Teachers at the Table is based on the simple premise that policy matters in education and teachers matter to policy. Policy reflects and shapes society's beliefs about schools, teachers, children, learning, and society, as well as the power structures embedded in our communities and decision-making processes. If policy is a public response to perceived social problems, it matters who is at the table when the problems are defined, the agendas set, and the policy itself designed. Although teachers may be central to the implementation of education policy, they are marginal to the design of it, especially around issues of teaching and learning. In short, teachers are not at the table. This is important because the lack of teacher voice in educational policymaking disconnects the goals and design of education policy from the actual lived challenges of implementing it. This book draws on a qualitative case study with both practicing and pre-service teachers involved in a policy advocacy professional development program. Findings from the study illustrate norms and routines (the nature of teachers' work, hierarchy of authority and professional status) that act as barriers to teacher involvement in policy creation. The book then follows with clear examples of teacher "pushback" against these same norms and details the conditions under which teachers can interact in authentic ways with decision making structures in schools and policy. Teachers at the Table is a unique examination into these dynamics, informing the critical efforts of teacher leaders to participate in educational policy creation, and helps us to understand, and more importantly, act upon the structures around teachers to better support their involvement in policymaking - with the ultimate goal of producing better educational policy that is more relevant and responsive to the youth, educators, families, and communities it serves.

Key Features Collects the ideas underpinning the AHP method and discusses them together with many improvements and extensions present in the literature. As a result, the reader will receive a much more complete picture of the method. Aimed at theorists and advanced practitioners from a wide range of scientific fields, including the social, management, and technical sciences Highlights the intuitive assumptions underlying the mathematical methods that make up AHP and the pairwise comparisons method Provides software code for readers who wish to practise AHP analysis using Wolfram Language.

"Improving Learning Environments" provides the first systematic comparative cross-national study of school disciplinary climates. In this volume, leading international social science researchers explore nine national case studies to identify the institutional determinants of variation in school discipline, the possible links between school environments and student achievement, as well as the implications of these findings for understanding social inequality.
As the book demonstrates, a better understanding of school discipline is essential to the formation of effective educational policies. Ultimately, to improve a school's ability to contribute to youth socialization and student internalization of positive social norms and values, any changes in school discipline must not only be responsive to behavior problems but should also work to enhance the legitimacy and moral authority of school actors.

From lesson planning to instructional practice to classroom management, teachers must make choices constantly throughout their day. Sometimes these decisions are easy, but there are some decisions that are very difficult. As in other professions, challenging choices arise in education which could be detrimental to one's teaching career. Therefore, thoughtful decision making must be part of every educator's daily experience-yet how can current and future teachers be equipped to make the best decisions in their fast-paced profession? In Tough Choices for Teachers: Ethical Case Studies from Today's Schools and Classrooms, Robert Infantino and Rebecca Wilke help teachers and those working with educators to acquire practical skills to enhance their ethical decision-making processes. By utilizing case studies based on real scenarios the authors have encountered, readers will be able to work through numerous ethical dilemmas that will assist them in honing their approaches to current educational challenges. Who can benefit from reading Tough Choices for Teachers? Teachers-Preservice, New, and Experienced District Leaders Professional Development Providers Professors of Education Student Teacher Supervisors Student Teaching Seminar Facilitators Department Chairs Cooperating Teachers Mentors of Teachers Thinking through the ethical situations described in each chapter will assist teachers in not only improving their own decision making but also in learning specific strategies to pass on to students in today's schools and classrooms.

From lesson planning to instructional practice to classroom management, teachers must make choices constantly throughout their day. Sometimes these decisions are easy, but there are some decisions that are very difficult. As in other professions, challenging choices arise in education which could be detrimental to one's teaching career. Therefore, thoughtful decision making must be part of every educator's daily experience-yet how can current and future teachers be equipped to make the best decisions in their fast-paced profession? In Tough Choices for Teachers: Ethical Case Studies from Today's Schools and Classrooms, Robert Infantino and Rebecca Wilke help teachers and those working with educators to acquire practical skills to enhance their ethical decision-making processes. By utilizing case studies based on real scenarios the authors have encountered, readers will be able to work through numerous ethical dilemmas that will assist them in honing their approaches to current educational challenges. Who can benefit from reading Tough Choices for Teachers? Teachers-Preservice, New, and Experienced District Leaders Professional Development Providers Professors of Education Student Teacher Supervisors Student Teaching Seminar Facilitators Department Chairs Cooperating Teachers Mentors of Teachers Thinking through the ethical situations described in each chapter will assist teachers in not only improving their own decision making but also in learning specific strategies to pass on to students in today's schools and classrooms.

Distributed decision making (DDM) has become of increasing importance in quantitative decision analysis. In applications like supply chain management, service operations, or managerial accounting, DDM has led to a paradigm shift. The book provides a unified approach to such seemingly diverse fields as multi-level stochastic programming, hierarchical production planning, principal agent theory, negotiations or contract theory. Different settings like multi-level one-person decision problems, multi-person antagonistic planning, and leadership situations are covered. Numerous examples and real-life planning cases illustrate the concepts. The new edition has been considerably expanded by additional chapters on supply chain management, service operations and multi-agent systems.

Engaging Resistance: How Ordinary People Successfully Champion Change offers an empirically based explanation that expands our understanding about the nature of resistance to organizational change and the effects of champion behavior. The text presents a new model describing how resistance occurs over time and details what change proponents can do throughout three engagement periods to effectively work with hesitant colleagues. The book's findings are illuminated by examples of six different resistance cases, embedded in the transformation sagas of two real-world organizations. A fundamental premise of this work is that resistance should not be something to avoid or squash as people work to change their organizations. In fact, resistance can be viewed as a natural, healthy part of an organic process. When engaged properly, resisters can help to improve change efforts and strengthen an organization's overall transformation.

Recent legal developments challenge how valid the concept of mental capacity is in determining whether individuals with impairments can make decisions about their care and treatment. Kong defends a concept of mental capacity but argues that such assessments must consider how relationships and dialogue can enable or disable the decision-making abilities of these individuals. This is thoroughly investigated using an interdisciplinary approach that combines philosophy and legal analysis of the law in England and Wales, the European Court of Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. By exploring key concepts underlying mental capacity, the investigation concludes that both primary relationships and capacity assessments themselves must display key competencies to ensure that autonomy skills are promoted and encouraged. This ultimately provides scope for justifiable interventions into disabling relationships and articulates the dialogical practices that help better situate, interpret, and understand the choices and actions of individuals with impairments.

All children deserve the opportunity to practice freedom of thought, voice, and movement in school. Giving students the opportunity to practice freedom--to teach them how to be autonomous, responsible, cooperative and critically literate--should be done in communities and schools across the country, and this book shows how. The key ability of the human brain that cannot be digitized or mechanized is its ability to interpret-that is, to cope with the intentions of another, to understand what was said and what was meant. Humans have the ability to work together as a team toward a common goal (i.e. cooperate), to be altruistic and make sacrifices to help others, to build trust, and to feel empathy or sympathy-and robots do not. Developing and using these interpretive and cooperative skills is essential to having a nation of thoughtful citizens who are capable of seeing themselves as solutions to the problems and issues we face. Empowered Students: Educating Flexible Minds for a Flexible Future is a theory-to-practice story of how students at a segregated and failing New York City high school were released from years of oppressive schooling practices and learned how to practice freedom, told through the voices and the people who built it: the school leaders, teachers and students.

There's no mystery in turning around low-performing or failing schools, but there are also no recipes. In Turnaround Principals for Underperforming Schools Rosemary Papa and Fenwick English identify the essential ingredients for success. The causes of failure are complex and interactive. Schools are not inert structures but living organisms. Putting schools back together is a collaborative venture. It takes a team to turn around a school, but it all begins with the leadership. The key to success rests in a school leader who has a fundamental understanding of the dynamics of schooling, human motivation, and possesses the resiliency and energy to engage in altering the internal landscape of an unsuccessful school. Two veteran educators have put together a work based on their research and experience for the past half-century. They pull no punches. The challenge is not only to turn low-performing or failing schools around, but to enable them to become more socially just places for all students.

Educational leaders must be prepared to lead during crisis. Leadership has been challenged with multiple crisis in recent years, including issues of school safety, school shootings, medical crises such as SARs, HINI, and the ongoing pandemic. While each of these situations has resulted in multiple plans of actions, none has impacted our society as the current pandemic (COVID19) has, in terms of immediacy of needs and actions. School and district leaders are in charge of managing many stakeholders, circumstances and have the authority and responsibility to lead with ethical behavior (Al Habusi, Ismail & Omar, 2018). Integrity, resilience, fairness help guide the components of ethical leadership that leaders need to model, communicate, and use as a framework for implementing and sustaining change in organizations (Hegarty & Moccia, 2018). This book is targeted for leaders of educational systems, school buildings and those leaders of organizations that are connected in some way to educational systems and schools at all levels. The educational issues raised by the COVID pandemic, began in March 2020. The leadership needs identified throughout this crisis exemplifies many of the issues of crisis management, that is applicable to other issues, such as school violence, school safety, accidents and deaths that occur in every district.

Teachers should have a leading role in what happens in their classrooms.

There's no mystery in turning around low-performing or failing schools, but there are also no recipes. In Turnaround Principals for Underperforming Schools Rosemary Papa and Fenwick English identify the essential ingredients for success. The causes of failure are complex and interactive. Schools are not inert structures but living organisms. Putting schools back together is a collaborative venture. It takes a team to turn around a school, but it all begins with the leadership. The key to success rests in a school leader who has a fundamental understanding of the dynamics of schooling, human motivation, and possesses the resiliency and energy to engage in altering the internal landscape of an unsuccessful school. Two veteran educators have put together a work based on their research and experience for the past half-century. They pull no punches. The challenge is not only to turn low-performing or failing schools around, but to enable them to become more socially just places for all students.

All children deserve the opportunity to practice freedom of thought, voice, and movement in school. Giving students the opportunity to practice freedom--to teach them how to be autonomous, responsible, cooperative and critically literate--should be done in communities and schools across the country, and this book shows how. The key ability of the human brain that cannot be digitized or mechanized is its ability to interpret-that is, to cope with the intentions of another, to understand what was said and what was meant. Humans have the ability to work together as a team toward a common goal (i.e. cooperate), to be altruistic and make sacrifices to help others, to build trust, and to feel empathy or sympathy-and robots do not. Developing and using these interpretive and cooperative skills is essential to having a nation of thoughtful citizens who are capable of seeing themselves as solutions to the problems and issues we face. Empowered Students: Educating Flexible Minds for a Flexible Future is a theory-to-practice story of how students at a segregated and failing New York City high school were released from years of oppressive schooling practices and learned how to practice freedom, told through the voices and the people who built it: the school leaders, teachers and students.

Drawing on his personal experience as a modern day school administrator, John M. Brucato believes that there is a pathway to survival, success, and enjoyment in the role of a school leader that keeps the focus on meeting the needs of young people, while nurturing relationship with all stakeholders responsible for bringing this to fruition. Creating a Learning Environment addresses the need to: Assess the culture that defines a school's environment, Reflect on the variables which can improve/degrade the culture, Determine what practices to employ in order to make necessary improvement. By using the practical examples related to the everyday dynamics of school business, educational leaders working in large or small schools can collectively identify with the situations, scenarios, and processes described. This book should be of interest to all educators who assume or aspire to leadership roles and administrative positions.

Parents, lawmakers, supervisors, and unions are among the many constituencies that demand influence, if not control, of the educational process. How does the school administrator balance all the needs of the various groups and still remain true to the ultimate, though most powerless constituency: the students? Through case studies and anecdotes based on real-life experiences, the authors share the ups and downs of the educational world, seeking to find the balance that is most effective in ensuring success. School Leadership: Case Studies Solving School Problems details decision making and actions taken that dramatically affect the success of students and schools as well as school systems. This second edition continues and improves on the first edition with a series of new and timely school leadership case studies that require the reader to reflect on the variety of issues that cross the principal's desk every day. The reader will find the case studies and anecdotes highly absorbing. They are so real, fraught with complexity, and will require the reader to use a sophisticated decision-making process.

A public relations director and a principal have mostly the same goals in helping students achieve at high levels. While each might go about impacting student learning in different ways, they both work to make education better. In Having an Impact on Learning, the husband and wife team of Matt and Kelly Wachel, help show how both the principal and the public relations director can propel education forward. Whether it's through perception, teaching and learning, communication, social media, events, student achievement, or working with the community, principals and public relations professionals have to understand their roles in contributing to each of those areas. While the topics of conversation between these two professions sometimes cause disagreement, in the end, the principal and the public relations professional agree that their two views must ultimately mesh to help do what's best for kids. In this book, get insight into these areas of education and learn about ways principals and public relations directors can work in harmony. School leaders and communicators have to be on the same page when it comes to telling the story of education. We are all storytellers and we have to be able to tell the story together.

Teachers should have a leading role in what happens in their classrooms.

Educational leaders must be prepared to lead during crisis. Leadership has been challenged with multiple crisis in recent years, including issues of school safety, school shootings, medical crises such as SARs, HINI, and the ongoing pandemic. While each of these situations has resulted in multiple plans of actions, none has impacted our society as the current pandemic (COVID19) has, in terms of immediacy of needs and actions. School and district leaders are in charge of managing many stakeholders, circumstances and have the authority and responsibility to lead with ethical behavior (Al Habusi, Ismail & Omar, 2018). Integrity, resilience, fairness help guide the components of ethical leadership that leaders need to model, communicate, and use as a framework for implementing and sustaining change in organizations (Hegarty & Moccia, 2018). This book is targeted for leaders of educational systems, school buildings and those leaders of organizations that are connected in some way to educational systems and schools at all levels. The educational issues raised by the COVID pandemic, began in March 2020. The leadership needs identified throughout this crisis exemplifies many of the issues of crisis management, that is applicable to other issues, such as school violence, school safety, accidents and deaths that occur in every district.

At no time in the history of public education has there been such a dramatic discrepancy between accelerated standards and expectations and adequate funding for our schools. Much has been written about how to achieve new expectations in the realm of student achievement and the need for accountability and the restructuring of how education dollars are spent. Unfortunately, most of the input regarding the need for "belt-tightening" is unaccompanied by tangible solutions or suggestions and results only in hollow rhetoric or convenient political sound bytes. This journey into meaningful avenues for cost-savings in public education is clearly an exception. Any school official who reads this book will find a number of viable possibilities for saving money. The authors offer time-tested, practical ideas, which are proven to work. Features cost-saving tips for: * District and school-level administration * Curriculum, instruction, vocational and special education, student services, and media * Building and grounds, maintenance, pupil transportation, and food services * Community colleges The authors briefly review the literature for: * Managing decline in resources and discuss the problem of declining funds for schools and solution strategies * Generating alternative revenue sources in education Samples of strategic plans are also included. For educational administrators, state governors and senators, school boards, and school business officials.

Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) includes methods and tools for modeling and solving complex problems. MCDM has become popular in the production and service sectors to improve the quality of service, reduce costs, and make people more prosperous. This book illustrates applications through case studies focused on disaster management. With a presentation of both Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) and Multi-Objective Decision-Making (MODM) models, this is the first book to merge these methods and tools with disaster management. This book raises awareness for society and decision-makers on how to measure readiness and what necessary preventive measures need to be taken. It offers models and case studies that can be easily adapted to solve complex problems and find solutions in other fields. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis: Case Studies in Disaster Management will offer new insights to researchers working in the areas of industrial engineering, systems engineering, healthcare systems, operations research, mathematics, business, computer science, and disaster management, and, hopefully, the book will also stimulate further work in MCDM.

What to Expect and How to Respond offers a solutions oriented glimpse into life in academia from the vantage point of groups including students, faculty and administrators. This interdisciplinary anthology provides insight into the profession for graduate students planning on becoming academics; brings to the attention of junior faculty potential tenure and promotion pitfalls as well as strategies to successfully overcome potential obstacles; offers senior faculty strategies to improve collegiality and the workplace environment; and provides administrators with tools to proactively and effectively contend with sensitive managerial matters. This interdisciplinary anthology is useful for undergraduate and graduate students of any discipline designed to prepare them for a career in academia whether as staff, faculty or an administrator. Moreover, this volume is a fine resource for those already in academia who may be experiencing any one or number of specific challenges highlighted from which useful survival strategies could be garnered.

This book offers 50 easy-to-read strategies for managing conflicts in your school involving students, parents, and teachers. Individually, these strategies provide specific insights into conflict resolution, reduction, and management. As a whole, the 50 strategies provide a comprehensive method to lead constructive change in your school. With quotes, examples, and reflection questions, this book offers ideas that help you lead with confidence.

This book examines the idea of educational accountability in higher education, which has become a new secular gospel. But do accountability policies actually make colleges better? What if educational accountability tools don't actually measure what they're supposed to? What if accountability data isn't valid, or worse, what if it's meaningless? What if administrators don't know how to use accountability tools or correctly analyze the problematic data these tools produce? What if we can't measure, let alone accurately assess, what matters most with teaching or student learning. What if students don't learn much in college? What if higher education was never designed to produce student learning? What if college doesn't help most students, either personally or economically? What if higher education isn't meritocratic, actually exacerbates inequality, and makes the lives of disadvantaged students even worse? This book will answer these questions with a wide, interdisciplinary range of the latest scientific research.