As secondary school environments become increasingly complex, shifts are occurring in the way leadership is being practised. New leadership practices emphasize shared or distributed leadership. A senior executive leadership team with responsibility for school leadership is likely to be one of the many, varied forms of new leadership practices…

This article is a cross-case analysis drawing on case study research conducted in 2009-2010 on six leadership preparation programs and their district-university affiliation, using research on consumer action and inter-organizational relationships to understand their relationships in developing leadership preparation programs. The six urban…

In creating Project Re-ED, Nicholas Hobbs (1913-1983) embarked on a bold new approach to emotionally troubled children and youth. Re-ED, an acronym for the Re-education of Emotionally Disturbed Children, builds on positive concepts of normalcy and health rather than deviance and illness. Hobbs had been impressed by the "educateur" of Europe and…

In this essay, Paula McAvoy addresses the problem caused by the liberal state's necessary tolerance of insular fundamentalist groups and the concern that children raised in such groups do not have a fair opportunity to evaluate their inherited beliefs. This tension comes to the fore around disagreements over schooling and requests for religious…

Technological advances on the Internet now enable students to develop participation skills in virtual worlds. Similar to controlling a character in a video game, multi-user virtual environments, or MUVEs, allow participants to interact with others in synchronous, online settings. The authors of this study created a link between MUVEs and…

In interdisciplinary or intercultural groups, it is highly important that the members of the group are able to apply and share knowledge across the standard boundaries that exist around disciplines and practices. Often, a lot of effort is required to avoid pitfalls such as misunderstandings, judgemental discussions or just the inability to…

Findings are reported from a year-long evaluation of the effectiveness of the SPRinG programme relative to a control group. SPRinG aimed to address the wide gap between the potential of group interaction to promote learning and its limited use in schools. The project involved working with teachers to develop strategies for enhancing pupil group…

Student engagement has been shown to positively affect college students' experiences. Student engagement includes co-curricular and curricular activities designed to enrich and broaden the educational experience. Activities can include both in-class and out-of-class experiences. One way for students to become involved is through student…

As I approach my thoughts on faith and the adult learning I will concentrate my deliberations on faith, spirituality and dissonance, and the adult learner as reported in in-person dialogs selected from four studies (Shirk, 1990, 1998, 2005). Consideration will be given to the sociopsychological aspects of and the costs and benefits related to…

There is wide demand for engineering graduates to be capable of working well in teams. The engineering accreditation body (ABET, www.abet.org) has responded to this need by requiring engineering programs to demonstrate that their graduates have "an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams" (Haag, Froyd, Coleman, & Caso, n.d.),…

Longitudinal studies are necessary to examine individual change over time, with group status often being an important variable in explaining some individual differences in change. Although sample size planning for longitudinal studies has focused on statistical power, recent calls for effect sizes and their corresponding confidence intervals…

The idea that social relations can aggregate into social capital has intuitive appeal that scholars are finding useful as they seek to explain variations in community outcomes. This article suggests that it may be time for metropolitan university administrators to begin thinking beyond community relations or community engagement as they seek to…

More and more, the educators this author works with recognize that schools will need to become different, not just better, to help students meet the challenges of the future. These educators are trying to respond to an imperative to innovate as well as improve. The depth of change required to move from creating improvement to fostering innovation…

Having completed graduate degrees in educational research and counseling, I have studied the theory of focus groups and participated in many while in a classroom setting. Interestingly, I had never moderated one until my first attempt in a text-based online environment. This paper describes my preparation for the session as well as the issues I…

The developmental exchange is a central feature of social development, interpersonal dynamics, situated learning, and personal transformation. It is the enabling process in Guided Autobiography (GAB) settings that promotes the achievement of personal goals and group accomplishments. Nevertheless, these exchanges are embedded in the GAB structures…