Educational Change Initiatives Research Articles

Incongruencies and Detrimental Effects of Neoliberal Education Reform in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Charged with postcolonial educational planning and development activities over the last 50-70 years, the context and content of educational planning and policymaking have evolved considerably in most Arab countries. The methodologies of planning and policymaking have also changed to match changing milieus and national priorities. Despite some accomplishments, many have amassed a record of educational policy and reform undertakings that have been less successful. Moreover, many Arab countries have been shown to continually lag behind other regions with similar levels of development, such as Latin America and South Asia. However, a few regional countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have taken a leading role in educational change initiatives in the implementation of globalized neoliberal reforms. More precisely, they have promoted bilingual (English/Arabic) and imported curricula, the modernization of school systems, privatization, standardization, accountability, school choice, and assessment reform. This study examined the implementation of recent UAE neoliberal reforms utilizing a framework derived from postmodern (neo)institutional analysis. This study argues that many policy undertakings have included contradictions and harmful impacts impeding the achievement of intended goals. Furthermore, educational policymaking has been caught between global and centralized national prescriptions for education and its role in society and unique contextual demands, which have created administrative challenges, dissatisfaction, and public resentment.

Incongruencies and Detrimental Effects of Neoliberal Education Reform in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Charged with postcolonial educational planning and development activities over the last 50-70 years, the context and content of educational planning and policymaking have evolved considerably in most Arab countries. The methodologies of planning and policymaking have also changed to match changing milieus and national priorities. Despite some accomplishments, many have amassed a record of educational policy and reform undertakings that have been less successful. Moreover, many Arab countries have been shown to continually lag behind other regions with similar levels of development, such as Latin America and South Asia. However, a few regional countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have taken a leading role in educational change initiatives in the implementation of globalized neoliberal reforms. More precisely, they have promoted bilingual (English/Arabic) and imported curricula, the modernization of school systems, privatization, standardization, accountability, school choice, and assessment reform. This study examined the implementation of recent UAE neoliberal reforms utilizing a framework derived from postmodern (neo)institutional analysis. This study argues that many policy undertakings have included contradictions and harmful impacts impeding the achievement of intended goals. Furthermore, educational policymaking has been caught between global and centralized national prescriptions for education and its role in society and unique contextual demands, which have created administrative challenges, dissatisfaction, and public resentment.

Using a Change Laboratory to voice students’ lived experience of moving from face-to-face to online instruction

Now that the grace period defined as “emergency” in the context of the mass move to online teaching has passed, students are less tolerant going forward of institutional failings that occurred during this time of remote learning not being remedied. Students are frustrated with a lack of their own voice in decisions at institutional level that affect them in all aspects of their online experience including, in educational change initiatives for the future.This study gave students the opportunity to voice their own experiences of the transition during this time, and their experiences of the new online environment since the new semester from September 2020. It attempts to document the effects of this changing environment on student experience by using Cultural Historical Activity Theory, and one on-line synchronous Change Laboratory as the methodology to collaboratively co-create and document the experiences of students.It explores how useful the students found this process to help give them the agency to express their own experience giving them a voice within educational change initiatives in the future. The findings demonstrate as we move forward to our new normal, that sub-standard online experiences will not be tolerated by students once they have an option to choose, and this will have a detrimental effect on institutions hoping to capitalise in this new online environment.Keywords: CHAT; student experience; online Covid-19 experience; change laboratoryPart of the special issue Activity theory in technology enhanced learning research <https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.cbaae672>

From accountability to shared responsibility: A case study of a multi-layered educational change initiative

From accountability to shared responsibility: A case study of a multi-layered educational change initiative

Feedback Credibility in Healthcare Education: a Systematic Review and Synthesis.

The purpose of this study was to systematically review and synthesize factors that influence learners' perceptions of credibility when feedback is provided by an authority figure in a healthcare environment. This study reviewed literature from medicine, psychology, and education using systematic review and qualitative synthesis methods. In a multi-step process, major electronic bibliographic databases were searched for relevant studies until October 2020. The search identified 9216 articles. A total of 134 abstracts underwent full-text review. Of these, 22 articles met inclusion criteria. The studies were heterogenous and the majority utilized a qualitative design with interviews and focus groups. A few studies employed mixed methodology (n = 2) and two studies used a quantitative design. Four main themes were identified: feedback characteristics, context of feedback, source credibility, and recipient characteristics. As programs implement major educational change initiatives to create more formative assessment practices, feedback will become even more crucial. The four main themes identified are important factors that contribute to the perception of feedback credibility. While the factors are described independently, they may be viewed as interrelated and the association between these factors and feedback may be driven more by learning culture than each characteristic. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-020-01167-w.

Complexity of choice: Teachers’ and students’ experiences implementing a choice-based Comprehensive School Health model

Background: Comprehensive School Health models offer a promising strategy to elicit changes in student health behaviours. To maximise the effect of such models, the active involvement of teachers and students in the change process is recommended. Objective: The goal of this project was to gain insight into the experiences and motivations of teachers and students involved in a choice-based Comprehensive School Health model – Health Promoting Secondary Schools (HPSS). Setting: School communities in British Columbia, Canada. Design and methods: HPSS engaged teachers and students in the planning and implementation of a whole-school health model aimed at improving the physical activity and eating behaviours of high school students. The intervention components were specifically informed by self-determination theory. A total of 23 teachers and 34 school committee members participated in focus group interviews. The minutes of planning meetings were collected throughout the intervention process. Results: Analysis of the data revealed five themes associated with participants’ experiences and motivational processes: (a) lack of time for planning and preparation; (b) resources, workshops and collaboration; (c) teacher control impacts student engagement; (d) teacher job action inhibited implementation of HPSS action plans; and (e) choice-based design impacts participants’ experiences. Conclusion: Findings from this study can facilitate future school-based projects by providing insights into student and teacher perspectives on the planning and implementation of school-based health promotion programmes and implementing choice-based educational change initiatives.

What Makes Reform Work?–School-Based Conditions as Predictors of Teachers’ Changing Practice after a National Curriculum Reform

Educational change initiatives, whether they involve the implementation of new policies or curriculum reforms, often fail to reach the level of teachers’ classroom practices. In the search for explanations, numerous studies have either characterized teachers as resistant to change or focused on how schools’ workplace conditions have failed to influence teacher change. This study draws attention to these issues by investigating teachers’ perceptions of the degree to which a national curriculum reform has brought about changes in their teaching. The study also proposes a model of how teachers’ perceptions of school-based conditions (i.e., school leadership, teacher collaboration, and development of school-based curricula) are related to teachers’ general orientations towards change and teachers’ perceptions of change as a result of the reform. The participants were 738 Norwegian teachers in public primary and lower secondary schools, and the data were analyzed using descriptive data, correlation analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM).The results indicate that the overall influence of the reform on teachers’ teaching was moderate. The results also revealed positive relationships between teachers’ perceptions of school-based conditions, teachers’ general orientations towards change and the degree of perceived reform changes in teachers’ teaching. However, a surprising finding is that school leadership and teacher collaboration were only indirectly related to teachers’ perceptions of reform changes, mediated through teachers’ general orientations towards change. The article highlights important relationships between educational reform, school-based conditions and teachers. It also contributes knowledge that is relevant to consider for successful reform of schools and education.

Orientations to academic development: lessons from a collaborative study at a research‐led university

This study reports on a collaborative teaching enhancement project at a research‐led university, within the context of a focus on the first‐year experience. It demonstrates the kind of influence which a combination of managerial and collegial approaches can have on the collaboration. It illustrates the importance of working with a conscious understanding of the academic development orientations underpinning an educational change initiative. In the study, academic developers teamed up with lecturers from eight departments to embark on change endeavours to enhance teaching and learning in the lecturers’ immediate settings. The adoption of an action research‐oriented, interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to professional development was found to be appropriate at a research‐led institution. Contextual and cultural factors inherent to the disciplines, departments and institution were shown to have an impact upon the involvement of participants in the project.

Viewing Response-to-Intervention through an Educational Change Paradigm: What Can We Learn?

Response-to-Intervention (RtI), a framework for improving academic and behavioral outcomes for all students, can be viewed as a current example of an educational change initiative. Given the difficulties that some schools may be experiencing when implementing RtI effectively, it is important to examine prior educational change conceptualizations and research for factors that may facilitate or impede current educational reform. The purpose of this article is to (a) present RtI as a current educational reform initiative, (b) use Fullan’s (2007) theoretical model as a framework through which to present information related to educational change, and (c) provide suggestions regarding how such educational change literature can inform and improve the implementation and future sustainability of RtI in schools.

Theory Competition and the Process of Change

The reasons why many educational change initiatives have little impact are often framed in terms of either a poorly designed process on the part of the change initiator, or in terms of problems with the attitudes, skills and/or knowledge of those responsible for implementation. In this paper, we seek to integrate these two perspectives more closely by focusing on their interface and the competing theories frequently held by the change initiators and implementers. This concept of theory competition is illustrated with a case of a national literacy initiative in New Zealand in which the change initiators wished to raise the achievement of low performing students through the development of “learning-centred” leadership in schools and evidence-based practice. The desired outcomes were not achieved because theories about what it means to be a successful leader in such a situation, the data needed to undertake the type of evidence-based analysis envisioned and school personnel beliefs about the target students were understood differently by those responsible for initiating the change and those responsible for implementing it.

Philosophy and Empirical Evidence: Achieving Vision Through Research

Ben-Avie and Comer describe how Jewish day schools and the Yale Child Study Center’s School Development Program (SDP) share a common agenda regarding the aim of education. The foundational science of education is child development, advocates James P. Comer in such seminal works as School Power (1980) and Waiting For A Miracle (1998). SDP, the educational change initiative founded by Comer, informed the design of the current study, which is an empirical exploration of how the climate of relationships in Jewish day schools impede or promote the process through which children forge a relationship to the Jewish people. The authors appreciate the editorial guidance and support provided by Maurice Elias and Michael Zeldin. A special thanks is also extended to Aryeh Davidson, Norris M. Haynes, Carol Ingall, and Trudy Raschkind Steinfeld. For more information about the research or surveys described in this article, please visit www.impactanalysis.org.

Post‐formal design conversation: designing just and caring educational systemsa

AbstractIn the USA, efforts to improve education continue to be poorly designed and disregard the necessity of centering these efforts on paradigms of justice and caring. Change efforts, such as vouchers, standards, rebuilding educational infrastructure, funding and privatization, are systematic at best, and are promoted by ideological and economic special interests who have no concern for the establishment of egalitarian systems. Because of the lack of design and critical concern, the change efforts invariably fail in their attempt to improve the quality of education, and merely sustain existing inequitable situations. Currently, outside of the academic arena, design theory and critical theory have little impact on the contentious debates about the purpose, form, and function of education. Therefore, how can the process of design and the promotion of justice and caring be included in the actual planning and practice of educational change? The argument will be made that processes of design and criticality can become part of the practice of education, and that the quality of education can be equitably improved through the synthesis of idealized systems design and post‐formal thinking. This synthesis, post‐formal design conversation, will be explored by first identifying the aspects of systems design and post‐formal thinking that are related to this synthesis. A discussion of the similarities and differences of post‐formal design conversation and design conversation will further explicate the nature of post‐formal design conversation. Finally, the potential of Opportunity‐Initiated Systems design to become an interventionist strategy, which will promote the inclusion of post‐formal design conversation in educational change initiatives, will by explored. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Customer-Supplier Analysis in Educational Change

Recent years have seen an explosion in the use of quality management disciplines in all fields. Quality management professionals assign great importance to an understanding of customers and suppliers in any complex discipline or enterprise. In education, planners of educational change efforts need a model for understanding customer and supplier interactions in order to improve the success rate of educational reform. With major resources being poured into educational reform initiatives, it is important to determine whether or not these investments are likely to pay off through successful implementations.In this study, the definitions of customers and suppliers in education were explored using a Delphi survey of two cohorts of education and business professionals. Differences between the cohorts were used to contrast the two perspectives. What emerged was the necessity of discussing all stakeholders in education as both customer and supplier. This contrasted with the business model of stakeholders serving either customer or supplier roles. These results are translated into a systems model and rubric for analyzing educational stakeholders to assess the likely relationships among customers and suppliers in any particular educational change initiative. Expected pitfalls of improper customer-supplier identification are discussed.

Responding to New Roles

Organizations that aspire to become learning organizations must encourage managers to adopt new roles as coaches, trainers and educators if learning is to become distributed and continuous at multiple levels within the organization. This article presents the findings of a large scale educational change initiative in a Fortune 10 company in which managers adopted instructional roles in a cascaded delivery approach. Captured in this data are the perceptions of managers about serving as instructors and the resulting role fit tension between managers who do not perceive providing instruction as a managerial role, and those managers who clearly consider instructional activities to be an integral part of their jobs. The issues that these managers confront in assuming instructional roles are discussed as they implement this cascaded delivery process. Implications for future practice and areas for further research are provided.

Supporting Community-Oriented Educational Change

A study of a federally funded program to develop and implement community-oriented social studies curricula and curriculum-based assessments grounds cautions for educational change initiatives. In this case, despite the project director's stated intent to support teachers' desire for instruction regarding local culture and history, top-down support for classroom-level change evidenced insensitivity. Production and implementation of the planned curricula and assessments was obstructed by teacher's lack of cultural identification with the targeted community groups, workload, competing instructional priorities, inadequate communication, and organizational politics. Professional development was sometimes beneficial but more often ineffective—either perfunctory, unnecessary, or disregarded. The findings offer insight regarding educational change and a systemic analysis.

Educational Change in Alberta, Canada

Alberta, Canada, is the site of large-scale educational change initiatives legislated by the provincial government. The mandates have sparked heated public debate over the appropriateness, wisdom, and utility of the reforms. This article summarizes the views of representatives of several educational interest groups and offers suggestions for making change more meaningful and successful.