A Mission-Based Argument for Private K-12 Student Press

Although the First Amendment does not guarantee student press within public schools, it does help affirm the value of such opportunities to student communities. Private schools do not enjoy such constitutional support, but may have a more powerful tool closer to home: their own school mission statements. This study coded nearly 500 private K-12 school mission statements to determine whether the priorities identified by these programs align with the documented benefits of student journalism and found a strong connection between both.

Mission of the school as an element of the socio-ecological model of developing students' sense of school belonging

While the benefits of school belonging are well documented, the issue of the possibility of strengthening and developing students' identification with this place by the school itself is less well known. The aim of this paper is to present a socio-ecological model of developing school belonging inspired by Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory of ecological systems. This article focuses on the mission of the school as an element of this model. The mission defines the school's priorities, defines values and goals, indicates the state towards which the organization is heading. From this point of view, the school mission can be an important tool in the process of strengthening students' sense of identification with the school.

The School Librarian Rocks

This paper will describe assessment tools used by the author as a primary school librarian practitioner. It will show: how the tools can be used to provide the School Librarian with the means to report on students; and how the School Librarian can show that learning has taken place in the library. In the process the credibility of the School Librarian as a faculty member is enhanced as well as the collaborative partnership with staff and as a consequence has a strengthened position for advocacy for the place of the library and the school library as a key contributor to the school mission. Thus it will be shown that assessment is one avenue that the School Librarian can demonstrate his/her professionalism and that she/he is responsible for providing ‘the school library as a learning environment’. This paper thus contributes to an aim and a subtheme of the 44th IASL Conference.

Mission matters: Association between a medical school’s mission and minority student representation

Increasing enrollment of students who are underrepresented in medicine has been a priority of United States (US) medical schools. The authors sought to compare how increasing minority student representation factors into mission statements, statements of values, and strategic action plans at top research-oriented US medical schools and US medical schools with a social mission. A Web search was performed to locate three documents for each medical school: the mission statement; a statement of values; and a strategic plan. Data were retrieved on the number of underrepresented minority graduates and total graduates from each school in the graduating classes of 2015–2019. The number and percentage of graduates during this period were compared according to schools’ mission statements using rank-sum tests. Other quantitative study data were compared by school mission using Fisher’s exact tests. Five of the schools with a social mission (25%) and none of the schools with a research mission had a mission statement that addressed increasing representation of underrepresented minority students in the medical school (p = 0.047). Schools with a mission statement that addressed this group had a higher proportion of those graduates during 2015–2019 (median 66%; IQR 28%, 68%) compared to schools that did not address this in their mission statement (median 10%; IQR 6%, 13%; p = 0.003). More research is needed to explore the association between US medical school mission statements and the representation of underrepresented students in medical education, especially at research-oriented medical schools.

Do Mission Statements Matter? An Evaluation of Dental School Mission Statements

Objective: In private enterprise, the Mission Statement (MS) of a company is the compass that shows the direction the organization is heading and is a guide in major decisions. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the mission statements of all United States (US) Dental Schools for common themes and to understand how these themes align with current issues in dentistry. Methods: Two reviewers manually searched every United States (US) Dental School website to identify the mission statement of each school and four investigators reviewed the mission statements, identified and listed themes. A qualitative analytical approach was used, and recurring themes were identified. IRB Exemption was provided (HUM00175583Â) by the University of Michigan School of Medicine’s committee on human studies. Results: In this study, 68 dental schools were evaluated, and 18 different themes were identified. The mean number of themes per school was 2 and the median was 4. The minimum number of themes among dental schools was 1 and the maximum was 11 themes. The findings indicated that the most recurring theme in dental school mission statements was research and dissemination of knowledge (76.11%) and the least recurring themes, which are some of the most pressing issues in dentistry were social justice (4.47%), public health (7.46%), and health disparities (8.95%). Conclusion: Missions statements are just as important in schools as they are in business. Therefore, dental schools should consider periodically revising their mission statements to coincide with the demands of current oral health needs.

New Educational Mission

The last chapter proposes to go not only beyond the epistemic dimension to improve it, but also beyond the lesson content. The German's lesson shows how easily we can exceed students' expectations and arouse their curiosity, enthusiasm, and learning investment. If we aspire to decrease school violence, bullying, and delinquency, a new educational mission would be to surpass teaching without necessarily being demanding or time-consuming. Indeed, making use of the relational dimension—using the multiple intelligence and STEAM approaches to include students through competence—seemss to refer to the new school mission as an aspiration builder rather than a selection referee and inducer of discouragement.

Clinical excellence and the dental school mission

Delivering clinical excellence is fundamental to the success of a 21st century dental school's mission and yet, our ability to define clinical excellence in practice remains surprisingly elusive. In this paper, Peter Thomson explores the complex and multi-faceted nature of clinical excellence, confirming its pivotal role throughout knowledge creation, teaching, training, lifelong education and clinical practice. Ultimately, our ability to deliver optimal patient care, manage new and emergent disease and enhance prevention and health promotion for the future require dental education and clinical service to be better aligned and more fully integrated with general healthcare provision for all.

Mission Statements as a Basis for Reflection on the Priorities of the General Secondary School

The article provides an analysis of general secondary school mission statements of 53 schools from the public sector in Warsaw. The purpose of the study was to gain a perspective on the school's priorities as defined by secondary schools themselves. The qualitative content analysis revealed that mission statements highlight the broad range of goals that the schools pursue. Some of these goals may be thought of in terms of educational results, while others may be seen as educational “inputs”. The obtained results show that schools share certain priorities, but there was also a range of “specific” objectives that the educational institutions pursue.