Perception of Secondary School Principals on Strategies for Improving Academic Performance: A Trajectory of UMkhanyakude Education District

The study outlines the findings from a case study that explored how the uMkhanyakude education district improved its academic performance in such challenging circumstances of the district. The performance chart of the district tabling results from 2008 to 2020 raised curiosity and interest to investigating the strategies employed by the district turn things around. The study adopted a qualitative method of enquiry employing document analysis and telephone interviews with principals of top-performing schools in the district. The findings revealed that transformative leadership, parental involvement in the form of izimbizo, adoption of schools with high enrolments, use of lead teachers, regular school visits, prescription of learner activities, well-planned extra-classes and introduction of Study camps raised learner academic performance in the district. The study recommends quality teaching and learning across the grades, parental involvement should be encouraged at all levels, two-way communication, regular support by the subject advisors and the unions.

A pathway to teaching for paraprofessionals of color

Research has shown that students of color benefit from having teachers who share their racial background. The paraprofessionals and education assistants currently working in schools represent one potential source of such teachers. Many of them are committed to schools and students but need support to obtain a teaching license. Laura Delgado, Kristin Baese, and Ally Hauptman describe a program for helping these paraprofessionals become full-time lead teachers by taking graduate courses while continuing to work as assistants and receiving mentoring support as they move through the licensure process.

Workforce Compensation Policies for Lead Teachers in State-Funded Preschool

Each state in the US has different compensation parity policies for their early childhood education programs. Currently, public preschool teachers often have similar qualifications to K-3 teachers but earn significantly lower salaries. Compensation parity policies ensure that equivalent work and qualifications are compensated with equivalent pay and benefits. Using data collected by the National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER), I organized and analyzed policy data from all state-funded preschool programs in the U.S., with a focus on state compensation parity policies for lead preschool teachers. Ultimately, my purpose was to understand state-funded preschool compensation parity for lead teachers in order to identify areas of improvement for the workforce within early education programs. I initially hypothesized that Pre-K programs that required pay parity did not cost states more per child than Pre-K programs that did not require pay parity. Literature from NIEER and other early education research institutions has shown that quality early education programs are critical in a child’s formative years and suggests that a more satisfied workforce yields more positive outcomes for children. Parity policies in state-funded Pre-K programs are not highly correlated to spending per child or program quality. Moreover, parity policies improve workforce well-being and should still be incorporated into state-funded Pre-K. Results show that there are only six programs across four states that require full salary parity for lead preschool teachers and no states require benefit parity for lead preschool teachers in both public and private settings. No clear pattern has emerged between compensation parity policies and state preschool spending or program quality.

Designing and validating an evaluation inventory for assessing teachers’ professional accountability

Research has already established the boundless potential of teachers in assisting effective learning processes, and there is still a need to expand research to illustrate interrelation and connection between the construct of teachers’ professional accountability which moderates and directs student learning. To this end, a comprehensive review of the literature was conducted by the researchers to explore and extract relevant theoretical constructs to teacher accountability. A literature review was followed by structured interviews with 20 administrators, teachers, students, and parents to record perceived concepts related to teacher accountability. Content analysis of recorded interviews and thematic network analysis of literature resulted in a 30-item Likert scale. The researcher-made questionnaire was subject to reliability and validity issues. Thus, in the second phase, the questionnaire was piloted with 142 male and female EFL in-service teachers selected on the basis of the convenient sampling method. Factor analysis on data collected through this reduced the items to 29 and indicated that data on teacher accountability loaded on five components including accountability towards students (N: 7 items), parents (N: 5 items), school leadership (N: 5 items), society (N: 7 items), and the profession (N: 5 items). The results also indicated that the questionnaire enjoys sound psychometric properties of reliability (α: 0.88 ˂0.5). The upshots of this study could provide a better understanding of the concept and lead teachers to be more coherent and accountable.

Recognising the impact of highly accomplished and lead teachers

The Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher (HALT) Certification process introduced in Australia in 2012 was designed to recognise expert teachers, to encourage them to continue to influence and impact their students and colleagues through their exemplary classroom practice. Expert teachers prepare evidence of their impactful practices, and have this evidence evaluated through a National Certifying Authority. HALTs are a relatively new role in Australian education, and little is known about their impact in schools, or the potential for their ongoing role as middle leaders in schools. This paper analyses the experiences of HALT teachers who had been certified by Independent Schools Queensland (ISQ) in 2018, and what impact they recognised they were having in the schools who supported them through their certification process. Impact is theorised as a temporal, reflexive narrative. Data were gathered in a cascading evaluative process through portfolio analysis, interviews with nationally certified teachers, school-based mentors and school leaders and a survey about their teacher and middle leader efficacy. The process of applying for HALT Certification had significant positive personal impact for the teachers, their students, their colleagues in their school and for some, beyond their school. The recognition of impact as a temporal narrative with distinct genres, and the concept of HALT teachers as middle leaders may point to new avenues of supporting applicants and to potential benefits for schools to encourage teachers to consider national certification.

Experiences of the First Year Implementation of a Nationwide School-Based Smoking Prevention Program in Korea

Encouraged by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Korea has implemented a nationwide School-based Smoking Prevention Program (SSPP) to reduce the prevalence of youth smoking. This qualitative study explored the school contexts of launching the SSPP in Seoul, Korea. Five focus groups were studied with 29 lead teachers in charge of the SSPP. Thematic analysis reveals three key findings. First, while infrastructure was insufficiently prepared due to the abrupt implementation, lead teachers agreed on the purpose of the SSPP. However, they perceived the program as myopic in only targeting smoking students and spending the mandatory budgets as a burdensome task. Second, the SSPP increased experience-based activities, influenced smoking family members, and created a smoke-free school environment. Third, to ensure more effective implementation, school principals should support inducing staff engagement. The teachers also maintained that the SSPP must be institutionalized as part of regular curricula with standardized books. For a more meaningful impact, the SSPP needs instructors and counselors to support smoking cessation programs that reflect school contexts. The teachers urged tobacco prevention measures at community, policy, and society levels. This study provides insights into a nationwide approach to initiating school-based smoking prevention program to achieve a tobacco-free generation.

School Library Leading the Way

In 2007 the principals of three schools in Auckland, New Zealand, formed a cluster with the aim of improving standards of information literacy in their schools over three years. Research, reported in a paper at the 2008 IASL conference, demonstrated that few teachers in the cluster were explicitly teaching their students the skills they needed when undertaking research or inquiry. In early 2008, a group of Lead Teachers, led by the teacher librarian in the largest school, and including trained library staff, designed a cluster model for teachers to use with their students when processing information. They also designed cluster-wide professional development which each school implemented in different ways. This paper reports on the findings of an evaluation carried out to measure the effectiveness of the first round of professional development.

Developing Positive Data Cultures in High-Stakes Environments: The Role of School Leaders

Data use is considered a key lever in school improvement processes, but the punitive pressure of high-stakes accountability can influence whether or not data use is enacted in ways which facilitate improvement. School leaders must learn to respond to high-stakes accountability in ways which lead teachers to feel safe, efficacious, and agentic with data use, and they must orient teachers to recognize data use as a mechanism for improvement. The following case describes how two leaders at Milo School District uniquely responded to high-stakes accountability and ultimately influenced the type of data culture created within their schools.

THE WEB OF POWER RELATIONS AND THE SCHOOL REGULATIVE DISCOURSE DURING PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS’ TEACHING PRACTICES

The purpose of this paper, which utilises Foucault’s theoretical framework, is to study the effect the existent web of power relations and the school regulative discourse have on the formation of the students as teacher-subjects, during their teaching practice organised by a Department of Primary Education in Greece. The data were collected using two research tools: the interview and observation. The research findings showed that power relations are formed between the mentors and the students. Moreover, the mentors’ action unfolds on three levels. They simultaneously act as supervisors and evaluators, as lead-teachers in the classroom and as role-models for the students. It is through their action that the students become familiarized the school regulative discourse. The majority of the students conform to the norms of the school regulative discourse and obey the controls exercised by the mentors, during their practicum. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0796/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>