Stephen Anderson

The government of Chile mandated a system-wide reform in public school education in 2017. The reform calls for de-municipalization of the public school sector (345 municipal education departments under mayoral control) and the creation of 70 Servicios Locales de Educación Pública (SLEPs) between 2018 and 2025. The reform represents a largescale attempt to improve and save public education in Chile. This analysis is based on case studies of implementation of the first four SLEPs in the first year of the reform. Using Stake’s method for multiple case study analysis, the analysis explores how context influences the professional capacity of the SLEPs to provide professional assistance to schools. The study relates to research on the effectiveness of intermediate level agencies in school systems and on contextual influences on organizational innovation and capacity building. The analysis reveals that contextual factors shaping initial professional capacity of the SLEPs reinforced traditional practices of local education agency support to schools in three of the four cases. The differentiating factor centered on the actions of local agency leaders who responded to capacity gaps and lack of direction from government authorities as either constraints on change or as an opportunity for innovation.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the findings from a study of teacher professional learning networks in Kenya. Specific areas of focus included network participation, network activities, network leadership, and professional impact on network members and their schools.Design/methodology/approach: The research was grounded in the literature on education networks and teacher learning. The research employed a qualitative design and was implemented from September 2015–March 2017, including three two-week field trips to Kenya. Data included network records, 83 personal interviews, 4 focus group interviews, 19 observations of network meetings, and classroom observation of network and non-network teachers in 12 schools.Findings: Network participation had positive effects on teachers’ sense of professionalism and commitment to teaching and on their attitudes toward ongoing professional learning and improvement in student learning. Teachers also highlighted network benefits for learning to use new teaching strategies and materials, responding to student misbehavior and misunderstanding, and lesson preparation.Research limitations/implications: Research constraints did not permit longitudinal investigation of network activities and outcomes.Practical implications: The paper identifies challenges and potential focuses for strengthening the learning potential of network activities, network leadership, and the links between network activity and school improvement.Originality/value: Prior research has investigated education networks mostly in North American and similar high income settings. This paper highlights the benefits and challenges for networks as a strategy for continuous teacher development in a low income low resource capacity context.

This article examines whether centrally developed initiatives at the state level have an impact on how districts in the U.S. think about their role in providing direction and support for student learning, and also examines how districts view the strategies that state governments use to initiate change at the local level. Our focus is on smaller districts, a context that has been underexamined in recent investigations of the effects of the changing educational policy environment. Our framework draws on perceptions of power, networking, and loose coupling to examine four small districts. Our study suggests that there is considerable variation in how smaller districts react to state standards and accountability, but none of the four districts describe their situation in ways that suggest that they feel besieged or victimized by state standards. All four saw themselves as being able to harness state policy to local priorities. There were, however, differences between the districts' orientations to state policy that correspond to the larger political culture of the state in which they are located.

This study examined data use and conditions influencing data use by typical principals and teachers, as well as the relationship between data use and student performance. The analysis drew upon a multi-method investigation of leadership at the school, district, and state levels. The findings emphasize the leadership of principals in establishing data use purposes and expectations, opportunities, training, access to expertise, and follow-up actions. Principal and teacher use of data is strongly shaped by district leaders in the context of state accountability systems. Statistical evidence linking patterns of data use to achievement test results was weak, and limited to elementary schools.