Educational Change

Correction to: How history matters: The emergence and persistence of structural conflict between academic and vocational education: The case of post‑Soviet Estonia In the original published article, the following references were published incorrectly.

International learning communities: What happens when leaders seek to learn across national boundaries? Abstract The past decade has seen increasing international education activity and interest from policymakers and think tanks in looking to other countries for educational reform strategies. This “new isomorphism”—the notion of global best practices in education—has been the subject of intensive debate between advocates and critics. But missing from this debate is an empirical account of what actually happens when global leaders gather, whether these leaders accept or resist borrowing from abroad, and, more constructively, how such gatherings might be organized to promote productive learning. Given these gaps, our research examines the emergence of what we call International Learning Communities (ILCs), which are sustained efforts to support public education leaders in ongoing cross-national learning. In this paper, we describe the nature of these communities and re-evaluate their role in the new isomorphism. Drawing on observations of two such communities and interviews with 30 ILC participants, we conclude that this model offers three types of learning: borrowing, co-construction, and systems thinking. While we view each as useful, we suggest that systems thinking is critical if international lessons are going to be effectively assimilated into coherent, contextually-appropriate strategies. Our findings are relevant not only for the continued study and development of system-level international learning, but also for all who seek to learn from other nations’ educational policy and practice.

Meeting the discipline challenge: Capacity-building youth-adult leadership Abstract Because misbehavior in schools is often instigated by a confluence of organizational features, the purpose of this research was to understand what Youth Court reveals about the causes of in-school conflicts and to what extent its processes help to address them. This multi-site qualitative case study collected data in the form of observations, documents, semi-structured and focus group interviews in order to explore Youth Court processes and outcomes. Double-loop learning was used to describe the extent and quality of dialogue and interventions. The research questions were: Does Youth Court facilitate double-loop learning? What contributing variables influencing student misbehavior does this discourse reveal? What is the impact of this discourse on school policies and practices? Youth Court surfaces vital information about students, teachers, classrooms, and school-wide policy necessary to inform the development or adaptation of discipline policies and practices; in some cases, that information became a catalyst for changes in classroom and school-wide policies and practices. Youth Court helped to address individual instances of misbehavior with interventions that were restorative rather than punitive. And yet, the greater benefits of Youth Court, namely improvements to a school’s culture and climate, were not necessarily fully realized because Youth Court activity and other school processes and structures are not formally linked. Further research using linkage theory would help to unpack why successes in Youth Court did and did not spread to other areas of school.

Impact of inquiry-based working on the capacity to change in primary education Abstract Educational improvement projects are increasingly focused upon the significant role of data in determining student performance, teachers’ learning, and schools’ ability to initiate local reforms. Thus, schools are moving toward a new approach to learning, progressing from the routine to the non-routine through inquiry-based working. In addition, educational improvement requires teachers to exhibit the capacity to change, namely, to implement the innovations proposed by government agencies or the schools themselves. Therefore, the current study investigates the extent to which the inquiry-based working of primary school teachers predicts their capacity to change. Furthermore, the study identifies which aspects of inquiry-based working are the critical drivers in the capacity to change. A mixed model analysis of questionnaire data collected from a sample of 787 teachers at 65 Dutch elementary schools revealed that the central aspects of inquiry-based work (i.e., working with an inquiry habit of mind, demonstrating data literacy, using data in the classroom, and using data at the school level) are significant in promoting an increased capacity to change. Working with an inquiry habit of mind emerged as the most critical aspect. Data use in the classroom and at the school level are complementary factors that also enhance a teacher’s capacity to change.

Perils of perspective: Identifying adult confidence in the child’s capacity, autonomy, power and agency (CAPA) in readiness for voice-inclusive practice Abstract In recent years, children’s voice initiatives in education have gained increased recognition and application. However, while the concept of child and student ‘voice’ is not new, there remains a high level of inconsistency in how voice-focused initiatives are implemented across education sectors. Not all voice initiatives are successful, mainly because such initiatives are not always willingly adopted by the adults directly responsible for the education of children. If authentic voice-inclusive practice is to occur, greater recognition of the impact an adult’s conceptualisation of children has on their willingness and ability to embrace voice-inclusive practice needs to take place. Understanding the key informants that adults draw upon to conceptualise children and their capabilities can assist educational strategists in identifying adult readiness for authentic and effective Voice-Inclusive Practice. Voice-inclusive practice is defined as actions and processes that incorporate children’s perspectives and actively engage with children on matters that affect them. This paper presents a conceptual model CAPA (capacity, autonomy, power and agency) representing the subjective designations adults place on the child that informs the application of sustained voice-inclusive practice and offers a ‘pre-voice’ exploration of an individual’s likelihood of engaging in voice-inclusive practice.

How school leaders can build effective data teams: Five building blocks for a new wave of data-informed decision making Abstract Data-informed decision making is considered important for school improvement. Working in data teams is a promising strategy for implementing data use in schools. Data teams consist of teachers and school leaders, who collaboratively analyze data to solve educational problems at their school. Studies show that school leaders can enable and hinder data use in such teams. This study aims at exploring what types of leadership behaviors are applied to support data use in data teams. The results of this study point to five key building blocks for school leaders wanting to build effective data teams in their school: (1) establishing a vision, norms, and goals (e.g., discussing vision, norms, and goals with teachers); (2) providing individualized support (e.g., providing emotional support); (3) intellectual stimulation (e.g., sharing knowledge and providing autonomy); (4) creating a climate for data use (e.g., creating a safe climate focused on improvement rather than accountability, and engaging in data discussions with teachers); and (5) networking to connect different parts of the school organization (e.g., brokering knowledge and creating a network that is committed to data use). Not only formal school leaders, but also teachers, can display these types of behavior. Finally, it is important to stress here that all these building blocks are needed to create sustainable data use practices. These building blocks can be used in a new wave of data-informed decision making in schools, in which teachers and school leaders collaboratively use a multitude of different data sources to improve education.

District agency in implementing instructional reform: A comparative case study of global education Abstract As instructional reforms are shifting focus from reading and math achievement towards social–emotional learning and challenging coursework that prepares students for college, careers, and citizenship, this study addresses how leaders in two school districts actively served as mid-level implementers of global education, an instructional reform that extends teaching and learning beyond traditionally tested subject areas. This qualitative comparative case study of global education implementation in two school districts found that leaders in both districts strategically supported global education implementation by generating will, building capacity, and re-orienting the organization, but differed in specific strategies they deployed based upon preferences for top-down or top-and-bottom approaches to systems change. Common strategies found in both cases point to specific ways that district leaders can exert agency in supporting teaching and learning that prepares students with the twenty-first century skills needed to thrive in a pluralistic, interconnected world, and raises new questions about which district-level implementation approaches are most effective in enacting change in schools and classrooms.

Educational governance transition in a social democratic country: A process-tracing analysis Abstract Despite the interest in governance transition in public education, it is challenging to find a theorised account of the process, and even more so in social democratic countries. To fill this gap, Israel can serve as a good case study for investigating how educational governance in social democratic countries changes under neoliberal influences. In the mid-2000s, the Israeli government presented the Dovrat reform, a greatly detailed plan for a new governance mode and multiple neoliberal policies in public education. Shortly after its introduction, political circumstances led to its formal demise, and as a result, many researchers called it a ‘failed’ neoliberal reform. As this analysis indicates, however, key features proposed by the reform ended up being implemented. This case study combines the ‘garbage can model’ and ‘institutional change’ theories to explain the dynamic of transition from a bureaucratic to a neoliberal governance mode in public education. The findings suggest that in Israel, and possibly in other social democratic countries, transition to neoliberal governance is a result of a dynamic that combines direct and indirect policy changes. The article discusses this dynamic and the circumstances that have helped produce it.

Swiss principals’ emotions, basic needs satisfaction and readiness for change during curriculum reform Abstract Based on an interdisciplinary theoretical approach, this study examines the relationship between school principals’ perceived satisfaction of their basic psychological needs during curriculum reform, their evaluation of the new curriculum’s usability, their emotional experience and their readiness to engage actively in the curriculum implementation. The sample consists of 359 public school principals in Switzerland, who filled out a questionnaire. Data were analyzed using equation modeling. The results indicate that principals are more open towards the implementation when they evaluate the usability of the new curriculum positively. Further, we found that change-related governance policies supporting the satisfaction of the need for social relatedness, fosters principals’ readiness for change, their evaluation of the new curriculum and their experience of enjoyment, the latter of which relates positively to their readiness to engage in the implementation at their school. The results of the present study suggest that not only teachers’ but also school principals’ emotions do play an important role in the context of educational change and that arranging for needs-oriented innovation governance is worth the effort.

Discursive lecturing: An agile and student-centred teaching approach with response technology Abstract The introduction of digital tools in response to instructional needs require the development of accompanying teaching approaches guiding their application. This study aimed to identify one such approach in upper-secondary education language teaching with response technology (RT), and situate it within the existing field of research on applied RT. Qualitative data from the two phase (exploratory and intervention) case study identified and tested discursive lecturing as a dialogical approach to language teaching, where class communication is aided by RT. The approach was found to resemble question-driven instruction (Beatty et al. in Am J Phys 74(1):31–39, 2006a, in Audience response systems in higher education: Applications and cases, IGI Global, 96–115, 2006b), but significantly diverge from this and other models for RT in the coherence of its procedure, and the integration of generative, active learning for the student and agile teaching to guide the progress of language learning. This indicates that RT provides potential for student-centring by affording classroom interaction based on student responses, where the rigidity of the teacher’s pre-planned lecture or question structures is replaced by a teaching agility which accommodates student production.