Graphic facilitation is a growing international practice and is often used to describe what professionals do when visually facilitating group processes. Although the professional arena has grown, there is a lack of empirical research in the field, especially regarding long-term perspectives on applying the practice in organisations. This paper…

This paper aims to provide public health organisations involved in chronic disease prevention with conceptual and practical guidance for developing contextually sensitive knowledge-to-action (KTA) strategies. Methods involve an analysis of 13 relevant conceptual KTA frameworks, and a review of three case examples of organisations with active KTA…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose how a bottom-up creation of an ambidextrous organization can be enabled. By integrating research on "contextual ambidexterity" and "individual and organizational capacity building", an "innovation capacity building" framework is conceptualized that suggests how balance…

The central theoretical argument of this paper is that educational leadership and organisational development and change in educational institutions in developing countries will not be effective unless school leaders are aware of the challenges posed by contextual factors that might have an impact on their professional activities. The article…

We explored the relationships between social contexts and factors that promoted and inhibited curriculum change at two universities. Thirty interviews were analysed using a general inductive approach to identify factors and forces in three social contexts (lecturer, departmental, and institutional). Curriculum change was characterised by six…

New Zealand, like many countries, faces the challenge of building and sustaining an educated population. Particular challenges are posed by the need to educate an increasing proportion of the population to higher levels in order to support the growth of a modern skills and knowledge economy, as opposed to an economy built on low-cost labour and…

Using quantitative data from school principals (SPs) and after-school program directors (ASDs) in 37 primary schools and after-school programs (ASPs) in Switzerland, this study examines the Perceived Professional Culture of Collaboration (PPCoC) as an aspect of school culture and professionalism of educational staff. The group comparisons confirm…

If some practitioners are more research minded than others, then promising approaches for bridging the research to practice gap may be developed by describing research-minded practitioners and examining how to locate and support them. This article follows this basic logic in providing an overview of organizational development and practitioner…

The authors in this special issue on systems-level consultation provide an excellent range of models for how school psychologists can work as system-level consultants within the various communities they serve. This article (a) provides commentary on the four articles in this special issue focused on systems-level consultation to serve diverse…

Instructional leadership remains a complicated and debated issue for education. In fact, traditional theories of leadership from within both education and the organizational sciences increasingly face criticism. Drawing from ideas applicable to differentiated contexts of learning, this article develops an alternative model of instructional…

Purpose: This study intends to investigate the extent to which the Sri Lanka Army can be described as a learning organization. Design/methodology/approach: The main tool of analysis used was the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) developed by Marsick and Watkins, with the exclusion of the sections on financial and…

System-level consultation or organizational development in schools is an area in great need of theoretical models and definitions. The three articles in this special issue provide a unique learning opportunity not only for consultation across borders but also for consultation within the same nation. In my commentary, I limit my remarks to a few…

Everybody wants quality teachers in schools. How are such teachers developed? In this article a model is presented that describes four contexts crucial to the preparation of teachers: the personal, the university, the practicum and the employment contexts. The ways in which these different contexts can and should work together in the education and…

Faculty development has been evolving in focus and form over the past five decades. Originally organized around sabbatical leaves, faculty development now offers a wide array of programs and involves a growing body of highly professional, deeply dedicated professionals. As both faculty members and faculty developers with over fifty collective…

The purpose of this article is to present a specific approach to the practice of action research "in complex organisations". Clearly, there are many approaches to the challenge of doing action research in organisations; approaches that are, and also must be, quite context dependent and specific. But my purpose is neither to give an…