/pdf/chicago-school-reform-from-the-inside-out-13d8b9cub4.pdf

Chicago School Reform: From the Inside Out.

This paper aims to extend our understanding of the influence of school professional cultures and principal leadership effects on early-career teacher leadership aspiration, learning and development...

Influence of professional cultures and principal leadership effects on early-career teacher leadership development in Hong Kong schools

The research that I have reported in this thesis has produced the following key findings regarding classroom staff’s decisions to adopt or not to adopt the innovation of professional development opportunities offered by a teaching school alliance. My unique contribution to the field is to build an emergent theory from my case study, which I represent graphically in section 5.4 of Chapter Five. This explanatory framework constructs the influences on an individual’s innovation adoption decision as a ‘change ecology’ consisting of three levels: the micro-, meso- and macro-levels.

The three key findings that emerge from my multi-strand, sequential, mixed-methods case study of the influence of a teaching school alliance on classroom staff’s professional development are:
	(1)	Classroom staff report prioritising personal and individual considerations when choosing whether or not to take up professional development opportunities offered by the subject Alliance. These considerations include the relevance of the innovation to their own practice; the degree of agency they have in meeting individual 	needs and goals; the degree to which their beliefs about change can be aligned with behaviours; and the amount of time they have available to spend on change activity, most of which is directed by their school leaders. I locate this finding in my 	explanatory framework at the micro-level, equivalent in innovation diffusion terms to the dimension of the adopter (where the characteristics of actors influence the probability of adoption of an innovation).
	
	(2)	 Classroom staff report a positive perception of change in principle: they say they are willing to surrender the status quo, and they report an appetite for improvement. However, the management of change in schools can act as a barrier to the spreading of effective practice. Classroom staff need to feel that they own the change if they are to buy into it. If they do not perceive that their individual needs and goals are being addressed, then innovations are less likely to be embedded into their practice. I locate this finding in my explanatory framework at the meso-level, equivalent in innovation diffusion terms to the dimension of environmental context 	(where characteristics of the actors’ external settings modulate diffusion).

	(3)	Classroom staff report a positive attitude towards collaboration for improvement, although this is chiefly at the level of their own school, subject department or team. System-level collaboration is seen more neutrally: while the strands of teaching school alliance activity are thought to be worthwhile in principle, classroom staff do not regard this Alliance as important to their own professional development. I locate this finding in my explanatory framework at the macro-level, equivalent in innovation diffusion terms to the dimension of the innovation itself 	(where characteristics of the innovation influence the adoption process).

My overall finding is that my subject Alliance appears to have failed to spread and embed change via the professional development of classroom staff in its member schools. My emergent theory to explain this finding is founded on a case study of a single teaching school alliance, but is related to other forms of between-schools working and is framed by the existing literatures of change and of collaboration. It can thus be applied on a broader scale to the overarching concept of collaboration for educational improvement, not only to the teaching school alliance model itself. I suggest further that the levels of influence on classroom staff’s attitudes to change that I have identified could be considered when planning and implementing other change efforts in education, and that my contribution is therefore of interest to policy-makers, practitioners and researchers on a wider stage.

The influence of a Teaching School Alliance on classroom staff's professional development

The use of ‘soft barriers’ to deter students with special educational needs (SEN) from accessing some schools has been reported in the Irish media. This article investigates the influence of ethos ...

‘Soft barriers’ – The impact of school ethos and culture on the inclusion of students with special educational needs in mainstream schools in Ireland:

When do I stop learning

School ethos and culture, and their influence on teacher career-stage learning, are integral yet often overlooked components of school-based professional development planning. An in-depth study was...

An exploration of the influence of school context, ethos and culture on teacher career-stage professional learning

Motivated by the role that branded apps play in enhancing customer perceptions of brands, this paper is developed to provide a better understanding of the extent to which task-service fit associated with branded apps influences brand attitudes. The primary research objective is to determine how perceptions of task-service fit associated with branded apps enhances branded app experience and to explore brand co-creation and ultimately brand loyalty. Using data from 573 branded app users we were able to identify the following relationships: Perceptions of task-service fit and o-creation were found to influence brand loyalty. Also, task-service fit and randed app experience influenced co-creation. Finally, results also confirm that branded app experience and brand co-creation are mediators of the relationship between task-service fit and brand loyalty.

Christine Furner

Papers

An exploration of the influence of school context, ethos and culture on teacher career-stage professional learning

The Effects of Task Service Fit on Brand Loyalty: A Study of Branded Apps