Changing Schools

"The raising of standards in schools is a global challenge to policy-makers. To overcome it means to remove the ongoing influence of poverty on school success. In an age of global mobility, economic polarization and unprecedented environmental and cultural challenges, the education of all children and young people to higher levels has become a key issue of international policy. This book presents new thinking and practice for progressing school change today, drawn from the works of authors around the world. Educational policy-making has been dominated by particular human capital oriented theories of school improvement, formulated and implemented in neo-liberal political environments. This book seeks to challenge this dominance. It draws both on contemporary innovations in practice and theory and long standing traditions of alternative thinking and practice. Linking together and articulating other ways of conceiving of and implementing school change, it bases its findings on values of equality and global citizenship. It shows how schools can work to make different knowledges, languages, narratives, truths and ways of being integral to mainstream curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and school cultures and structures. The book is directed at all who are concerned with progressive school change and the promotion of democratic citizenship and social justice. This will include education students, those currently studying for school leadership positions, heads, teachers and policy-makers"--Provided by publisher.

"In this comprehensive volume, a roster of leading scholars in educational policy and related fields offer eighteen essays seeking to illuminate new ways for American public education to counter persistent racial and socioeconomic inequality in our society. Drawing on extensive research, the contributors reinforce the key benefits of racially integrated schools, examine remaining options to pursue multiracial integration, and discuss case examples that suggest how to build support for those efforts"--

The Change Leadership Group at the Harvard School of Education has, through its work with educators, developed a thoughtful approach to the transformation of schools in the face of increasing demands for accountability. This book brings the work of the Change Leadership Group to a broader audience, providing a framework to analyze the work of school change and exercises that guide educators through the development of their practice as agents of change. It exemplifies a new and powerful approach to leadership in schools.

Much has been written about globalization and the challenge of preparing young people for the new world of work and life in times of complexity and continuous change. However, few works have examined how globalization has and will continue to shape education in the East. This volume discusses education within the context of globalization and examines what is occurring in schools and systems of education in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, Singapore, and Australia. Closer examination of recent developments and current trends reveal the same turbulence and a range of common issues in areas such as assessment, curriculum, leadership, management of change, pedagogy, policy, professional capacity and technology. This volume demonstrates the commonalities and differences and offers tremendous insight into the way things are done in places where student achievement is high but there is also a sense of urgency in continuing an agenda of change.

Changing schools at 11 or 12+ is a critical, often traumatic event in a pupil’s career. Earlier studies had looked at this transitional stage from the schools’ point of view, in the light of institutional aims and objectives. Originally published in 1984, this richly detailed and readable study looks at it from the pupils’ point of view: it illustrates their perceptions of the transfer, their anxieties and their experiences. The book is the result of a research project, in which children transferring from a typical middle school to a typical comprehensive in a Midlands town were observed over a period of eighteen months. The authors reveal various ways in which children adjust to a large, more complex school organisation, to new forms of discipline and authority, and new demands in school work. They emphasise the significance of teenage culture during this period, and identify an important area of interplay between school culture and sub-culture. They pay special attention to gender identities, and the ways in which these affect pupils’ responses to different subjects in the curriculum. Finally, they consider the theoretical and policy implications of their survey, and make positive recommendations for improving school and classroom practice at both primary and secondary level.

List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments 1: Progressive Education: A Definition 2: Old Wine, New Bottles 3: Progressive Schools in the 1930s 4: Progressive Education in the 1930s: The Local Perspective5: Postwar Education: The Challenge 6: Progressive Education under Fire 7: Postwar Education in the Suburbs 8: Postwar Education in Middle America 9: Progressive Education and the Process of Reform Tables: School and Community Statistics, 1930-1960 Notes Index Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.