The project School-In was an in-service professional development project which aimed to improve inclusion and facilitate schools' academic results by taking the local context, expectation structures, and school culture into consideration. This intervention project was based on a systemic approach and designed to include the entire teaching staff, ensuring cross-disciplinary and cross-level impact. Conducted in five Norwegian municipalities, School-In was financed by the Research Council of Norway (NFR) as an innovation project for the public sector. This book gives a detailed overview of the project School-In, documenting its research and intervention methods. It provides stakeholders, educational researchers, and practitioners with information about the make-up of the study. In this book, School-In is presented as an example of how new ideas and knowledge can be gained from several research approaches and readers are given specific examples of how development processes may be conducted and investigated in schools.

This work is written through an authentic systems perspective, by five coauthors with diverse expertise in a variety of areas. The contents include past and current roles in k-12 classroom teaching, special education, administration, college teaching, and state education administration. Concrete applications for use in the classrooms are presented, which utilize the systems approach and provides real life experiential strategies for implementing the concepts highlighted in the section. As readers are asked to translate theory into practice, the authors model this effort seamlessly and realistically. For example, the "Parent-Teacher Communication" chapter supplies an abundance of promising practices from the individual teacher level, to the school level, to the district-level involvement among the elements of the system. The "Technology" chapter discusses the best practices for teaching and learning through technology and highlights examples that are in use in schools today. In the "Cultural Diversity" chapter, educators are given case studies and exemplars on how other districts, schools, or individual teachers have integrated diversity in their settings. The text invites the reader to absorb the theoretical aspects and view these through real life applications. The reader easily becomes a participant in the process of creating applications in classrooms through the discussion questions for each chapter, and the vignettes interspersed throughout the book. Book jacket.

This book gives readers big ideas for how to think about applying systems thinking in education to create the conditions for sustainable, continuous development. The theory of Systems Thinking is explained and concretized through stories of its application at all levels of the educational system. Chapters are designed to help readers “unearth” the importance of Systems Thinking and understand its centrality to the sustainability of education as a social system.

Monographic compilation of conference papers on the systems analysis approach to the management of educational systems in the USA - includes papers on behavioural objectives, performance contracting, etc., and a bibliographyc guide to the systems sciences, pp. 117 to 151. Conference held in Chicago 1972.

This Open Access book features a school development model (Arizona Initiative for Leadership Development and Research AZiLDR) that offers a roadmap for schools to navigate the complexities of continuous school development. Filled with processes that balance evidence-based values with democratic, culturally responsive values, this book offers strategies to mediate the tensions and to address school culture, context and values, leadership capacity, using data as a source of reflection, curricular and pedagogical activity, and strengths-based approaches to meeting the needs of culturally diverse students. You will find: - Active, reflective activities - Case studies illustrating each concept - The research base supporting each concept - Descriptions of processes from other contexts (South Carolina, Germany, Australia, Sweden) - Thoughts about next steps for contextually sensitive and multi-level school development - Suggestions for cross-national dialogue and research within the Zone of Uncertainty Use this ideal source to guide school leadership teams in creating productive schools that continually grow!

Bringing together valuable insights from research and practice undertaken at the world-famous Pen Green Centre, Democratising Leadership in the Early Years illustrates how settings and practitioners can develop and maintain forms of leadership which foster collaborative practices across and within settings and services. Effective leadership is key to establishing socially inclusive and democratic practices and as such, it has become a key concern for policy-makers, researchers and practitioners in the field of Early Childhood Education and Care. Drawing on authors’ first-hand experiences, on systems theory, psychological theory and neuroscience, chapters in this book illustrate the role of highly effective leadership in ensuring that services are accessible, inclusive and innovative. Practical advice will support professionals in overcoming destructive systemic and psychological dynamics to flatten hierarchies, improve relationships, learning and educational outcomes, and to encourage staff, parents, and children to contribute creatively to collaborative enterprises. Accessible and insightful, Democratising Leadership in the Early Years will improve understanding of approaches to leadership and support early years practitioners, students and managers as they develop their leadership skills and build capacity within settings and the wider community.