Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1996. / Title from title page screen, viewed May 31, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Robert Arnold (chair), Paul Baker, Kenneth Strand, Norman Durflinger. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-74) and abstract. Also available in print.

The management of Nigeria high schools are noted for administrative practices in the management of their schools; hence the term administration is commonly used in their daily operations. This fact on ‘administration’ was emphasised by the Nigerian government in the National Policy on Education (Nigeria, 1981, p. 21). Therefor as a researcher from Nigeria, my rationale for embarking on this research study was to find out to what extent a public high school in Nigeria was still operating in a hierarchical, individualistic, authoritarian style of leadership or whether it has started embracing contemporary approaches such as distributed leadership. The main goal of this study was to explore leadership practices in the case study school with the main focus on how different people relate to each other in the various leadership practices of the school, such as staff and briefing meetings of the school. In addition, my research questions aimed at exploring the respondents’ perceptions of leadership and factors enabling or constraining the distribution of leadership in the school. The study is located within the interpretive paradigm. As a researcher in a wheelchair studying in South Africa I needed to find alternative ways of accessing the research site and gathering data. I was able to use electronic communication for the collection of my data. I used four different tools of data collection methods namely document analysis, observation, questionnaire and stimulated recall interviews. Findings from the study indicated that there was limited evidence of contemporary leadership approaches in the case study school. The school was still operating traditional leadership, while school activities were dominated by a hierarchical chain of command. What emerged from the leadership practices of the school could be termed authorised distributed leadership which was under the command of the school principal. Data also indicated that there were some forms of restricted teacher leadership in the management and administration of the school. In addition, findings revealed that the case study school was very good at the management and administrative functions. The school was very effective and efficient in the controlling and management of both human and material resources. Lastly, findings from the case study school indicated some enabling factors to the distribution of leadership in the case study school which include a culture of respect and cordial relations among the SMT and the teachers, Prominent among constraining factors to the distribution of leadership in the case study school were: cultural orientation of the people where the case school was located, exclusionary religious practices by the principal of the school and the inhibiting role played by the Ministry of Education. Finally, based on these findings, recommendations were made both for practice and for future research.

Principals were struggling with the interpretation of their roles in the implementation of the NCS in South African schools, parlty due to the huge change and complexity of the NCS. It was found that principals did not understand their roles in the implementation of the NCS, and as a result did not develop staff, were not familiar with the roles of educators as specified by policy and shifted the burden of developing educators to the Department of Education. A qualitative research approach was employed. A reputational case sampling was conducted on three secondary school principals in the KZN Vryheid District. A semi structured interview and a semi-structured questionaire were employed on these three principals to gather data. Theme analysis was used to determine how principals interpreted their roles in the implementation of the NCS. I found that principals did not have enough understanding of their roles in the implementation of the NCS. However, principals complained that the Department of Education was more concerned about expanding access to education than quality of education. They also lamented that teachers had a low self- esteem with the profession. I found that principals required detailed workshops on their roles in the implementation of the NCS, ongoing curriculum leadership training, and required LTSM resources and equipped laboratories.

M.Ed. (Educational Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

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Submitted in partial fulfilment of a Masters Degree in the Department of Educational Planning and Administration at the University of Zululand, 2005. / Educational policy reform such as South African Schools Act, No. 84 of 1996 and the National Education Poiicy Act, No. 27 of 1996 require all educators to participate actively in the governance and management of their schools with the view to providing better teaching and learning environments. Educators must participate in the management processes of their schools to bring about deliberate, meaningful and effective management. This study provides both a literature review and an empirical study of strategies that principals may adopt to facilitate participative management among educators. The following key findings emanated from the study: • There is a lack of educator involvement in the management process. • Principals do arrange formal meetings with educators frequently enough but do not structure meetings tightly enough. • There is a general lack of communication between the school management team and educators. • Educators are not involved in the implementation of educational policies. The following recommendations were extrapolated from the above findings: • Principals should encourage networking between schools so as to promote interschool communication, resource sharing, staff and learner collaboration and information exchange. • Principals should conduct staff training programmes and should promote teamwork among educators in their schools. • Effective management strategies should be made explicit in training workshops and policy documents such as the South African Schools Act, No. 84 of 1996, should be discussed in educator forums. It is the fervent hope of the researcher that this study will alert principals to pitfalls of authoritarian management styles and equip principals with practical strategies and techniques to effectively facilitate participative management in their respective schools.

Recent efforts to restructure schools through increased teacher involvement are likely to fail without a corresponding redesign of the underlying organizational and political structure of schools. Because the current structure of most schools actually prohibits the collaboration necessary to effect change and promotes professional isolation instead, staff members faced with the tasks of restructuring experience frustration more often than success. The changes that do occur are often superficial and cosmetic while the basic hierarchy and mechanisms of control remain intact. Allowing teachers to redesign their schools, specifically to develop new models that promote interdependence and the sharing of professional expertise, provides an opportunity to explore the reasons teachers might choose to forego the relatively safe world of the self-contained classroom to participate in the often stressful and time consuming development and implementation of new approaches to teaching and learning. Exploring those factors which motivate teachers to attempt innovation and determining the attributes and beliefs of those teachers about school change is the focus of this study. The study investigates the concept of teacher efficacy, the teacher's belief that his/her actions affect student achievement or that he/she has the "ability to have a positive effect on student learning" (Ashton, 1984; Ashton & Webb, 1986). The perceptions of efficacy among selected teachers in an urban elementary school in the Northwest involved in implementing an Accelerated School model are examined in an effort to determine which factors influence those feelings. Identifying the issues which confront teachers engaged in innovation and the conditions they feel contribute to their success or failure is also an outcome. Increased efficacy, the perceived ability to "make a difference," is critical to classroom effectiveness and efforts to restructure schools. Data were obtained during the 1993-1994 school year by means of an efficacy scale based on the model developed by Gibson and Dembo (1984), structured interviews with selected teachers, an open-ended questionnaire, and observations during a sharing session with teachers in a nearby district considering a similar innovation.

Faculty advising is crucial for student success, but little is known about the specific relationship between advising and master's students' success. Given that master's student enrollment is growing and diversifying, examining the relationships between advising and success is imperative for institutional efficiency and educational excellence. This quantitative study investigated nearly 1,000 master's students' experiences with two primary types of advising--administrative and mentoring. The study looked for correlations with multiple proxies of student success (e.g., graduation, retention, institutional commitment, and GPA). As well, other potentially influential individual, educational, and organizational variables (e.g., background characteristics, peer culture, and department climate) were examined for their effect on the relationship between advising and success. Results indicate that student satisfaction with advising is correlated with success. In particular, student satisfaction with administrative advising, which communicates accurate policies and helps students form educational plans, increased student success. Student satisfaction with mentoring advising, which emphasizes individualized professional support (e.g., feedback on thesis writing) was also shown to facilitate master's student success. Recommendations highlight the importance of creating degree maps and electronic degree tracking as a form of administrative advising support for students and the importance of having nurturing multiple faculty-student contacts within the department to build collegial rapport and mentoring relationships.

Considering the characteristics of research questions, The study adopted qualitative approach and case study strategy. Six teachers from two elementary schools in a district of Shanghai were chosen as cases. Data was collected through observations, interviews and documents, and then coded and analyzed them by Nvivc8. / Shanghai launched its curriculum reform since the late 1980s, which was followed by the second round curriculum reform started in 1998. Owing to those constantly wheeling processes of reform, curriculum materials, teaching methods, curriculum evaluation, curriculum organization, accountability and people's conception of curriculum experienced a big change. These changes challenged teachers' traditional understandings of curriculum and teaching as well as their ways of acting. The practice of teaching becomes more and more complicated, and there are a lot of conflicts and uncertainties in it. Rather than choosing between the right and wrong, teachers make their decisions through negotiations with many elements in the dynamic field. Based on these considerartions, this research focuses on the content of decisions teachers make at the level of classroom along with analysis of these processes which are framed in a perspective of negotiation. / The findings of this research indicate that: (1) The content of teachers' curriculum decision-makings at the level of classroom concentrated on teaching goals, content and process, while emphasizing evaluations after classroom instead of instantaneous evaluations in teaching. (2) Thenegotiation with situation factors was the main avenue teachers took to decide teaching goals and contents. When conflicts emerged between teachers' beliefs and situation factors, most of teachers were inclined to step back and make compromise with situation factors. (3) Teachers' negotiation with other people provided accesses for teachers to getting emerging curriculum ideas, learning processes and methods of teaching. People who have authority in experience of teaching, professional knowledge and administrative power were important evidences for teachers' decision-making. (4) Along with accumulation of experience in teaching, teachers' decisions mainly depended on their negotiations with themselves. (5) Teachers' final decisions were co-products of their negotiations with situation, other people and themselves, while each of these three elements played different role in this process. / Through analyzing content and process of decision-makings of teachers in elementary school in Shanghai, this research summed up the characteristics of negotiation embodied in the Chinese teachers' decision-making at the level of classroom. Those findings will shed some light on the improvement of curriculum reform in Chinese basic education as well as on teacher development domain. / 杨兰. / Adviser: Pingkwan Fok. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 345-362). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Yang Lan.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The provision of quality education for all South African learners has been an issue of central concern since the advent of the democratic dispensation in 1994. One initiative since 1998 was the implementation of a new curriculum for South African public schools, C2005 as it was then called. This curriculum was later revised and streamlined as the NCS. There was a mixed reception to this new curriculum. Some perceived it as a progressive initiative by the Ministry of Education, while others argued that it was ambitious and that it undermined the conditions and context of South African schools. Essentially the curriculum policy implementation was intended to change the entire system and introduce new ways of doing in all sectors of education. This links strongly to processes of systemic change and that is the considered policy backdrop to this research. In this study I work from an interpretive perspective and draw on the cognitive sense-making framework to develop in-depth, understanding of teachers’ roles as interpreters and enactors of education policy change in South Africa related to the implementation of the NCS. More specifically, the study examines the ways in which six Arts and Culture school teachers in six diverse South African educational contexts experienced and responded to the implementation of the NCS. Data from the study indicates that teachers found it difficult to adjust to the more complex and demanding teaching methodologies, which took up a great deal of time and required very different roles in the classrooms. Data from the study also suggests that the way teachers come to understand and enact policy or reform initiatives is influenced by their prior knowledge, the social context within which they work, and the nature of their connections to the policy or reform message. The study further suggests that teachers adapt a curriculum rather than adopt it as it is, and that their prior understandings and beliefs about knowledge, beliefs and experiences combined with their contexts in which they work frame their classroom practices explaining why policy is not enacted as intended. Conceptualising the problem of policy implementation in this way focuses attention on how implementing agents construct the meaning of a policy message and their own behaviour, and how this process leads, or does not lead, to a change in how they view their own practice, potentially leading to changes in both understanding and behaviour. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die voorsiening van kwaliteit-opvoeding vir alle Suid-Afrikaanse leerders was ʼnsentrale besorgdheid na die totstandkoming van die nuwe demoktratiese bestel in 1994. ʼnInisiatief was die implementering van ʼn nuwe kurrikulum vir Suid-Afrikaanse openbare skole sedert 1998, die C2005 of NKV soos dit tans bekend staan. Die instelling van hierdie kurrikulum was op verskeie maniere ontvang. Sommige het dit as ’n progressiewe inisiatief van die Ministerie van Onderwys beskou, terwyl ander verskillende perspektiewe het en geargumenteer het dat dit ambisieus is en die toestande en konteks van SA skole ondermyn. Vir onderwysers was die resultaat na die oorgang van meer komplekse en veeleiesende onderrigmetdologie moeilik, omdat dit baie tyd geverg het en swaar gerus het om hulle rolle in die klaskamer te verklaar. Wat belangrik was, is dat die doel van hierdie kurrikulum beleidsveranderinge daarop gemik was om die totale skolestelsel te transformeer tot ’n vernuwende manier van hoe dinge in alle sektore van die onderwysstelse egter behoort gedoen te word. Dit sluit sterk aan by prosesse van sistemiese veranderinge en hierdie is die oorwegende beleidsagtergrond van hierdie navorsing. Die doel van die studie was om maniere te ondersoek hoe ses Kuns en Kultuur onderwysers in verskillende onderwyskontekste die NKV ervaar en hoe hulle daarop reageer, veral in die Kuns en Kultuur leerarea omgewing. Die studie was meer spesifiek daarop gemik om te eksamineer hoe onderwysers die KK leer-area in die klaskamer aanneem, aanpas en implementeer. Die studie openbaar, deur die kognitiewe raamwerk te gebruik, dat die wyse waarop onderwysers die beleid of hervormings-inisiatiewe verstaan en begryp, beïnvloed word deur hulle bestaande kennis, die konteks waarin hulle werk en die aard van hulle verbintenis tot die beleid of hervormings boodskap. Die studie suggereer verder dat onderwysers ’n kurrikulum aanneem soos wat dit is en dat hulle bestaande begrippe en opvattings in verband met kennis en opvattings en ervaringe gekombineer word met die kontekste waarin hulle werk en dat dit hulle klaskamer praktyke vorm en hierdeur word verduidelik waarom beleid nie kan plaasvind soos wat dit beplan is nie.