Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-01-19T14:56:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 mariajanainadeoliveiragordianonascimento.pdf: 1006868 bytes, checksum: c83735682bff6843f581720fda03e780 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-01-25T17:59:12Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 mariajanainadeoliveiragordianonascimento.pdf: 1006868 bytes, checksum: c83735682bff6843f581720fda03e780 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-01-25T17:59:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 mariajanainadeoliveiragordianonascimento.pdf: 1006868 bytes, checksum: c83735682bff6843f581720fda03e780 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-12 / Esta dissertação objetiva descrever e analisar o processo de implementação da Política Nacional de Educação Especial na perspectiva da educação inclusiva no município de Cruzeiro do Sul no estado do Acre e propor um plano de ação para os trabalhos com a inclusão de alunos com deficiência. A metodologia adotada consistiu em uma pesquisa documental, realizada por meio da análise e estudo da política, da legislação vigente, de dados do censo escolar e dos relatórios anuais enviados pelas escolas ao setor da secretaria responsável pela educação especial, o NAPI (Núcleo de Apoio Pedagógico à Inclusão). Foram aplicados questionários aos professores de AEE (Atendimento Educacional Especializado) e intérpretes. Realizou-se posteriormente, entrevistas com o coordenador geral do NAPI e com dois dos orientadores que acompanham e dão suporte aos professores de AEE intérpretes e atendentes pessoais. Ao longo dos capítulos é possível verificar como o processo de implementação da política nacional de educação especial ocorreu nas escolas estaduais de Cruzeiro do Sul, os avanços conquistados e o que, ainda, merece aprofundamento e melhorias. As reflexões são realizadas a fim de corroborarem com as proposições apresentadas com o intuito de aprimorar os trabalhos oferecidos nas escolas estaduais do município. / This paper aims to describe and analyze the process of implementation of the National Policy on Special Educacion in the context of inclusive education in the city of Cruzeiro do Sul in the state of Acre and propose an action plan to work with the inclusion of students with disabilities. The methodology consisted of a documental research, carried out by means of the analysis and study of the policy, the existing legislation, the school census and annual reports sent by the school to the sector of the secretary responsible for special education, the NAPI (Nucleum for Pedagogical Support the Inclusion). Surveys were applied to teachers of AEE (Educational Specialist Attendance) and interpreters. Subsequently, interviews were held with the general coordinator of the NAPI and with two of supervisors accompanying and supporting the teachers of AEE, interpreters and personal attendants. Over the chapters it is possible to verify how the process of implementation of the National policy on Special education was realized in the state school in Cruzeiro do Sul, the advances achievements and that, still, deserves further development and improvements. The reflections are carried out in order to corroborate with the aim of improving the work offered in the state school of the district.

As education reform initiatives around the world are becoming more focused on developing teacher professional development and school professional learning communities (PLCs), the role of school principal leadership in implementing reforms related to the government vision of teacher professional development and school PLC has come to be seen as important. This has also led to the establishment of leadership training programmes for school principals to assist these principals with their new role as leaders of school reform implementation. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the school principals' roles in leading teacher professional development in four public schools in similar socio-economic contexts, but with different levels of learner achievement, within the greater Cape Town area. Towards this end, the thesis relates professional development practices to the relevant policy - the Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Professional Education and Development (the 'Framework'), to the Advanced Certificate of Education: School of Management and Leadership (ACE-SML) training curriculum and to the idea of a professional learning community, which is promoted by this policy and this training course. The research reported in this thesis draws on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of field, habitus, capital, and doxa to conceptualise and describe the relationships between the various players and the ways in which these relationships affect teacher professional development practices and school PLC culture in the participating schools. Findings from this research reveal similarities and differences between the schools with regard to the roles of school senior leaders and the schools' approaches to teacher professional development practices. Ironically, government policy is taken less seriously in the three schools that achieve higher learning outcomes than in the school that achieves weaker outcomes. Instead of conforming to the policy, the approach in each of the three higher achieving schools is based on the history and values of the particular school, the preferences of the principals and whether or not the principal attended the school management and leadership training course.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study examines the problems of implementing water allocation policy in the context of the local state bureaucracy as well as the specific experiences of local black emerging farmers in the Breede Gouritz Water Management Area. This study used qualitative research methods and is based on many hours of interviews and observing bureaucrats and stakeholders at the receiving end of the bureaucratic business process of water allocation. It is not only concerned with the physical and technical aspects of access but explores how the different role players interact, navigate, shape, frame and manage challenges to gain access to and control water for productive use. The actual experiences and understandings of the stakeholders in their own contexts when engaging with the access to water are crucial to gain a comprehensive understanding and insight into the influence of bureaucracy and power relations. This thesis therefore maps the confusions and incapacities and shows that even though the South African laws are based on the best international frameworks, they fail, as they do not sufficiently address the unique environment and landscape. Existing scholarship has not adequately researched local bureaucratic power. At the coalface of implementation, bureaucrats make up their own rules to cope with rapid policy churning. Combined with existing power relations, policy implementation and policy direction is steered towards different and unintended trajectories, making transformation a challenge to achieve. Consequently, my main finding is that there have been constant and rapid legislative and policy changes but they have simply added to the confusion and instability.

The call for teacher improvement has recently moved into the realm of policy with the implementation of Race to the Top. RTTT challenged states to raise the bar of teacher effectiveness through the implementation of more rigorous evaluation procedures, which are tied in part to student achievement. Tennessee was one of the first states to implement this type of teacher evaluation policy. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine teacher perception and to explore the role of the teacher in policy implementation and the relationship to instructional decision making in the classroom. Results point to the complexity of instructional change and the pivotal role of the administrator in facilitating that change.

No description available.

This study investigated the perceptions of the beneficiaries of a learner transport programme in the Idutywa District of the Eastern Cape. Learner transport in South Africa continues to be a challenge, especially for those in the rural areas. The Statistics South Africa General Household Survey (2016:14) reported that more than two thirds (69.8%) of learners walked to school and 83.6% of these learners needed 30 minutes or less to get to school. Many learners in the rural areas still walk long distances to access schools due to poor infrastructure and the limited number of easily accessible schools. To understand the beneficiaries’ perceptions, a qualitative case study of a secondary school in the rural Eastern Cape village was designed. Data was collected through 47 face-to-face interviews with learners, teachers, parents, a principal as well as through a telephone interview with a government official. Additionally, observations were undertaken to gather supplementary data focusing on the geography of the village as well as the arrival and departure times of the school transport. The study draws on a social policy framework to make sense of the study findings. Through a thematic analysis of the data, themes such as spaces of operation, learners’ travelling experiences, schooling barriers as well as unintended consequences of the learner transport programme were arrived at. Although the transport provided much needed relief, findings indicate that learners still walk to school if the transport does not pick them up as scheduled and they often do not have money for public transport. They also got to school late when they had to walk to school, there is a shortage in the number of vehicles assigned to transport them, learners also missed extra lessons due to the pick-up and departure times of the transport and there is occasional conflict amongst the learners using the learner transport. The study concludes that there needs to be an increased provision of the government learner transport, work needs to be done regarding the implementation of the Learner Transport Policy, as well as the management of the programme in rural villages such as the one that the study focused on in Eastern Cape. / Sociology / MSocSci / Unrestricted

This research explored stakeholder experiences of a quality enhancement project (QEP) in South African universities. Stakeholder views were considered regarding the impact of the policy shift embodied by the QEP on implementation strategies and the gains made since its inception in improving student retention and throughput. The study employed a multiple-qualitative case study research design involving four universities (one traditional, one university of technology, one comprehensive, one traditional merger) and purposive sampling. Data collection techniques involved document analysis, in-depth interviews with Deputy Vice Chancellors: Teaching and Learning, Directors: Teaching and Learning, quality assurance (QA) managers, quality enhancement (QE) coordinators, Council on Higher Education (CHE) officials and the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) QA experts and focus group interviews with student leaders. The theoretical framework for this study was drawn from Ball et al.’s (1992) theory on policy processes and it focuses on three contexts of policy processes: the contexts of influence, text production, and practice. The findings revealed multi-layered stakeholder perspectives of the QEP based on stakeholders’ situated contexts in the higher education sector. The CHE and DHET viewed the QEP as an instrument (intervention) to capacitate institutions through promotion of best practice initiatives and collective engagement, shared practice and “learning from each other”. The institutions, on the other hand, were divided on how they experienced the QEP as follows: i) as an essential and valuable process to address structural and transformational issues for institutional effectiveness and change, ii) as an ambitious, uncoordinated, expensive, and to a certain extent futile process for address teaching and learning issues across the sector, and iii) as a lens to evaluate progress in meeting institutional goals and creating graduate attributes. The students expressed feelings of frustration about their voices not being heard in policy and institutional decision-making processes. The findings also revealed the complexities surrounding the shift from quality assurance (QA) to quality enhancement (QE), differences in approach and practice resulting from a lack of common understanding of what policy is, the role played by the QEP and the different understandings amongst the stakeholders about its intentions. At the same time, the lack of a theory underpinning practice translated to different experiences and interpretations of the shift from QA to QE. Strategies employed were informed by individual institutional visions located in the DVC: Teaching and Learning portfolios and not in the collective university community of practice. The findings also revealed that borrowing educational policy from other countries and contexts can have adverse effects for policy implementation owing to differences in political, social, economic and cultural contexts and different institutional dynamics. Importantly also, the top-down approaches where policy makers design policy to fit their ‘mandate’ and ‘philosophy’ of policy resulted in a project mentality that was not useful. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Education Management and Policy Studies / PhD / Unrestricted

Thesis advisor: C. Patrick Proctor / Schools, districts, and states are at a time of transition from the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) to The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and this change comes alongside evolving state policy landscapes. Since NCLB and the epoch of English-only education in Massachusetts, which ended after the passage of the Language Opportunity for Our Kids (LOOK) Act in 2017, have been shown to have a primarily negative impact on emergent bilingual students, a historically marginalized group of learners, there is a need for educators and researchers to understand how educators are comprehending and responding to policy changes. Yet processes of policy interpretation and implementation are often not straightforward and many factors from the location of an organization to an individual’s role, connections, and prior professional experiences (Burch & Spillane, 2005; Spillane, 1998) can impact policy understandings and implementation. The purpose of this qualitative dissertation was to understand how educational leaders interpreted and responded to ESSA and the LOOK Act in Massachusetts. Utilizing sensemaking theory as a theoretical framework (Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002), analysis of 17 participant interviews as well as state documents demonstrated that district, state, school, and organizational leaders were optimistic about the educational future of bilingual children in Massachusetts. They viewed the LOOK Act as offering needed flexibility for designing educational programs, as better aligning with participants’ beliefs about bilingualism and language learning, and as potentially facilitating the increased engagement of bilingual families as stakeholders with a voice. Educational leaders understood ESSA in relation to how they understood NCLB. They also viewed ESSA primarily as a compliance mandate. Participants responded to ESSA and LOOK by defending their intentional focus on the immediate: the policies, initiatives, and practices that aligned with their beliefs about what is best for bilingual students. These priorities included reconceptualizing programs of education for bilingual students and launching English Learner Parent Advisory Councils, both made possible by the LOOK Act, as well as hiring and retaining equity-minded district leaders, advocating at the state and district levels around funding structures, building teacher capacity to teach emergent bilingual students, developing multiple pathways for children, and shifting belief systems around bilingualism and bilingual children. Developing understandings of how educators interpret and respond to ESSA and LOOK can further inform educators’ crafting of policies and programs that can benefit bilingual children. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

The introduction of the National Policy on Religion and Education (NPRE) in 2003 signalled the intention by government to provide a framework within which educational institutions have to deal with religion issues. The policy was introduced “in recognition that there have been instances in which public education institutions have discriminated on the grounds of religious belief” (NPRE, 2003: 3). Therefore, the policy gives full expression to the invocation of religion in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa and the principles governing religious freedom. It further prescribes, in Sections 58 to 65 (NPRE, DoE, 2003), how school governing bodies (SGBs) should conduct religious observances. The study pursued the answer to the question: “Is the implementation of the policy on religion and education in schools advancing the school community’s right to freedom of religion, belief and opinion as anticipated by the NPRE?” The study examined how SGBS in two rural high schools of the North West Province engaged in the development and implementation of the policy on religion. The research used extensive interviews, questionnaires, document analysis and observations to elicit SGBs’ understanding, views and experiences of the issues of religious values and diversity through the implementation of the policy on religion and education in their schools. This interpretive case study traced the ability of the policy to enhance the school community’s right to freedom for religious belief and expression and freedom from religious coercion and discrimination. The findings of the study reveal a gloomy picture about the extent to which the policy on religion in schools is able to achieve the goals and objectives as intended by the NPRE. Two major challenges emerged; one is the lack of knowledge on the part of parents and learners serving in the SGBs to understand and interpret policy. The second is the minimal involvement of stakeholders in decision-making processes on matters that affect their lives, such as religion. This situation ultimately allows educators and principals to manipulate the environment of policy development and implementation. The result thereof includes the situation where one religion is being given priority over others, adoption of a particular religious character because other stakeholders do not have the knowledge about their religious rights, and the direct and indirect coercion of learners and educators to attend an assembly turned into a mono-religious observance. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / gm2014 / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Thesis (M.Ed.(Curriculum studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2016 / The purpose of this study was to explore how district office Curriculum Advisors (CAs) support teachers to implement curriculum policies requirements in the Capricorn District of the Limpopo Province. This exploratory case study addressed this knowledge gap by exploring the lived experiences of ten CAs in one district. Data was constructed through semi-structured interviews, observations and document analysis. This study revealed various forms of support that CAs offer to teachers, challenges they face and suggestions/strategies they use to deal with them. The kind of support CAs offer to teachers can be categorized into five themes: training, monitoring, moderation, setting tasks and enrichment programmes. Generally, the study also revealed that there are significant challenges to CAs‟ ability to effectively practise curriculum support. These include: overload due to shortage of CAs, lack of resources, political interference and challenges from teachers. Furthermore, CAs used teamwork and sacrifice as their way of dealing with these challenges. They also provided suggestions which the government may employ to eradicate these challenges. In conclusion, the study provides six recommendations related to policy-makers and government, and implications for future research. KEY CONCEPTS Curriculum Advisors, curriculum support, teachers.