Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

The School Development Program (SDP) focuses on building caring and effective school communities in situations where communities and schools have been previously mutually alienated. The expansion of SDP from a small pilot project to a nation-wide initiative is considered in terms of the change strategies and assumptions that underlie SDP. A strong emphasis on assessment of the SDP model has resulted in the foundation of a nine step set of guidelines for success.

The relationship between community and school reform is experienced from two perspectives: the coordinated professional services model, and the community development or employment model. The chapter compares the strengths and weaknesses of each model with the intent of gaining new insights into the community context of improved urban schooling

This chapter delineates the contemporary involvement by teacher unions in projects to improve teaching and learning, including but extending beyond the arena of collective bargaining drawing from research on a variety of recent reform efforts by teachers’ organizations in Canada and the United States. The challenges of and necessity for unions’ current reform work are identified.

This chapter is based on the claim that we need a theory of teacher education for social change, one that is grounded in the relevant educational scholarship as well as grounded in the practice of school-based teachers. The components of the grounded theory include: knowledge and interpretation frameworks, ideology and political frameworks, K-12 pedagogy for social change, and teacher education as inquiry across the life span. Implications for policy, practice and research are identified.

This chapter applies literature on the politics of education to data from a recent study of ten racially mixed secondary schools that were attempting to alter their grouping practices to illuminate how macro social, political and economic forces shaped the struggles these schools faced. The study found that unless reforms seek to achieve parity in opportunity and achievement across diverse groups of students, reformers face enormous challenges.

This chapter focuses on the complicated relationship between school restructuring and the improvement of classroom teaching. The analysis examines the causal mechanisms linking restructuring and classroom change, reviews empirical research on the impact of restructuring of teaching, and concludes with an assessment of the potential for improving instruction.

This chapter argues that teaching standards have the potential to reform radically the professional development system for teachers, and to move control into the hands of the profession. It proposes a standards-based professional development system. Goals for the standards are determined in the main by educational policy. Profession-defined standards provide the basis on which the profession can establish expectations for professional development and accountability.