Expectations of and expertise in school advisory and development services in a school district in Iceland Allyson Macdonald Kristján Ketill Stefánsson Iceland University of Education Paper presented at SERA 2006, Perth, Scotland 23rd-25th November 2006
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Expectations of and expertise in school advisory and development services in a school district in Iceland Allyson Macdonald Kristján Ketill Stefánsson.
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Expectations of and expertise in school
advisory and development services in a school district in
Iceland
Allyson MacdonaldKristján Ketill Stefánsson
Iceland University of Education
Paper presented at SERA 2006, Perth, Scotland23rd-25th November 2006
The presentation
• The evaluation – the context– purpose of the evaluation – methodology– some results/themes in the data– new questions
• Approaches to advisory services – constraints and contributors – teacher leaders– perceptions of teacher learning – district leaders– school development professionals - standards– interagency learning
• A model for further development
The study
• Peri-urban community, rapid growth– Population about 8000 – Four preschools (480 learners, aged 2-5)
• over 90% of children aged 4-5 at least 8 hours a day
– Two compulsory schools (1350 learners)– 113 teachers
• Light industry and services• Holistic school policy developed over two years
and adopted in 2002• Evaluation of the LEA office
Functions of the LEA
• Local education authority– Counties responsible for school provision– Has developed a county policy (2000-2002) which is however
not legally binding for individual schools– Schools required to carry out self-evaluation
• Provision of specialist services – Psychologists, speech and language problems
• Support for school development – advisory services– Curriculum support, school subject advisory services– Inservice education – directly and indirectly; schools also have
their own money– Development projects – directly and indirectly; assistance with
applications to national funds• Five full-time staff (two school-psychologists)
Purpose of the evaluation
• To evaluate the activities of the LEA office – according to legal requirements and local policy– in terms of work distribution and human resources
– mapping the overlap between administrative tasks and specialist and advisory services
• To assess the views of school principals and special education teachers on the services and activities of the LEA office
Data collection
• Participants– LEA staff, school principals, special needs teachers– Preschools (aged 2-5), compulsory schools (aged 6-15)
• Mixed methods – Qualitative
• face-to-face interviews with staff, transcribed • e-mail interviews, analysed with NVivo software
– From documents, including annual reports, figures from them and work descriptions
• Electronic approach at all stages• Data collection from December to March• Feedback meetings from April to June• Prototype for evaluation of other LEA offices
• The growing independence of schools, encouraged by LEA policy, is reflected in attitudes and activities– Financial management more centralised than
principals would like it to be– Increased specialised knowledge in schools– Demands for quality assurance and accountability
• Curricular changes– Increased emphasis on meeting individual needs– Changes in secondary (post-compulsory) education
affect the compulsory curriculum
Social and economic themes
• Changes in the employment sector creating new expectations among parents– Increased demand for all-day places in preschools
and after-school services in the lower yearclasses and a wider and coherent variety of activities for older children
• Changes in society and in the community• School/social inclusion• Demands from parents for quality services• Direct access to schools and the LEA (e-mail) and
demand for actions• The knowledge society and views on education
Psychology services
1,0
2,0
3,0
4,0
5,0Special needs support
Psychological services
Services of a lay minister
CounsellingPrevention measures
Speech development
Teaching advice
Useful
Sufficient
1,0
2,0
3,0
4,0
5,0Follow-up of individual cases
Bullying
Well-being of the student
Prevention activities
Exam stress
Parent education
Child neglect
Depression
LEA office
Schools
1,0
2,0
3,0
4,0
5,0General advice
Mathematics difficulties
Individualized learning/development
General education
Subject-based advice
Reading difficulties
LEA office
Schools
Views of services
from schools
Views of services
from the LEA•Preschool leaders and experts more positive towards the LEA than compulsory school participants
•New analytical techniques appearing and being developed for increasingly younger children
•School leaders and experts feel that they have the human resources to provide many of the services needed
•An increased emphasis on prevention strategies, starting at an early age and with parents and children
•What expectations are there• of specialist and advisory services?
•What sort of expertise is available in the LEA office and in schools and how can it be tapped?
•What is the current role of educational psychologists and what roles could they play in learning and teaching?•Where do essential services end and advisory services begin?•What is the relationship between the pattern of increased demand for school-related services to the explicit provision of prevention-oriented services?
A way forward?
From the literature
• Becoming a leader in schools– Lewthwaite (2006)
• How do district leaders promote teacher learning and instructional innovation?
– Spillane (2000)
• Can we relate monitoring-challenge-intervention to the work of individual LEA specialists, to the LEA as a whole and to specialists in schools?
– National Standards for School Improvement Professionals (2003)
• Can we learn from the notion of interagency learning to the need for specialist/advisory services?
– Warmington et al. (2005)
Becoming a teacher leader
• Constraints and contributors – professional trajectory– risk and protective factors – attributes and processes, also time-dependent– intrinsic and extrinsic factors– personal attributes, microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem,
macrosystem – interplay between systems
• Development is a joint function of the person and the environment– Personal dispositions of commitment and interest– Proximal conditions – collegial and professional support and
expectations within the microsystem• Key concepts: individual, systems, development
Lewthwaite (2006)
District leaders’ perceptions of teacher learning
• New/reform policies, changes in content and pedagogy, leaders as change agents, learning theories
• Study of 40 teacher leaders in nine school districts, part of a larger study on reform
– 34 leaders (85%) – quasi-behaviorist approach – outside expertise, transmission, control of funds, teaching practice not addressed
– five leaders (12,5%) - situated approach – teachers play an active role in their own learning, work with teachers’ identities
– one leader (2,5%) – quasi-cognitive approach – individual rather social or group process, reconstruction of own knowledge
• Individual agency and social structure– Structural arrangements constrain transformation of thinking– Trust – teachers hide deficiencies from leaders– Motivation for teacher learning and change - cynicism– Work of teacher leaders fragmented – wide variety of responsibilities and may