Session Information
SES B 06, Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
Taking a global perspective, unprecedented in human history by their scope and speed, changes in all aspects of life have occurred in the last few decades. In such an environment, education is expected to provide a key contribution in preparing individuals for the challenges of the modern world and the development of the knowledge-based society. From the wide range of different education policies, in many education systems strengthening school autonomy is seen as a potentially successful response to such challenges. This is based on an assumption that effectiveness and efficiency of the system may be improved only if the ’bottom-up’ approach is used as well. Therefore, more attention is given to capacities of schools to manage their own quality and development. In this respect, teachers certainly have a key role. It is hard to find any comprehensive education reform which does not proclaim the crucial role of teachers, though this role may differ substantially. In those reforms where viewing teachers as technicians predominates, they are expected to accept, learn and implement new forms of work that were invented by others. On the other hand, where more complex view of teachers is present, including intellectual, emotional and socio-political aspect of the profession, teachers acquire more ambitious and proactive reform roles. One such role includes active participation in the process of school development, something which can also be understood as a form of teacher leadership. Teacher’s engagement, collaboration and leadership in school development are increasingly becoming important themes in research, policy and practice, within which, some of the crucial questions are: ’What makes teachers actively participate in school development and what are the best ways to enhance this participation’? Essentially these are the basic questions of this research, too. Literature on factors influencing teacher involvement in school development is heterogeneous regarding the conceptual frameworks and fields of research: school effectiveness and improvement, education change, teacher professionalization, teacher leadership, school micropolitics, organizational citizenship behaviour, just to mention a few. The factors included in this research may be broadly classified in two groups: personal (traits, values, motives, job satisfaction, competencies, evaluation, life circumstances) and contextual (school staff and relationships, principal’s support, local and systemic environments and policies). The objective was to determine relative contribution of these different factors and to build broad policy recommendation in order to enhance teacher involvement in school development.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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