Purpose: The study aimed to explore the authority and power of kindergarten superintendents in public education to elucidate their leadership dynamics. Design/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 Israeli kindergarten teachers about the authority and power of their superintendents. Thematic analysis was used to…

Dialogic educators have designed strategies to facilitate dialogic teaching, such as establishing ground rules, employing talk moves, and structuring discussions. Though productive, such strategies rarely open dialogic space, in which shared meaning is created through an interaction that blurs the boundaries between participating voices. Dialogic…

Narratives, or stories, are used every day by people as a way of making sense of and communicating events in the world. Narratives can be highly useful as a learning tool in science education. Though research on narrative-based pedagogy in science education and communication is very common, most of that research was done in formal settings. Our…

This paper brings an ethnographic experience to bear on the existing research field of school bullying, rounding out our understanding by focusing on an essential aspect: children's culture. Based on 14 months of fieldwork and a close analysis of the case of Anat, a 9-year-old victim of bullying, the paper identifies a unique formation of school…

Dialogic pedagogy aims to promote deliberative democratic skills, virtues and practices within an equitable and empowering classroom environment. This article problematizes the practice of setting classroom ground rules in light of dialogic pedagogy's democratic aspirations. Specifically, we explore the space for dissenting voices within the…

Purpose: Viewing school as a feminine bias workplace alongside being a field of power relations as argued by Bourdieu, this study examines: (1) gender differences among teachers in different forms of capital (cultural, social, and feminine) and in their participation in decision-making (PDM) at school in three domains: managerial, administration,…

This study adopts a structural perspective to explore micro-politics in senior management teams and identify the principals' inner circle. Based on data from an Israeli random sample of state primary teachers, profiles of trust in principal are identified and used to break down the subgroups of teachers serving in various roles in senior…

The professional literature views school principals as major socializing agents for assistant principals (AP) due to their ability to determine the AP's responsibilities, assess performance, and influence the AP's willingness to advance to higher management roles. The effect of the relationship between the two on the AP's functioning is even…

Mid-level roles in education have been widely explored, primarily in schools, but little research has been conducted during the systemic reform that involves creating a mid-level role between end units and the system. The present study explores the sense-making of early childhood leaders (ECLs) at the initial stage of their new role as mid-level…

Parents are widely acknowledged as prominent actors in schools' success; consequently, school-parent interactions are heavily investigated from sociological, psychological, political, and cultural perspectives. By applying the "open system" perspective to schools as an eco-system, this study addresses parents as integrative stakeholders…

As part of a larger mixed-method study on teacher evaluation, this paper explores how cultural and socio-political contexts of the Israeli Arab public schools inform principals' high-stakes evaluation processes for attaining tenure. Concepts from micropolitical theory were used to analyse data from in-depth semi-structured interviews with twenty…

The purpose of this study is to assess to what extent public school principals experience role uncertainty and risk on the job and to examine the joint effect of school principals' leadership style and use of power bases on school outcomes, under perceived role uncertainty and role risk. Questionnaires were administrated to 191 school principals…

Educators in many countries are concerned about the decline in respect for authority by young people. The current study explores how children perceive their teachers' authority, what the "boundaries" (limits) to that authority are, and under what conditions they may decide to rebel. Over 200 Israeli elementary and middle school students…