A case study of the Tatweer school system in Saudi Arabia: the perceptions of leaders and teachers

School reform is a major concern in many countries that seek to improve their educational systems and enhance their performances. In consequence, many global schemes, theories, studies, attempts, and programmes have been introduced to promote education in recent years. Saudi Arabia is one of these countries that implemented educational change by introducing many initiatives. The Tatweer Programme is one of these initiatives and is considered as a major recent reform. The main purpose of this study is to investigate this reform in depth by examining the perceptions and experiences of the Tatweer leaders and teachers to find out which extent they have been enabled to be innovative, and to examine the types of leadership and decision-making that have been undertaken by such schools. This study adopted a qualitative case study that employed interviews, focus groups and documentary analysis. The design of the study has been divided into two phases; the first phase was the feasibility study and the second phase was the main study. The research sample of the feasibility study was head teachers, educational experts and Tatweer Unit’s members. The sample of the main study was three Tatweer schools, Tatweer Unit members and one official of Tatweer Project in Riyadh. The findings of this study identified the level of autonomy in managing the school; the Tatweer schools’ system is semi-autonomous when it comes to the internal management, but it lacks autonomy when it comes to staff appointment, student assessment, and curriculum development. In addition, the managerial work has been distributed through teams and members; the Excellence Team plays a critical role in school effectiveness leading an efficient change. Moreover, Professional Learning Communities have been used to enhance the work within Tatweer schools. Finally the findings show that there have been major shifts in the Tatweer schools’ system; the shifting from centralisation to semi-decentralisation; from the culture of the individual to the culture of community; from the traditional school to one focused on self-evaluation and planning; from management to leadership; and from an isolated school being open to society. These shifts have impacted positively on the attitudes of students, parents and staff.

The political economy of bovine tuberculosis in Great Britain

A brief history of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) and its control in Great Britain is presented. Numerous diverse policies to control the disease in man, cattle and wildlife have been pursued over the last 100 years and many millions of pounds have been spent. After notable success in reducing the incidence and prevalence of bTB in cattle in GB from the 1950s to the mid-1980s, the number of cattle slaughtered has increased with increased geographical spread continually since that time with a high point of bTB incidence in 2008. This increase appeared to coincide with changing policy regarding the control of the disease in badgers with a more humane approach adopted and with strengthened protection for badgers through legislation. Indeed, much controversy has been involved in the debate on the role of badgers in disease transmission to cattle and the need for their control as vectors of the disease with various commissioned research projects, trials, public consultations and media attention. The findings of two social science investigations presented as examples showed that citizens generally believed that bTB in cattle is an important issue that needs to be tackled but objected to badgers being killed, whilst cattle farmers were willing to pay around £17/animal/year for a bTB cattle vaccine. It is noted that successes regarding the control of bTB in other countries have combined both cattle and wildlife controls and had strong involvement from industry working with government.

Harold Pinter: A Night Out : A Study in the Political ConnotationsAnd the Abuse of Power

Harold Pinter’s A Night Out is a significant but rarely produced piece of drama. Therefore, there is very little criticism to support or contradict my argument. The reason why I chose to do my essay on this particular play is to open doors for academic research and to try and make it an equal to its sister plays. I will raise questions and topics to prove the play is worth the readers’ time and effort and that A Night Out is a sharp piece of political theatre. Although at first glance it is a simple enough story, a straightforward tale of the nasty consequences of motherly love when it is pushed to the limit, on deeper inspection, a more far reaching and complex analysis of the abuse of power can be observed. The play offers a variety of themes, including: interpersonal power struggles, failed attempts at communication, antagonistic relationships, the threat of impending or past violence, the struggle for survival or identity, domination and submission, politics, lies and verbal, physical, psychological and sexual abuse. The prevailing theme in the play is the abuse of power: powerful parties oppressing weaker ones, and the results of the oppressed party looking for a vent in someone even weaker than themselves.

A comparative study of immigrants’ political participation in Sweden and the Netherlands

This study deals with immigrants’ political participation in Sweden and the Netherlands. Scholars have recognized low level of political participation of immigrants in Sweden compared to the Netherlands. The main goal of this study is to analyze the institutional influence, mainly from political parties over immigrants’ motivation for active electoral participation. The modified actor-context model uses here as the main theoretical framework. In addition, social capital theory employs to analyze immigrants’ voluntary organizational membership. This study confirms that, Swedish immigrants have the lower participation rate in the political sphere, at lest to a certain extent, than its counterparts the Dutch immigrants. This study also confirms the argument that contextual factors can influence actor’s motivations in integration-oriented action, and similarly it validates the necessity of enlargement of the actor-context model.

Manipulation in Newspaper Articles : A Political Discourse Analysis of Lexical Choice and Manipulation in Japanese Newspaper Crisis Reporting in the case of North Korea

This paper analyzes some forms of linguistic manipulation in Japanese in newspapers when reporting on North Korea and its nuclear tests. The focus lies on lexical ambiguity in headlines and journalist’s voices in the body of the articles, that results in manipulation of the minds of the readers. The study is based on a corpus of nine articles from two of Japan’s largest newspapers Yomiuri Online and Asahi Shimbun Digital. The linguistic phenomenon that contribute to create manipulation are divided into Short Term Memory impact or Long Term Memory impact and examples will be discussed under each of the categories.The main results of the study are that headlines in Japanese newspapers do not make use of an ambiguous, double grounded structure. However, the articles are filled with explicit and implied attitudes as well as attributed material from people of a high social status, which suggests that manipulation of the long term memory is a tool used in Japanese media.

Demokrati eller presidentdiktatur? : Konstitutionella vägval i postkommunistiska länder

While authoritarian presidents prevail under heavily president-oriented constitutions throughout the post-Soviet region, democracy along parliamentary lines triumphs in Central Europe. This article discusses the constitutional pattern among the post-communist countries on the basis of two general questions: First, how can we explain why strong presidential constitutions dominate throughout the post-Soviet region whereas constrained presidencies and governments anchored in parliament have become the prevailing option in Central Europe? Second, and interlinked with the first question, why have so many post-communist countries (in the post-Soviet region as well as in Central Europe) chosen neither parliamentarism nor presidentialism, but instead semi-presidential arrangements whereby a directly elected president is provided with considerable powers and coexists with a prime minister? The analysis indicates that both historical-institutional and actor-oriented factors are relevant here. Key factors have been regime transition, pre-communist era constitutions and leaders, as well as short-term economic and political considerations. With differing strengths and in partly different ways, these factors seem to have affected the actors’ preferences and final constitutional compromises.

The use of the pronouns we, us, and our in political speeches : A comparative study of the inaugural addresses of Bush and Obama

Pronouns carry considerable importance in language. The speaker’s identity and connection to the audience emerges through the consistent use of certain pronouns (De Fina, 1995). This research is about the use of we, us, and our in political discourse. Specifically, their use will be examined in the inaugural addresses of George W. Bush in 2005 and Barack Obama in 2009. The aim of this research is to examine the frequencies and the co-occurrences of these pronouns and then compare their use in these two speeches. More specifically, how do the pronouns examined affect the message and enhance hearer credibility. This is done by applying (a) a quantitative corpus linguistics analysis and (b) qualitative analysis of the context of use. The results show that there is a difference in frequency of pronoun use; however, the usage of pronouns is rather similar in the two speeches

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).

Candidate Quality and Voter Response in U.S. House Elections

We propose and test the implications of a two-dimensional concept of candidate quality in U.S. House elections. Strategic quality is composed of the skills and resources necessary to wage an effective campaign; personal quality is composed of the characteristics most ordinary citizens value in their leaders and representatives, such as personal integrity and dedication to public service. We employ district informants in studies of the 1998 and 2002 congressional elections to measure these qualities in candidates, and we merge mass survey data with the district informant indicators to assess constituents’ awareness and evaluation of House candidates, and voting choice. We find that awareness tends to be responsive to candidates’ strategic quality, and that incumbent evaluation is remarkably responsive to variation in personal quality, even taking into account the quality of challenger emergence. These and other findings appear to support a more positive view of citizen capacity than is common in the congressional elections literature, especially in light of the electoral security of House incumbents.

Too Many Bad Cooks Spoiling the Broth? Effectiveness of NGOs in Addressing Child Labour in El Salvador

The reaction of the first world to the persevering plight of a large part of the third world varies. In response to the sometimes glaring disparities, many international organizations and multinational corporations have recently adopted a pro-development rhetoric with relation to the problem of global poverty. However, the rhetoric rarely translates into action. As David Bacon discusses, leaders of corporations and organizations now tend to conclude their speeches by expressing a desire to reduce the suffering of the third world. However, when it comes to agreeing on specific concessions that could indeed improve the world-wide economic situation, first world countries are reluctant to act. A good example of this type of behavior is the current negotiation of the WTO, the “development round of Doha,” in which the United States along with the European Union pressure countries of the developing South to open up their markets, while at the same time refusing to remove or even decrease their own agricultural subsidies. The first world civil society observes the behavior of international organizations and western based multinational corporations as ineffectual. Taking the matter in its own hands, especially in the past couple of decades, this civil society has created a countless number of development-oriented nongovernmental organizations. These are supposed to compensate for the lack of action by international organizations. Development NGOs are believed to be more locally responsive as well as free of business or political considerations in choosing their strategies, and thus generally more efficient than IOs. However, if they really were how they are alleged to be, the problems of the third world would already be ameliorated by a significant amount, if not completely eradicated. Do development-NGOs indeed possess the characteristics that they claim to possess? What is their real affect on human rights? And how effective are they in their work?

State Political Action Committee Financing and the 2008 Presidential Election: A Detailed Look at Mitt Romney and the Commonwealth PACs

This study looks at the historical context in which PACs developed, as well as the current legal environment in which they operate. It will also briefly discuss the legal and procedural challenges that candidates face and the ways in which PACs alleviate some of these pressures in ways that presidential committees cannot. An understanding of the strategic dilemmas which cause candidates to seek extraneous structures through which to establish campaign networks is essential to extrapolating the potential future of campaign finance strategy. Furthermore, this study provides an in-depth analysis of the state Commonwealth PACs both in terms of fundraising and spending, and discusses the central issues this state PAC strategy raises with respect to campaign finance law. The study will conclude with a look into the future of campaign financing and the role these state-level PACs may play if current rules are not revised.