Arbetet är en källstudie över inlägg publicerade på skolverkets hemsida. Studien undersöker reaktioner gentemot förändringar i det samhällsvetenskapliga programmet gällande ämnena religionskunskap, filosofi och psykologi. Skolverkets förslag att slå samman filosofi med psykologi kritiserades utifrån administrativa problem. Ämnena ansågs dessutom vara alltför olikartade för att slås ihop med hänsyn till deras vetenskapliga metoder, innehåll och historik. Resultatet är i linje med Lindes begrepp ämnesprofessionell kod och Hargreaves begrepp påtvingad kollegialitet. Religionskunskapens förstärkta ställning och filosofin och psykologins försvagade ställning kritiserades utifrån en mängd olika synvinklar. Religionsämnets vetenskaplighet och konfessionslöshet ifrågasattes. Kursplanen i religion kritiserades för att vara alltför omfattande, och religionslärarnas kompetens att undervisa i etik ifrågasattes. Filosofin försvarades utifrån dess nära koppling till styrdokument, och psykologin försvarades utifrån mänskliga behov och intresse. Studien fann en stark vilja bland lärarna att avgränsa sina egna ämnen gentemot andra ämnen. / The study is based on contributions to discussion that was published on the homepage of the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket). It examine reactions on the proposals for the Social Science program. The proposal to put together philosophy and psychology in to a single subject was criticized on administrative grounds (problems with assessment, teacher competence etc). The two subjects were also considered to be to different in method, content and history. The result is in line with Andy Hargreaves concept of forced collegiality and Lindes concept of subject specific code. The proposal to increase hours for religious studies (religionskunskap) was criticized from different viewpoints. Religious studies was accused of being to unscientific bound to theological discourse. Its curricula was blamed of being to wide intruding on other subjects, and the teachers competence to educate their pupils in ethics were put in to question. The the proposal to decrease hours for philosophy was criticized on the ground that the subjects curricula was strongly connected to the official goals of the Social Science program. The proposal to decrease hours for psychology was criticized by appeling to its popularity among pupils and that its knowledge was important to satisfy basic human needs. The study discovered a tendency among teachers to classify their own subject in relations to other subjects.

Teacher turnover in urban public schools has traditionally been associated with school destabilization and is considered adversarial to school improvement and reform efforts. However, the 2009 federal education reform initiative, Race to the Top, endorsed forced teacher turnover at the lowest performing schools as a strategy for recruiting teachers of greater human capital and commitment to student learning. Using qualitative case study methods, this dissertation explored whether teacher turnover affects school reform efforts, and if so, how, by studying teacher turnover at three urban public high schools in New England. The findings revealed that teacher turnover does affect school reform efforts. In two of the three cases studied, teacher turnover contributed to the churn of human capital and to the disruption of social capital. In both of these cases, school reform efforts were negatively affected. In the third case, the potential negative effects of teacher turnover were largely mitigated through advanced planning. The leadership team also demonstrated how carefully controlled internal turnover could be used to advance reform efforts.

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The influences of school reform on the instructional practices of a seventh-grade language arts teacher was the focus of this study. This study was conducted in three phases: an ethnographic study, a pilot study, and a case study. The ethnography focused on the restructuring committee's proceedings, yielding information relating to the origin of reform efforts. The pilot study, stemming from the ethnography study, explored the instructional practices within a block scheduling format. Finally, the case study, investigated the viewpoints of the restructuring efforts as perceived by the participants. Data sources consisted of observations, formal interviews, previous and current classroom assignments, school reports, student surveys, and field notes. The data were analyzed, noting changes in curriculum intent, instructional approaches, assessment, and classroom management. The results of this study suggest that this teachers' success occurred as a results of the school division's posture toward restructuring and the teacher's level of readiness and intense personal desire for change. The implications for this study suggest that success in reform depends greatly on the approaches used in decision making, the level of teacher preparation and ownership, and the perspectives of all individuals involved. / Ph. D.

There are local and national cries for high school reform, especially in our at-risk high schools; however, close examination of our at-risk high schools shows some are succeeding despite the odds against them. This is a case study of such a successful, at-risk high school. The National Association of Secondary Schools defines an at-risk school as one having a student population of at least 50% minority students, 50 % free and reduced lunch students, and 90 % or better graduating and being accepted into college. Bright Star High School was chosen because it fits these criteria and it was recognized by school officials inside and outside of the school district for its high student performance on a variety of other student achievement indicators. The collection of data took place over a twelve month period between June 2006 and June 2007. This case study answers two questions: (1) What makes Bright Star High School so successful? (2) How did it become this way? In response to the first question, the findings show that there is not one factor that makes the difference but multiple factors that interact with each other. These factors include: (1) common vision and mission; (2) a safe and secure, small, personalized environment; (3) strong, instructional leadership; (4) a faculty that functions as a learning community; (5) rigorous academic programs and intervention and support strategies (6) parent involvement. The factors identified in this case study are similar to those identified in other successful, at-risk schools and to those reported in related literature and research studies. In response to the second question, the findings show: (1) the Bright Star faculty nurtured a culture that supports and encourages the establishment and maintenance of a collaborative learning community; (2) changes at the district, state, and national levels in graduation requirements, accreditation requirements, and the No Child Left Behind Act had a powerful impact; (3) real change takes time, persistence, patience and an understanding that it is messy and not easy. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study was to examine how federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) funds were allocated and what differences existed between allocation patterns and overall student achievement outcomes as measured by annual measurable objectives (AMOs) established by the Virginia Board of Education in schools denied accreditation and those attaining full accreditation while under school improvement sanctions. School reform in K-12 education has seen many changes. The federal government has intervened, implementing stringent mandates for increased student achievement and sanctions for school divisions not meeting the required benchmarks. Within the Commonwealth of Virginia, schools not meeting annual measurable objectives (AMOs) in the content areas of reading and mathematics or graduation rates for high schools are identified in one of three categories: priority, focus, or as a Title I or Non-Title I school that has not met one or more of the AMOs (Virginia Department of Education, 2014). Schools designated as priority received 1003(a) and/or 1003(g) federal school improvement grant funding to implement research-based school reform initiatives. The goal of this study was to provide a descriptive analysis of the relationship between SIG funding and overall student achievement that will add to the current research. The population studied was schools identified as denied accreditation within the Commonwealth of Virginia. Additionally, comparable data were examined from ten priority schools previously accredited with warning that became fully accredited while under school improvement sanctions. Accreditation ratings from the 2013-2014 school year were utilized. Descriptive statistics revealed differences existed among allocation patterns in the group of schools denied accreditation and the group of priority schools that achieved full accreditation while under school improvement sanctions. Descriptive statistics and independent samples t-tests revealed SIG funding had a positive impact on student outcomes in reading among the group of schools denied accreditation and the group of priority schools that achieved full accreditation while under school improvement sanctions. Findings indicated mathematics student outcomes did not experience the same benefit from SIG funding. / Ed. D.

School divisions and principals are tasked with meeting state standards and federal annual measurable objectives (AMOs), as well as with closing the achievement gaps that exist in schools. To accomplish this mission, organizational learning, specifically the use of protocol-structured discussions, has become a fundamental component of school reform processes. Protocols to examine professional practice, engage in data-driven decision-making (DDDM), and look at student work have gained more notoriety as school reform strategies in K-12 education. The purpose of this single-case embedded common qualitative case study was to examine and describe how Uprising Elementary School (UES), in the mid-Atlantic part of the United States, made changes during the school reform process that benefited students from 2012 to 2015. Qualitative data were collected through interviews, focus groups, observations, document reviews, and reflexive notes. I used NVivo 11 Pro to store the data transcripts by creating specific nodes and the constant comparative analysis method to determine themes in the data collected. During triangulation, the multiple sources of data of data kept the qualitative data reliable and accurate. The six findings included: (a) organization of the staff into organizational learning structures created a uniform system of continuous improvement, (b) leadership was a key element influencing the overall success of UES, (c) protocols can be organized into a professional learning model to promote organizational learning, (d) the professional learning model had a profound impact on organizational learning and teacher leadership, (e) the implementation of protocols had a positive effect on school culture, and (f) the strategic implementation of protocol-structured discussions as a school reform strategy transformed learning. / Ed. D.

The role of school culture in facilitating underrepresented students' access to and success in college is examined in this ethnographic study. The purpose of this study is to examine an urban, public high school's culture in the southeast region of the United States with a high population of African Americans and students living in poverty. The college-­ going culture theory proposed by McClafferty, McDonough and Nunez (2002) and later refined by McDonough (2006) is used as a framework for this study and an ethnographic research design is employed using interviews, observations, open-­ended surveys, and document review as data collection methods. The objective of the study is to describe the culture of an urban high school by examining its artifacts, values and beliefs and underlying assumptions, specifically as it relates to preparation of students for postsecondary education. Findings from this study will help inform strategies on reforming school culture to support college access and success for urban high school students, and will support the use of the college-­going culture theory as a useful lens through which to understand college access issues. Additionally, this study helps to describe some of the common characteristics of urban education in the heart of education reform and describes the core challenges associated with developing college-­going culture in urban communities with high poverty and low college attendance rates.

Thesis advisor: Marilyn Cochran-Smith / Prior to the widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in 2009, writing was largely neglected in the education policy realm. However, the CCSS called for major shifts in the teaching of writing reinforced by the requirements of rigorous new standardized writing assessments. While the high stakes attached to these new assessments place all teachers under increased pressure to improve students’ writing, little is known about how teachers perceive the standards and assessments or how these are influencing classroom instruction. To address this need, this case study explored how English teachers at one urban high school made sense of their school’s new writing initiative, which incorporated use of CCSS-aligned, standardized writing assessments to improve students’ writing. In this longitudinal study, I drew from multiple, nested data sources, including interviews with teachers and school leaders, observations of department meetings, and teacher “think alouds” about students’ writing. Relying on the theoretical lenses of sense-making (Spillane et al., 2002) and communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), I argue that teachers’ sense-making of the writing initiative was individualized and heavily mediated by the standardized assessments they used. This study has three major findings. First, at the school level, there was a “coherence gap” between how the multiple, conflicting purposes of the initiative were represented to teachers and lack of organizational structures to support streamlined implementation. Second, at the department level, the discourse about writing was constrained by the decontextualized nature of the CCSS and the standardized writing assessments, which oversimplified teachers’ understandings of writing as a social process. Third, at the classroom level, teachers relied on two particularized dimensions of their professional knowledge – their “reform knowledge” and their “relational knowledge” – to exercise agency in implementation. Overall, teachers made meaning of the writing initiative in localized ways consistent with their established writing instruction and their perceptions of students’ needs. This study underscores the central importance of particularized teacher knowledge in translating reform meaningfully to the classroom. Until school leaders and policymakers recognize teachers’ knowledge as valuable and create opportunities for teachers to share this knowledge with others, reforms are unlikely to be successful. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the origin, development, and implementation of the Better Schools Program in Tennessee. Materials were gathered from East Tennessee State University Library, University of Tennessee Library, Walters State Community College Library, Belmont University Library, Tennessee State Library and Archives and Morristown-Hamblen County Library. These materials consisted of government documents, presidential and gubernatorial speeches, audio and video tapes, books, and periodicals. Personal interviews were also collected from two TEA members and seven legislators. The materials were analyzed, and important passages were marked, incorporated into the paper, and documented. The research questions were (1) What prompted the instigation of the Better Schools Program? (2) Who was instrumental in establishing the Better Schools Program? (3) What areas of education were affected by the Better Schools Program? (4) Who were the proponents and opponents of the Better Schools Program? and (5) How did the Better Schools Program's ten points translate into statutes or regulations in Tennessee? The research reached three conclusions based on an analysis of the materials. It was determined that Governor Alexander's political philosophy closely coincided with those concepts held by the Better Schools Program. Despite the opposition from TEA, the Governor and his cabinet were able to solicit enough support from politicians, educators, business people, the media, and the public to enact their policies into laws governing Tennessee's educational system. The reform movement terminated in four acts: the unnamed act whereby vocational-technical schools were placed under the Board of Regents, the Public Education Governance Reform Act of 1984, the Comprehensive Education Reform Act of 1984, and the Revised CERA of 1985.