Analyzing the Link between Distributed Leadership and Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs at Secondary School Level

School head teachers can no longer lead their schools on your own; they are obligated to cooperate with their leadership team members. They assign various leadership functions to teachers and allow them to contribute in decision-making process. In this context, this correlational study was mainly intended to analyze secondary school teachers’ perceptions regarding various functions of distributed leadership and to find out their relative weight in terms of predicting secondary school teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. Furthermore, the effect of three demographical variables (i.e., gender, experience, school sector) was also studied in predicting teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. A randomly selected sample of 1335 secondary school teachers completed self-report questionnaire comprising three parts i.e., demographic section, 23 item Distributed Leadership Inventory (Hulpia et al., 2009) and 10 item Teacher Self-efficacy Scale (Schwarzer et al.,1999). Results of descriptive analysis revealed that secondary school teachers perceived themselves as highly self-efficacious. Pearson correlation coefficient showed that all the independent variables related to distributed leadership i.e., support, supervision and coherent leadership team and dependent variable i.e., teacher self-efficacy were found to be substantially related with each other. Standard multiple regression analysis indicated that coherent leadership team variable was the strongest predictor of secondary school teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. Results also suggested that coherence among leadership team affects secondary school teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs more positively in comparison with all the other independent variables. As regards demographical variables, school sector found to be a significant predictor of secondary school teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. Finally, this study recommends that school leaders should work in cooperation with all the teachers with a clear view on school goals in a trustworthy and open environment avoiding any role conflicts.

New Zealand violin teaching contexts and their impact on teacher practice in private studios and out-of-hours music centres.

<p>The out-of-hours music programme provides free instrumental music lessons to primary school aged children and has a long-standing history in New Zealand, dating back to 1929. While this government-funded programme has been part of the primary school sector for more than fifty years, there is little to no research about its teaching or how it functions. Out of hours music centres are unique to New Zealand and while being attached to the primary school sector are run independently outside school hours. Many of these centres offer violin lessons and generally, their teachers also work as private violin teachers. Are violin teacher’s pedagogical practices different depending on whether they teach in a centre, or in their own studios? This sociocultural study presents a critical analysis into beginner violin pedagogies and the similarities and differences between the out-of-hours music context and the private studio.</p>

New Zealand violin teaching contexts and their impact on teacher practice in private studios and out-of-hours music centres.

<p>The out-of-hours music programme provides free instrumental music lessons to primary school aged children and has a long-standing history in New Zealand, dating back to 1929. While this government-funded programme has been part of the primary school sector for more than fifty years, there is little to no research about its teaching or how it functions. Out of hours music centres are unique to New Zealand and while being attached to the primary school sector are run independently outside school hours. Many of these centres offer violin lessons and generally, their teachers also work as private violin teachers. Are violin teacher’s pedagogical practices different depending on whether they teach in a centre, or in their own studios? This sociocultural study presents a critical analysis into beginner violin pedagogies and the similarities and differences between the out-of-hours music context and the private studio.</p>

Between-school inequalities in access to STEM curricula in a marketized education system: The case of Australia

We used descriptive statistics and a logistic regression to examine between-school inequalities in science and math curricular offerings in Year 12 (final year) in all schools in one Australian state (Victoria). Dataset contains variables about school contexts: school enrolment size, school socioeconomic composition, school sector, and school location.

Between-school inequalities in access to STEM curricula in a marketized education system: The case of Australia

We used descriptive statistics and a logistic regression to examine between-school inequalities in science and math curricular offerings in Year 12 (final year) in all schools in one Australian state (Victoria). Dataset contains variables about school contexts: school enrolment size, school socioeconomic composition, school sector, and school location.

Frontiers of cosmopolitanism: Educational enclaves and the extractive roots of international schools

This article situates international expatriate schools in their cultural and political economy by drawing attention to the tensions between a cosmopolitan educational ethos and processes of social, economic and legal enclavement. Based on extensive multi-sited ethnographic research in the international school sector, we show how cosmopolitan claims of openness mirror a relative closure and ‘offshore-like’ enclavement. To do so, we build upon the notions of modularity and extractivism, which we use as heuristics to analyse social and spatial practices of defining boundaries. Gazing beyond the main foundational myth of international schools, we first outline their concomitant extractive roots. Second, we shed light on the conditions of international teachers’ circulation worldwide. Third, we examine the territorial entanglements and disentanglements that characterise international schools. Finally, we investigate the tensions induced by a cosmopolitan educational ethos whose discourse of inclusion is inevitably paired with practices of exclusion.

Students’ Cognitive Test Anxiety and Secondary School Examination Performance: Moderating Effect of Gender and School Sector

Despite a bulk of research in international context investigating the relationship of cognitive test anxiety with students’ academic performance, little work has yet been done in this area on samples of students in Pakistan. This correlational design study was, therefore, conducted to examine the relationship between secondary school students’ cognitive test anxiety and their examination performance in educational context of Pakistan and to ascertain how the direction and/or strength of this relationship may be moderated by students’ gender and their school sector. Data were collected on students’ cognitive test anxiety, total obtained marks in SSC examination and obtained marks in English along with students’ gender and school sector from 1712 mixed ability students enrolled in year 11 in 91 public and private institutions. Both the descriptive and inferential statistical techniques (i.e., Mean, SD and Independent samples t-test) along with Pearson’s R correlations and hierarchical multiple regression were performed to analyze the data. Results depicted that female sample students reported higher level of cognitive test anxiety in comparison to their male counterparts. Results also suggested a small but significant negative effect of cognitive test anxiety on students’ examination performance and that student cognitive test anxiety component accounted for 10% of variance in their examination performance. Results further revealed that the magnitude of relationship between students’ cognitive test anxiety and examination total point scores do not change much for the moderating variables and these variables accounted only for 3% of variance. The magnitude of moderating effect, however, found to be somewhat stronger in the school sector in comparison to students’ gender.