Restructuring Schools for Collaboration


Book Description

This book provides a more comprehensive discussion of collaborative school efforts than any other single source currently available. Specifically, multiple disciplinary perspectives are presented, addressing the complexity or "promises and pitfalls" of school collaboration efforts. The book is organized in terms of major considerations in school collaboration initiatives—the organizational structure; the change process; inter-agency and intra-school collaborative efforts; and implications for instruction, leadership, and leadership preparation. Also, the book informs the design of educator preparation programs emphasizing collaborative schools and cross-disciplinary teaching. The chapters address many issues regarding school collaboration, such as which organizational structures will enhance collaborative efforts; which change processes are important in building school collaboration; the costs (in effort, energy, time, or other resources) of collaborating with other external agencies; how teachers' work can be redesigned to enhance collaboration between teachers and the anticipated outcomes for teachers and students; how educators can overcome their separate role socializations to build collaborative work relationships within schools; and the implications of school collaboration for teaching and learning, school leadership, and leadership preparation. The closing chapter offers five synthesizing issues or dilemmas for school collaboration.







Schools That Change


Book Description

Through specific examples, qualitative research, and portraiture, the author illustrates how and why some schools are able to achieve significant, sustainable change while others cannot.




Restructuring the Middle Level School


Book Description

This book provides middle level teachers and administrators with a rich resource on restructuring schools to help young adolescents achieve intellectual, social, and emotional success. It is a comprehensive volume that describes the leadership knowledge bases, skills, processes, and attitudes necessary for successful middle level school restructuring. Major themes in the book include: trends and issues in middle level schools; characteristics of young adolescents; middle level curriculum; instruction and assessment; successful middle level school programs; leadership skills and collaborative decision-making; school restructuring; staff development; program evaluation; and maintaining a climate for change.







EBOOK: Developing Leadership: Creating the Schools of Tomorrow


Book Description

What is our best present understandingof good school leadership? How do I lead my school to make itrelevant to students of the 21st century? The idea for this book grew out of aninternational conference organized by theNational College for School Leadership,An International Future: learning frombest practice worldwide, which exploredinnovative and significant aspects ofeducational leadership and brought together internationalcolleagues to generate new understandings. The conference proved adynamic forum for debate for researchers, academics, policy-makersand practitioners. It was clear at the conference that there was aconsensus of understanding around certain key themes that crossednational boundaries. In Developing Leadership, well-knowninternational contributors explore this consensus to promote the keythemes which reflect our best present understanding of good schoolleadership, and to inform school leaders about leading edge thinkingwhich bears on their role. These key ideas, which are highlighted at various points throughoutthe book, are built around professional learning communities;distributed leadership; strategic thinking about ICT; sustainability;internship; mentoring and coaching. Contributors: Ray Bolam, Martin Coles, Gary Crow, Clive Dimmock,Dean Fink, David Green, Andy Hargreaves, Sing Kong Lee, BillMulford, Fred Paterson, Tony Richardson, Geoff Southworth, JamesSpillane, Louise Stoll, Ken Stott, Allan Walker, John West-Burnham




Roadmap to Restructuring


Book Description

Designed as a guide for practitioners, this book draws on over 600 sources to discuss school restructuring definitions, trends, and issues; achievements of a few select schools; and implementation techniques and strategies. Two overarching, indirectly stated issues pervading the reconceptualization of schooling are multiculturalism and a caring school staff. The book is organized into four parts. Part 1, Rationale and Context, presents a historical context for restructuring and a summary of the current motivations for, and implications of, educational restructuring. Part 2, Changing Roles and Responsibilities, examines the evolution of new roles for essentially all the groups that participate in public education. Part 3, Dimensions of Restructuring, explores the concepts of incremental and discontinuous change and extensively discusses current school restructuring activities along 12 dimensions: learner outcomes, curriculum, instruction, assessment, learning environment, technology, school-community relations, time schedules, governance, teacher leadership, personnel definitions and roles, and working relationships. Part 4, Process of Restructuring, captures the lessons being learned about the restructuring process and presents examples of strategies and techniques. (Contains over 600 references.) (MLH)







Restructuring Schooling


Book Description

The editors of this volume aim to help educators make better decisions about their efforts at restructuring by showing what has and has not worked in some of the most widely known experiments. Because the programmes examined have been in place for several years, the cases offer richness of detail and a wealth of ideas. This book's insights and practical detail will benefit educators both in schools and at district level, as well as students and academics in the field.