A needs assessment of public health professionals: supporting the implementation of Ontario 2010 revised elementary health and physical education curriculum

Based on the Comprehensive School Health framework, Ontario's Foundations for a Healthy School (2009) outlines an integrated approach to school health promotion. In this approach the school, community and partners (including public health) are fully engaged With a common goal of youth health. With the recent introductions of the Ontario Public Health Standards (2009) and the revised elementary health and physical education curriculum (2010), the timing for a greater integration of public health with schools is ideal. A needs assessment was conducted to identify the perceived support required by public health professionals to implement the mandates of both policy documents in Ontario. Data was collected for the needs assessment through facilitated discussions at a provincial roundtable event, regional focus groups and individual interviews with public health professionals representing Ontario's 36 public health units. Findings suggest that public health professionals perceive that they require increased resources, greater communication, a clear vision of public health and a suitable understanding of the professional cultures in which they are surrounded in order to effectively support schools. This study expands upon these four categories and the corresponding seventeen themes that were uncovered during the research process.

Equitable and Inclusive Education for All? Public Funding for Denominational Schools in Ontario

Roman Catholic separate schools’ denominational right to receive public funding is a contentious issue in Ontario’s educational system. Ontario’s publicly funded denominational schools historically served a purpose at Confederation; however, in light of Ontario’s evolving demographics, publicly funding denominational schools today may no longer serve the needs of Ontario. The research problem in this study is expressed through growing problems reconciling Roman Catholic schools with diversity and current public views. Additionally, recent tensions, public views, and political consensus suggest it is time to revisit the existing policy. In order to understand both the history of denominational schools and the present context, this study conducted II policy analyses as its research design by completing 2 policy cycles. The first policy cycle determined that based upon Upper and Lower Canada’s pre-Confederation diversity, extending public funding to denominational schools at Confederation was an effective way of protecting minority rights; however, the analysis in the second policy cycle; which examined how equitable and inclusive denominational schools are today, concluded that the denominational school system no longer serves the diversity and equity needs of contemporary Ontario. Building on these findings, this study then explored two viable alternative educational arrangements for Ontario’s future educational system: publicly funding all faith-based schools, or publicly financing a one-school-system. To address the diversity issue in Ontario, transitioning toward publicly funding a one-school-system is found to be the most viable option.

L'analyse positive du financement public de l'education.

Rapport de recherche

Leadership ethics and the problem of Dirty Hands in the political economy of contemporary Africa

Cet article discute des problèmes de gouvernance et de corruption en Afrique dans le cadre d’un débat politique et philosophique large entre universalisme et relativisme, idéalisme et réalisme, ainsi que entre individualisme et communautarisme. Premièrement, je défends que l’approche réaliste de l’éthique politique et du leadership ne permet pas de différencier entre les éléments descriptifs et prescriptifs de la gouvernance et peut aisément être utilisée pour justifier « les Mains Sales » des dirigeants au nom de l’intérêt supérieur de la nation, même dans les cas où l’intérêt personnel est la seule force motivationnelle pour les actions qui sapent les codes sociaux et éthiques ordinaires. Deuxièmement, l’article montre la faillite de la confiance publique dans le gouvernement et la faiblesse de l’Etat renforce les politiques communautariennes sub-nationales qui tendent à être fondées sur l’ethnie et exclusive, et par conséquent, qui viole le cœur de l’éthique publique, c’est-à-dire l’impartialité. Finalement, l’article suggère que les principes d’éthique universels pour les services publiques soient introduits en complément plutôt qu’en concurrence avec les éthiques locales, socialement et culturellement limitée au privé. Cela requière, d’une part, que nous comprenions mieux la complexité historique, les circonstances économiques et sociales et les arrangements politiques transitionnels dans les pays africains. D’autre part, un nous devons investir dans une éducation éthique civique et professionnel réflexive qui adopte un point de vue nuancé entre le réalisme politique et l’idéalisme comme point de départ des réformes institutionnelles, aussi bien que modalité de changement des comportements à long terme.

School leadership in a contradictory world

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Emergent leadership : is e-leadership importance in the quality of virtual education?

Resumen basado en el de la publicaci??n

A framework for revitalisation of rural education and training systems in sub-Saharan Africa: Strengthening the human resource base for food security and sustainable livelihoods

Recent studies of the current state of rural education and training (RET) systems in sub-Saharan Africa have assessed their ability to provide for the learning needs essential for more knowledgeable and productive small-scale rural households. These are most necessary if the endemic causes of rural poverty (poor nutrition, lack of sustainable livelihoods, etc.) are to be overcome. A brief historical background and analysis of the major current constraints to improvement in the sector are discussed. Paramount among those factors leading to its present 'malaise' is the lack of a whole-systems perspective and the absence of any coherent policy framework in most countries. There is evidence of some recent innovations, both in the public sector and through the work of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society organisations (CSOs) and other private bodies. These provide hope of a new sense of direction that could lead towards meaningful 'revitalisation' of the sector. A suggested framework offers 10 key steps which, it is argued, could largely be achieved with modest internal resources and very little external support, provided that the necessary leadership and managerial capacities are in place. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Higher education engagement in leadership development: using autobiographical narrative to understand potential impact

The paper explores the lived experience of leadership learning and development in a single case study of an entrepreneur participating in a major leadership development programme for owner-managers of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs). Based on autobiographical research, it provides a rich contextual account of the nature and underlying influences of leadership learning throughout the life-course, and as a consequence of participation in the programme. Whilst the paper should interest scholars, policy makers, and those concerned with programme development, it may also resonate with entrepreneurs and help them make sense of their experience of leadership development.

Do inspections of schools influence head teachers’ leadership?

This paper seeks to describe and discuss the impact of inspections of schools in Sweden. It outlines the political context, based on New Public Management (NPM) theory, according to what role the Schools Inspectorate is supposed to play in order to govern and control. Attention is also devoted, referring an on-going case study, to how inspections influence head teachers and their leadership in their everyday work.   Reports from the Schools inspectorate are public. This forces both politicians and head teachers to take measures. In this case, the head teachers perceived that the inspection reports confirmed what they already knew, but it also gave them an alibi and a tool to push their teachers to take part in everyday school development work. During the first year after the inspection the head teachers mainly strived to adjust formal deficiencies in local steering documents. However, some of the deviations reported from the Schools inspectorate are regarding pedagogical problems that are complicated and difficult to handle. As interventions in many cases will show up much later the results are, for example as increased goal fulfilment, in this case, still an open question. Nevertheless, it seems obvious that the Schools Inspectorate must be seen as a result of the governing philosophy that denotes New Public Management NPM).

Public investment in basic education and economic growth

The main objective of this paper was to visualize the relation between government spending on basic education and the human capital accumulation process, observing the impacts of this spending on individual investments in higher education, and on economic growth. It is used an overlapping-generations model where the government tax the adult generation and spent it in basic education of the next generations. It was demonstrated that the magnitude of the marginal effect of government spending in basic education on growth crucially depends on public budget constrains. The paper explains why some countries with a lot of public investment in basic education growth at low rates. In that sense if a country has only a lot of public investment in basic education without investment in higher education it may growth at low rates because the taxation can cause distortions in the agents incentives to invest in higher education.

Three essays on education from the perspective of the economics of public setor

This work consists of three essays organized into chapters that seek to answer questions at first sight unrelated, but with one common denominator, which is the scarcity of public resources devoted to education, overall, especially in lower education. . The first chapter deals with the scarcity of resources devoted to education in a context of population aging. Two hypotheses were tested for Brazilian municipalities on the relationship between the aging of the population and educational expenditure. The first, already proven in the literature, is that there is an intergenerational conflict for resources and the increase of the share of elderly in the population reduces the educational expenditure. The second, proposed here for the first time, is that there should be reduction of competition for resources if there is a relationship of co-residence between young and old. The results indicated that an increase in the share of elderly reduces the educational expenditure per youth. But the results also illustrate that an increase in the share of elderly co-residing with youth (family arrangement more common in Latin American countries) raises the educational expenditure, which reflects a reduction of competition for resources between generations. The second chapter assesses the allocative efficiency of investments in Higher Education. Using the difference between first-year and last-year students’ scores from Enade aggregated by HEI as a product in the Stochastic Production Function, is possible to contribute with a new element in the literature aimed at estimating the production function of education. The results show that characteristics of institutions are the variables that best explain the performance of students, and that public institutions are more inefficient than the private ones. Finally, the third chapter presents evidence that the allocation of public resources in early childhood education is important for a better future school performance. In this chapter was calculated the effects of early childhood education on literacy scores of children attending the 2nd grade of elementary school. The results using OLS and propensity score matching show that students who started school at the ages to 5, 4, and 3 years had literacy scores between 12.22 and 19.54 points higher than the scores of those who began school at the ages 6 years or late. The results also suggest that the returns in terms of literacy scores diminish in relation to the number of years of early childhood education.

Using remote lab networks to provide support to public secondary school education level

The advantages of networking are widely known in many areas (from business to personal ones). One particular area where networks have also proved their benefits is education. Taking the secondary school education level into account, some successful cases can be found in literature. In this paper we describe a particular remote lab network supporting physical experiments accessible to students of institutions geographically separated. The network architecture and application examples of using some of the available remote experiments are illustrated in detail. ©2008 IEEE.

Inequality in education in Costa Rica: The gap between students in public and private schools. An analysis of the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

Includes bibliography.