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1、school actualization program as a lever for high school improvement in taiwanhongda lin, doctoral studentnational taiwan normal universitydepartment of educationhondalin2000paper presented at icsei 2010 the 23rd international congress for school effectiveness and improvement conference, kuala lumpur

2、 convention center, malaysia 5th 8th january 2010need to get authors permission before cited.school actualization program as a lever for high school improvement in taiwan1purpose and backgroundthis study aims to investigate the actions of the leadership teams of senior high schools developed for imp

3、roving educational quality in the context of the school actualization program (sap) mandated by the central government in taiwan. the study explores the following questions: (1) what policies of sap have been developed and highlighted in school practices? (2) how did the leadership team of each sap

4、school strategize actions for school improvement? (3) what impacts of sap on schools can be found so far?1.1 background in facing with new demands of globalization, the national competition relies on the improvement of educational quality. the quality assurance reform discourses are resounded in man

5、y countries (cheng, 2005). to response with endless changes in education, leadership is proved to be critical for school improvement and its sustainable development (chen, 2008; fullan, 2004; leithwood & jantz, 2006; sergiovanni, 2000) since 1990s, shifts of education reform policies have become dai

6、ly realities faced by educational practitioners in taiwan. among the top-down reform policies, those attracted public much attention include: integrating the curriculum from primary to secondary education, changing entrance exam mechanisms, and enlarging the institutions of higher learning. recently

7、, taiwanese government has planned to expand national basic education from 9 years to 12 years in response to public demands. in order to make this daunting task smooth and successful, the ministry of education (moe) launched 13 reform programs to set this particular policy into motion. the school a

8、ctualization program (sap) is one of the13 programs.1.2 sap context and designthe sap has three purposes: to enhance capacity building of high school leadership teams, to keep “top” or promising students to enroll in community high schools, and to decrease educational quality gap between schools and

9、 steadily implement the policy of “12 years basic education.” the sap mandated four focal development aspects that each sap school has to implement. they are curriculum and instruction, teacher professional development, support disadvantaged students learning, and resources investment and allocation

10、. the senior high schools needed to incorporate these four aspects into sap management projects in order to secure the additional 3-years funding allotted from the sap. currently, there are 146 out of 320 senior high schools in taiwan participating in the sap (the moe, 2009). each school could recei

11、ve certain amount of sap grants determined by the quality and feasibility of school project proposals. in order to guide schools to build their capacities, the sap sets current/capital expenditure ratio at 1/5, excludes certain items such as regular equipment and hardware from current expenditure, a

12、nd limits capital expenditure to the items mostly relevant to instruction or learning. besides, the moe provides consultancy services for schools and requests schools learn and network from one another. sap schools also develop self-management techniques to monitor the program implementation. in add

13、itional, the moe recruited a core taskforce in the sap to evaluate the program, offer feedback to the participating schools and the central government every year. the findings of this study are derived from the evaluation study.the sap aims to accomplish dual goals of a comprehensive educational ref

14、orm to achieve both educational excellence and social justice in education. based on the sap context, i am interested in exploring how these participant schools put the sap into practices and improve schools effectively. 1.3 research questionspolicy makers usually concern how reform policies can bri

15、ng changes to schools and how these policies are implemented effectively in a variety of school and local contexts? ball (2008) explains reform policy is constitutive of power discourses. often-time, schools are facing multiple reform programs in place at the same time, and these endless demands exh

16、aust much of leadership teams energy and might stumble the team on the way to improvement (fullan, 2004). leadership teams of participant schools are expected to take the reform action. although they are viewed as key agents on changing process, they often treat themselves as situated subjects pushe

17、d by diverse forces constituted of power relations with conflicts and contradictions arising from the reform policies. their perceptions may not be far from the reality. according to the sap evaluation study and the findings of questionnaires, participating schools complained it was difficult to fol

18、low funding regulations and deal with overloaded paperwork. some sap schools were found implementing the sap projects pretty well. nevertheless, the reform reality is far from simple and the improvement path is never linear. the implementation process was influenced by the contexts and as well as th

19、e strategic planning that leadership teams generated. if these experiences could be revealed from school micro context, it would be helpful to provide critical information for the moe revamp the program and its implementation each year. it is also useful for the moe to change the macro conditions an

20、d support school improvement efforts. thus, this paper asks two primary questions:(1) how did schools implement sap projects targeting school problems accordingly?(2) what happened inside these schools? what kinds of strategies have been initiated by the leadership teams to bring real changes to sch

21、ools?2. data sources and methods2.1 why these three schools?in order to evaluate program and understand the policy implementation process, the core taskforce of sap chose three public senior high schools for case study. i observed and participated interviews in these three schools last year. all the

22、se three schools showed excellent leadership practices, effective strategies for “school actualization,” and the increasing number of students performing well on academic achievement. the pseudo names of the cases study schools are lisa school, jewelry school and helene school.2.2 school backgroundt

23、he three schools are different. lisa school has smallest size among these schools. lisa school is 9 years old and well-known by its specialized curriculum design and pedagogy of project based learning (pbl). the school teachers are very competent in curriculum development and action research. howeve

24、r, the effect of the pbl curriculum has always been challenged by the mainstream values about educational credentials in educational market. lisa school is oftentimes facing with value competition embedded in the design of curriculum. further, the teachers have not fully experienced pbl collaborativ

25、e instruction, and the first generation of experiential teachers of the school is gradually leaving schools. lisa school applied for the sap at the second year of the present principals office term.jewelry school is an old school. before this female principal took his office, there were fragmentatio

26、n and conflicts rooted in the separated cultures of the loosely teaching and administration system, which i called “self-based” culture. self-based culture in teaching system is featured by a “polite” climate and non-collaboration among teachers. in administration system the self-based culture is ma

27、rked by section /non-section dichotomy on all administrators. in order to acculturate the staff, the principal shuffled administrative personnel. as the principal decided to apply sap, she called for a community meeting to reveal community expectations and pressure to the teachers and the staff. jew

28、elry school applied for the sap at the sixth year of the present principals office term.helene school is well established in the northeast county of taiwan, and has educated many social elites in taiwan. the school is seen as a community school that students from other counties cannot easily commute

29、 due to geography barrier. the people in this close area, however, have built strong identification and develop their own particular life styles. helene school applied for the sap at the first year of the present principals office term. the principal, after doing swot analysis of school, found that

30、the number of top students decreased and the teachers were not aware of school situations. self-based culture is also predominant in this school.2.3 data collectionthe qualitative research design was multi-cases study with multiple data collection methods (yin, 1994). three participant schools were

31、purposely selected as research sites. the data collection included sap evaluation questionnaires, participative observation, schools documents, and interviews with principal, administers, teachers, students, and parents. the interviews were the major source for data collection. all the interviews we

32、re digitally recorded and transcribed into verbatim texts. the codes of verbatim texts are listed in the table1.jewelry schoollisa schoolhelene schoolprincipalh01py0902h00hs1000 g00ps1000g01cy1001h02cy1004h00hs1100h03ph1102h03py1107h03ph1109administersa01py0901a01py1007a01ph1103a02ph1110teacherst01p

33、y0904t01py1002t02py1003t01ph1101studentss01hd0905s01hd1005s01hd1104s02hd1108parentsp01py0903p01py1006p02py1008p01py1105p02py1106table 1. data sources-the names of verbatim texts3. data analysisthe main concern of this study is to reveal the process of school improvement in the sap context. the sap c

34、ontext can be delineated into two types: school and the policy (sap program) contexts with the elements of purposes and means. the purposes and means of the sap have been described above. the following section will introduce school contexts the purposes and means of school sap actions. the sap is im

35、plemented on a volunteer basis. the purposes of schools to participate in sap could be revealed by their thinking about “school actualization.” there is no rigid definition used to prescribe how and what school actualization is for sap. schools can interpret the policy according to their own perspec

36、tives and needs. in others words, the interpretation of “school actualization” contains schools purposes, and schools would try to develop useful means to achieve the purposes. here comes to another question: how can we clarify the validity of means by which schools implement their saps if no rigid

37、definition of “school actualization” was mandated? means adopted by schools contain school purpose. effect of some means could be confirmed and others couldnt. to answer the above questions, i illustrate the findings in three parts. the first part is to describe how participant schools interpreted “

38、school actualization.”secondly, we would ask questions about the means with ends that could be confirmedin other hand, how school ran the program and took effective strategies for improvement? in the last part, i discuss the means without the empirical data in the end to support the strategies is ef

39、fective. 3.1 schools motivation and their interpretation of “school actualization”credentialism is a rooted mainstream and a symbolic value of personal success in taiwanese education system. one of the symbolic representations is the “superstar schools” which attract and enroll most of top students.

40、 there are about 20 out of 320 high schools in taiwan defined as the “superstar schools”. some of the principals in this study commented on sap that it was impossible for all schools to become superstar. one said: “if academic achievement is the only goal for school actualization, there would be onl

41、y the superstar school could make school actualization. i usually searched for the meanings and the ways of school actualization from my perspective.” the policy attraction of sapthe attractions of sap are financial aid, the title of “school actualization”, the program design.the financial aid of th

42、e sapin taiwan, additional financial aid is necessary for schools to make changes. the sap policy could satisfy school needs right away. the principal of jewelry school mentioned: “the financial aid is really attractive to me. we need money to take place the activities” ( h01py0902).the symbol of “s

43、chool actualization”“actualizing school” is regarded as a positive symbol which could market schools and attract attention of parents and students. as one principal said:the image of our school was changed differently when we became a sap school. we had less than 1400 students when i joined the scho

44、ol, and recently the number of enrolled student is rising up gradually. (h01kj0701) the program design of the sapsome administrators and principals need outside supports as driving force for the school to make change possible. the requirements of sap are perceived as a lever for schools to galvanize

45、 collective efforts. one school staff commented: “the sap project is just one part of my school-based plans. the other kinds of programs focus on hardware and infrastructure, and the saps regulation provides a chance for me to make change on the school management. it does really do me a big favor. (

46、h03ph1102)”schools interpretation of “school actualization”the meaning of “school actualization” was regard as improvement, process evaluation, dynamic system, and schools strength finding.“school actualization” is improvement“school actualization means inner competition by school itself instead of

47、competition between schools,” an administrator said, “firstly it is improvement on equipment or hardware, the second is improvement on teaching, and finally it is improvement on quality of student.(a01jl0802)” another principal also commented that there was no need to compare our the school with sup

48、erstar schools or other schools nearby. the challenge is from inside.“school actualization” should be evaluated in processsome principals stated that it was right to make judgment throughout the process instead of focusing on outcome of schooling. a principal mentioned, “it is hard to make criteria

49、of school actualization, school actualization still is an abstract concept, and no one can evaluate a school from outsiders perspective. (h03py1107)” “school actualization” is one kind of dynamic systemsome principal considers “school actualization” as a process of acculturation and developing peopl

50、e. one said:it needs more than two years to set up culture sustainable steadily, it is necessary to draw professional leaning dynamics from instruction structure, otherwise the strategy would be useless if the mind structure inside teachers would not be touched or changed.(h03ph1102)“school actualiz

51、ation” means changing and find out the schools strength.some principal mentioned “school actualization” as an opportunity to generate the schools strength, one principal said, “we made some changes through the sap, and we found our strength now. i think we just cumulated a little, and we lack someth

52、ing deeper and know constantly what it is.” (h01py0902)3.2 effective strategies taiwanese high schools now need to apply for many programs and financial aids to keep school running better. each of the programs has its particular regulations and requests to accomplish. the sap is one of these reform

53、intervention programs. the interview data showed that the schools needed to do more paperwork than other programs and projects to implement the sap, and the financial grant design is inconvenient for schools. how the schools in this study overcame the obstacles to implement school project? and how d

54、o they align their school strategies with their goals? the effective strategies are the answer. the effective strategies refer to the means with the end could be confirmed. in this paper, the effective strategies which the schools adopted have the empirical end for better and meaningful practices. t

55、he better practice is performed at the implementation of the sap, and the meaningful practice is performed at the relationship and culture. the sap implemented in the schoolsthe schools applied for sap in terms of the financial aid, the marketing title of “school actualization,” and driving force of

56、 sap design. these schools integrated the resources into strategies or daily operation according to their particular contexts. all the three case study schools had something in common. they improved implementation of the sap in two ways: making project according to teachers needs, allotting finance

57、and resources according to schools visions.making project according to teachers needsusually upper high school structure in taiwan consists of the administrative system and teaching system, resources outside schools need to pass through administrative system to convert into the hardware or software

58、for instruction or influence on teaching and learning potentially. the form of this structure might work on the past. but under this changing era, the administrative system and teaching system is usually asynchronous. when administrators strive hard for resources, teachers complain it is additional loading or useless for improving instruction. sometimes too many resources also bring troubles to administrators. they worry about how to spend the money efficiently to meet the government requirement. as the finance regulation mentioned above, the sap sets current/