Education Commons^™

Work-Related Stress And Burnout Factors Of Principals In Regional Greece: A Historical Perspective, Christos Leventis, Evangelos C. Papakitsos, Konstantinos Karakiozis, Argyrios Argyriou

Journal of Research Initiatives

Work-related stress and burnout is a reality in modern society, because the lack of time and the high work demands seem increasingly intensified. Thus, the study of working conditions and the factors that affect the physical and mental health becomes even more imperative. Professions that are particularly stressful are those where there is daily contact with people, for example, doctors, nurses, social workers, or school leaders. Besides administrative and official duties, modern principals perform additional functions such as the organization and management of schools, the coordination of people who are involved in the teaching and operational process and they intervene …

Science Of Learning Network Of Schools: The Science Of Communities Of Practice, Andrew Jones, Frank Vetere

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Frameworks referencing synthesised bodies of prominent research adorn education improvement policy like curiously named pieces of Ikea furniture—peculiar in their assemblage, ostensibly contemporary, and striking in their modular convenience. Amid this, most pundits still agree that we have an education advancement issue in this country. Despite significant increases in funding from successive federal and state governments, we simply haven’t been able to shift the needle. What we can ascertain is that compliance-based improvement approaches don’t work. They are unable to influence the cognitive maps, beliefs and understandings of the educator to the extent necessary to effectively improve outcomes for students …

Teacher Leader And Teacher Leadership: A Call For Conceptual Clarity, Susan Lovett

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Education systems cannot afford to lose promising teachers who could be the school leaders of tomorrow. My work shows a need to promote leadership as learning for teachers and students rather than as management and administration, heavy workloads and disconnectedness from students and their learning. Conceptions of leadership that allow teachers to see professional learning as the reason for their work make a contribution to school leadership as a whole. Schools benefit from leaders at all levels no matter their distance to classrooms. School cultures can stimulate leadership practices when professional learning exchanges among teachers are reciprocated. Professional learning is …

Developing Evaluative Thinking And Evidence-Based Practice: A Synthetic Case Study, Tim Wyatt

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

The NSW Literacy and Numeracy Action Plan, which operated from 2012 to 2016, provided $261 millon to improve literacy and numeracy learning in 448 the most disadvantaged and lowest performing schools across the three education sectors in NSW. A key objective of the Action Plan was to enhance teacher and school leader capacity, including the ability to apply evidence-based practices and evaluative thinking to planning and programming for teaching and learning at a classroom level, and to planning and decision-making at a whole-school level. The concept and terminology of ‘evidence-based practice’ is in common parlance in Australian schools; however, in …

Pre-Service And In-Service Teacher Education: A Leadership Model For Collaborative Learning, Jo-Anne Reid

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Innovative collaboration between schools and university can enhance teacher education. This model was developed as part of a partnership between a school principal leading a cluster of diverse primary schools, and a local university school of teacher education. The partnership established a memorandum of understanding to support targeted and standards-based professional learning for teachers and new leaders across the schools in the cluster. Novice pre-service teachers were also assigned to these schools for an extended weekly professional placement. This session outlines the model as it was designed: to respond to the strategic demands of particular school communities, as well as …

Nourishing Teachers’ Leadership For Learning: Insights From Practitioner Research, Simon Clarke

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

This session contends that leadership and learning are mutually supporting and reinforcing. It is only recently that attempts have been made to describe in practice the complex connections existing between the two activities by drawing on empirical evidence. To this end, this session will depict ways in which leadership and learning are indispensable to each other in day-to-day teachers’ work, and the implications this symbiosis has for practice. Firstly, the session will consider the key foundations and principles of leadership for learning, especially as they relate to the Carpe Vitam international leadership for learning research project. Secondly, we will discuss …

Enhancing Instructional Leadership: Lessons From The Nsw Literacy And Numeracy Action Plan, Tim Wyatt

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Over the past decade, schools, school systems and governments at all levels have invested heavily in enhancing the quality of school leadership. The Australian Government-funded National Partnerships (2012–2014) identified principal leadership as one of its explicit goals. More recently, the emphasis of leadership development has been on enhancing instructional leadership. This paper describes an approach to enhancing instructional leadership adopted as part of the NSW Literacy and Numeracy Action Plan (2012–2016), which was the particular approach of the NSW government school sector. The three school sectors in NSW each adopted different models for their implementation of the Action Plan relevant …

An Explanatory Sequential Mixed Methods Study Of The School Leaders’ Role In Students’ Mathematics Achievement Through The Lens Of Complexity Theory, Emma P. Bullock

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

School leaders are expected to make decisions that improve student mathematics achievement. However, one difficulty for school leaders has been the limited amount of research concerning content-specific (e.g., mathematics) school leadership and its effects on student achievement. School leaders do not make decisions in isolation; rather, they make decisions as part of a complex adaptive system (CAS), as proposed by complexity theory. The purpose of this study was to explore the role the school leader plays in students’ mathematics achievement through the lens of complexity theory.

The researcher collected survey data from K-12 school leaders and conducted focus group interviews …