The purpose of this paper is to explore military service-linked economic and social governing initiatives in early twentieth-century Sweden, and thereby offer a broadened…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore military service-linked economic and social governing initiatives in early twentieth-century Sweden, and thereby offer a broadened understanding of educational institutions as governing arenas.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the term “governing” to describe and analyse various calculated techniques of the state – and/or affiliated governing actors – to influence and direct the behaviour of conscripts in order to deal with particular economic and/or social problems, the author ask what kind of economic and social problems policymakers and social commentators of education were looking to deal with, why military service was considered a suitable means and/or setting for doing so, and what governing techniques they proposed be used. The author furthermore take in consideration the intimate links between citizenship, gender, and military service and argue that the governing initiatives analysed enables us to understand these links in partly new and a more concrete way.
Findings
The study shows that there were numerous ideas and requests amongst policymakers and social commentators of education on making use of the nation’s conscription scheme for non-military purposes as it provided the nation with a unique opportunity to reach and influence entire generations of men on the threshold of adulthood. Proposals included, e.g., the use of various forms of instruction in assorted subjects, facilitation of base libraries and an extension of the period of military service, in order to deal with economic and social problems such as, e.g., mass unemployment, alcohol abuse, elementary education deficiencies, and uneducated voters, as well as shortages of skilled personnel in particular branches of great importance for the nation’s economy.
Originality/value
While there is a sizable and growing body of research on governing initiatives in non-military educational settings, proposed and implemented to solve various economic and social problems in society, scholars in Sweden and elsewhere have largely overlooked the use and role of military service in such undertakings. This paper seeks to redress the balance and thereby offers a broadened understanding of educational institutions as governing arenas.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide higher education institutions with strategies of continuing education and methods to communicate and implement these strategies.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide higher education institutions with strategies of continuing education and methods to communicate and implement these strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
The balanced scorecard approach is used to implement the strategy. It translates the strategy into tangible objectives, measures and targets and balances them into four different perspectives: customer, finance, internal processes, and learning.
Findings
The strategy of focus combined with the strategy of cost‐efficiency is applicable for higher education institutions. These strategies can be adjusted, for example, to profitable growth in continuing education.
Research limitations/implications
The balanced scorecard approach can be used widely in higher education institutions and with slight modifications in other public sector organisations. The customer perspective typically includes the desired objectives in the public sector, contrary to the private sector where it is reasonable to place finance at the top of the perspectives.
Practical implications
The study also presents a useful example of how the strategy can be described using the concept of a strategy map and numerical balanced scorecards.
Originality/value
It turns out that the strategies of focus and cost‐effectiveness and the balanced scorecard approach, developed in the business literature, can be successfully applied in continuing education.
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This chapter considers some of the limit points of contemporary relations between International Large-Scale Assessments, learning analytic platforms, and theories of mind…
Abstract
This chapter considers some of the limit points of contemporary relations between International Large-Scale Assessments, learning analytic platforms, and theories of mind circulating in contemporary comparative and transnational educational policy discourses. First, aspects of the rise of Big Data and predictive analytics are historicized, with particular attention to how emergent notions of concepts like an intelligent educational economy paradoxically seem to offer unprecedented opportunities for personalizing education that increasingly rely on efforts to construct, universalize, and predict transnational benchmarks. Then, the chapter pursues how such efforts to universalize measures and predict changes have located the mind as a primary target for solving social problems through educational reform. More specifically, the emergence and circulation of the perceptron in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s is suggested as one example of how efforts to model the human mind as a neuro-dynamic learning system became entangled with efforts to produce universal, mobile, and adaptive neuro-dynamic learning systems targeting the transnational optimization of human minds.
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Tanja Hautala, Jaakko Helander and Vesa Korhonen
The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesize the attributes of loose and tight coupling in educational organizations. In addition, it is aimed to determine whether this…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesize the attributes of loose and tight coupling in educational organizations. In addition, it is aimed to determine whether this phenomenon has value and strategies to offer for the current educational administration and research.
Design/methodology/approach
Integrative literature review and content analysis, assisted by Atlas.ti software, were used as the methods of this paper. Review data included 32 articles from peer reviewed journals.
Findings
Conceptual framework of continuum of organizational couplings in educational organizations was generated. Elements of the framework include the features of coupling concepts within the continuum, components of couplings, contributory types of organizational couplings and the elements of leadership and change process with emerging strategies, as well as the element of cultural context. In this paper, elements of continuum of couplings and leadership will be emphasized.
Practical implications
Findings have practical implications for the management and leadership in educational organizations, and for the researchers in the field for future research purposes.
Social implications
Findings have social implications for both teaching staff and administration in educational organizations, by highlighting the attributes of loose and tight coupling, and their connections with leadership, change process and cultural context.
Originality/value
The paper presents a distinctive synopsis of the educational administration literature, in the context of loose and tight coupling, with the time span of four decades.
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PROFITHAN HASHIM and HAROLD W. BOLES
The purposes of this study were twofold. The first was to develop a model and the second was to propose a set of task descriptions appropriate and necessary for implementing the…
Abstract
The purposes of this study were twofold. The first was to develop a model and the second was to propose a set of task descriptions appropriate and necessary for implementing the model. The model developed has three crucial stages, i.e., Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating. Within each stage are four common steps, i.e., Analyzing, Developing, Operating, and Evaluating. The three stages and the four steps within each stage were derived from an exploration of various schools of thought represented in the literature on inservice projects and models. Several extant models were discovered, and two in particular influenced the development of this one, but all were perceived to have certain deficiencies. This new model was designed to incorporate the best features of the others, while eliminating their deficiencies. Since the development of the model was based on the advocacy and validity of stages and steps as established in the literature, the model was judged to be theoretically and philosophically valid.
Michael Donnelly and Andrea Abbas
Basil Bernstein’s theoretical ideas have been called upon by far fewer higher education researchers than would be expected. We argue that the international higher education field…
Abstract
Basil Bernstein’s theoretical ideas have been called upon by far fewer higher education researchers than would be expected. We argue that the international higher education field of research is ripe for further application of Bernstein’s theoretical ideas. Through reference to our own and that of others, we illustrate five key affordances of Bernstein’s theoretical framework. First, it provides a unique approach that leads researchers to pose formerly unthinkable questions and encourages the development of new knowledge to address them. Second, Bernstein’s valuable concepts raise questions about the specific but inter-related macro- (societal), meso- (organisational) and micro- (individual) level processes involved in producing (in)equalities. Bernsteinian analysis can help to identify how inequalities emerge from and can be addressed at these levels. Third, we contend that the approach encourages empirical exploration of the ways in which education may be disruptive of the social order. Fourth, we suggest Bernstein’s concepts can be adapted to capture the complexity of intersecting inequalities in a way that allows the object of analysis to determine what inequalities are foregrounded. Finally, we argue that concepts help to orientate questions around inequality and social justice in a way that does not over-determine answers.
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Tommaso Agasisti, Giuseppe Catalano and Piergiacomo Sibiano
The purpose of this paper is to examine the difference between formal and real school autonomy in the Italian educational system. The Italian case is characterised by low levels…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the difference between formal and real school autonomy in the Italian educational system. The Italian case is characterised by low levels of school autonomy. It is interesting to consider whether heterogeneity of patterns is possible in this context. A description of this heterogeneity is provided through archetypes.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology is a qualitative survey conducted among school principals. A non‐standardised questionnaire was completed by 35 principals. The collected data were examined in accordance with the framework dimensions (different features of school autonomy) and three archetypes were identified.
Findings
The three archetypes of schools identified are: first, entrepreneurial (the strategies followed and the tools used are broader than those that the law prescribes); second, chaotic (different actors express their opinions but, ultimately, there is no shared decision at the school level); and third, bureaucratic (the school's principal thinks that nothing can be done without legal prescription).
Originality/value
Through a new case (the Italian educational system), this paper contributes to the stream of literature on the disconnect between formal and real school autonomy. This paper can help policy makers to improve understanding of the characteristics and internal heterogeneity of the educational system.
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Elda Nikolou‐Walker and Hugh Curley
The purpose of this paper is to examine, evaluate and analyse the degree to which effective leadership can contribute to the success of any business including, in this instance, a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine, evaluate and analyse the degree to which effective leadership can contribute to the success of any business including, in this instance, a specific higher educational institution (HEI).
Design/methodology/approach
The current challenging economic climate views most leaders within the public and private sectors, as having to manage in an époque of heightened uncertainty. Thus, the majority of businesses today seek ways in which they can work smarter within the perimeters of their valuable, but, nonetheless, limited, resources. The paper argues a successful work‐based learning (WBL) leader can improve the learners’ performances by instilling a degree of purpose and value into the learning process, achieved through mentoring and coaching of students, thus enabling their rapport to identify what is of importance, or value to themselves during their individual period of study.
Findings
The HEI examined, with its hierarchical structure and traditional learning programmes, seems appropriate to adapt to the challenges of the external environment whilst appreciating and recognising its internal assets. Within WBL, the leadership role is not “clear‐cut” as its collegial approach enhances the knowledge transfer process as it is at a pace set and agreed to the ability of the WBL students, who adopt responsibility for their own learning. Leadership and teacher development, through the concept of “Distributive Leadership”, can support an environment of “calculated risk”, to advance the HEI's reputation and corporate social responsibilities to its surrounding community.
Originality/value
The paper discusses the concept of leadership and how the WBL approach to learning/teaching, within HEIs, has helped to develop and advance this concept. It illustrates how WBL enhances the performance of an HEI, and the teaching/learning experience, through considering the role of the head teacher, teachers and students. All these elements are discussed against a backdrop of the challenges that an uncertain business environment presents; the main impact being that many HEIs are having to operate like a business and find practical methods to meet these challenges to attract new business and secure its existence.
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Vicky Duckworth and Matthew Cochrane
The purpose of this paper is to explore the choices learners have in steering their way through the educational system in the UK.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the choices learners have in steering their way through the educational system in the UK.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on data from two studies, one conducted in a state secondary school and the other in a Further Education College, both based in the north‐west of England. Both used interviews (either individual or focus‐group) to collect data, which were then analysed using a grounded approach.
Findings
In linking the two studies the authors highlight how the impact of symbolic violence and the relations between groups and classes at school continue into the “choices” the learners make during adulthood and also into the learner's working life, and that these “choices” are often a large‐scale consequence of many “micro‐choices” arising from day‐to‐day situations. The acts of symbolic violence described in the college group are not of themselves very different from those described by the school group, though the consequences for the school group cannot yet be known.
Research limitations/implications
The participants in the two groups are unconnected in that they attend different institutions and are at very different stages of their education. However the authors contend that there is a connection in terms of the participants’ experience of symbolic violence.
Originality/value
The paper draws attention to the existence of symbolic violence in everyday school life, and highlights how these instances can have significant impact.