Revisiting Robert Axelrod: Cooperation, School Management and Teacher Unions

The militancy of teacher unions is frequently associated with the disruption in schools where unions are antagonistic to management. The objective of this qualitative study was to examine the impact of cooperation between teacher unions and school management. Using Axelrod’s theory of the Evolution of Cooperation, the instrument explored whether school principals can forge successful cooperation between school managers and union site committees. Several studies are showing that cooperation among staff is critical for learner achievement and collegiality. Furthermore, cooperation enables the school’s role-players to work towards a shared vision. The conclusions point out that school managers should consciously engender cooperation to run successful schools where teachers would not betray one another. A methodical cooperation plan could be the missing tool required to turn unsuccessful schools around to become successful.

Can Successful Schools Replicate? Scaling Up Boston’s Charter School Sector

Can schools that boost student outcomes reproduce their success at new campuses? We study a policy reform that allowed effective charter schools in Boston, Massachusetts to replicate their school models at new locations. Estimates based on randomized admission lotteries show that replication charter schools generate large achievement gains on par with those produced by their parent campuses. The average effectiveness of Boston’s charter middle school sector increased after the reform despite a doubling of charter market share. An exploration of mechanisms shows that Boston charter schools compress the distribution of teacher effectiveness and may reduce the returns to teacher experience, suggesting the highly standardized practices in place at charter schools may facilitate replicability. (JEL H75, I21, I28)

Black supplementary school leaders: Community leadership strategies for successful schools

Long established in the United Kingdom, Black supplementary schools are valued by Black parents for their ability to nurture the academic potential of Black students and achieve positive educational outcomes where mainstream schools sometimes fail. Through exploratory qualitative interviews conducted with a small group of African-Caribbean supplementary school leaders, this article seeks to understand Black supplementary school leaders’ perceptions of educational leadership and supplementary school success. Utilising Yosso’s perspective on ‘community cultural wealth’, in particular the ways in which Black communities provide and are rich in cultural/educational resources, the article examines the extent to which the leadership perceptions of Black supplementary school leaders are rooted in notions of community and serving, along with the leadership strategies they employ in creating successful schools. Such insights are especially important at a time when mainstream education continues to deliver poor educational outcomes for Black students.

Successful and effective schools: Bridging the gap

The main purpose of this paper is to examine perspectives of successful and effective leadership as well as successful and effective schools in an effort to uncover the governance interventions which produce one or the other characterization. This examination is undertaken through the utilization of two guiding frameworks: the Pashiardis-Brauckmann Holistic Leadership Framework and the Bredeson and Johansson framework for principals’ functions. Additionally, views on success and effectiveness from around the world are utilized. Following this, in this theoretically focused paper we make the argument that successful schools institutionalize the right processes in order to achieve and sustain the desired results and thus become effective. Then, in an effort to bring context into the equation, we discuss what the context is for each education system and student and if schools can make up for the deficiencies of a student’s individual context. We end our discussion by stressing the fact that researchers, through their work, can inspire teachers and principals with their (often) simple descriptions of complex school improvement processes. These descriptions have a profound effect on the applied pedagogical work in schools, which is sometimes more influential than national policy decisions and educational reforms.

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT: THEORY, POLICY, AND PRACTICE

There is great interest in educational leadership in the early part of the 21st century because of the widespread belief that the quality of leadership makes a significant difference to school and student outcomes. There is also increasing recognition that schools require effective leaders and managers if they are to provide the best possible education for their learners. Schools need trained and committed teachers but they, in turn, need the leadership of highly effective principals and support from other senior and middle managers. While the need for effective leaders is widely acknowledged, there is much less certainty about which leadership behaviors are most likely to produce favourable outcomes. I examine the theoretical underpinnings for the field of educational leadership and management, assess different leadership models, and discuss the evidence of their relative effectiveness in developing successful schools.

Organizing schools so teachers can succeed: A conversation with Susan Moore Johnson

Kappan’s editor-in-chief talks with renowned scholar Susan Moore Johnson about her extensive research into the professional lives of public school teachers. For decades, studies have shown that teaching tends to be isolating work, with few opportunities for teachers to collaborate with and learn from each other or to play meaningful roles in school decision making. In her most recent book, however, Johnson describes the much more supportive professional culture she observed in a group of successful schools in a high-poverty urban district.

Identifying Distinctive Features of Productive and Socially Efficient Schools

The article presents the results of a series of empirical studies devoted to the analysis of the relationship between school performance (according to the Unified State Examination criterion), its social efficiency (according to the criterion of the frequency of student circulation to tutors) and various social and pedagogical characteristics of the school. A correlation analysis was carried out on an array of data obtained over 5 years of regular comprehensive surveys in schools of St. Petersburg. The sets of signs that are most characteristic for schools with high performance and for schools with high social effi ciency are identified and described. Distinctive features of successful schools are associated with a high level of use of tutoring services by students, with good material and technical conditions, teachers’ competence in the use of design and research methods, etc. In socially eff ective schools, the achievement of students’ academic results is based on the use of their own school strengths — teachers’ potential, innovative technologies with large-scale attraction of the Internet and electronic resources. The study was carried out with the fi nancial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research in the framework of the scientifi c project “Signs of an eff ective school in conditions of the mass distribution of tutoring practices” No. 19-013-00455.