scholarly journals Under What Conditions Do Rural Schools Learn From their Partners?

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 65-81
Author(s):  
Hilde Forfang ◽  
Jan Merok Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
School Improvement ◽  
Small School ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
Collective Case Study ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Learning Capacity ◽  
External Sources ◽  
Administrative Units ◽  
Collaborative Structures

This case study was designed to explore the strategies and actions that high performing schools with sustainable results employ at the district level in a rural part of Norway. The district subjected to the study is characterised by small municipalities and a scattered population, with a few small school administrative units, which might be a challenging context for sustainability and improvement. In response, the districts developed collaborative structures to increase collective learning capacity. The research design involved a collective case study, and it draws on data from interviews with school leaders at the municipal level and local school policy documents. The findings suggest that Norwegian school district actors can facilitate school improvement by shaping collaborating cultures, inter-organisational learning processes and educational infrastructures. Furthermore, the findings highlight the schools’ ability to recognise and value new knowledge from external sources, such as academic institutions and partner schools, assimilate novelties across boundaries and, eventually, utilise these for strategic or operational ends to enhance an organisation’s absorptive capacity. Finally, the findings indicate that superintendents can play important roles through boundary-spanning and gatekeeping activities.

Relationships and interactions between school owners and school principals: A case study of a Norwegian school district programme

2020 ◽  
pp. 174114322091976
Author(s):  
Hilde Forfang
Keyword(s):  
School District ◽  
Collaborative Governance ◽  
Collective Case Study ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Rural School District ◽  
Professional Network ◽  
Improve Student Achievement ◽  
Municipal Boundaries ◽  
Administrative Units

The literature has revealed that high-performing districts establish collaborative working relations with school leaders as a part of the strategy to improve student achievement. This study was designed to investigate the relationships and interactions that school owners and principals in municipalities with high-performing school results employ at the district level in a part of rural Norway. The district subjected to the study was characterized by small municipalities with a few school administrative units, which can be a challenging context for school owners’ involvement and interaction with principals. The research design involved a collective case study and draws on data from surveys, interviews and local school policy documents. The findings suggest that the proximity between neighbouring professional actors seems to be important, and that rural school district actors should build systemic competence and a purposefully tailored infrastructure to reinforce interactions and relationships with the subordinated principals. Further, the findings highlight the advantage of collaborative governance across municipal boundaries and the significance of a trust-based professional network for inter-organizational learning to flourish.

scholarly journals Soft Skills of Leaders and School Improvement in High Performing Schools

2015 ◽  
Vol 191 ◽  
pp. 2127-2131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tang Keow Ngang ◽  
Siti Huwaina Mohamed ◽  
Somprach Kanokorn
Keyword(s):  
School Improvement ◽  
Soft Skills ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
High Performing

The Practical Relevance of Accountability Systems for School Improvement: A Descriptive Analysis of California Schools

2007 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinrich Mintrop ◽  
Tina Trujillo
Keyword(s):  
School Improvement ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
High Growth ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
Accountability Systems ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Low Performing Schools ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
California Schools

In search for the practical relevance of accountability systems for school improvement, the authors ask whether practitioners traveling between the worlds of system-designated high- and low-performing schools would detect tangible differences in educational quality and organizational effectiveness. In comparing nine exceptionally high and low performing California middle schools, the authors conclude that if such travelers expected to encounter visible signs of an overall higher quality of students’ educational experience at the high-performing schools, they would be disappointed. Rather, they would have to settle on a narrower definition of quality that is more proximate to the effective acquisition of standards-aligned and test-relevant knowledge. High-growth schools tended to generate internal commitment for accountability and consider it an impetus for raising standards.

The emotional ecology of school improvement culture

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (5) ◽  
pp. 488-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Demerath
Keyword(s):  
School Culture ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
Collective Efficacy ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Feedback Loops ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
Content Type ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Staff Members

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand how high-performing schools develop and sustain improvement culture. While school culture has consistently been identified as an essential feature of high-performing schools, many of the ways in which culture shapes specific improvement efforts remain unclear. The paper draws on new research from social cognitive neuroscience and the anthropology and sociology of emotion to account for the relative impact of various meanings within school culture and how school commitment is enacted. Design/methodology/approach The analysis here draws on three years of ethnographic data collected in Harrison High School (HHS) in an urban public school district in River City, a large metropolitan area in the Midwestern USA. Though the school’s surrounding community had been socioeconomically depressed for many years, Harrison was selected for the study largely because of its steady improvement trajectory: in December, 2013, it was deemed a “Celebration” school under the state’s Multiple Measurement Rating system. The paper focuses on a period of time between 2013 and 2015, when the school was struggling to implement and localize a district-mandated push-in inclusion policy. Findings Study data suggest that the school’s eventual success in localizing the new inclusion policy was due in large part to a set of core interlocking feedback loops that generated specific emotionally charged meanings which guided its priorities, practices and direction. Specifically, the feedback loops explain how staff members and leaders generated and sustained empathy for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, optimism in their capabilities and motivation to help them learn and flourish. Furthermore they show how school leaders and staff members generated and sustained confidence and trust in their colleagues’ abilities to collaboratively learn and solve problems. Originality/value The model of the school’s emotional ecology presented here connects two domains of educational practice that are frequently analyzed separately: teaching and learning, and organization and leadership. The paper shows how several key features of high-performing schools are actually made and re-made through the everyday practices of leaders and staff members, including relational trust, academic optimism and collective efficacy. In sum, the charged meanings described here contributed to leaders’ and staff members’ commitment to the school, its students and each other – and what Florek (2016) has referred to as their “common moral purpose.”

scholarly journals Small schools and the pressure to consolidate.

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aimee Howley ◽  
Craig Howley
Keyword(s):  
Small Schools ◽  
Small School ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Small School Reform ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Shared Commitment ◽  
Urban Places

Positioned in relationship to reform literature calling for small schools “by design” and interpreting data from a case study of a high performing but low-SES district in a Midwestern state, this paper provides a basis for making sense of the apparent divergence in policies governing schooling structures in rural and urban places. Its interpretation examines the way educational reformers work to valorize a multidimensional set of practices constituting “small school reform.” This reform package is, ironically, to some extent unrelated to what is actually taking place naturally in small schools and districts, where more “traditional” practices are said to be more common. Reformers often regard such practices as deficient, but that judgment seems to disregard empirical findings about school and district size, which typically show that smaller scale itself confers advantages across locales. Moreover, they overlook dynamics such as those revealed in this case study, which demonstrate how smaller scale promotes a close-knit family atmosphere as well as shared commitment to a set of core values. In addition, with smaller scale come structural arrangements that support an ethos of self-sufficiency and openness to “outsiders”—transient as well as open-enrollment students. These dynamics enable a small district to weather substantial threats to its existence.

scholarly journals How do Principals of High Performing Schools Achieve Sustained Improvement Results?

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 133-149
Author(s):  
Lewes Peddell ◽  
David Lynch ◽  
Richard Waters ◽  
Wendy Boyd ◽  
Royce Willis
Keyword(s):  
School Improvement ◽  
Shared Vision ◽  
Effective School ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Foundational Principle ◽  
High Achieving Schools ◽  
Ace Model ◽  
Improvement Programs

Education systems across the globe have enacted national testing regimes to monitor and report student achievement progress as an outcome of teaching performance. This paper reports on an investigation of strategies that Principals of high achieving schools use to achieve school results, based on NAPLAN reports (the National Assessment Program in Australia) and interpreted via the Alignment, Capability and Engagement (ACE) model of organisational readiness. Our findings identified specific Principal behaviours, actions and attitudes as necessary for effective school-wide improvement programs, as well as the existence of commonly shared strategies and approaches that help to explain why these particular Principals have been successful in their pursuit of school improvement. These include a shared vision for improvement, use of data-driven decision making, and building positive, “transparent” relationships to encourage teacher buy-in. Importantly, these findings identified “organisational readiness”, a foundational principle of the ACE model, as a fundamental requisite to effective school improvement.

Can schools meet the promise of continuous improvement?

2017 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 54-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Elgart
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
Continuous Improvement ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Implementation Capacity ◽  
Real Progress ◽  
Strong Relationships

Continuous improvement is “an embedded behavior within the culture of a school that constantly focuses on the conditions, processes, and practices that will improve teaching and learning.” The phrase has been part of the lexicon of school improvement for decades, but real progress is rare. Based on its observations of about 5,000 institutions a year, AdvancEd Improvement Network has found that there are strong relationships between effective continuous improvement practices and the following characteristics of high-performing schools: a clear direction, healthy culture, high expectations, impact of instruction, resource management, efficacy of engagement, and implementation capacity.

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