It has been ingrained into the American consciousness that our public schools are failing and our students are underachieving. This is something we all know. What is less clear is why American schools are failing. Time and time again, we come back to teachers, who have been identified as the single greatest factor in determining the success of the student. Teachers can make the difference in the lives of students and help secure our economic future. Teachers unions speak for these teachers, thus, in our search for a scapegoat, teachers unions often rank at the top. Right or wrong, it is a serious accusation to say that teachers unions are responsible for the failure of the American education system. Teachers, and consequently teachers unions, have the power to greatly impact education reform. After assessing the state of education in the United States and establishing teachers unions’ role in the bigger picture of education, I will first explore the source of teachers unions political power: their large membership and their money. Teachers unions are among the largest unions in the country and the NEA (National Education Association), specifically, is the highest political contributor of all public sector unions. To assess their political influence, I will show where and how they use their money with the intention of evaluating whether or not they overstep their boundaries as a typical labor union. The next important variable to consider when evaluating the impact of teachers unions is their classification as a public sector union. Private and public sector unions operate under different sets of laws and thus have different rules and strategies for collective bargaining. I will examine how their public sector status impacts their influence on hotly contested education reform issues, such as teacher performance pay, teacher evaluations based on student achievement, school vouchers, and charter schools. What makes teachers unions different from other labor unions? And do these differences give teachers unions a detrimental amount of control over education reform?

Chapter 1 begins with the motivation of my study in teachers' labor market. I employ a monopolistic screening model to show that there exist multiple equilibria in the educational system; a pooling equilibrium and a separating equilibrium. The model predicts that the pooling equilibrium is optimal only when the average quality of teacher applicants is high. Using data from the OECD, I examine the relation between teachers' earnings and teacher quality of the U.S. and Korea. Chapter 2 focuses on teachers and their career dynamics, and the data is at teacher level. Using the Current Population Survey for 2001-2010, I show that public school teachers are paid less compared to other comparable college graduates in non-teaching sectors. By studying the change in earnings after career changes, I find the evidence of positive selection when teachers move into the non-teaching sectors and of negative selection when non-teachers move into the teaching sector, which results in the decrease in the average teacher quality. Chapter 3 looks at both teachers and school districts, and I use district-teacher matched dataset, based on the School and Staffing Survey (SASS) for 2007-2008. I employ a multilevel model and a propensity score matching to identify union effects in states with different legal environments for collective bargaining of teachers. I find that collective bargaining is neither necessary nor sufficient for unions to affect teachers' well-being. I show that meet-and-confer is a popular alternative to collective bargaining and that it is an important mechanism for unions to influence teachers' non-wage benefits. Chapter 4 concerns school districts, and I use SASS district level data. I reevaluate the role of teachers unions on pay structure and districts' financial status. In contrasts to previous findings, I find that the variance of teachers' earnings is higher in more unionized settings. Moreover, I show that the financial status of districts with teachers unions is stronger than that of districts without the unions. I confirm that unionism is associated with less usage of performance pay system. / Economics

Theme of the Master degree – Lithuania teachers‘ unions influence on the education changes process. The theme is relevant, as it seeks to value teachers‘ unions influence on the education changes process. Teachers‘ unions activities in Lithuania have not been researched. In this paper is analysed how education changes process, education policy‘s usefulness depends on social organizations‘ involvement into this process. Namely teachers‘units, unifying teachers, who directly participate in education process, can help education politics to make rational decisions and to prompt teachers to improve, play up public not only in the direct work, but also creating education policy. Problem of the research. Education is related with permanent changes process, therefore Lithuania‘s general training marks, quality characteristics, activity‘s usefulness, teachers‘ improvement and certification are revised. In this plane also centralization/decentralization process, functions‘ distribution among separate education links questions and another group of the questions – teachers‘ work conditions, payments and etc. It is necessary to involve as many participants as possible into education policy‘s creation, to develop social dialogue. Teachers, united into unions, seek to participate into education changes process and to represent their interests. Here arise the problem do teachers‘ unions have opportunity to influence education changes process determining decisions at the national and... [to full text]

A number of school - based conflicts which tend to impact negatively on the entire running of schools, are reported each academic year to the Department of Education (DoE) officials by concerned role players. The said conflicts have resulted in a continuous and destructive tug - of - war between some principals and teacher union members, thus causing school principals unable to perform their core functions to the maximum. Worse scenarios have seen a number of learners drawn in causing mayhem and complete ineffectiveness to some schools. Firstly, the intention of the entire research project was to provide a survey approach which will focus on the principals' perceptions of the role of teacher unions in school management. Secondly, this study sought to address how school principals perceive their own management roles in unionized school environments. Thirdly, the study further sought to look at the strategies that can be employed to assist and benefit school principals who encounter problems in their highly unionized school environments so that the running of their schools can be effective and efficient. Lastly, it sought to address the perceptions of teacher union members with regard to their own role in school management and how they can contribute meaningfully in order to promote the culture of learning and teaching ( COLT) in schools. A survey design, in which qualitative methodology was engaged to collect and analyze data, was utilized in the study. Responses were elicited by means of administering questionnaires to selected principals and personal semi-structured interviews to some union members. The document analysis was the third method that was used in order to enhance the credibility of the study. Responses in the questionnaires revealed that while some principals in this study recognize the existence and the role of teacher union members in their schools, there are those principals who are not comfortable with the teacher union involvement in their school management. Emanating from data gathered through the personal semi - structured interviews, teacher union members firmly believe they are deprived by principals from making their meaningful input that would assist in the effective running of schools. Such relationships suggest a lack of mutual trust between school principals and teacher union members in the areas of study. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.

Thesis (Ph.D.(Education Policy))-University of Pretoria, 2007. / Abstract in English. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the educators’ perceptions on the role of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) in teacher professional development. The study also investigated the Union’s perceived challenges in contributing to teacher professionalism in South Africa, their perceived professional priorities and perceived expectations of teachers. The research genre used for this study was the interpretivism or constructivism paradigm. The qualitative methodology was used and case study employed as the research design of the study. The findings of this study were that SADTU were perceived as militant activists. Their activities were perceived as often very disruptive to education and their role appeared to be more politically focused than educational. They promoted and protected teacher labour rights and interests. However, they had no programme, nor the expertise nor the resources to respond to teachers’ professional development needs. The perceptions about them were that they had minimal or negligible contribution to teacher professional development. SADTU conducted training, but with nothing of value to teacher professional development. The unethical, unconstitutional and professionally non-developmental cadre deployment of SADTU leadership compromised the Union. Another finding was the important role of appropriate continuous professional development programmes in the improvement of the teachers’ own professional development, in the improvement of classroom practices and eventual enhanced learner performance. Inclusive to professional development are educationally good skills and values to colleagues, learners and parents both at school and out of school. Recommendations for SADTU were the: development of a clear programme on Teacher Professional Development; mobilisation of SADTU members towards restoring and enhancing the dignity of the teaching profession; engaging politically in curriculum policymaking to form inclusive professional associations; ending cadre deployment for senior management posts by SADTU leadership; establish development centres for critical maths and science, computers skills and other subjects and resuscitation of teacher colleges.

South African primary school children need to be confronted with music in such a way that they can create, perform, listen and relate to it in a multicultural setting. This can be achieved by integrating music into the primary school curriculum, by means of ideas drawn from Comprehensive Musicianship, the spiral curriculum and outcomes-based education. Apart from the educational value of an integrated curriculum, the shortage of trained music educators makes it a necessity to involve generalist teachers in this way. There is thus a need, not being met by SASMT or SAMES, for a professional organisation to examine the goals and objectives of school music, and to equip teachers to put them into practice. In addition, as music is not specifically protected in Curriculum 2005, a professional organisation dedicated to primary school music is crucial to the survival of music education in South Africa. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M. Mus.

D.Ed. (Educational Management) / The influence of union leadership plays an important role in determining both the perspectives and leadership styles of the principals who hold positions of leadership in teacher unions. Although there is extensive literature on the basics of the development of the concept of identity in general, little is known about how identity is forged in education unionisation in general and what specific leadership character may result out of the principals who are union leaders. As is commonly known, such knowledge is crucial because principal leaders are continuously faced with making leadership decisions, acquiring endless information and implementing educational policies whose effectiveness might be tainted by union biasness and favoritism. In the light of continued absence of knowledge of how identity is forged in unionisation, coupled with the ever increasing election of principals by teacher union members to occupy leadership roles in these unions, this inquiry explored how such occupation of union leadership roles shape the self-knowledge of these principals and what leadership style may result as a reason there off. The inquiry specifically sought to determine whether the unionisation discourse constructs the identities of the principals who are leaders and if so, how it does this and what consequences this is likely to have on the leadership style of the principals concerned. The identity theory of Stryker and Statham (1985) (Owens, Stryker and Goodman, 2006) was used to addresses this aim. In addition to this, the inquiry used the principals who hold positions of leadership in Teacher Union A, Teacher Union B and Teacher Union C respectively as case studies, focusing specifically on the broader social discourses that exist subjectively in these unions as a vehicle to demonstrate the development of the identity of the principals who are leaders in them. The language used by these principals in focus groups discussions and participant observations were the main source of data for this inquiry. By doing so, this inquiry aimed to illuminate how union leadership act to produce self-knowledge that, in turn, leads to the discursive coordinates by which the principals who are union leaders come to define themselves. This was achieved by conducting focus groups interviews and participant observations of the principals who are in positions of leadership in these three unions and thereafter drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis in order to interpret the transcripts of the data collected by both focus groups interviews and participant observations.

This study investigates the role played by the Namibia National Teachers’ Union (NANTU) in school management. It examines the challenges faced by school principals in managing schools as a result of the presence of unions. In order to understand the behaviour and impact of union representatives in schools the study makes use of literature on teacher unionism, democratic, political and ambiguity management and leadership theories. Working in the interpretive orientation the study used semi-structured interviews, document analysis and focus group discussions. The research was conducted in the form of a case study involving three schools in the Kavango region of Namibia, and the data collected were dealt with according to case study principles. The study reveals that the presence of the union has several benefits for the school: for example, it advances the democratic participation of stakeholders, provides feedback to the school principal on how staff members experience his or her leadership, and offers advice on labour-related matters. It was also discovered that NANTU representatives act as mediators in conflict situations, which means that teachers can become better at managing and resolving conflict through their experience of serving on the union structures. However it was also discovered that the presence of NANTU in schools has several negative effects on schooling. For example, NANTU activities can disrupt school programmes; moreover, in some schools, neither NANTU representatives nor school principals understand their own or each other’s roles, and consequently they are always in conflict. The absence of a policy regulating the representation of NANTU in decision-making structures in schools causes the conflict to escalate. It emerged that the role of NANTU in schools is mainly determined by the leadership style of the school principal and the effectiveness of the NANTU representatives in that particular school. For example, an autocratic leadership style on the part of the school principal tends to exacerbate the conflict situation, while NANTU has been known to mobilize learners to demand the removal of school principals through class boycotts. NANTU is more concerned with defending the rights and interests of its members than any other matter affecting education. This research is likely to benefit school managers, policy makers and implementers, and NANTU structures, as it provides clarity on what both NANTU and school principals expect from one another. The study also demonstrates that school principals need to acknowledge and consider the divergent nature of the various interest groups in schools.

The majority of South African public schools are not performing well and this is particularly true of the schools in the Eastern Cape Province. Many factors including teacher union strikes contributed to this situation. Teachers’ unions went on strike without considering the rights of learners. The aim of this research was to determine the extent to which teachers’ unionized strikes influence the quality of teaching and learning at selected high schools of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape Province and to determine ways in which the teacher unions can also protect the rights of learners to achieve quality education in these selected high schools. The research consists of a study of relevant literature, followed by a qualitative research design. The sample group consisted of Grade 12 teachers, deputy principals and site stewards from four high schools in the Port Elizabeth District. The researcher trusts that her understanding as presented in the research findings and recommendations will benefit not only herself but will empower all the teacher unions’ members and learners coping with the stress of teaching and learning at times of strikes.