In a context where schools are held more and more accountable for the education they provide, data-based decision making has become increasingly important. This book brings together scholars from several countries to examine data-based decision making. Data-based decision making in this book refers to making decisions based on a broad range of evidence, such as scores on students’ assessments, classroom observations etc. This book supports policy-makers, people working with schools, researchers and school leaders and teachers in the use of data, by bringing together the current research conducted on data use across multiple countries into a single volume. Some of these studies are ‘best practice’ studies, where effective data use has led to improvements in student learning. Others provide insight into challenges in both policy and practice environments. Each of them draws on research and literature in the field.

Social organization varies greatly from school to school, and this variation fosters different, though equally valid, conceptions of teaching. In this book, the author presents problems and successes that recur in 78 diverse elementary schools.

This book shows how principals can foster collegiality, provide mentorship, offer rewards, and otherwise create conditions so that teachers will be internally motivated.

"Gathering data and using it to inform instruction is a requirement for many schools, yet educators are not necessarily formally trained in how to do it. This book helps bridge the gap between classroom practice and the principles of educational psychology. Teachers will find cutting-edge advances in research and theory on human learning and teaching in an easily understood and transferable format. The text's integrated model shows teachers, school leaders, and district administrators how to establish a data culture and transform quantitative and qualitative data into actionable knowledge based on: assessment; statistics; instructional and differentiated psychology; classroom management."--Publisher's description.

James Spillane, the leading expert in Distributed Leadership, shows how leadership happens in everyday practices in schools, through formal routines and informal interactions. He examines the distribution of leadership among administrators, specialists, and teachers in the school, and explains the ways in which leadership practice is stretched over leaders, followers, and aspects of the situation, including routines and tools of various sorts in the organization such as memos, scheduling procedures, and evaluation protocols. This book is a volume in the Jossey-Bass Leadership Library in Education—a series designed to meet the demand for new ideas and insights about leadership in schools.

It’s Our School, It’s Our Time outlines a whole-school approach to teacher–pupil collaboration, illustrating how aspects of social inequality can be addressed by involvement in the school community and active participation in decision-making from an early age. The book presents insights into the psychological processes that are at work when pupils and teachers share decision-making, and how this can harness and increase motivation for teachers and their pupils. Combining both theory and examples of practice, this book provides clarity about the impact of collaborative decision-making and how it can help pupils to take ownership of their classrooms and promote greater cooperation and productivity. This book: draws on 25 stories from Dr Rowe’s own study and experiences as an educational psychologist, and the accounts of other educators and researchers. shows how teachers and school leaders have overcome some common hurdles that those in conventional schools might encounter. provides research-evidence and practical examples from real-life classrooms that will inspire teachers, teaching assistants and school leaders. Written by a highly experienced educational psychologist, this companion guide will help teachers, head teachers, teacher educators and student teachers to transform achievement, behaviour and motivation through greater collaboration with their pupils.

This book is about the practice of decision making by school principals and about ways to improve this practice by capitalizing on evaluation dimensions. Much has been written on decision making but surprisingly little on decision making in the school principalship. Much has been also written on evaluation as well as on evaluation and decision making, but not much has been written on evaluation in decision making, especially decision making in the principalship. This book presents two messages. One is that decision making in the principalship can be studied and improved and not only talked about in abstract terms. The other message is that evaluation can contribute to the understanding of decision making in the principalship and to the improvement of its practice. In this book we call for the conception of an evaluation-minded principal, a principal who has a wide perspective on the nature of evaluation and its potential benefits, a principal who is also inclined to use evaluation perceptions and techniques as part of his/her decision-making process. This book was conceived in 1985 with the idea to combine thoughts about educational administration with thoughts about educational evaluation. Studies of decision making in the principalship had already been on their way. We decided to await the findings, and in the meantime we wrote a first conceptual version of evaluation in decision making. As the studies were completed we wrote a first empirical version of same.