Management in Education

Understanding and implementing educational reform policies is a daily practice in the professional lives of school actors. The discrepancy between how reforms are intended and later realised in the local context constitutes an ongoing discussion spanning multiple areas of research. This article adds to prior research by exploring the role of organisational identity perceptions and identification in school leader sense-making within the process of implementing policy in the Swedish extended education system. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with selected school leaders (n = 11). Findings showed that school leaders made sense of the policy in contrasting ways depending on values assigned to perceived core attributes of the managed educational programme. Findings also suggest that school leaders’ identification or nonidentification with traditional identity-aspects of their organisation, and prospective identity-outcomes of the policy, influenced actions taken in response to the policy demands.

Since the election of the Coalition government in 2010, an increasing number of primary schools in England have converted to academy status. This article explores how executive leaders working in primary academies construct academy freedoms and their attitudes towards their local authorities. Interviews with four executive leaders working in two contrasting Multi-Academy Trusts were analysed using critical discourse analysis. Findings show that in these primary academies, leaders chose to discursively distance themselves from other academy schools, and instead construct themselves as continuing the best traditions of local authority support. The findings indicate that the professional identities of academy leaders, as key policy actors, have an impact on how national policy is interpreted and enacted. The discourse of these academy leaders suggests that primary academisation has led to school leaders appropriating methods of strategic redefinition, to navigate the new post-2010 education landscape and construct new professional identities.

With a rise of alternative permit (AltPermit) teachers coming to education, many have little to no preparation or self-efficacy for the demands needed to support all learners. Low teacher efficacy is associated with high rates of attrition. As a result, districts throughout the United States struggle to retain the teachers they recruit and hire for these hard-to-fill positions. Using a mixed-methods approach, teacher efficacy and retention of AltPermit P-12 new hires is examined in one of the largest districts in California. The district provided year-long supports to impact teacher efficacy and retention. Although survey results did not show a statistically significant impact on teacher efficacy, document analysis indicated positive retention trends and recruitment of more ethnically diverse teachers as compared to the district’s overall teacher population. Interviews illustrated positive perceptions of district supports as a means to increase teacher efficacy and job retention, particularly for special education teachers.

The study aimed to identify the influence of head teachers’ change facilitator styles (CFS) on teachers’ concerns about ICT integration. The three CFS (responder, manager and initiator) were studied in relation to its influence on teachers’ seven stages of concern (unconcerned, informational, personal, management, consequence, collaboration and refocusing) about ICT integration. Both styles and concerns are embodied in the concerns-based adoption model, which guided the theoretical framework of the study. This quantitative study used CFS and stages of concerns questionnaire to collect data from 276 secondary school teachers. Initially, teachers’ concerns were explored, followed by head teachers’ CFS and their influence on teachers’ concerns about ICT integration. The results showed that secondary school teachers’ concerns, regarding ICT integration, were at the initial stages as reflected by their high mean scores on personal and informational stages. Findings inform about the responder as a dominant CFS used by secondary school head teachers. The data suggest differences in terms of the influence of head teachers’ three CFS on teachers’ concerns about ICT integration.