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1.
In Portugal, the agency for assessment and accreditation of higher education has recently included in its remit, beyond programme accreditation, the certification of internal quality assurance systems. This implies lighter touch accreditation and aims to direct institutions towards improvement, in addition to accountability. Twelve institutions have already undertaken the certification, and both self-assessment and external assessment reports are available. Based on the qualitative analysis of the nature of institutional strengths and weaknesses highlighted in these evaluation reports, the paper aims to understand whether the identified strengths and weaknesses are related to procedural and organisational matters or to cultural change (values and beliefs), in turn offering an insight into the quality culture(s) which characterise higher education institutions in Portugal. Findings suggest that the quality culture of the analysed institutions is somewhere between responsive and reactive. Overall, all reports dwell more on the prioritisation of formal and structural procedures, both regarding strengths and weaknesses. External reports point towards more weaknesses related to stakeholders’ participation. Both aspects are more frequent in polytechnics than in universities. These findings suggest that polytechnics are more reactive, whereas universities are more responsive. Therefore, accountability apparently continues to be, for the time being, a more pressing concern than improvement.  相似文献   

2.
Large urban school districts often struggle with hierarchy, fragmented processes and cultures whereby organisational silos between school and central office staff serve as a major barrier for reaching the desired strategic goals of improving student achievement. In addition, school district staff are undergoing change requiring leaders and staff in these organisations to adapt and build their capacity to support changing demands. However, little attention is paid to how to build the necessary systems and learning environments to support capacity building and leader development. This article reports on an action research study using mixed methods that reveal how central office leaders and school principals break down organisational silos to build a culture of learning using learning organisation principles. Using the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) short form, participants completed questions related to the school district's capacity for learning. Data from the survey and interviews outline key findings that illustrate how the learning organisation framework served as a model to create the organisational conditions and culture to enable support and cooperation for learning, capacity, change and improvement to occur. This action research case study is a look at one organisation's approach to addressing a gap in learning organisation research in the area of learning organisation interventions. In addition, it extends current research on schools as learning organisations with an example of data-informed change in one large school district in the southern United States.  相似文献   

3.
In Australia, graduates of Master of Public Health (MPH) programmes are expected to achieve a set of core competencies, including a subset that is specifically related to Indigenous health. This paper reports on the methods utilised in a project which was designed using action research to strengthen Indigenous public health curricula within MPH programmes at Australian universities. This aim is achieved through the use of three interlinked ‘action–reflection’ cycles, involving individual Indigenous public health academics who, through their membership in a scholarly network, have undertaken a series of curriculum reviews, which have in turn influenced organisational change in universities. The project results demonstrated how action research can successfully strengthen Indigenous public health curricula.  相似文献   

4.
Teachers are often assumed to have a negative attitude towards quality endeavours of their institutions and to hold defensive organisational values. However, there is little empirical research on this issue. This study focuses on teachers’ conceptions of quality, on their preferred organisational values and on the relationships between the two. A written questionnaire was presented to the teaching staff from 18 departments of universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands (N?=?266). It comprised 18 questions about teachers’ conceptions of quality, representing two quality scales: compliance and accountability and enhancement and improvement. A further 24 questions, related to organisational values, represent two scales that typify flexible organisations, and two that typify control-oriented organisations. The results reveal a neutral score on the compliance and accountability conceptions of quality and on the control-oriented organisational values, and a high score on enhancement and improvement and on the flexibility-oriented values. Both pairs appear to be moderately positively correlated. Despite the need for further qualitative research, it can be concluded that teachers perceive quality first and foremost as enhancement and improvement, rather than as compliance to external standards and accountability. These findings offer interesting perspectives for the further development of an internal quality culture in higher education.  相似文献   

5.
This article examines the relationship between school organisational climate and the school's preparedness to undertake restructuring and improvement. Over the last two decades, much research into school improvement and effectiveness has indicated the importance of school climate for a school's efforts to change. For school-level personnel, an understanding of the nature of the prevailing climate would seem valuable in determining the school's willingness and capacity to embark on school improvement initiatives and to evaluate the impact that such initiatives have on the nature of the school's climate. The research reported here was conducted in three phases. The first phase involved the assessment of the prevailing organisational climate in 30 secondary schools drawn from three State education systems in Australia. The second phase involved analysing and documenting the principles and school-level process associated with the establishment of site-based management in the three State education systems. The third phase sought teachers' perceptions about the impact of site-based management on school improvement planning, collaboration and curriculum leadership, and classroom practices. The research indicated the existence of an important relationship between organisational climate and the school's capacity to implement and sustain authentic site-based management. Where the prevailing organisational climate is negative, tailored ‘front-end’ strategies designed to improve the climate might be undertaken prior to the school embarking on substantial school improvement initiatives. Finally, assessing organisational climate can provide information about a school's preparedness to undertake change, and a re-assessment of climate following a change initiative can provide evaluative data about the extent of change within the school. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.  相似文献   

6.
Systemic action and learning in public services   总被引：1，自引：1，他引：0  
Complex, systemic issues continue to challenge public services without respect for organisational and professional boundaries. In practice, collaborative working with others who have differing professional cultural norms and systems confront members with the need to learn about each other's values, priorities and practices. This paper explores the potential of action learning for the development of systemic leadership capabilities within public services. Starting from core principles it is argued that action learning be seen not simply as a small group process for problem-solving or individual development, but as a collective process for inquiring into and taking action on projects and practices within their complex, multi-agent contexts.  相似文献   

7.
Abstract

There has been rapid development in Blended Learning (BL) diffusion and prior studies mainly focused on issues related to students and lecturers in improving teaching and learning outcomes, but very few studies focused on institution’s readiness and diffusion issues. Thus, there is need for institutional-based research to guide universities, colleges, and polytechnics to strategically diffuse BL. Accordingly, this study develops a model to investigate the variables and associated factors that influence institutions' administration readiness to diffuse BL initiatives based on Diffusion of Innovation (DoI) theory and institutional BL adoption framework that comprises of mature implementation stage of BL. Quantitative research approach was employed and data was collected using online survey questionnaire from 223 e-learning administrators/managers in Malaysia universities, colleges, and polytechnics. Next, Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was employed for data analysis. Results indicate that institutional structure, resource support, technology infrastructure, management strategies, and ethical considerations are key variables that positively predict administration readiness to diffuse BL initiatives in higher education. Additional results from Importance Performance Map Analysis (IPMA) in PLS-SEM suggest that institutional structure has the strongest effect on administrators’ readiness to diffuse BL and is also the most important variable that influences BL diffusion in institutions. Theoretically, findings from this study provide insights on how institutions’ administration perception and acceptance of BL approach can be enhanced. Practically, the developed model can be employed as a readiness tool to assess institutions current state in implementing BL environment and further provides a road map for future improvement.  相似文献   

8.
School effectiveness and school improvement researchers have increasingly looked towards establishing some kind of synergy between their respective fields. However, most recent attempts to create such links have not sufficiently addressed their different perspectives on organisational development and change. School effectiveness research has tended to view organisational development in terms of structural change, while the school improvement field has conversely placed an emphasis upon the cultural dimensions of organisational change. This has resulted in a methodological and theoretical divide that has proved difficult to resolve. This article argues that by incorporating the concept of 'power' into the analysis the two fields can be brought together more successfully. The article suggests that this 'third dimension' provides a bridge between structural and cultural analysis. It also highlights some important research questions that arise out of this tripartite relationship. The article concludes by suggesting that an analysis of power may provide the long awaited conceptual and theoretical fusion sought by both fields.  相似文献   

9.
This paper is part of a program to study organisational effectiveness in higher educational institutions in the UK and Australia, and to compare the results with work conducted by Cameron (1981, 1986) in the USA. Cameron's work empirically derived and confirmed nine effectiveness dimensions and offered a typology of four institutional groups. In the UK, following surveys of the perceptions of senior academics and administrators concerning their own institutions, Lysons and Hatherly (1992, 1996) obtained results highly consistent with those of Cameron, and their analysis also supported a typology of four groups, namely classical redbrick universities, former polytechnics, former colleges of technology and 60's greenfield universities.An important further issue is the external validity of such effectiveness research particularly when discriminating between various categories of institutions. This paper uses data derived independently of the perceptual survey data to predict and confirm the taxonomy of four institutional groups already established in the prior UK research. These data come from the research ratings of the Universities Funding Council (UFC) and the Times Good University Guide. The Times data includes objective statistical data about each institution whilst the UFC ratings are based on the expert judgements of research assessment panels with representation from a range of institutions.The typology of four institutional groupings confirmed by the data analysed in this paper is consistent with the competing values explanations for organisational taxonomies (Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1983; Lysons 1993).  相似文献   

10.
This paper presents research on the returns to tertiary education for individuals who graduated between 1997 and 2008 with bachelor degrees from universities and polytechnics in New Zealand based on their experiences post study. It examines data on their post‐study earnings drawn from two longitudinal datasets linking administrative data on individuals’ tertiary education records to their earnings. An advantage of this research is that it reports on differences in the earnings of those who studied in specific fields of study at polytechnics and universities. The data are used to help shed light on the importance of reputational capital in reproducing social classes.  相似文献   

11.
This paper explores how performance culture could affect students' learning about, and disposition towards, acting as organisational change agents in schools. This is based on findings from an initiative aimed to enable students to experience acting as change agents on an aspect of the school's culture that concerned them. The initiative was informed by contemporary practice and concerns in the field of student voice, and worked with a systemic action research approach focused on organisational dynamics. This research found that students' understanding of, and disposition towards doing, organisational change, seemed to be affected by how their internalisation of performance culture mediated with their concern to maintain their organisational status. Based on the theory of organisational socialisation, it argues that this may lead to a learnt inhibition towards doing organisational change in students who struggle with their organisational status in schools.  相似文献   

12.
Major developments in organisational theory have witnessed the emergence of several models of organisational effectiveness (OE) and change (Keeley 1978; Hannan & Freeman 1977; Miles & Cameron 1982). The integrative competing values framework suggests organisations adopt uniquely effective approaches reflecting their needs at different stages in their life cycle by addressing varying degrees of emphasis on systems resource, human relations, internal process, and rational goal orientations (Cameron & Whetten 1981; Quinn & Rohrbaugh 1983; Quinn & Cameron 1983). This coincided with, and complemented, the growing recognition of the importance of developing systematic means for organisational speciation (McKelvey 1975, 1982; Muchinsky & Morrow 1980) and using the resulting taxonomies emerging from these studies to underpin theory building and further research.The ongoing challenge of this era is, therefore, to continue to test and extend construct space and explore organisational typologies in line with these theoretical and empirical developments in order to provide practical utility for decision makers. Indeed, this was the impetus for large scale OE research programs involving higher educational institutions in both Australia and the U.K.This paper first briefly reviews highlights of the developments emerging from the Australian programs over a number of years. Framed in this context, the paper then summarises the study program in the U.K. aimed at further cross-cultural exploration of OE dimensions. Of particular interest was their usefulness in predicting and fleshing out a taxonomy of U.K. higher educational institutions, namely classical (red brick) universities, former polytechnics and colleges of advanced technology, and 60's greenfield universities.The results reinforced life cycle and resource dependency theory underpinning the competing values framework based explanations for inherent and systematic differences between these archetypes (Quinn & Rohrbaugh 1983; Lysons 1993). However, further research directions are also suggested.  相似文献   

13.
Understanding the change process in higher education requires the development of adequate theory. Theories are characterised by propositions which guide thinking, research and professional action. These propositions are a starting point for research, one goal of which is a contribution to the development and refinement of theory. Theory enables explanation, prediction and well-guided action to take place. An end-point to this is better understanding and influence over the change and development process in higher education. There is no general theory of change in higher education. So, what theories guide our action? This question is explored, together with a consideration of the role of theory in the process of individual and organisational change. The paper comprises two contributions, one by Cannon on theory development, the other by Lonsdale which is a reaction to and extension of Cannon's arguments, especially as they relate to organisational change.  相似文献   

14.
This article reports on a small-scale collaborative research study on middle leadership (ML) in Iceland and Ireland. It explores the ML role using the theoretical lens of distributed leadership (DL). The majority of DL studies to date examine leadership as an organisational resource that can be cultivated and utilised to serve school improvement. This research, however, situates the teacher at the core of DL and commences a discourse on how MLs experience their leadership practice from a DL perspective. The empirical investigation is based on semi-structured focus group interviews across the range of schools in both education contexts. The findings indicate a disconnect between DL theory as outlined in the literature and ML practice as currently experienced in Ireland and Iceland. While a form of DL exists in both contexts, this is strictly at the gift of the Principal rather than a reciprocal relationship with teachers in relation to leading school activities. The findings also signal a need for a proactive approach in School Leadership Preparation Programmes and in Initial Teacher Education to facilitate school leaders and teachers in understanding and adopting a distributed mindset.  相似文献   

15.
This paper presents an evidence-based model (the I3E model) for embedding education for sustainability (EfS) within a higher education institution. This model emerged from a doctoral research that examined organisational learning and change processes at the University of Southampton to build EfS into the university curriculum. The researcher aimed to learn from real practice through acting as a facilitator for curriculum development in EfS within an interdisciplinary group of academic staff members. A critical friend position was also acquired within a community of practice to implement a programme which attempted to embed sustainability within the student experience. The I3E model identifies four overarching components that can support universities in their aim to embed EfS within the undergraduate curriculum. These integrated components are: Inform the university community about sustainability; Engage the different university stakeholders in the change process towards sustainability; Empower individuals and groups to make change happen within their sphere of influence and action; and Embed sustainability within existing university structures.  相似文献   

16.
Drawing on the model of managerial responses to multiple organisational identities (integration, aggregation, compartmentalisation, deletion and multivocality), this article explores managerial responses in Ukrainian research universities whilst means-ends decoupling takes place at the state level. The latter term implies that practices of state policies are disconnected from the state’s core goal of enhancing public welfare. Data is taken from recent interviews with 11 top managers from three Ukrainian research universities. Our findings reveal that the greater the institutional complexity experienced by the university and the more the top managers maintain confidence in practices and organisational identities that deviate from the global model of the research university, the greater the means-ends decoupling at the organisational level. The university that sustains the least degree of means-ends decoupling at the organisational level shows aggregation as the managerial response, while the university with the highest degree of means-ends decoupling is characterised by multivocality with underdeveloped identities of research at the international level and knowledge transfer. As a higher degree of means-ends decoupling at the organisational level implies a larger efficiency gap and significant diversion of both human and financial resources, a managerial response that lacks synergy, in our case multivocality, also leads to the above-mentioned negative consequences.  相似文献   

17.
This literature review considers the use of action research in higher education. The review specifically looks at two areas of higher education activity. The first concerns academic teaching practice and includes a discussion of research and pedagogy practice, and staff development. The second considers student engagement. In both of these core features of higher education, action research has proven to be a central approach to the investigation, reflection and improvement of practice. Each of these main foci includes a discussion of the limitations of the literature. The review illustrates the extent and range of uses to have benefited from an action research approach.  相似文献   

18.
This article examines differences in reported approaches to studying and course perceptions of students in British universities and polytechnics. Hypotheses about these differences derived from the functions and characteristics of the two sets of institutions are compared with data from a questionnaire survey of 1903 university students and 305 polytechnic students. The results, adjusted for subject area differences, indicate that contrary to expectation the university group are less likely than the polytechnic group to use deep approaches to studying. The two groups report similar patterns of study organisation. The university students experience somewhat poorer teaching. The polytechnic students are more interested in gaining qualifications for employment and perceive their courses to be clearly to this end. The results are considered in relation to further research into student learning patterns and implications for the binary system of higher education.  相似文献   

19.
Observing peers for professional development is a familiar and valuable practice but not always favoured in many educational institutions. This small-scale action research (AR) was conducted in an institution where teachers are accustomed to regular peer observation, requiring each teacher to conduct peer observation and to reflect in their teachers’ portfolios. Conventionally, to fulfil the requirement each teacher finds a colleague to observe them either with or mostly without a certain focus. This study, however, employed action research methodology to inquire into a collegial peer observation model to improve this organisational practice. It aimed to promote mutual growth of the participating faculty members in an agreed area. Including the author, five faculty members, who are midcareer and experienced English language teachers, acted as members of the consultation group. In the AR project, appreciative inquiry was used when reflecting on the observed classes and during focus group interviews. As a result of this AR, at least two levels of knowledge were generated: first-person (author) and second-person (the team). The knowledge claim that this practitioner research constructed is ‘When small groups of teachers conduct peer observations focusing on a common concern, learning and collegial growth may increase.’ It is expected to lead to a third-person stage in the department and the academic community in general.  相似文献   

20.
高职院校的开放性要求其与各相关环节及环境在双向互动的交互作用中体现多样性,而多样性又应该以多样化的具体形式展现。高职院校开放性的现实形式包括国际化发展理念、校企合作的办理念、校际合作发展途径及外部监督机制等方面。从理论和实践的角度来看,高职院校的开放性分别为真命题、真命题及伪命题共存两种状态。因此,基于实践之中高职院校开放性的诸多假命题的存在及对高职院校发展的副作用,应着力从高职院校自身、企业、政府等利益相关群体着手维护并重塑高职院校开放性的实践形式。  相似文献   

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