The shift towards collegiality is a new setting for many teachers. Most teachers work alone, in isolation from their colleagues and collegial collaboration requires organisational structures. The aim of the study is to describe and analyse upper secondary mathematics teachers’ collective practice,developed in a professional development initiative. This study is a case study and the empirical data is generated through observations and an interview of a group of four teachers at a school who met on a weekly basis throughout a term. Their discussions focused on the mathematical concept of slope in a setting of learning study. This thesis is the case of when mathematics teachers focus discussions on slope and draws on Wenger’s Communities of Practice Perspective, as a unitof analysis, and addresses the question: What are the characteristics of practice when upper secondary mathematics teachers focus discussions on slope in the setting of a learning study? The analysis accounts for characteristics of the aspects of practice, through the coherence of mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared repertoire in the community of practice. The teachers are engaged around finding small changes in their teaching that could give major effect in students learning. They negotiate what the students need to know in order to understand the relation between Δy and Δx. The characteristic of practice is a conceptual mapping of the concept of slope. It reveals students’ partial understanding of related concepts due to how they were given meaning through previous teaching. The conceptual mapping of slope goes back as far as to the student’s partial understanding of the meaning of subtraction. However, what emerges is in relation to the teachers’ experience of avoiding students’ difficulties with negative difference when teaching slope. It turns out to be a negotiation and a renegotiation of teaching slope for instrumental understanding or conceptual understanding. An overall characteristic of practice is that it develops in a present teaching culture.

[pt] O presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar de maneira exploratória os contornos da colegialidade para e no STF. Nesse sentido, o trabalho busca em um primeiro momento traçar as considerações normativas gerais que precedem a teoria da colegialidade tanto a partir da perspectiva institucional como um mecanismo de engenharia decisória, procurando assim investigar: o que, como e por que colegialidade? Em um segundo momento, o trabalho explora o complexo desenho institucional da Suprema Corte brasileira para compreender os diversos caminhos que levam até o colegiado, bem como os diversos colegiados dentro de um único tribunal. Por fim, o trabalho investiga os ministros integrantes do tribunal como instrumentos da colegialidade e quais os diversos sentidos que a colegialidade alcança a partir de uma investigação dos votos dos integrantes em decisões em plenário. / [en] The present work aims to analyze in an exploratory manner the contours of collegiality for and in the Federal Supreme Court. In this sense, the work seeks, at first, to outline the general normative considerations that precede the theory of collegiality both from the institutional perspective as a mechanism of decisionmaking engineering, thus seeking to investigate: what, how and why collegiality? In a second moment, the work explores the complex institutional design of the Brazilian Supreme Court to understand the different paths that lead to the collegiality, as well as the diverse collegiate bodies within a single court. Finally, the work investigates the Court members as instruments of collegiality and what are the different meanings that collegiality achieves from an investigation of the votes of members in plenary decisions.

This study aimed to determine the relationship between school culture and student achievement. Elementary school teachers (N=574) from 27 schools in suburban Seminole County, Florida completed the School Culture Triage Survey to generate a school culture score. The participating schools were ranked and placed in categories representing the top 33% (N=9), middle 33% (N=9), and bottom 33% (N=9) of the population based on their culture score. School culture data were analyzed and correlated with third grade student achievement data, as measured by the 2007 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) Reading to determine if there were any relationships between (a) school culture and student achievement; (b) the three key components of school culture (collaboration, collegiality, and self-determination/efficacy) and student achievement; and (c) principal tenure and school culture. Additional data analysis served to determine if there were any experiential or demographic differences among the teachers from the schools falling in the top, middle, and bottom 33% on the School Culture Triage Survey. To learn more about principal beliefs with regard to school culture and student achievement, principal interviews were conducted with some principals (N=8) from the participating schools. Through a review of the research results and related literature, the researcher concluded that a relationship between the overall school culture and student achievement did not exist. Further analysis revealed that there were no relationships between student achievement and collaboration, collegiality, and self-determination/efficacy, or between school culture and principal tenure for the schools participating in this study.

The fragmentation of teachers' work, through isolation and the absence of structures for collegial interaction, make teaching a very solitary and private kind of work that has far reaching implications. Although teacher isolation is recognized as an ongoing problem and a detriment to the teaching profession, empirical evidence of what principals are doing to reduce teacher isolation and to promote collegiality is limited. The purpose of this research study was to identify how elementary school principals are reducing teacher isolation, promoting collegiality, and facilitating beginning teacher induction. The researcher examined the perceptions of 331 public elementary principals throughout California regarding these issues. Data were gathered through a 72 item questionnaire designed for this research study based on the literature, and descriptive statistics were used to organize and analyze the data. In general, most principals indicated that they were implementing many practices discussed in the literature that contribute to reduced teacher isolation and greater collegiality. For example, most principals indicated that they have a collaborative leadership style, implemented collaborative professional development, engaged teachers in shared decision making, and considered collaborative time for teachers to be very important. Most principals also claimed that their teachers preferred to work with colleagues to develop lesson plans and teaching strategies, were involved in change initiatives, and collaboratively worked to meet school goals. Practices that should be more fully implemented include aspects of teacher and mentor release time, teacher observations and feedback, teacher leadership, professional dialogue, and principals' involvement in the induction process. For example, principals and teachers must have ample opportunity to observe teachers and provide constructive feedback, principals should share with teachers the responsibility of planning and leading faculty and collaborative meetings, and principals should not rely solely on an induction program like BTSA for supporting beginning teachers but rather exercise their leadership role by being actively involved in the induction process. Recommendations for further study included conducting a teacher survey and personal interviews with principals and teachers, because principals may have responded to the survey in an idealistic fashion that was contrary to their actual practices or philosophy.

This thesis examines my experience of leading leadership development. During the last three years I have been researching my role as Head of Leadership and Organisational Development at the University of Hertfordshire (UH), with a view to making sense of and rethinking leadership and approaches to leadership development more generally. This thesis considers how my own thinking and practice has changed and developed as a consequence of paying attention to and reflecting on personal experience, whilst at the same time locating my sense-making in the broader academic scholarship. Narrative accounts of the significant incidents and interactions that I have participated in during the past three years have been shared verbally with the participants on the programmes that I lead, and explored more extensively in written form with colleagues in the learning community on the Doctorate in Management (DMan) programme at UH, as a means of intensifying my sense-making and its generalisability to a community of engaged enquirers. My research was prompted by disillusionment with the dominant discourse on leadership and leadership development based as it is on theories, frameworks, tools and techniques that privilege a form of autonomous, instrumental rationality and deceptive certainty that did not reflect the social, non-linear, uncertain day-to-day realities faced by me and the managers with whom I worked. In this thesis, I draw on my experiences as a manager, leader of leadership development, and a student of leadership development, to problematise the mainstream managerialist conceptions of leadership and organisation that are now part of the organisational habitus (Bourdieu, 1977) in the UK. The rise and naturalisation of managerialist ideology across the private, public, and charitable sectors in the UK makes it an inordinately difficult perspective to contest without risking some form of exclusion. I contend that my experience of attempting to encourage radical doubt and enquiry rather than the mindless acceptance and application of conventional wisdom contributes to knowledge in the field of leadership and organisational development by providing insight into and an alternative way of thinking about and practising leadership and leadership development. In contesting dominant conceptions, I proffer a more reality congruent alternative to mainstream thought. I draw on the perspective of complex responsive processes of relating (Stacey et al, 2000, Griffin, 2002, Shaw, 2002), critical management studies (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996), social constructionism (Berger et al, 1966), and other thinkers critical of managerialist conceptions of leadership and leadership education (Khurana, 2007) to explore leadership as a social, relational activity where leaders are co-participants, albeit highly influential ones, in the ongoing patterning of relationships that constitute organisation. However, I argue that it is insufficient for management educationalists to snipe critically at managerialism from the sidelines, problematising one perspective and simply replacing it with another (Ford et al, 2007), leaving their participants ill-equipped to navigate the potentially destructive political landscape of day-to-day organisational life. While the dominant discourse on leadership and organisation is flawed, to avoid exclusion managers must still become fluent in the language and practice of managerialism, the ideology that has come to dominate the vast majority of organisational communities in which they find themselves. In this thesis, I argue that it is crucial for managers and leaders of leadership development to engage with a polyphony of perspectives, and develop the reflective and reflexive capacity to continuously explore and answer for themselves the questions who am I, and what am I doing, who are we, and what are we doing?

La présente vise à étudier le rôle que jouent les groupes dans les Sénats universitaires en période de restrictions budgétaires. En utilisant le cadre d’analyse des conflits fourni par Bélanger et Lemieux (2002), en développant une typologie dérivée de celle de Hardy (1996) et en se basant sur les constats empiriques de Jones (2001, 2004) concernant les perceptions des participants à cette instance, nous avons analysé le déroulement de l’Assemblée universitaire de l’Université de Montréal au cours de l’hiver 2008. Les résultats montrent que les groupes syndicaux et associatifs collaborent peu, que la direction réussit à tirer son épingle du jeu en formant des alliances ponctuelles avec les différentes factions et que l’Assemblée ne joue plus efficacement le rôle pour lequel elle a été créée. Cette étude montre l’importance de continuer la recherche sur la micropolitique universitaire afin d’appuyer la recherche actuelle portant sur les meilleures pratiques en enseignement supérieur. / The aim of this study is to evaluate the role that groups play in the academic governance of Canadian universities, through the university Senate, during a period of financial retrenchment. Using a theoritical framework taken from Belanger & Lemieux (2002), Hardy (1996) and Jones (2001, 2004), the analysis focuses on the 2008 Winter semester sessions of the University Assembly of Université de Montréal. The results show that unions and associations did not show inter- and intra-group cohesion strong enough to counter the administration’s cohesiveness and ability to make alliances. The Assembly itself has seen its share of formal responsibilites wither and was, during the observation, little more than a soapbox for groups who wanted to place an item on the institutional agenda. The study highlights the importance of further study of inter-groups relationships in higher education, in parallel with the wider scientific trend of revision of management practices in universities.

Student Number : 0317854T - MEd research report - School of Education - Faculty of Humanities / School effectiveness and school improvement research is a worldwide phenomenon that has inspired a great deal of literature. This report examines teachers’ perceptions of a teacher-led curriculum development initiative currently effective in independent schools in the Gauteng Province of South Africa, and it describes strategies for implementation for interested schools. It is a programme that focuses school improvement back into the classroom, with teachers leading the changes at their site of practice. The Gauteng Independent Schools Curriculum Development Initiative (GISCDI) is a teacher-led initiative. Qualitative research generates an understanding of how the mechanisms of this initiative impact on the lives of teachers and students. It provides detailed explanations of teachers’ perceptions of change in actual classroom practices, pedagogy and curriculum implementation by entering into conversations with selected participants. It considers the changes in light of reflective practice, after involvement in the GISCDI. The report accesses the different methodologies the teachers implemented in their classrooms, after the teacher-led interventions were presented to them. It also considers the concepts of teacher leadership, trust, distributed leadership and collegiality as being the core elements to initiating, implementing and sustaining change in practice, to benefit student learning and improving schools.

Student Number : 0106532X - PhD thesis - School of Education - Faculty of Humanities / Managerialism and collegiality are employed in this thesis as constructs through which to make sense of the changing nature of management in a South African university. The rise and dominance of the managerialism discourse is examined with respect to organisational change and restructuring. As principally a qualitative research project, a single case study of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) is investigated using interviews, documentary analysis and focus group discussions as the main sources of data from 2001 to 2004. The study is exploratory and strives to establish how and why management has changed. It does so by investigating the underpinning changes in the organisational regime and the different levels of management; the role of the Senior Executive Team, the changing nature of the deanship and the head of school position as a consequence of the merger of departments and the creation of a school structure. Although management in higher education is recognised as having existed for as long as the establishments themselves, the thesis is concerned with the changes in power and authority of academic leaders, the struggle with their ‘lived’ tension between academic leadership or collegiality and managerialism and the implications of this for academic practice. The thesis illustrates that changes in management at Wits demonstrate efforts towards an era of post-managerialism, in this specific case best described as ‘contrived collegial managerialism’. The concept of ‘contrived collegial managerialism’ refers to how the domination of managerial practices from above has altered collegial relations from below. This has resulted in the weakening of academic leadership with profound implications for academic work and practice. Only through strengthened academic leadership at the different levels of university management and primarily school and disciplinary levels, can the university survive the indignities of the increasing corporatisation of its strategies, processes and management practices which constrain the opportunities for meaningful engagement and development of intellectual projects. It is only at disciplinary level, through strengthening the position of heads of department as academic leaders, that collegial relations can be developed and pressure towards upward accountability structures counteracted. Without this, the university risks being consumed by corporate practices at the expense of its unique quality and contribution to society, academic and intellectual advancement.

Por que a um grupo de indivíduos não eleitos é dado derrubar uma decisão política tomada pela maioria dos representantes do povo? Para justificar o papel contramajoritário de juízes e cortes, vários arranjos têm sido propostos ao longo de um debate ainda em curso na teoria constitucional. Autores como John Rawls e Ronald Dworkin sustentaram uma qualidade deliberativa do processo decisório judicial - magistrados, especialmente os das Cortes Supremas, teriam destreza e motivação institucional para apresentar argumentos mais apropriados sobre o significado da constituição e cartas de direitos. Críticos negam que a deliberação judicial seja um paradigma de razão pública e, especialmente no Brasil, afirmam que o órgão de cúpula do Judiciário possui um modelo decisório não-dialógico. Neste trabalho, portanto, o desempenho deliberativo interno do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) é investigado através de um modelo de análise denominado Escala de Deliberatividade Intrainstitucional (EDI). Os dados colhidos indicam que, apesar da existência de interação entre os membros do colegiado, a decisão final não valoriza os potenciais ganhos deliberativos da sessão de julgamento, tornando a prática decisória da Corte o que a dissertação chama de ação coletiva figurativa - quando, apesar de existir um momento de aparente de deliberação entre os membros, aquilo que faz o colegiado apresenta um produto de algo que os membros individuais fazem sozinhos, ou seja, daquilo que fazem sem pensar que estão agindo enquanto grupo. Sem rationes decidendi que expressem a opinião da Corte como um todo, prejudica-se a formação de precedentes e, consequentemente, a construção de uma jurisprudência constitucional íntegra, estável e coerente. / Why can a group of unelected individuals overturn a political decision taken by the majority of the people\'s representatives? To justify the countermajoritarian role of judges and courts, a lot of possibilities have been proposed throughout a debate that still occurring in constitutional theory. Authors such as John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin sustained a deliberative potential of judicial decision-making - judges, especially Supreme Court Justices, would have the skills and institutional motivation to present more appropriate arguments about the meaning of the constitution and charters of rights. Critics deny that judicial deliberation is a paradigm of public reason and, especially in Brazil, argue that the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) has a non-dialogical decision-making model. In this paper, the internal deliberative performance of STF is investigated through an analysis model called Intrainstitutional Deliberativity Scale (IDS). The results indicate that, despite the existence of interaction between the members of the collegiate, the final decision doesn\"t value the potential deliberative gains of the plenary session, making the decision model of the Court what we call collective figurative action - when, despite there is a moment of apparent deliberation among the members, what the collegial does presents a product that individual members do alone, i. e., what they do without thinking that they are acting as a group. Without common rationes decidendi, the Court undermines the precedential value of a case and, consequently, the construction of the jurisprudential integrity and authority.

The United Nations declared 2005 to 2014 to be the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. This agenda is being implemented enthusiastically in university facilities management and operations, and while research in sustainability is increasingly common, tertiary curriculum has not experienced a similar push. This thesis undertakes to explore the expressions of sustainability in the academic activities of universities, and to determine what sort of change (if any) is appropriate. It also seeks to mediate what has become a polarised debate between idealists and pragmatists around the implementation of EFS. Two key features of the work are: 1) the investigation of sustainability in the aggregate student experience, rather than individual subjects; and 2) returning to first principles to avoid a normative stance a priori.¶ A range of methods is employed adaptively through the process of this alternately broad and deep exploratory study, including: participant observation, interviews, content analysis, questionnaires, social network analysis, bibliometrics, and data clustering. A systemic approach to Canadian and Australian case work captures the diversity of institutional roles and academic motivations at play in adaptation to the EFS agenda.¶ A stasis exists between the literature around higher education curriculum for sustainability and its implementation. The problem is exacerbated by the lack of pedagogical training in most university academics. A long-standing utilitarian sectoral culture and an increasingly job-focused student market further challenge such public-good concepts as sustainability in the academy. Four simple ideas sit at the heart of 35 years of environmental and sustainability education literature, despite changes in jargon: liberal education and broad foundations; interdisciplinarity in problem-solving; cosmopolitan philosophies; and civic action. Relevant disciplinary content includes biology, environmental science, policy, philosophy, human society, economics, and culture. Most of these elements are rare in the Australian sector, which instead offers science and technology-focused environmental programs with flexible requirements. A transition to the human realm is evident in programs targeting sustainability.¶ Curriculum cannot be viewed in isolation, however, as it concerns only one of a university’s many constituencies, and one facet of academic staff scholarship. For example, even in higher education sectors more sympathetic to a diversity of university niches and curricular models, like Canada’s, sustainability offerings operate at a tension from low-cost and low-effort teaching models. So-called ‘umbrella’ networking structures on cross-cutting topics must walk a careful line to be comprehensive yet non-competitive. They present great opportunities for sustainability teaching but are almost uniformly research-focused. A distinct sense emerges that the erosion of the collective identity and activities of academe has weakened the ability of universities to respond to new information and challenges in anything but corporate, isomorphic ways.¶ Two detailed Australian cases of research, research training and curriculum development activities around sustainability paint a rich picture of the agenda. The intractability of fragmentation between disciplines is evident, even in so-called interdisciplinary units. Problem-based topics often do not have an established social network or committee structure, and priorities can differ by budget unit. Disciplines provide identity, peers and cohesive research directions that can be compelling for individual academics. The most fascinating pattern that arises during the mapping of research co-authorship and co-supervisory relationships around sustainability is the bi-directional orientation: academics collaborate outside their departmental home on papers, but within that home to mentor research students. This combination unifies two contrasting theories of social capital transmission – those preferring dense and sparse networks, respectively – and may be ideal. Students then receive consistent messages while gaining access to the largest (non-redundant) set of human and technical resources via their supervisors’ personal networks. This hypothesis should be explored further: if supported, it would have major impacts on the rhetoric around collaboration in interdisciplinary units in particular.¶ Curriculum design processes in utilitarian universities are subject to the same fallibilities in adapting to sustainability as other institutions and the wider society. Change is motivated and moderated by financial imperatives and the scale of thought is often coincident with budgets. Engagement processes are often incomplete or undemocratic, hampered by inadequate leadership and shifting membership. Group learning via research, experimentation or vigorous debate is surprisingly rare. Finally, ad-hoc or project-based academic teams are rarely mandated to tackle the causes of problems, some of which can be intractable, and are limited to treating the symptoms. Incremental pragmatism may be a necessary element to university adaptation for EFS.¶ A number of recommendations are offered to improve interdisciplinarity and university values more generally. Individual academics should: offer additive alternatives to metrics and incentive schemes that maintain existing functions; act on common ground to rebuild a community of scholars; wield to the fullest the freedom in the classroom, and the opportunity to reflect, that university teaching allows; and, continue to debate ideas with passion and rigour, avoiding ‘academic correctness’. University management can contribute by: establishing a clear academic identity for the university beyond ‘excellence’, and supporting firm foundations for students based on that particular vision; taking a proactive view of course review and development and facilitating experimentation in those settings; intentionally fostering interdisciplinary units differently to disciplinary ones; and, establishing and recognising equivalence across a range of successful academic career archetypes.¶ This methodologically innovative work also suggests opportunities for extending the research, including: refining and testing the sustainability canon developed here; better understanding collaborative behaviour and the impact of various models of supervisory teams on student career paths; and, finding better ways of defining, modelling and evaluating interdisciplinary scholarship. Sustainability is likeliest to emerge from a healthy and independent tertiary sector, than one operating as an overt policy instrument.