Philip Riley

Education students and their teachers: comparing views on participative assessment practices

Beliefs about the validity and merit of self‐, peer‐ and group‐assessment practices are presented from 213 pre‐service primary teachers and 30 staff who teach them. Both groups were surveyed using comparable items. A subset of seven staff participated in semi‐structured interviews. Staff were far more supportive of peer‐ and self‐assessment practices than their students with both groups indicating modest support for group assignments. While pedagogical factors best represent the staff support for engaging students in assessment of their own and their peers’ work, several staff in interviews revealed that their high level of support for peer‐assessment was closely linked to a time‐saving factor. Peer‐assessment was more often used than self‐assessment while both practices were reported to have increased over the past two to three years. These findings are consistent with the reported increase in participative assessment practices in higher education generally. An important implication of this research is that in order to optimise the use of participative assessment, staff need to better prepare their students by modelling and communicating their reasons for adopting such practices.

The Impact of Teachers’ Aggressive Management Techniques on Students’ Attitudes to Schoolwork

ABSTRACT Previous studies have shown that teachers’ aggressive classroom management impacts negatively on students. The authors compared student reaction to teachers’ use of aggressive management techniques in Australia, China, and Israel. Reactions included distraction negativity toward teachers and perceptions that teachers’ responses were unjustified, yet the perception of aggression as justified (or not) only minimally affected the degree of students’ distraction and negativity toward the teacher. Yelling in anger and sarcasm appeared less problematic in Israel and somewhat less so in China; in Australia, no difference in potential impact between different forms of aggression was evident. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Early career teacher attrition: new thoughts on an intractable problem

Early career exit from teaching has reached epidemic proportions and appears intractable. Previous attempts to find solutions are yet to make much of an inroad. The aim of the research was to discover what nine beginning teachers required to remain in the classroom, by adopting a phenomenological approach. The authors identified participants’ common experiences through semi-structured interviews and unprompted written narratives. Data were examined for trustworthiness by reference to the literature. Key words from the narratives were synonyms, or broadly synonymous with, optimism, arrested development or disillusionment. The process of leaving involved entry, characterised by optimism; early experiences, characterised by arrested development; pre-exit, characterised by disillusionment; and exit.

Investigating teachers’ explanations for aggressive classroom discipline strategies in China and Australia

Student misbehaviour can provoke aggressive teacher management (e.g. yelling in anger), adversely effecting students’ learning and attitudes toward school. To investigate this phenomenon, data were obtained from 75 Chinese (typically Eastern) and 192 Victorian (typically Western) secondary teachers who self-reported aggressive management. Results: 49% of Chinese and 59% of Australian teachers adopt aggressive behaviours rarely to sometimes; and, 9% of Chinese and 13% of Australian teachers sometimes or more frequently. The teachers were assessed for levels of support for Attribution, Attachment or Efficacy theory as explanations. The only significant differences were found for Attachment theory with Chinese teachers reporting significantly more support. National setting explained 29% of the variance independent of gender, levels of aggression and years of experience.

Leading Professional Learning in Schools: Emotion in Action.

School leadership and teacher professional development are two well‐defined fields of research within the education literature, yet there is relatively little research that has examined the leadership of teachers’ professional development and learning. The study reported in this paper seeks to understand the experience of teachers who have responsibility for leading professional learning in their schools. The first part of the paper describes the Leading Professional Learning program funded by the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and designed by Monash University. The program aimed to build teachers’ capacity to lead professional learning within their school settings. The program involved a series of workshops for 70 teachers over a period of six months; the design and implementation of school‐based Professional Learning Projects; and, the writing of cases that reflected program participants’ experience of leading professional learning in their school and their own learning about leadership and professional learning. The second part of the paper analyses the cases written by program participants in order to describe and account for key dimensions of school‐based leadership of professional learning. The analysis reveals important facets of the relational and emotional dimensions of leading professional learning in schools. The identification of these dimensions provides important insights for understanding the complexity of teacher‐led professional learning, as well as for the design of policy and practice pertaining to leading professional learning.

Emotional demands, emotional labour and occupational outcomes in school principals Modelling the relationships

Most research into emotional labour is focussed on front-line service staff and health professionals, in short-term interactions. Little exists exploring the emotional labour involved in repeated on-going interactions by educational leaders with key stakeholders. This study explored the relationships between emotional demands, three emotional labour facets, burnout, wellbeing and job satisfaction in 1320 full-time school principals. Principals displayed significantly higher scores on emotional demands at work, burnout and job satisfaction, and significantly lower wellbeing scores than the general population. Structural equation modelling revealed that emotional demands predicted the elevated use of all emotional labour strategies. Surface Acting-Hiding emotions had an inverse relationship with burnout, wellbeing and job satisfaction. Surface Acting-Faking emotions had an inverse relationship with job satisfaction. Deep Acting demonstrated no significant associations with outcome variables. The findings of this study extend the current literature on the effects of emotional labour. The study also extends understanding about the separate effects of the facets of emotional labour, which will aid in the development of interventions to reduce high levels of burnout reported by educational leaders.

Exploring the Nature of Teachers’ Professional Learning

In recent times, the distinction between traditional Professional Development (PD) and Professional Learning (PL) is becoming increasingly apparent. The shift associated with the intent and the language between PD and PL is evident in the report by Wei et al. (2009). The distinction between PD and PL is also captured by Mockler (2005) who characterized PD as something delivered in a ‘spray-on’ manner in which teachers attend a ‘PD day’ then return to their schools with the expectation that they will implement the workshop ideas in their own practice. What is clear is that the professional learning of teachers has become increasingly recognised as important in enhancing not only the quality of teaching in schools but also for developing the teaching profession more generally (Berry, Clemans, & Kostogriz, 2007). PL approaches tend to emphasize practices that are: sustained over time; responsive to the specifics of school and classroom contexts; underpinned by research and practice-based evidence; and, supported by professional learning communities and collaboration (Hayes, Mills, Christie, & Lingard, 2006; Hoban, 2002). In short, PD could be viewed as doing things to teachers so that they apply them in their practice while PL is about working with teachers to help them develop their skills, knowledge and abilities in ways that are responsive to their (pedagogical) needs, issues and concerns.

Attachment theory, teacher motivation & pastoral care: a challenge for teachers and academics

The hypothesis that an unconscious need for a corrective emotional experience (CEE) drives the choice to care for others was investigated via attachment style and feelings of anger at students and staff. Data were obtained from 750 pre-service and experienced teachers, including 179 principals, who completed one of two versions of the Experiences in Close Relationships questionnaire and reported anger toward students and staff. Significant differences between subgroups in relation to Attachment and Anger were found. Pre-service teachers’ reported the highest levels of attachment insecurity, Principals the lowest. Only secondary teachers reported Anger at Staff and higher Anger at Students frequencies. If initial motivation to teach is predicted by insecure attachment, teacher preparation courses should take this into account.

The Emotional Labour of the Aspirant Leader: Traversing School Politics

The emotions of the aspirant leader are underexplored. In this chapter, we detail how aspirants experience the transition from teacher to leader and report on the kinds of emotional labour associated with the transition. This was examined during events of high emotional arousal for 130 school aspirants: when they felt professionally wounded, either by colleagues, leaders, parents or students. During a time of wounding, emotional work and emotional labour hinged on the dissonance between ‘display rules’ of the school and what aspirants’ actually felt. Exploring the wounding stories revealed common display rules, which were often broken. Breaking these rules always had consequences and emotional correlates. The most prevalent form of emotional labour was surface acting. The final discovery was the resilience of the aspirants as they recovered. Invariably, aspirants progressed through an emotion cycle of Regrouping, Recovery and Resolution. The quality of collegial relationships was the key to resolving the woundings.

Effects of support on stress and burnout in school principals

Abstract Background: More than ever before, school principals are dealing with stress and burnout, resulting from increasing role demands and decreasing decision latitude and autonomy. Following the Demand–Support–Constraints model, reasons for stress and burnout can be found in the lack of social support in the environment. Purpose: This longitudinal study investigates whether changes in social support from colleagues, supervisors and/or the broader community affect levels of principal stress and burnout. Sample: Approximately 26% of Australia’s school principals took part (N = 3572): primary (n = 2660) and secondary (n = 912) spread across all Australian states and territories. Age ranged between 46 and 55 years, and mean leadership experience was 12 years. Design and methods: Since stress and burnout are psychological phenomena that develop over time, a longitudinal approach was adopted. Data were collected across four waves, spread over four years, from 2011 to 2014. Results: It was found that social support predicts decreased stress and in turn burnout in school principals, however differences were found according to the type of social support. The data provide strong evidence for a positive effect of stress on burnout (e.g. the more stress at time 2, the more burnout in principals at time 3) and partial support for indirect negative effects of social support on burnout (e.g. the more support from colleagues at time 2, the less burnout in principals at time 3). However, we also found two instances of positive effects of social support from the broader community on burnout. This suggests that the more support principals receive from the broader community, the more likely they are to show burnout symptoms. This might be explained as the ‘the downside of empathy’, where principals who are strongly supported by their community might also feel more connected to that community. When their community is struggling, they are probably struggling as well. Conclusions: The findings highlight the positive impact the wider school community can play in providing supplementary professional support to the principal. Unbundling or repackaging the job responsibilities with an administrative team that shares the leadership of the school, could be part of the solution.