This paper reports on the findings from a study with 22 early-career secondary school English teachers in New South Wales, Australia. Against the backdrop of increased attention to the patterns of teacher recruitment, retention and attrition, the present research sought beginning teachers' perspectives on the extent to which their initial…

Worldwide teachers are faced with the task of continuously facilitating and implementing educational reform that has been designed without their participation. This exclusion of the key agents, who must mediate between the change agenda and actual change in the classroom, from the planning and decision-making processes, is detrimental to…

A survey of faculty in three schools of a South Australian postsecondary institution supported hypotheses that: (1) teachers would desire types of institutional decision making that would permit them more involvement, and (2) they would desire greater participation in decision making than they perceive themselves to have. (MSE)

Investigates teachers' and principals' perceptions of instructional leadership in a sample of Western Australian government primary and secondary schools, using the Instructional Leadership Questionnaire. Instructional leadership was viewed as a shared responsibility; teachers felt principals were less involved than principals felt they were.…

Describes curriculum planning processes for environmental education programs employed by secondary school teachers in Australia. Explains the phases involved with a school based curriculum project and provides a case study report to illustrate the approach. Offers suggestions for initiating and sustaining curriculum planning in environmental…

This paper reports on collaborative, school-based research in an Australian Research Council-funded project that focused on curriculum leadership for effective learning and teaching. Although the research addressed certain questions about the nature of curriculum leadership and its representation in varied teaching/learning contexts, it raised…

This paper presents findings of a case study that examined Australian primary teachers' perceptions of school-based curriculum development (SBCD). The study was conducted at Blackpool Primary School, a Catholic school in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Data were derived from participant observation, a teacher questionnaire, interviews with all…

This paper describes an inservice education program for teachers entitled "Participation and Planning: The Classroom Teacher and the Curriculum Process." Fourteen teachers with varying backgrounds attended the course. The objectives of the course were to (1) provide participants with experiences in the design, implementation, and…

This study investigated teacher involvement in decision making in the Victoria (Australia) government school system. Data analysis found teacher involvement to be associated with gender, seniority and organizational responsibility, age and teaching experience, affiliation with the teachers' association, the influence of the principal, professional…

The supportiveness of the principal was found to be significantly related to the organizational and theoretical dimensions of school-based curriculum development. When school staff saw the principal as supportive, there was higher perceived intimacy among staff, higher perceived curriculum satisfaction, more perceived group decision-making, and…

Although devolution (decentralization) policies assume that school communities will work collaboratively to make decisions appropriate to the local context, cooperative processes do not occur automatically. This paper outlines a case study of a school committee's efforts to develop a discipline policy at an Australian elementary school. Committee…

Two models for the structure of college/university Senates and Councils in in Western Australia are proposed, and 50 recommendations of the Tertiary Institutions Governance Committee are presented. The Committee reviewed the governance of: the Senates of the University of Western Australia and Murdoch University, and the Councils of the Western…