ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Collaborative Principal Preparation Programs: A Systematic Review and Synthesis of Qualitative Research
Author: Parylo, Oksana
Date: 2013-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Principals,Administrator Education,Leadership Training,Instructional Leadership,Partnerships in Education,Cooperation,Barriers,Success,School Districts,Literature Reviews,Theory Practice Relationship,State Policy,Legal Responsibility,Sustainability,Content Analysis,Qualitative Research

The purpose of this systematic review was to (1) conduct the systematic search of the literature to identify the studies on partnerships in school leader preparation; and to (2) systematically review the findings of these studies and synthesize them into major themes reflecting the state of the art in collaborative leadership preparation in the United States. Descriptive themes focused on the reasons for universities and school districts to collaborate; the content of collaborative leader preparation programs; the practitioners&apos; involvement; factors to success; implementation barriers and successes; and the lessons  learned. Reflections on the collaborative approach to principal preparation are provided.
Action Research: A Tool for Promoting Faculty Development and Continuous Improvement in Leadership Preparation
Author: Carver, Cynthia L.
Date: 2013-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Faculty Development,Instructional Leadership,Action Research,Leadership Training,Principals,Masters Programs,Administrator Education,Educational Improvement,Administrator Role,Teacher Administrator Relationship,Reflection,Thinking Skills,Learner Engagement

This paper introduces the use of action research to examine the content and outcomes of university-based leadership preparation programs. Using examples drawn from an ongoing action research project with candidates in a master's level principal preparation program, we demonstrate how the collection and analysis of candidate's written reflections, completed as part of required coursework, informs our work as university faculty and supports a cycle of continuous program improvement. Over the years, action research has become a common strategy for professional learning in teacher education. The use of action research to study leadership development remains uncommon, however, especially among leadership educators. This study offers a new and promising approach to examining the preparation of school leaders.
Teacher Perceptions of the Impact of the Data Team Process on Core Instructional Practices
Author: Schwanenberger, Michael
Date: 2013-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Teacher Attitudes,School Districts,Surveys,Focus Groups,Suburban Schools,Statistical Analysis,Intervention,Specialists,Allied Health Personnel,Elementary School Teachers,Secondary School Teachers,Instructional Leadership,Feedback (Response),Preschool Teachers,Middle School Teachers,Teaching Methods,Instructional Design,Communities of Practice,Academic Achievement,Educational Improvement,Data Analysis,Mixed Methods Research

This paper documents the results of a mixed method study of teachers who participated in a survey and focus groups in a K-12 southwestern suburban school district during the 2011-2012 school year. The mixed method design contains elements of both qualitative and quantitative approaches, permitting the authors to collect qualitative and quantitative data in the same study. The teacher population (&quot;N&quot; = 295) included intervention specialists, speech and language specialists and counselors at the pre-school, elementary, middle school and high school levels. The quantitative and qualitative results from this study are synthesized and triangulated in the Cross-School Results Triangulation Table (Table 1), and indicate that the district teachers assessed the impact of the Data Team Process (Reeves, 2006) on their curricular, assessment/feedback, instructional and leadership practices as positive. Teachers generally reported that the process positively impacted student learning, though results varied between pre-school, elementary, middle school and high school levels. Results were reasonably consistent within the pre-school and elementary levels, varied slightly within the middle school level, and were more variable at the high school level. The study exposed the need in the district to focus on the full ten-step Data Team Process, provide protected time to work in Data Teams, design teams carefully to allow same subject teaches to work together, enforce common norms of behavior and create school-wide Data Teams to orchestrate the efforts of subject/grade level teams.
How REAL Teachers and Professors Learn: Threshold Crossing and Concepts in Professional Learning
Author: Noonan, Sarah J.
Date: 2013-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Experienced Teachers,College Faculty,Learning,Expertise,Action Research,Interviews,Personal Narratives,Models,Learning Theories,Teaching Experience,Teacher Effectiveness,Qualitative Research

This paper describes preliminary findings from a study of teacher and professor learning. Using narrative inquiry, the author interviewed expert teachers and examined the process of teacher and professor learning. The study focused on how teachers learn as a form of self-study in informal action research. The study examined (1) the challenges requiring resolution during the early stages of a career, (2) experiences of struggle, (3) the principles and practices leading to expertise, and (4) the long lasting effects of teacher and professor learning on professional practice. Using threshold theory (Meyer &amp; Land, 2003/2005) and a model of informal action research called REAL (Noonan, 2013), the author illustrates how the experiences of expert teachers during the early phases of their career result in permanent changes in practice and the development of a professional identity.
Outputs as Educator Effectiveness in the United States: Shifting towards Political Accountability
Author: Piro, Jody S.
Date: 2013-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Teacher Effectiveness,Accountability,Statistical Analysis,Academic Achievement,Educational Policy,Political Influences,Economic Factors,Trend Analysis,Models,School Districts,Politics of Education,Teacher Education Programs,Program Evaluation,Federal Legislation,Elementary School Teachers,Secondary School Teachers

The definition of educator effectiveness is being redefined by econometric modeling to evidence student achievement on standardized tests. While the reasons that econometric frameworks are in vogue are many, it is clear that the strength of such models lie in the quantifiable evidence of student learning. Current accountability models frame accountability in terms of educator effectiveness through student achievement as edunomic outputs. There have been three phases of edunomic outputs, with the unit of  analysis ranging from broad, institutional data to individual teachers and students. This trend for using quantitative outcomes in educational accountability is buoyed by a shifting perspective of accountability informed from those inside the profession to a definition shaped by external perspectives defined by econometric models. Educator accountability is evolving into a political accountability policy (McDonnell, 1994) as  education witnesses a transition from professional to political accountability models. Educators must continue to problematize the outputs measurement for effectiveness to include broader forms of student achievement and find ways to refine measurements in econometric models for political accountability that speak to student achievement informed by professional judgment.
Strategies to Maintain School District Financial Solvency: Illinois School Business Officials' Recommendations
Author: Williams, Ann C.
Date: 2013-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: School Business Officials,Change Strategies,Finance Reform,School District Wealth,School District Spending,Money Management,Online Surveys,Interviews,Educational Finance,Financial Problems,Qualitative Research

The purpose of this study was to identify financial management strategies that school business officials have found most successful in achieving school district financial stability. To accomplish, 208 Illinois school business officials in six counties: Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties, excluding Chicago School District 299, were asked to complete a qualitative online survey. One hundred and thirty-five completed responses were received, which resulted in a 65% response rate. In addition, three survey participants, who had lead their school districts from financial difficulty to  solvency, were interviewed to further probe survey responses. The study identified 122 financial management strategies that school business officials should consider to maintain financial solvency in school districts. Those mentioned most often included communicating effectively with stakeholders and updating financial projections regularly. Respondents also noted the importance of: (1) Managing collective bargaining agreements/proposals and their implications; (2) Creating and adhering to long range financial plan; (3) Creating and maintaining balanced budgets; (4) Staying current with economic information at the local, state, and federal levels; (5) Meeting with their service providers to discuss possible cost reduction options; (6) Becoming active in Illinois ASBO, which provides professional development and networking opportunities to school business officials nationwide; (7) Spending time gaining a more thorough understanding of their districts finances before making any changes; and (8) Collaborating with stakeholders to ensure sound decision making occurs.
How Faculty Supervise and Mentor Pre-Service Teachers: Implications for Principal Supervision of Novice Teachers
Author: Range, Bret
Date: 2013-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Preservice Teachers,Mentors,Teacher Supervision,Supervisory Methods,College Faculty,Semi Structured Interviews,Teacher Attitudes,Student Teachers,Feedback (Response),Trust (Psychology),Supervisor Supervisee Relationship,Instructional Leadership,Teacher Motivation,Qualitative Research

The intent of the study was to ascertain university faculties' perceptions, through semi-structured interviews, about supervision and mentoring of student teachers. Findings indicated faculty supervisors' perceived feedback to student teachers about student engagement as important. Additionally, supervisors believed building trust with student teachers was instrumental to the supervisory relationship, yet they believed they did little to intrinsically motivate student teachers. Supervisors mostly used two steps of the clinical supervision model, namely extended observations and post-observation conferences. Finally, faculty supervisors described a directive-control approach when remediating ineffective student teachers and reinforced the idea that effective teacher supervision is a collaborative effort. Implications for principals' supervision of novice teachers are included.
Student Perceptions of Digital Story Telling as a Learning-Tool for Educational Leaders
Author: LaFrance, Jason
Date: 2013-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Graduate Students,Student Attitudes,Story Telling,Administrator Education,Ethnography,Autobiographies,Technology Uses in Education,Instructional Leadership,Theories,Reflection,Assignments,Learning,Self Concept,Classes (Groups of Students),Peer Relationship,Doctoral Programs,Qualitative Research

A study regarding students' perceptions of digital storytelling as a learning tool was conducted in the fall of 2012. The population consisted of 12 students participating in an Administrative Theory course as part of their doctoral program in K-12 or higher education administration at a Carnegie Doctoral Research University in Georgia. During the eight-week course, students created digital stories that synthesized an auto-ethnography with leadership theory using Bolman and Deal's (2011) four-framework approach to leadership. This allowed students to demonstrate the practice of continual reflection and assessment, a commitment to technology, diversity, and in-depth understanding of the knowledge and skills required of educational leaders. The purpose of this non-experimental qualitative study was to examine student's perceptions of utilizing digital storytelling in educational leadership coursework. The research question was: What are students' perceptions of digital storytelling as a tool for learning in Educational Leadership coursework? Findings are arranged by the 4 themes which emerged from the analysis of the data; assignment components, learning, identity development, and class cohesion.
Leadership Lessons from North Korea: An Analogy to the ISLLC Standards
Author: Lindahl, Ronald A.
Date: 2013-10-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Educational Administration,Leadership Training,Foreign Countries,Information Sources,Educational Policy,Administrative Principles,Comparative Education,National Standards,Instructional Leadership,Leadership Qualities,Global Approach,Best Practices

This module draws parallels between conditions in North Korea and the work of school leaders, as defined in the 2008 ISLLC Standards. It is intended to demonstrate to educational leadership preparation programs how seemingly unrelated contexts may be utilized to capture students' attention, hopefully with the result of enhancing their understanding and internalization of basic principles of educational leadership.
Best Practice Clinical Interventions for Working with Suicidal Adults
Author: Bartlett, Mary L.
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Best Practices,Adults,Suicide,Behavior Modification,Counseling Techniques,Risk,Risk Assessment,Check Lists,Contracts,Evidence,Intervention,Problem Solving,Cognitive Restructuring,Therapy

Drawing from existing empirical literature, this article examines best practices for working with adults who are in suicidal crisis. An explanation of suicidal thinking and how to assess for suicidality is provided, and specific clinical interventions and techniques that have been empirically evidenced as useful with this population are highlighted. Based on the premise that understanding the suicidal mind leads to more effective intervention, a consideration of psychache as the basis for behavior in suicidal clients is discussed. Finally, dialectical behavioral therapy, problem solving therapy, and cognitive therapy are examined as mechanisms for addressing the needs of suicidal clients, with a consideration of specific counseling techniques available and effective within those contexts. Working with suicidal clients is challenging. Given that more suicidal clients at moderate and high levels of risk are being treated in outpatient facilities, often by overworked or undertrained counselors, it becomes critical for persons treating such clients to be familiar with the latest empirical developments in this area. Counselors often report struggling to understand suicide, to assess suicidality in their clients, and to properly classify suicide risk level. Further, utilizing empirically-evidenced interventions represents the present standard of care in this area but are commonly misunderstood and underused. (Contains 3 figures.)
A Semantic Rule-Based Framework for Efficient Retrieval of Educational Materials
Author: Mahmoudi, Maryam Tayefeh
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Semantics,Information Retrieval,Educational Resources,Databases

Retrieving resources in an appropriate manner has a promising role in increasing the performance of educational support systems. A variety of works have been done to organize materials for educational purposes using tagging techniques. Despite the effectiveness of these techniques within certain domains, organizing resources in a way being adequately reusable for support purposes is still in the offing. In this paper a semantic approach is proposed to increase performance of retrieving educational materials based on using frames. Here, frames are used to represent the very knowledge necessary for realizing the similarity/ relevance between query and supportive materials. Owing to the complexity in semantic handling of the entire text, the suggested frame-based approach is applied only to the titles or subtitles, or in general the main headings, in the material. To make these frames comprehensive, we have made use of two attributes called &quot;Major Characteristics&quot; and &quot;Basic Constituents&quot;, which are responsible respectively for &quot;the goal behind a conceptual entity (Why/ for What a conceptual entity is being used)&quot; and &quot;the basic elements supporting a conceptual entity (How / in What way a conceptual entity is realized)&quot;. Conceptual entities here stand for the entire ideas belonging to headings (titles or subtitles) in a material. These attributes seem to have enough potential for representing the knowledge of titles and sub-titles in a way reflecting the content of the paragraphs in a reasonable way. To evaluate the capability of the proposed approach, retrieving materials within the domain of Multi-Agent Systems (a subject of high concern in Artificial Intelligence) was picked out as the benchmark problem. According to this benchmark, materials are retrieved based on the user&apos;s desire. Taking this point into account, we made a dataset for the subject of Multi-Agent Systems as an educational resource in academia, within which a number of users&apos; desires from different groups were considered as possible queries, and the corresponding materials were then retrieved using the proposed approach. Computer experiments show acceptable precision and recall values for these queries with a quite good balance between them which is represented in terms of F-measure. The findings lead us to the fact that &quot;Major Characteristics&quot; and &quot;Basic Constituents&quot; have the ability to increase the status of re-usability for the stored materials. Moreover, the fact that materials can be reused efficiently, leads us to the point that our proposed representation scheme can be useful for educational support issues in the situations where user&apos;s desire is complex enough to the extent that several materials ought to be merged together to yield the requested material.
Collaborative Learning in a Boundary Zone: A Case Study of Innovative Inter-Institutional Collaboration in Israel
Author: Tabak, Edith
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Institutional Cooperation,Qualitative Research,School Districts,College School Cooperation,Case Studies,Educational Change,Instructional Leadership,Communities of Practice,Superintendents,Administrator Attitudes,Administrator Role,Achievement Gains,Scores,Achievement Tests,Teacher Educators,Teacher Attitudes,Cooperative Learning,Feedback (Response)

This qualitative study focused on the collaboration between a school district and a college of education in Israel and aimed to explore how the participants created common understanding in order to promote educational change. The theoretical approach involved analyzing the institutional interconnections based on boundary practices and boundary objects and the ways these interconnections shaped the collaborative learning process, promoted educational change, and fostered educational leadership in the district and in the college. The study observed the formation of a community of practice within the boundary zone, which was developed over a three-year period by a group of 20 superintendents, the district head, and two teacher educators. Beyond concrete outcomes, such as improvement of pupils' scores on the state-mandated achievement tests, the study showed a transformation in the superintendents' perception of their roles and a cultural change in the district.
Management of School Infrastructure in the Context of a No-Fee Schools Policy in Rural South African Schools: Lessons from the Field
Author: Marishane, Ramodikoe Nylon
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: School Administration,Foreign Countries,Educational Policy,Delivery Systems,Principals,Administrator Attitudes,Rural Schools,Fees,Educational Finance,Profiles,Strategic Planning,Government School Relationship,Qualitative Research,Semi Structured Interviews,School Buildings

This study examines the management of school infrastructure in the context of the &quot;no-fee schools&quot; policy introduced in the South African education delivery system. Focusing on four rural schools, the study applied a qualitative method, which involved observation of infrastructure conditions prevailing at four selected schools and in-depth interviews held with their principals. The study has found that though the no-fee policy has come to relieve poor parents of the burden of paying school fees, it does not help schools in addressing their infrastructural challenges.
Suicide Prevention for Counselors Working with Youth in Secondary and Post-Secondary School
Author: Wiley, Cindy
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Suicide,Prevention,School Counselors,High School Students,College Students,Identification,Early Intervention,Counselor Training

According to the latest statistics, suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death in those aged 15-24 (CDC, 2010), when many are enrolled in secondary and post-secondary institutions. Because of such alarming statistics, the need for prevention education is great. However, many counselors and educators feel ill- equipped in prevention and intervention techniques that directly address the frightening subject of suicide (Heath, Toast, &amp; Beattam, 2006.). Because of increased legislative action requiring the implementation of school wide prevention programs, many counselors have been tasked with creating programs that address this growing mental health concern. Understanding the signs and risk factors associated with adolescent suicide along with possible implementation guidelines and helpful resources assist in creating a comprehensive program designed at incident prevention.