unique features of educational organization

In many areas of the social sciences, in contrast, the investigator is recognized as an engaged participant. In addition to the features of education that influence research, there are also aspects of education research as a field that help clarify the nature of scientific inquiry in education. One key axis of variation is relative size. and Ed.D (Harvard). Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. U.S. higher educational institutions also differ in their student-body composition. The members' actions are largely governed by formal rules and a norm of professionalism (impersonality). Schools serve students who are new immigrantsoften unfamiliar with American life beyond what they might have seen in moviesas well as many Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, and American Indians whose families have lived here for generations and who have varying degrees of English proficiency. After all, medical research is something of an engineering science in that it brings theoretical understanding in the life sciences to bear on solving the practical problems of prolonging life and reducing disease. But public schools also face market competition. These partnerships are not always easily formed, and often take long periods of time to establish. The abstract concepts and ideas that are meaningful to them vary across time, space, and cultural tradition. PhiDelta Kappan (February and March):391397; 472475. Moreover, this avenue of market control is increasing, as state governments establish not only more categorical grant programs but also performance funding, in which a certain portion of state formula aid is conditioned on meeting certain performance targets. Stakeholders are the persons who are in charge of organizations (leaders/principals); stakeholders are the targets whom. Powell, Arthur, Eleanor Farrar, and David Cohen 1985 The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers inthe Educational Marketplace. First, since several disciplinary perspectives focus on different parts of the system, there are many legitimate research frameworks and methods (Howe and Eisenhart, 1990). In. Measure It. A major source of this diversity in size and structure is, of course, differences in degree and form of economic development even among less developed societies. One of the most popular school restructuring strategies in the early 1990s was the emergence of charter schools. The Board of Trustees of the Newcastle Elementary School District, Newcastle, California, is seeking a highly qualified, fully certified, educational leader to serve as Superintendent. This research is carried out in a collaboration in which district and school personnel have vested interests in the research. These schools vary enormously, from individual Montessori schools, Christian academies, and elite private schools to citywide systems of Catholic parochial schools. It often does not end up benefiting the students to which it is ostensibly targeted (Somini 1999). ." Hopper, Earl 1977 "A Typology for the Classification of Educational Systems." Sizer, Theodore 1985 Horace's Compromise: The Dilemmaof the American High School, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Numerous researchers, educators, and writers have attempted to define the major features of positive and negative school cultures, and an abundance of studies, articles, and books are available on the topic. In studying the effectiveness of an educational program, then, comparisons must almost always be made to standard or existing practice. But in industrialized societies such as the United States, formal education rivals, if not exceeds, nonformal and informal education in importance and the use of society's resources. Market control is less coercive than political authority. Paris, France: Author. In order to better understand these unusual features of the American system, let us examine the structure of U.S. education in greater detail. In order to attract students and then motivate them to work hard and actively participate, teachers often resort to such devices as giving students more choice over course selection or course content, making course content less abstruse and technical (more "relevant"), reducing academic demands, and grading less stringently (Powell et al. New York: Longman. Understanding the past often enables social science researchers to explain why things happened. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education. In some cases, important research cannot be conducted without this collaboration. New York Times (February 23):B1, B5. Employees are treated with respect. The ubiquity of the modern mass media and the fact that they are now held in relatively few hands allow them to widely and deeply shape many of our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (Bagdikian 1990; Herman and Chomsky 1988). Such events can complicate data collection, compromise sampling procedures, and thwart opportunities to generalize. We believe that the expectation that research-based information will be available and should be part of the decision-making process needs to be cultivated both in the public and in the research community. Education can occur in school classrooms, private homes, museums, community centers and through information accessible on the Web. They empower teachers to communicate, collaborate, reflect, inquire and innovate. 1985; Sizer 1985). Both are worthy, both require researchers to have a keen understanding of educational practice and policy, and both can ultimately lead to improvements in practice. The schools may not know why students are leaving, and the loss of funds, good students, and good teachers may impede its capacity to improve. hVnF~ErVlR 1{. Because so many U.S. students go on to college and because student selection occurs to a great extent within college, U.S. higher education institutions are quite varied in curriculum, prestige, and student-body composition (see below). As an institution, its clientele frequently move, for example, from one school or college to another. Teachers usually clamor for better-prepared students, and a loss of middle-class students can lead the better teachers to themselves desert a particular school. (We discuss teacherparent struggles for control below.) Manno, Bruce V., Chester E. Finn, Jr., Louann Bierlein, and Gregg Vanourek 1998 "Charter Schools: Accomplishments and Dilemmas." Very frequently they vote on who will represent them on a school board or in state office. In fact, business's influence based on its role as future employer of students has been institutionalized in the form of a myriad of business/school or school-to-work "compacts" or "partnerships" in which formal links are established and schools receive resources and job placements in return for greater responsiveness to business opinions about the desirable content of education (Gelberg 1997; Van Horn 1995). As a result, efforts to increase market competition within schooling through such devices as vouchers and charter schools are often portrayed in the U.S. as democratic innovationsbecause they "empower" individualswhereas in Europe there is much more hesitation to equate consumer choice and citizen sovereignity (Whitty et al. For example, in most states, the regulations governing teacher certification are less strict if one teaches in a private school than a public school. The process and requirements are unique processes displaying knowledge, competencies, and expertise, regardless of the field of practice. Yet the ways that those principles are instantiatedin astrophysics, biochemistry, labor economics, cultural anthropology, or mathematics teachingdepend on the specific features of what is being studied. World Learning, Inc. positions itself as a unique international organization which provide education, exchange, and development programs. Thus, innovation is the result of a process. Because they draw from neighborhoods differing in class and racial composition, they end up differing from each other in student composition. But because many disciplines are focusing on different parts of the system, contradictory conclusions may be offered, adding fuel to the debates about both the specific topic and the value of education research. According to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, 16 percent of the population changed households between March 1999 and March 2000 (Schacter, 2001). For example, greater student choice may not cause the deserted schools to change. Also, in some circumstances, researchers may not hide the purposes of a study from the subjects (a common practice in double-blind trials) for ethical reasons. In some physical and life sciences, investigators are often deliberately kept ignorant of the identity of research participants, and controls are instituted through such devices as double-blind or randomization procedures. An important consequence of the U.S. pattern of considerable local control is that local concerns are more likely to be reflected in school policies and practices than is common in countries with more centralized educational systems. Partnerships between researchers and practitioners have become attractive in recent years because the site of much education research has shifted from the laboratory to schools and classrooms (Shulman, 1997). Multiple scientific disciplines study education. Moreover, even if schools do react, they may get the wrong cues because students and their parents make bad choices due to lack of good information (Weiss 1990). Moreover, local tax revenues may also decline. In the preK-12 system, for example, students are assigned to classes, classes are organized by grade level within a school, schools are organized into school districts, school districts may be organized within counties, and counties are subdivisions of states. Bureaucratic control had become perhaps the dominant form of school control by the end of the Progressive era. Furthermore, profoundly different methods and approaches characterize each discipline and field in the physical sciences, depending on such things as the time frame, the scale of magnitude, and the complexity of the instrumentation required. In short, the educational system seems unique in the range of its functions and the centrality of its relationship, at least theo-retically, to the other social institutions. The need to ensure ethical research conduct may weaken the strength of the research designs that can be used. The poorest districts do have more money to spend, but rich districts have increased their tax levels in order to maintain their spending lead (Ballantine 1997). 1999). Goodlad, John 1984 A Place Called School: Prospects for theFuture. But the flip side of the coin is that such nations also suffer from much less inequality in school spending across localities andbecause of class and racial segregation in housingacross social classes and races. The statute that authorizes charter schools in the state of Minnesota, for example, specifically encourages serving children with special needs. In particular, we briefly discuss five features of education that shape scientific inquiry, and describe how these features affect research. %PDF-1.6 % So far, in our discussion of control we have focused on political authority, whether exercised by national, state, or local governments or the citizens that elect them. Spicer, Michael W., and Edward W. Hill 1990 "Evaluating Parental Choice in Public Education." 1. Characteristics of the management system include: internal and external constraints; flat hierarchy; bases of authority; conflicting role demands; lack of colleague control; bureaucratic rules; size of staff; feminization; and management selfimage. Sample 1 Sample 2 Sample 3 Political scientists study the implementation of large-scale institutional change, like charter schools. But these assertions of power by teachers and by local and state school bureaucrats have in turn provoked democratic counterclaims by groups representing conservative parents concerned about parental prerogatives over education. entrance exams also may complicate the evaluation of the effectiveness of curricular change. Bristol, Pa.: Falmer. For example, charter schoolspublic schools that operate under contract with either a state agency or a local school boardtake very different forms according to their states authorizing statutes and the particular contracts (charters) under which the schools operate (RPP International, 2000). A study that examined the mechanism by which Catholic schools achieve equitable outcomes for students used such a technique (see Box 5-3). Mirroring the diversity of the broader population, education takes place in specific neighborhoods with their particular geographical, historical, social, ethnic, linguistic, economic, and cultural mixes. Children of lower socioeconomic status (SES) groups tend to perform worse in school, Charter Schools Finally, this proliferation of frameworks, coupled with the sheer scope of the myriad fields that contribute to understanding in education, make. Assertions of bureaucratic authority have been met by counterclaims by teachers in the name of professional authority or market control. Sierra Leone, a relatively tiny country on the west coast of Africa, totals 28,000 square miles, or 71,470 square kilometers. Educational organizations pay more attention to human (stakeholders). Significant labor-market advantages go to those who attend and graduate from college, but the school system has relatively weak connections to most occupational sectors. Organizational sociologists study systems that are organized to meet education goals. High stakes accountability systems and national college. The presence of many disciplinary perspectives in education research has at least three implications. 66 1 All About Education Industry: Key Segments, Trends and Competitive Advantages The Education Industry comprises establishments whose primary objective is to provide education. Educational leadership is built on the premise of constructing and applying knowledge in ways that make a positive difference. In James G. March, ed., Handbook of Organizations. Ongoing work at the Park City Mathematics Institute (see http://www.admin.ias.edu/ma/) provides an example of the potential for interdisciplinary inquiry in education to enhance understanding and promote effective instruction. We briefly consider federal requirements governing research ethics in Chapter 6, where we argue for a federal education research agency to take a leading role in facilitating ethical access to student data. Only under unique circumstances can a case be made for managing a . Elementary and Secondary Education. Matthew Lynch More from author Leave a reply The Edvocate Podcast, Episode 7: How Digital Age Teachers Can Win Over Parents Everything that we do at UCDS is designed to promote innovation and excellence in education. This has been a perennial problem with federal Title I funding for high-poverty schools. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Chicago: Rand McNally. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. A specific implication of the role of contextual factors in education research is that the boundaries of generalization from scientific research need to be carefully delineated. Ideological Formation. Such changes occur as a result of the democratic system of educational governance in the United States, and can have practical implications for research planning (e.g., limiting opportunities to conduct long-term studies). They create jobs and define their responsibilities, establish organizational rules, allocate scarce resources (money, space, staff, etc. Within this bureaucratic structure, administratorssuch as district superintendents or college presidents, school principals or deansexercise great power. New York: Harper and Row. The jury is still out on whether they will enroll more than a fraction of public school students, successfully "routinize the charisma" of their founders after those founders move on, significantly enhance the performance of their students, and effectively stimulate regular public schools to improve. Board of Education of the City of New York 1997 Directory of the Public High Schools, 19971998. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. But most advanced societies vest control in a national central educational authority, usually a national Ministry of Education. British colonies typically had higher rates of college attendance and lower rates of grade repetition than French colonies, echoing the differences between their colonial masters' own school systems (Brint 1998). For example, a Spencer Foundation forum aimed at identifying promising mentoring practices in young scholars in education research revealed a number of effective strategies and approaches with no clear patterns (Schoenfeld, 1999). This authority is at its apex in the classroom and fades as one goes up the bureaucratic hierarchy (Metz 1978; Weiss 1990). Since then, the nation has been in a constant process of reforming the schools, and there is no sign that this tinkering towards utopia (Tyack and Cuban, 1995) will end soon. In Philip G. Altbach, ed., International Higher Education: An Encyclopedia, vol. 2. Cobb, Casey D., and Gene V. Glass 1999 "Ethnic Segregation in Arizona Charter Schools." The This strategy is often used in medical trials to ensure that researchers perspectives are not influenced by their knowledge of which participants received which treatment, and similarly, that this knowledge does not alter the behavior of the research participants. Economically Advanced Countries. There are several countries that lodge governance primarily at the subnational or provincial level, such as the United States, Canada, and Germany. Economically less developed countries (LDCs) vary greatly as well in the size and structure of their school systems. Yet school systems still differ considerably, even among countries comparable in economic development. No tax-derived funds may be used to support private K12 schooling unless special conditions are met (for example, private schools may receive public aid if they enroll handicapped students). The governance of education has been a repeated motif in our discussion above. 3. culture-type organizations, which have a moral-normative pattern and are Market competition can be a very powerful control device, but it is also less effective than its evangelists believe. New York: Oxford University Press. The army, the school the nearby municipality etc. The differences between these studentstheir age and entry into U.S. schools, the quality of their prior schooling, their native language and the number of native languages represented in their class, their parents education and English language skills, and their family history and current circumstances will affect their academic success much more than their common lack of English (Garcia and Wiese, in press). Some students visit their home country frequently, while others have no contact with their or their parents birthplaces. As in other applied fieldssuch as agriculture, health risk reduction, crime, justice, and welfareeducation research relies critically on relationships between researchers and those engaged in professional practice: teachers, administrators, curriculum developers, university deans, school board members, and a host of others. An organization has specific goal or purposes for its existence. For example, students representing dozens of native languages may attend a single school; in some school districts students speak more than 125 languages (Crawford, 1992). However, within the home room, teachers often do divide students into different groups that are supposed to learn the same material at different speeds. We would now like to discuss it in greater detail. While small in numbers and enrollments, the elite private schools, which are variously termed "prep" or "boarding" or "country day" schools, carry great prestige and importance. We argue that a key implication of these features of education is the need to account for influential contextual factors within the process of inquiry and in understanding the extent to which findings can be generalized. And in states such as California and Washington, it has become commonplace for voters to vote on school policies such as affirmative action in student admissions and teacher hiring (Wirt and Kirst 1992). Student decisions about whether to take one or another course or whether or not to actively participate in class deeply shape the character of teaching and learning within classrooms. Apple, Michael 1986 Teachers and Texts. While all charter schools are characterized by some degree of flexibility from state education statutes, their educational programming and student populations vary considerably across and within states. Different kinds of research require different levels of participation along a continuum ranging from weak (i.e., short, distant, one-time interaction) to strong (long-term partnership or collaboration). This posture exacerbates the difficulties establishing the relationships necessary to conduct research. For example, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have maintained old and distinguished academic high schools such as Boston Latin. Finally, nonformal educationwhich takes such forms as on-the-job training, agricultural extension programs, and family-planning outreach programsis more organized than informal education but has aims that are more specific and short term than those of formal education. Moreover, the huge size of many U.S. schools makes them impersonal and hard put to maintain the involvement and commitment of students (Cusick 1983; Goodlad 1984; Powell et al. The nonsectarian, nonprofit private institutions include both many of the most prestigious doctorate-granting universities in the world and many small, undistinguished liberal arts colleges (U.S. National Center for Education Statistics 1997). Weiss, Janet A. 2. economic-type organizations, which have a remunerative-calculative pat-tern and are exemplified by factories and businesses. Ethical issues also have implications for data collection. , and Jeannie Oakes 1996 "Potential Pitfalls of Systemic Reform: Early Lessons from Detracking Research." Columbus, Ohio: Merrill. Like other applied fields, education research serves two related purposes: to add to fundamental understanding of education-related phenomena and events, and to inform practical decision making. 1998; Wells et al. Clark, Burton R. 1985 "The High School and the University: What Went Wrong in America" (2 parts). Schools use a diverse set of ICT tools to communicate, create, disseminate, store, and manage information. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 1998 Education at a Glance. Nonetheless, teacher professional authority has always been uncertain and contested. The readings in this chapter discuss educational organizations from large systems to individual . some features in an altered form may be retained. School competition for students has risen in the 1990s. 1. The comprehensive high school provides college preparation, vocational education, and general secondary education under one roof (Clark 1985; Krug 1964, 1972). The weakness of teachers' claims for professional power and autonomy results from several factors. organization and the personal needs-dispositions of the individuals who work in the organization. Berkeley: University of California Press. But they do all this within parameters set by the national ministry, which can veto their decisions (Kanaya 1994). Because of this, many current educational reformssuch as school-to-work partnerships between schools and employersare directed toward enhancing the connection between secondary school curricula and labor market opportunities. Like the individual, every organization has its own personality with integrity, its own culture and its own values which are unique and influential for the smooth functioning and effective management of the institutions for creating motivation and self- pride among individuals. b. In such field-based work, collaborations with practitioners can bring a form. This dynamic creates a turbulent environment for research. Moreover, as will be discussed below, the federal government has also exercised great ideological power (Campbell et al. Higher Education. Both are strongly connected to specific employment. It is much larger than, and organized very differently from, most other nations' systems. The character of education not only affects the research enterprise, but also necessitates careful consideration of how the understanding or use of results can be impeded or facilitated by conditions at different levels of the system. The connection between educational credentials and workplace opportunities is comparatively weak in the United States (Collins 1979). Pp. Incorporating such linguistic and sociocultural contexts into the research process is critical to understanding the ways in which these differences influence learning in diverse classrooms. Formal schooling takes place in an interdependent, multilayered system. Even formal schooling varies in profound ways from community to community, and from preschoolers to adults. Most other countries require passage of a national exam to receive a degree that qualifies one for university entrance (Brint 1998). 1993). To be sure, seventeen U.S. states do use minimum-competency examinations for awarding high school degrees (Airasian 1987; U.S. National Center for Education Statistics 1997), but the country still does not have a European-style national examination that alone determines university entrance. 1998). Educational Policy 6 (June):160179. Our discussion of diversity above is illustrative: to what extent, for example, is it possible to generalize results of research on suburban middle-class children of Western European descent to inner-city, low-income, limited-English students from Central America or Southeast Asia? New York: Teachers College Press. In order to retain students, particularly middle-class white ones, school districts adopt a variety of expedients. Research whose direct aim is to aid educational practice, decision making, and policy in the near term also must meet scientific principles for rigor, but it has an action orientation. American Journal of Education 95 (May):393412. However bureaucratic schools are, they are also professional organizations because teachers make up such a large portion of the labor force and administrators are invariably former teachers. These different modes of influence can often yield great power if they are effectively meshed. ), order specific actions, referee conflicts among subordinates, and hire and supervise subordinates (Campbell et al. To set the stage for our discussion of the particulars of scientific education research, we reiterate our position that there are substantial similarities between inquiry in the physical and social worlds. Clearly, differences in wealth and degree of industrialization explain a major part of this variation. For example, in Germany, academic and vocational training is assigned to separate secondary schools, with nearly half of all students entering the latter (Brint 1998). Gallup's research finds that there are three requirements that must be present in each of the strategies. Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features? Human movement and change have, for example, affected efforts to study the effects of education vouchers on student achievement. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. The operation of public education at the elementary and secondary levels largely rests with the local school district. Education and schooling are not synonymous. The comprehensive nature of U.S. secondary schools is fairly atypical, for the usual pattern abroad is to have separate academic and vocational high schools. previous chapters that our principles of science are common across disciplines and fields and that the accumulation of knowledge progresses in roughly the same way. The United States has no national universities (except for the military academies and a few other specialized institutions). Continuous education, self-regulatory, and evidence-based approach can be seen as common characteristics for the performance standards on both community and national levels. Recent enthusiasm for "evidence-based" policy and practice in educationnow codified in the federal law that authorizes the bulk of elementary and secondary education programshave brought a new sense of urgency to understanding the ways in which the basic tenets of science manifest in the study of teaching, learning, and schooling. Education and Urban Society 28 (May):347365. Ravitch, Diane 1995 National Standards in AmericanEducation. These structural features have created an educational system in the United States that is wide open and characterized by very high enrollments and great student and institutional diversity. Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name. U.S. colleges are legally owned by a wide variety of bodies. These resources include funds, students, teachers, and jobs. Human resource management (HRM) is an organizational strategy and design of a formal system to ensure the effective use of employees' knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics to. New York: McGraw-Hill. Encyclopedia of Sociology. The dual purposes of education research suggest that there must be a balance of considerations of the factors of the validity of the knowledge claims, the credibility of the.

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