The roots of Primary Education are found within broadly progressive ideologies. These philosophies have become subject to challenge with attempts to apply business management models to schools. Ideals of education for an economic role led to the development of the Education Reform Act (1988) which established a number of provisions, radically altering the management of schools. These requirements promoted greater school based management emphasising teachers' autonomy and the development of collaborative working patterns. Paradoxically this was within a framework that reduced schools control over the curriculum, and represented a considerable move in government policy and an alteration in the context of planning and implementation, thereby creating a tension. A major thrust of re-organisation in primary schools has been to encourage them to deploy staff in order to make best use of available subject expertise. The introduction of a National Curriculum, more formalised inspection procedures and standard attainment tests have raised school accountability and the necessity of developing pupils subject knowledge to an ever greater extent. Consequently Subject Leaders have become a serious consideration central to the quest to effectively meet the needs of the National Curriculum. It is this apparent paradox between centralist prescription and devolved control with the imposition of business management styles on primary schools that makes the role of Subject Leader such a complex issue. This research explores the roles of Subject Leaders in the context of the tensions that exist between the traditional primary school teaching values and cultures, and the new managerial systems being imposed on them. It is argued that the Subject Leadership role is influenced by three major factors. Firstly are factors external to the school such as legislative change and inspection reports. These act to shift school priorities dramatically. Legislation may also raise the importance of particular curriculum areas and act to undermine feelings of progress made in other subjects thus creating a hierarchy of subject responsibility. Secondly primary school management styles and structures are demonstrated to have a significant impact on the role. They are shown either to undermine or encourage Subject Leaders in playing an active role in the development of the curriculum. It is suggested that flat management styles are more successful as they are likely to value individual contributions. Thirdly factors are raised related to the Subject Leaders themselves showing clearly the importance they attach to communication and good relations with colleagues. In addition the culture of the school is shown to have a marked and interactive influence over all these factors Subject Leaders preferring to work in collaboration rather than seeing themselves as 'leading'. As a consequence it is argued that the language of leadership should be abandoned as encouraging division between colleagues and failing to capture the basic communal culture of primary education.

<p> Reforms early in the 21st century purported to close the achievement gap between White students and students of color, to provide accountability and transparency to taxpayers, to implement meaningful consequences for low-performing schools, and to create the workforce for the century. In this study, I investigated the effects of school reform on the lived experiences of students who graduated from high school in 2014 by inquiring into six young people&rsquo;s perceptions of their schooling. I sought to better understand whether participants were aware of the existence and intent of school reforms, and how or whether their aspirations for their futures had evolved over the course of their formal schooling in concert with the expressed goals of those reforms. The data set consisted of narratives from six recent low-income male and female high school graduates of color. Analysis revealed striking similarities between their experiences despite the variety in outcomes. The narratives indicated that school reforms have had little impact on students&rsquo; lives other than to graft the go-to-college imperative, onto the young people&rsquo;s inherent aspirations. Young people remained alienated from their education, and outcomes continued to adhere to racist, classist, and gendered expectations. </p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to examine how the ability to articulate a professional purpose informed the lived experiences of master&rsquo;s-level post-practicum students during their practicum experience. This qualitative phenomenologically oriented study used Damon&rsquo;s (2008) definition of purpose, Gestalt principles of figure and ground (Polster &amp; Polster, 1973), van Manen&rsquo;s (1990) four lived existentials, and existing literature regarding the construct of purpose as its theoretical underpinnings. There is no existing literature on how a professional purpose, or the lack of one, factors into a novice counselor&rsquo;s selection of a population with which to work during the practicum experience, and whether the presence or absence of a professional purpose affects the student&rsquo;s ability effectively to perform during the practicum. </p><p> For this study, eight master&rsquo;s-level post-practicum students were interviewed regarding their experiences of working with clients at a number of practicum sites. The data were summarized into five themes that included the following: the process of population selection that lacked intentionality, the phenomenon of clinical resonance, the unprepared counselor, the lack of a professional purpose, and the challenge of dealing with resistant clients. The study suggests that the lack of self-awareness evidenced by an inability to articulate a professional purpose leads to a stressful first professional experience. Under such circumstances, overmatched counselors may be drawn to clients who mirror their own unresolved issues, and thus, may fail to provide clients with appropriate care and to receive the supervisory support needed for building clinical skills. The research raises a pedagogical issue related to the need for self-reflection in counselor education programs and suggests that the counseling field should reexamine the distinction between professional and personal development for counseling practitioners. Suggestions are made as to ways to promote self-awareness in counselor training programs so that students will be more likely to formulate a professional purpose, which brings intentionality to population selection that is consistent with the profession&rsquo;s insistence on intentionality in other aspects of counseling practice.</p>

<p>This project explores Larry Koonse's playing and teaching as it relates to improvisation. In particular, the author discusses the various aspects of Koonse's playing through the elements of melody and space. This project focuses on the author's interview with Larry Koonse, which presents questions that reveal the guitarist's views on space in playing jazz and improvising. Koonse's ideas are compared and contrasted with perspectives from other teachers and pedagogues, used to support and expand on his ideas. This project also explores the views and experiences of other students and players, such as Kevin Downing and Jamey Rosenn. </p>

<p> It is not known why the chronic mis-education of Black students has neither been adequately investigated nor treated as the most significant, widespread phenomenon of twenty-first century pedagogy. To attempt to understand this quandary, it was urgent to ask: How do Black educators understand the education of Black students? Are they able to incorporate the tensions and varied experiences they have had as students into their professional repertoire? This study described how Black educators&rsquo; unique cultural perspectives might enable increased insight into the problem of mis-education. Critical race theory framed this study with an emphasis on narrative inquiry and transformative learning. I interweaved narrative/counter-narrative and critical event research methods as both theoretical and methodological frameworks. I engaged in multi-part interviews and observations of 5 educators to explore their unique biographical narratives and analyze how their lives and teaching practices might better inform the success of Black students. Findings indicated (a) educators uniquely experienced the vestiges of mis-education as they faced insidious forms of racism during the course of their academic journey, (b) educators sought to interrupt the racism that their White teachers&rsquo; and peers exhibited, (c) educators encouraged students to use their voices and various platforms to effectively counteract their oppression, and (d) educators engaged transformative pedagogies in overt and covert ways depending on both the social and the teaching context(s). Based on the findings of this study, a liberation-based pedagogy is recommended to ensure the empowerment, increased performance, and well-rounded education of Black students.</p><p>

<p> This phenomenological autoethnographic case study illuminates the emergence of interdisciplinarity in a public high school. The intent is to study how interdisciplinary project-based and personalized learning benefits both students and educators, particularly when working within a gradual release framework utilizing an ethic of care or a &ldquo;Caring&rdquo; approach. Using a phenomenological autoethnographic methodology via a series of reflective vignettes, the case study explores behaviors, practices, conditions, curriculum, and description of specific student outcomes. The design of the study examines my personal experiences, observations, conversations with others, and reflections on the implementation of this model within a high school building promoting two explicit pathways: disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning. </p><p>

<p> Places are expressive, dynamic, and responsive beings voicing themselves at different scales of emergence. Placefields are the sites of research at the complex nexus of peoples, cultures, geography, experience, mythology, and place history in terrapsychology. Children are open and receptive to these expressive qualities of place, understanding these place emanations through the context provided to them by place-based educators and other adults. This four-month study at Lowell National Historical Park utilized terrapsychological inquiry to explore youth connection to the historic industrial placefield of Lowell, Massachusetts as experienced by learners and educators, reproduced through youth placefield encounters, and iterated through self, community, and as culture across scales. The arts-based research method of terrain weaving empowered this research to connect with complex pattern languages of Lowell, surfacing the symbolic repertoire of place, the somatic and psychological components of youth place encounter, the deep patterns of place that rise through the researcher, and the expansive states of consciousness that are catalyzed through complex place relationships. The difficult histories placefields perform reproduce their traumatic and historic woundings in the visiting psyche. At the same time, the underlying resilience, strengths, and gifts of places with difficult histories are vital assets to be liberated. The experiential and embodied elements of field trips make them powerful intersections for troubling the ways historic narratives are constructed. This research concludes it is possible to radically redesign field trips and recontextualize histories to provide a nourishing, regenerative place encounter by adopting complex, expansive, and agential understandings of place.</p><p>

<p> This study investigated participants&rsquo; openness to change when exposed to a teacher-led care-based innovative method of curriculum delivery, specifically the <i>Schoolhome</i> Instructional Design.</p><p> Answers were sought to four research questions. What are the teachers&rsquo; and administrators&rsquo; knowledge and understanding of the caring pedagogy of the <i>Schoolhome</i> with regard to theory and intent? How do teachers and administrators describe their reaction to the <i>Schoolhome </i> Instructional Design? What are the differences among teachers&rsquo; and administrators&rsquo; responses to the <i>Schoolhome</i> Instructional Design? To what extent would the teachers and administrators support an implementation of the <i>Schoolhome</i> Instructional Design?</p><p> Data from surveys and interviews were analyzed using a theoretical framework derived from Bronfenbrenner&rsquo;s (1979) ecological theory of human development, Martin&rsquo;s (1995) caring educational philosophy, and Hawkin&rsquo;s (2002) <i> I, Thou, It</i> concept of the three-way relationship between teacher, student and subject matter.</p><p> Findings showed that the teachers and administrators responded positively to the <i>Schoolhome</i> and would support its implementation at least in part. Findings also revealed concerns about logistical issues. Several implications can be drawn from the study results. First, one caring-based model will not work for all educators, and second, practitioners will need to update their theoretical educational knowledge prior to any implementation. Third, an in-service program should occur so that any innovation may be knowledge-based and carefully designed. Fourth, teacher education programs should develop a course on teacher-research practice and procedure. Fifth, study results also reveal a need to re-conceptualize change and caring.</p><p>

<p> Outcome-driven data literacy is a relatively new discipline in the field of K-12 education. With the exception of a few researchers, a handful of teacher training organizations, and practices observed in some public schools, there is little guidance for how teacher training organizations interested in developing outcome-driven, data-literate teachers should go about this work. In response to this problem, this study investigates how four teacher training organizations already engaged in developing outcome-driven, data-literate teachers are going about teaching these kinds of knowledge, skills, and mindsets. Using a qualitative case study approach, the study aims to help teacher training organizations identify approaches for teaching data literacy by sharing promising practices and lessons learned from organizations that have pioneered this work over the last several years.</p><p>

<p> Since the 1980s, community leadership development programs (CLDPs) across the United States have been developing the capacities of citizens to become effective local leaders. Generally, CLDPs focus on three key areas: building and enhancing the leadership skills of their participants; increasing participants&rsquo; awareness and knowledge about their communities; and cultivating the participants&rsquo; relationships with each other and with other community leaders. However, when it comes to evaluation studies about the impact of CLDPs, most of the scholarly work has focused on assessing the change in the leadership skills of the programs&rsquo; participants. Only limited research focuses on how CLDPs impact the ability of local leaders to work together over time to achieve collective action. </p><p> This research study investigated a type of CLDP, the American Leadership Forum-Great Valley Chapter program (ALF-GVC). Through the lens of social network theory and the relational capacity framework, it examined how relationships that are cultivated during the ALF-GVC program impact the ways in which its senior fellows work together to address community issues. Insights from the collective experience of 30 research participants revealed that the ALF-GVC program does impact the relational capacity of its senior fellows. Specifically, evidence supports that the ALF-GVC program helps create a positive internal working environment for senior fellows. The program was associated with increasing the size, diversity, cooperation, and cohesion of the research participants&rsquo; networks. As such, by expanding our understanding of how local leaders build relationships and the ways in which those relationships impact how they work together over time to address community issues, the findings from this research study contribute to the literature and practice, all of which can be used to help sustain and strengthen civic engagement in the United States. </p>