Quality and Improvement in Education: The Role of the Educational Practitioner Essay

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Introduction

In modern world the complex task of teaching effectiveness is a hard to pin down issue. Some theoreticians identify teacher effectiveness in stipulations of the student achievement. Further researchers center of attention on high-performance ratings of supervision. At rest others depend on comments from administrators, students concerned stakeholders. In practice addition to effectiveness, it fluctuates on just how to measure successful teachers.

Higher education is going amidst great quality change in concept of an effective teacher. The number of students is increasing to a great extent but shortage of sufficient public spending for the universities erodes the quality of education. At the same time, lecturers face job insecurity and confront bigger workloads, while universities are forced to become more efficient. The future achievement of any university depends on academics’ performance to respond instantly with a view to happen quality educational change.

Academics face uncertain demands, while trying to resolve academic crises. Preedy, M., Glatter, R., and Wise, C. (eds) (2003) stated that a different approach is needed for their management and educational improvement. Effective teachers demonstrate academic leaders how to increase resource productivity and increase teaching quality. It also shows how leaders can assist their staff through substantial change without compromising professional quality.

Gaining empirical experience from the world of business leadership as well as research into how to makes academics more productive. Here is the objective to demonstrate academic and university leaders at every domain, how they can lead the university to the path of prosperity.

Bennett N and Anderson L (2003) said that the transformational leader who creates an ‘ideology’ for the future of their organisation and motivates others to follow their path they highlights on current research and thinking about ‘leadership’ rather than ‘leaders’. It indicates the intricate factors that influence the real effectiveness of academic leaders. It clarifies that successful academic leadership can be explained by the extent to which faculty, students, and others who share in campus leadership. Concept of effective teacher practices with leadership in all educational sectors from primary to higher education.

The teacher of people in leadership positions presents the foundations for the theory of leadership. They depicts a picture of leadership as a variety of disciplines – history, philosophy, psychology, politics, and sociology.

Kerry and Murdoch (1993) analysed the important characteristics of leaders and school principals. He raised two key questions: a) what kind of leadership will schools require to help them face the next ten years? b) How equipped are managers in school to provide that leadership? Campbell (1999) suggests in that “there is an expectation that head teachers will be leaders, managers and professionals”. What is the equilibrium between those characteristics?

Conventionally, the school principals emerge from the profession by developing the necessary leadership skills. It prioritizes that they possess a secure and deep understanding of the educational focus of the role. They have been developing and practicing the managerial and leadership aspects as they developed through the management hierarchy. MacDonald’s (1998) revelation is that “a school leader at any level of the organization (must have) won the trust, belief and confidence of staff to a significant degree and these are assets that the staff has given to the leader”. This might highlight that there is a growing common understanding of the school principal’s role. The final vision of the training process sums up an ‘ideal principal’ recognized and accepted by all.

Institute of Education, University of London

The national college for leadership was set up in November 2000. It is launching some 24 different school leadership programs and provides funding for it from the DFES. It has increased from £29.2m in 2001- 2 to £111.3m 2004-5. The NCSL has become more potent in the leadership and management arena. It is doing substantial work for educational leadership development including funded research and consultancy. In, Weindling (2004) has demonstrated that the NCSL was funding nearly 50 percent of the UK research on education leadership by 2002.

National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) play vital role in development of educational leadership. Walker and Dimmock (2004;273) cite an NSCL report that it provides a worthwhile starting point for a system that previously had no minimum requirements for headship but it is below the intellectual level regarded as necessary

n. The NCSL is involved in a process of ‘designer leadership’ by accrediting school leaders according to managerial national standards. It is obvious that the NCSL is also more broadly framing up school leadership through research, publications and other services for school leaders provided through its website and at organized events.

The Wales NPQH Centre in England for training

There is number of difference in the condition of training for NPQH in Wales with the provision and assessment in England. In Wales, application and selection is performed by both the Wales NPQH Centre and in England LEAs are launched by nine regional providers with no direct LEA involvement. This is the role of LEAs in Wales which is more vital in the leadership and management of education in Wales than in England. The training is different in a number of ways. In England, the NPQH is basically training-based, whereas in Wales the training element is conducted by practical workshops that lead to the use of practicing headteachers.

Goal for incorporating a creativity programmme into School Effectiveness

Mortimore et al (1991) and Hopkins, (2003) cited that the system of education in developed countries is an important issue. The issue of globalization has brought to the attention of researchers the need to think about reconstruction of the education system by systematic and scientific review of an organisation.

The learning of school effectiveness demonstrate that myriad number of research have been performed during the last few decades which have supported the idea that individual schools have made pupils progress further than might be expected. Therefore, myriad number of studies has been launched in schools to investigate the characteristics of school effectiveness with the aim of improving outcomes of schools performance. Under these circumstances, creativity is considered as a principal objective of education in which learners wish to develop human minds to make people more creative and creative.

It needs to launch a creativity program and school effectiveness program. For this purpose, the questions below will be discussed: What are the aims, necessities, outcomes and quality of application of these programs? What are the abilities of these programs? To what extent could creativity programs be incorporated into mainstream schools? The rapid advancement in technology means that the capacity to learn throughout life has become vital to human survival as access to food, water, and shelter. The focus of school effectiveness is concerned with the idea that schools do have major effects and make a difference (Reynolds and Creemers, 1990). The definition of an effective school is that it is where the focus is on students’ outcomes and performance.

How to empower teachers as decision makers and how to modify their classroom behaviour by providing more instructions to pupils, less frequent use of discipline, raising more questions and providing more convergent and divergent tasks. One important program known as Classroom Discussion provides an ideal forum for students to develop their creative thinking skills Beghetto, (2006) so teachers can support students’ creative thinking by encouraging and rewarding students’ novel ideas, unique perspectives, and creative connections.

Today’s students should cope with the challenges of life in the challenging world instead of just being prepared for society’s needs, and economic purposes. The effective school studies consider pupils’ rights and responsibilities. They also need to learn how to learn by understanding the value of meaningfulness of learning which leads them to generate original ideas rather than reproducing taught material.. It must highlight on the creative process rather than value-added concept. It focuses on inventive thinking rather than teaching and learning material.

In this situation there is a necessity for a system of education to design a new learning environment that conducts by reforming educational programs based on creativity programs which promote learning for life.

Therefore, we need to change firstly our understanding of the aims, necessities, outcomes, abilities and application of today’s educational goals and ambitions. Everyone should be equipped with a basic level of learning capacity that they can learn throughout their lives, become novel designers. This study focuses on creativity and educational psychology, such as counseling children and young people to recognise their potentiality in order to become more creative and efficient.

Developing school effectiveness

The school improvement movement grew out of the school effectiveness in fundamental manner. The improvement literature began to investigate the procedure by which a school could improve its performance. It is measuring this through qualitative data. It should need to bring the two approaches together and to link the processes of effectiveness and improvement with their outcomes for pupil attainment has long been acknowledged by Gray et al, (1996), MacBeath and Mortimore (1995) and Craft, (2000).

Evaluating the findings from a major study carried out in Scotland between 1995 and 1997, it provides a rich insight into the meaning of effectiveness. It offers wide ranging and rich quantitative and qualitative data, which offer further insights in to what makes a school effective and how to secure improvement.. Jim MacBeath and Jim MacCall start by set the study and its aims in the context of policy development both internationally and in Scotland, identifying the need for this particular Scottish study. They finalized the study in the context of the school improvement and effectiveness literature.

They cite three clusters of indicators of school quality; leadership and management climate, academic expectations and learning emphasis, and clarity in standards (behaviour and work). This finding has the alarming indication that ‘In schools faced with the challenges of low prior attainment and socio-economic disadvantage, low teacher expectation and low morale may be additional obstacles to improvement’ (p120). In the chapter MacBeath is devoted to the question of whether schools need critical friends. It exploring the question but not ultimately coming to a definitive view on it.

The literature foretell that school improvement is as much about strengthening a school’s capacity for managing change as it is about developing strategies for educational development.

This suggests the support for school development, to provide a range of staff development activities, research support.

What is the role of the educational practitioner in establishing quality in teaching and learning?

Educational practitioner in establishing quality in teaching and learning is a core set of quality measures that should be identified for standardized reporting academic arena. It should replicate the extent priorities developed by educational practitioner focusing both national aims for improvement of quality in teaching and learning. National Initiatives and areas for improvement in the school-improvement project are-

Reports

Inspection reports assess a school’s key strengths and areas. They provide a clear indication as to what action the school should needs to go forward. The ideas generated by the school’s staff at a planning session following the oral report on the inspection findings, which is facilitated by the inspection team.

Action-Plans

The schools are needed to launch an action plan to show how they will address the areas for improvement identified. It is expected that these action plans will be administered within the context of a School Improvement Plan.

Schools’ Self-Assessment

The self-assessment is a vital part of the Cayman Islands school evaluation model by placing the tools of evaluation in their hands. Inspectors work with schools prior to an inspection to familiarize staff with the inspection model. The Handbook guides the inspection process, and to assist them in establishing, and maintaining, beyond the inspection period. The schools are instructed to use the criteria and indicators to assist them in evaluating their performance.

Training

The Inspectorate is imparting training courses to support the building of internal capacity for improvement in the education system. These include self-assessment, action planning, an annual Senior Management Conference, and its most ambitious project to date. The National Educational Leadership Program (NELP) which was developed in partnership with the Ministry of Education, London Leadership Centre in the UK.

Research Projects on Education

Prof. Cheng Kai-ming and Dr. Wong Kam-cheung (1998) conducted a research on education. The objective of the study is to realize the dynamic interactions between education and the economy. The objective of study is to investigate the nature of the development and dissemination of school curriculum in the People’s Republic of China. This is highlighting on complexity and diversity of curriculum development and dissemination.

This study has contributed to the existing literature on curriculum development in China in the following ways. First, it portrays the conception that is undertaken in curriculum development in China. Second, it indicates how the official curriculum was interpreted and defined by the Intermediate agencies whose task was to operationalize and disseminate the curriculum. Finally, it chalks out the mechanisms that are used to disseminate the official curriculum

The main objective of the research was to identify associations between various regions, school and family to school attendance and non-attendance within selected border counties of three national minority regions.

The preliminary analysis of the data links the problem of school non-attendance to a number of factors like that of inadequate school facilities, shortage of qualified teachers, low achievement levels, irrelevance of the school curriculum, lack of parental and community support, inability of families to pay school fees, necessity to travel long distances to attend schools, a shortage of school places in lower secondary school. It does not contribute a great deal of support to mainstream patterns of schooling.

Conclusion

There is a growing recognition in many countries of the world that the old organizational structures of schooling simply do not fulfill the requirements of learning in the 21st century. There are new models of schooling emerging largely depending on different collaborations. These new forms of schooling may vary from country to country. They particularly represent new organizational approaches to schooling. The opportunities for other agencies and schools have to play important roles in the school improvement process. It is important to differentiate between school effectiveness and school improvement.

The important step would be to develop a school effectiveness and improvement policy that would provide a conceptual framework. How these processes will contribute to the achievement of national goals and objectives for education. It needs to develop a mechanism to bring school effectiveness and school improvement approaches. It has been analyzed structural argument, theoretical ideas with own experience a for quality improvement of education.

Bibliography

Blase, J. and Anderson, G. (1995), The Micropolitics of Educational Leadership, London: Cassell.

Bennett N and Anderson, L., (2003), Rethinking Educational Leadership: Challenging the Conventions, Paul Chapman Publications. ISBN: 0761949259.

Dimmock, C. (2002), School Design: A Classificatory Framework for a 21st Century Approach to School Improvement, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, Routledge, London.

Thomas, H. and Martin, J. (1996), Managing Resources for School Improvement: Creating a Cost-Effective School, London.

MacBeath, J. (ed) Effective School Leadership – Responding to Change, London: Paul Chapman Publishing.

Gunter, H. (2001), Leaders and Leadership in Education, London: Paul Chapman.

Grint, K. (2000), The Arts of Leadership, Oxford University Press: Oxford, ISBN: 019829445X.

Gronn, P. (2003), The New Work of Educational Leaders: Changing Leadership Practice in an Era of School Reform. London: Paul Chapman.

Fok Shui Che (2004) Values Orientations of Hong Kong’s Reform Proposal, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, Vol.15(2) pp.201-214.

Jollie, C., (2005), FDTL Leadership Program.

Kai-ming C. and Kam-cheng, W. (1996), School effectiveness in East Asia: concepts, origins and implications, Journal of Educational Administration, Vol.-.34(5).

Kotter, J. (1990), A Force for Change: How Leadership Differs from Management, Free Press: New York. ISBN: 0029184657.

Manesh, S. E. (2007), Goals for Incorporating a Creativity Program into today’s School Effectiveness Program In Mainstream Schools, PHD, Research. Web.

Leung, F. K. S., and Nancy W.Y. (1995), The Hong Kong component of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Web.

Ramsden, P., (1998), Learning to Lead in Higher Education, 1st ed., Routledge; London, ISBN-10: 0415152003.

Senge, P. M. (1993), Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation, 5th ed., Randon House Business Books, ISBN: 0712656871.

Shortell, S. M., and Kaluzny A. D. (2000), Health Care Management: Organisation Design and Behaviour, 4th ed., Delmar. ISBN: 0766810720.

Southworth, G., (2004), A response from the National College for School Leadership, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, British National Leadership, Vol. 34, No. 2.

Yukl, G. (2001), Leadership in Organisations, 5th ed., Prentice Hall: New Jersey, ISBN: 0130647500.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "Quality and Improvement in Education: The Role of the Educational Practitioner." October 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/quality-and-improvement-in-education-the-role-of-the-educational-practitioner/.

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