Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-81). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-238). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.S.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf : 61).

There has been a trend toward increased in educational accountability for the past fifty years as seen through legislation, policy, and guidance implemented by state education agencies. While states had accountability systems, the federal NCLB Act of 2001 formalized the current system that worked to remediate schools challenged to meet the accountability expectations? Exacerbating these circumstances was a shifting accountability model, AZ LEARNS, that measured school performance from 2007-2009. The Arizona Department of Education formalized processes and structures to address the needs of low-capacity schools through the State System of Support. This research examined the role of the ASSIST Coach in underperforming schools as a measure of state intervention in Arizona. Data revealed that insufficient time, resources, and support were afforded to low-capacity schools by the ASSIST Coach to affect change that resulted in school improvement within the AZ LEARNS model. Additionally, the skills, experience, and background did not align to the needs of low-capacity schools that participated in this study. In the absence of effective state intervention, schools turned to internal capacities to plan for and implement school improvement initiatives that were minimally effective in turning around their respective underperformance. Based on these findings, recommendations for future research were offered to strengthen the support for schools under the State System of Support in Arizona.

While school districts across the nation are pressed to make better and more frequent use of a range of educational data, they have few resources that help guide the process of improving educator capacity for data use. To date, there have been few efforts to examine the intersection of professional learning and data use to better guide efforts at improving educator data use capacity. In order to learn more about how school districts attempt to meet educator needs in terms of data-related learning, and how they use policies to approach this issue, I examined the intersection of data use and professional learning in three school districts. I used a qualitative case study methodology to examine these issues, and relied on interview data from n=110 individuals across the three districts, as well as document analysis in each district, to better understand the existing structures in each context and how those structures came to be. I also utilized random sampling for some focus groups, and used a peer nomination process for other focus groups, which allowed me to identify educators thought by their colleagues to be “exemplar” data users. I found that across the districts, educators at all levels articulated with remarkable consistency a range of skills and knowledge they said were essential to good data use. Also, educators were consistent in describing the kinds of professional learning structures they thought best supported their needs as learners. However, in most cases, district structures fell short of these ideals. The districts rarely codified expectations related to the structure of professional learning or to data-related skills and knowledge in formal policy, and planning related to data use tended to be fragmented among many departments and leaders. As a result, there were many assumptions that “someone else” or another department was providing support in terms of data-related professional learning, while many times data use-related learning simply fell between the cracks. Informed by existing research and the results of this study, I posited a model aimed at supporting policymakers as they engage in planning for data-related professional learning. / text

This thesis explored the experiences of five principals enrolled on the Advanced Certificate in Education: School Leadership henceforth referred to as ACESL, and their reflection on the programme in relation to their professional practice. The ACESL is a professional qualification programme that is currently funded by the Department of Education through a number of service providers. The paucity of research on the influence of management development programmes on the professional practice of principals formed the background to this study. In 1996, the Department of Education set up a Task Team to explore possibilities of such management development. The purpose of the programme was to provide structured learning opportunities that promote quality education in South Africa through the development of a corps of education leaders who apply critical understanding, values, knowledge and skills to school leadership and management within the vision of democratic transformation. This purpose points to the pivotal role of education leadership and management in transforming schools in South Africa. This research attempted to address this gap in knowledge by examining the experiences and reflections of principals on the ACESL programme and it also explored the influence of this programme on their professional practice. The study focussed on the subjective experiences of principals on the ACESL programme. This being the case, this research was located in an interpretivist, qualitative paradigm. The central intention of the interpretivist paradigm is to understand the subjective world of human experience. The findings of the research suggest that the experiences of the principals on the ACESL are largely positive. Some elements of the programme did give rise to negative experiences. The principals were unanimous in articulating the positive effect of the programme on their professional practice. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

Om en skola lyckas väl eller mindre väl i sitt uppdrag beror på många faktorer. En del avdessa kan skolan inte påverka. Till dessa faktorer hör till exempel vårdnadshavaresbakgrund. Vad skolan däremot kan påverka är lärares skicklighet i att undervisa, vilket harvisat sig vara den enskilt största skillnaden mellan skolor och skolsystem av olika kvalitet.För att utveckla lärarnas yrkesskicklighet behövs ett levande samarbetsklimat. Studiens syfteär att undersöka i hur hög utsträckning högstadielärare samarbetar kring undervisning,bedömning samt hur elever lär sig. Trettiofyra lärare fördelade på två högstadieskolor deltogi enkätstudien. Skolorna delar skolledare och har en identisk organisation med avseende påtid för formellt samarbete.Resultatet visar att det finns ett mycket starkt samband mellan det schemalagda och detspontana samarbetet lärare emellan. Det som behandlas på schemalagd konferenstid(ämneskonferenser och andra möten med styrt innehåll) är också det som det spontana samarbetet kretsar kring. / How successful a school is depends on many factors. Some of these factors schools cannotaffect, for example, parents’ backgrounds. What the schools can affect however is how wellteachers teach, which has proven to be the single biggest difference between schools andschool systems of varying quality.In order to develop teachers' professional skills, teamwork is essential. This study aims toinvestigate the extent to which high school teachers collaborate on teaching, assessmentand how students learn. Thirty‐four teachers at two secondary schools filled in thequestionnaire. The schools share principals and have an identical organization regardingtime for formal collaboration.The results show that there is a very strong correlation between within scheduled andspontaneous teacher cooperation. What is being discussed at scheduled meetings (such assubject specific conferences and other meetings with given content) is also being discussedwhen teachers collaborate spontaneously.

The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of teachers with respect to the intentions of the Developmental Appraisal Policy, how the policy was implemented at school level and its influence on Teaching. How this policy came to be understood and interpreted at school level during its implementation phase is the subject of this study, focussing on a teacher-union sanctioned policy aimed at Teacher Professional Development. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies characterise the data collection strategy. A survey questionnaire was administered to 181 teachers in the Verulam Circuit in KwaZulu-Natal. Indepth semi-structured interviews were conducted using a stratified random sample of 15 teachers in proportion to the three variables namely, gender, age and race. The study's findings reveal the following: 1) The implementation of the policy was largely executed in a technical administrative fashion which provide semblances of being well understood and accepted as a new form of appraisal replacing the former "judgemental approach" to Teacher Appraisal. 2) In the actual practical operation of the proposed teacher professional appraisal procedures, teachers at the institutional level were seen to be using the Developmental Appraisal Policy in not so different a fashion as the former judgemental model, which promoted nepotism and a superficial attention to deep teacher professional changes. An important question needs to be borne in mind: Does a union-driven policy lead to deeper changes in Teacher Professional Development in a democratic ethos? 3) Most of the teachers claimed that sharing of resources and assessment techniques had positively influenced their Teaching- Practice. However, these activities had been in practice long before the introduction of the Appraisal policy. There were also conflicting views whether the Developmental Appraisal Policy or Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) Policy had caused an influence on Teaching Practice. There was very little to no evidence to suggest that the appraisal policy had influenced the teachers' Teaching Practice. 4) The study revealed that the different genders, ages and races interpreted the impact of the Developmental Appraisal Policy in relation to their unique expectations of their school context, their lived! executed experiences of teaching and their stages of development as professionals. A "one-size- fits-all" Developmental Appraisal Policy is thus discouraged. The results suggest three broad implications for school-based Teacher Professional Development viz.: • changes needed at the policy landscape (at the Department level), • changes needed at the school landscape (at institutional level), • and changes needed at an individual level. Firstly, the Department of Education as the employer tries to regulate the school from the "outside". Changes at this level include for example, the need for Department officials to rethink the way they perceive and communicate with the broader constituency of teachers. The gap between the Department as "bureaucrats" and teachers need to be narrowed. Both Department officials and teachers need to realise that they are "partners" towards improving the quality of teaching and learning. Secondly, the thesis argues that there are many changes necessary at an institutional level to engage with Teacher Professional Development. For example, school personnel such as teachers and managers need to design a flexible school timetable to accommodate time for teachers to engage with Teacher Development. Thirdly, personal factors such as love for children, passion and dedication towards the profession emerged as important factors in engaging with Teacher Professional Development. Thus, the thesis argues that Teacher Professional Development entails developing also the "inner qualities" of the teacher. Teacher Professional Development cannot be confined to faithful compliance to delivery of state-designed curricula. Finally, the thesis argues that we need to integrate harmoniously the changes at these three levels i.e. the Departmental, institutional and individual levels so that effective Teacher Development can take place. This study contributes to understanding more qualitatively and quantitatively the Teacher Development landscape of post-apartheid educational transformation from the perspective of teachers within their institutions engaging with policies targeting their professional growth. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

School is an important institution charged with the task of contributing to the economic, cultural and social development of the community, and of nurturing democratic citizens. Countless state-sponsored measures have therefore been initiated in order to affect the quality of schooling. One example is a state-financed school development project, which is the focus of this thesis. The overall purpose of the study was to improve awareness of whether, and if so how, using projects as a strategy for improving school contributes to sustainable changes, as well as what has been both advantageous and disadvantageous to this end. Two projects were studied with a focus on the participant's perceptions of and experiences from this project. A number of headmasters and educators were interviewed on two occasions, once in connection with the final phases of the projects, and then again three years later. The analysis of the empirical data was guided by The Frame Factor Model (Lundgren, 1994, 1999), and by Hoy and Miskel's (2008) organisational model. In summary, the study shows that the ambitions of both of the school projects were greater than the sustainable results. Moreover, it was clear that the conditions placed upon the school organisation by the outside world constituted both promoted and encumbered the results of the school projects. State funds contributed to the improvement of schools, while at the same time, other state regulations delimited what the sustainable changes were. The desirable changes were also affected by processes within the organisation and can be connected with structures, cultures and individuals. Above all, current structures within the organisation need to be changed so that the employees have an in-depth involvement in a project and for a protracted period of time. Changed structures allow for common expertise and values to be improved with regard to venturing into a project. Furthermore, the various skills of the employees, as well as their attitudes toward projects within the organisation, were also significant to the sustainable changes. One suggestion for continued research is to improve the knowledge on how structures can be changed within a school organisation so as to enable the organisation's employees to be engaged in such a way as to make collective learning possible.

Capacity building is now mentioned synonymously with school improvement in much of the literature. However, research on the topic is limited (Hadfield, Chapman, Curryer and Barrett, 2004) and generally undertaken at the micro level of school functioning. There is an absence of debate on political, economic and social trends with implications for capacity building (Muijs, Harris, Chapman, Stoll & Russ, 2004; Thrupp & Willmott, 2003; Gray, 2000). Hopkins, Beresford and West (1998) claim the concept lacks clear articulation and definition. This inquiry explores capacity building for school improvement in one low decile, multicultural, New Zealand primary school. This research is framed by four aims: to undertake an investigation on processes that enhance improvement, namely, capacity building for school improvement; to define capacity building; to conduct an in-depth study of influences (external and internal) on capacity building for school improvement; and to record the journey of one school in building capacity for improvement. The inquiry is positioned within an interpretivist paradigm, employs a case study approach and grounded theory methods for data analysis and interpretation. Research questions that guide this investigation are: How is capacity for school improvement defined - what are its features? How do internal school factors - vision, stakeholder activity, culture and professional development - evolve capacity? In what ways do external wider societal factors influence the development of capacity? What links exist between capacity building and improvement as evidenced in this school setting? Data suggests that capacity building for school improvement is time and context dependent. Its conceptualisation is unique to setting. Capacity building for school improvement is a response to meeting individual, collective and systemic needs in ways that sustain equilibrium while moving in the direction of improvement. Attributes inherent in its construction are vision, stakeholders as change agents, school culture and professional development. The main practices are: knowledge production and utilisation; switching-on mentality; and division of labour: roles and responsibilities. From attributes and practices emerge four themes: situated activity; connectedness; leadership, governance and management; and outcomes. Attributes, practices and themes explain capacity building for school improvement in one setting. The capacity of an organisation, to manage tensions and address need, ensures individual, collective and systemic equilibrium while moving in the direction of improvement