Curriculum Management, Instructional Leadership and New Information Technology.
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| Title: | Curriculum Management, Instructional Leadership and New Information Technology. |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Carter, D. S. G., Burger, M. |
| Source: | School Organisation. 1994 14(2):153-168. |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 16 |
| Publication Date: | 1994 |
| Document Type: | Reports - Evaluative Journal Articles |
| Descriptors: | Change Strategies, Elementary Secondary Education, Information Management, Instructional Leadership, Models, School Effectiveness, Supervision, Technological Advancement |
| ISSN: | 0260-1362 |
| Abstract: | Advocates taking advantage of pedagogically driven new-generation information management systems (IMSs) to manage curriculum, instruction, and assessment in change-oriented schools seeking to enhance effectiveness. Delineates a curriculum information management model and describes an exemplar of a new generation of IMS software. Suggests applications of IMS technology to supervision and instructional leadership. (Contains 15 references.) (MLH) |
| Entry Date: | 1994 |
| Accession Number: | EJ487885 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwE2i4-Tmyh-rt99QlSQoOP_AAAA5DCB4QYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHTMIHQAgEAMIHKBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDBDyQ0GtoWJ6Q3CXGAIBEICBnJrSKh2yiWN79_InBZ3jRpo_lfRugeqmJNYu4dSJlEW30K6tcPMSNfxNzLvt8cZQSiTA5R0xeU9x8V2-TN4l48v9ffLEHc0VWQGCm68_SyUMVdtdzpawvoclWKZkHLTlckU6M5w71WOgI9eZnyCN6YWSdp0N-v-Q-jbRhhCHcJBemAF5avCFjfJWyo_WJUdeOI9xkzcqjqiAN8M6tw== Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN9511032508;SGA01JUN.94;1996Feb01.10:09;v2.3</anid> <jsection id="AN9511032508-1"> Curriculum Management</jsection> <title id="AN9511032508-2">CURRICULUM MANAGEMENT,INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP AND NEW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY </title> <p>ABSTRACT A case for taking advantage of pedagogically-driven new-generation Information Management Systems (IMSs), to manage curriculum instruction and assessment in change oriented environments for the purpose of enhancing school effectiveness, is presented. A curriculum information management model is delineated and an exemplar of a new generation of IMS software described. Applications of IMS technology to supervision and instructional leadership are suggested It is concluded that IMS technologies are a necessary adjunct to the work of schools in an age of uncertainty and change in meeting increased societal expectations for the outcomes of schooling. </p> <p>It is now axiomatic that a significant change has occurred in the USA, as elsewhere in Westernised societies, involving a dramatic shift away from an industrial-based to a technological-based economy within a global information society. In a recent paper Henry Kelly, of the Office of Technology Assessment in the USA, made the observation that we do not have even an adequate vocabulary to describe the nature of the huge socio-economic and technological transformation that is under way, the nature of which has been to increase sharply the demand for education (Kelly, 1991). The restructuring that necessarily occurs as a consequence of introducing new technology enters practically every facet of our lives. </p> <p>The inevitable transition to computer supported and computer managed learning contexts offers major challenges and new opportunities for pedagogy and curriculum, potentially enabling us to break the lock of structures and the inertia of tradition which we have tended to think of as given when introducing changes into our education systems. The infusion of information technology in school- and system-level change processes provides the necessary tools and infrastructure for curriculum, instructional processes and student performance to be managed more effectively within the well-recognised and traditional forms these have taken over the last 2,500 years[<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref1">1</reflink>]. More importantly, though, it enables us to conceptualise, implement and manage curriculum, teaching and learning in quite different ways in which the `deep structures' of the school, for example, concerned with such things as methods, and the scheduling of time and space in which these activities occur, come to be seen in paradigmatically different terms. In newly created information rich environments what is needed to effect the shift and break the deadlock of habit and tradition is the vision to reconceptualise the curriculum and the nature of schooling in future oriented terms, and the leadership to give effect to the vision. </p> <p>Much of the expenditure of resources in time, money and human endeavour recorded in a voluminous literature has not been noteworthy in bringing about changes of the order required to have a noticeable and durable effect on educational systems and practices. With one or two notable exceptions one constant in the history of educational reform is that we have persisted with the use of change models and strategies that have been shown to be ineffective or inappropriate to the nature of the endeavour (Carter, 1993). As far as mass secular education is concerned, change efforts appear, generally, not to have met the needs of complex post-industrial societies nor to have helped very much in improving the quality of life and providing opportunities for the self-actualisation of large numbers of the population. </p> <p>Creating a curriculum for the next century requires not only thinking about how to do things better, but how to do them differently, in seeking educationally justifiable ends based on a vision of the future or alternative futures that we now hold. The latent power of technology to assist in this process seems to be of a variable nature in debates about effecting the reform and restructuring of education ranging from uncritical acceptance, to ambivalence, to outright antipathy on the part of some practitioners. Where statements about the nature and role of technology do feature in the management of teaching and learning they tend to be focused on the outcomes of the educational process, rather than being conceived in terms of the process itself. From this `over the shoulder' perspective organisational and system structures become determinants of curriculum design when in fact the structures in which a curriculum design is to be made operational are part of the design itself (Carter, 1991, 1993). </p> <p>The advent of new information technology for the purpose of school administration; the efficient allocation of resources and the management and scheduling of curricula has made life for administrators, paradoxically, more simple yet more complex. At the interface of instruction with learning the introduction of the microcomputer allied with advances in communications technology provides us with the potential to revolutionise both, as well as the organisational structures in which they conventionally take place. In short the computer, when acting in combination with an informed mind, acts as a contemporary eolith allowing us to perceive yet further possibilities that were previously not possible. The tools are available. The challenge lies in an educated vision. The transformative power remains latent until it is given force through the exercise of the public will under the guidance of effective leadership. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-3"> The `On-line' Curriculum </hd> <p>While the rhetoric sounds grand, the potential of the liberating influence due to the arrival of the microcomputer, modem and interactive video disk in conjunction with communications technology in supporting classroom innovation has, for many, yet to be realised. The `high tech' classroom is one in which, for example, individualising instruction can become a practical reality, offering students, teachers, supervisors and parents unlimited access to information which would have been unthinkable hardly a generation ago. In this information rich scenario, the traditional didactic schoolroom model of education becomes even less appropriate and yet the research on teaching shows the extent to which this pervasive style of direct teaching is resistive to change. In this regard, Lanier &amp; Little note: </p> <p>For teachers this emphasis [i.e. reflexive conservatism, sic] often means a continuation of the teaching practices by which they were taught as well as the tendency to see the prevalent patterns of teaching as the only ones possible. It means a restriction on their views of what they might do as teachers . . . (Lanier &amp; Little, 1986, p. 551) </p> <p>Similarly, while some of the reasons for it lie outside their control, teachers as a group tend not to use, and hence realise the potential of new information technology in their instruction and management of learning in ways that will enhance their professional effectiveness. </p> <p>Developments in technology provide the opportunity to improve existing services at the school and system level as well as providing special types of educational services which could exploit the special features of emergent technologies for improvement and change. These are becoming well recognised but still operate in a piecemeal, disjointed and incremental way, rather than functioning in a truly integrative fashion in supporting and managing curriculum, pedagogy and assessment in an information-dependent environment-thereby changing it to one that is information rich. </p> <p>The intellectual tools to support instructional leadership through the management of information to guide and inform data-based decision-making are already becoming available at affordable prices. Sophisticated, pedagogically driven, Instructional Management Systems (IMSs) which combine administrative functions with a range of others that lie at the heart of schooling, including curriculum development, instruction, evaluation and assessment, allow for the creation of information rich environments with a vast transformative potential. These new generation software tools facilitate the design, development, implementation and alignment of curricula at the macro and micro levels of schooling. They provide, for example, the means or monitoring which curriculum elements are included in daily lesson plans; students grouping practices; at-risk students; the development of teacher-made learning materials; the management of material resources; the configuration of assessment programmes across different time spans and subject areas; and curriculum alignment to external references, bench-marks and standards on a continuous, routine and substantially unobtrusive basis. </p> <p>Through the total integration of school functions they represent a marked departure from those Management Information Systems (MISs) currently used essentially for administrative regulation, accessible to only a few administrative staff and based on scientific management principles. The latter tend to relate inputs with outcomes in an isomorphic fashion and substantially ignore curricular and instructional processes and learning context. They need, therefore, to be distinguished from the notion of an integrative IMS as used in this paper. </p> <p>A sophisticated IMS enables school administrators to determine the curriculum scope and sequence which they desire, while enabling each of their teaching staff to be actively engaged in curriculum development activities in an ongoing way. In these information managed environments, on-line curriculum guides become live working documents as educators monitor, adapt and refine curriculum events on a daily basis. For outcome evaluations, supervision and accountability purposes, administrators can ascertain the extent to which a particular teacher uses a variety of instructional activities in his or her teaching, or the extent to which curriculum and its implementation is congruent with state guidelines, standards and bench-marks, or other external references. </p> <p>Because the IMS automatically records detailed audit trails as staff members use it, supervisors can obtain profiles of how the performance of students and/or teachers are changing, by viewing sets of records accumulated unobtrusively through the daily operations of the school over selected periods of time. It is evident that this capability raises issues of confidentiality and security and possible dilemmas which may arise from using powerful information technology to monitor social processes. The issues raised are not unique to education. Although they lie beyond the scope of the present paper, it is worth noting that it is not so much the availability and technical capabilities of powerful information technology per se, but the uses to which these technologies may be put in the human dimension. </p> <p>While reforms in the school system for many have not occurred on a sufficiently grand scale to register any dramatic impact on what actually goes on in classrooms, some promising long-range technology infusions and innovations have been initiated in pockets in a number of districts and schools. At a national level, however, it has become necessary to seek ways to develop what over a decade ago Toffler (1980) identified as two basic raw materials for the (then) coming age: information and imagination. The basic skills of reading, writing, computing and communicating with all forms of technology are still vitally necessary, but a more systematic effort has yet be made to get beyond the fashionable rhetoric of higher order thinking and problem-solving to make these a reality in classrooms (Carter, 1990). To be functional in a complex participatory democracy students will need to have acquired more than a discrete thesaurus of unrelated facts. </p> <p>In Westernised societies at least, the rhetoric exists in abundance supporting the advent of national curricula, for example, but schools, even if they go along with it, do not have the means to implement emergent designs in the stringent manner required in an age of high publicly verifiable accountability. Those responsible for developing high level thinking skills and attributes in students require the tools to allow them to plan, implement and monitor attendant teaching and learning processes, including their effectiveness and consequences. In addition to managing learning with a process orientation emphasising heuristics, problem-finding and problem-solving, valuing and evaluating, teachers need to help their students acquire a more sophisticated understanding of social structures as these apply to the economy and work place. A critical understanding of and commitment to their culture, viewed dynamically, that empowers individuals to transform it at the same time it is being transmitted to them, is nowadays both a high order life-skill and an imperative for the reconstruction of society as we envisage it now and would like it to become (Lawton, 1992, p. 121). </p> <p>Learning also has to become more integrated across subject areas and we need to get a `whole curriculum' perspective on the vertical and horizontal integration of curriculum elements, and the monitoring of student transitions in a hurry. With the advent of new IMS technology we have the tools available to resolve the hitherto intractable problem of curriculum correlation, and vertical sequences from initial entry to school, and the capacity to monitor students longitudinally across transitions in the education system and on exiting formal schooling. In the absence of such tools, conceptions such as these tend to remain interesting theoretical concepts embedded in scholarly texts and papers tending not to see the light of day in the social realities of schools and schooling, serving to perpetuate the myth of `tine secret garden of the curriculum', and the gulf between practice and theory. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-4"> A Normative Curriculum Model for Information Management </hd> <p>Traditional curriculum models do not take into account the generation, flow and management of information that in the past has substantially acted as a bottleneck to, rather than enhancing the implementation of, innovations and curriculum for school improvement and the raising of school achievement in line with individual entitlements and societal expectations. Contemporary indicators suggest that information overload is likely to be a health hazard to those who manage and populate schools now and in the future (Zanetic et al., 1990). Diagnosis and treatment requires the application of new information technology to bring this back to manageable and human proportions, so that teachers and administrators may retain more of a sense of control over the processes of change which seemingly envelop them. The basis for conceptualising and integrating emergent curricula with both their internal and external environments lies in, and increasingly must rely on, information management to guide and inform design and implementation decisions made in the light of increasing social complexity and public policy agendas. </p> <p>In the model presented below it is important to keep in mind that the connections between curriculum elements is not a set of generic and implied relationships, but rather one of information flow connecting the elements to each other and the wider social environment within which schools are embedded. The relationships are shown in Figure 1. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-5"> Curriculum </hd> <p>The model is underpinned by a particular ideology regarding the nature of curriculum, pedagogy and the current organisational structures of schooling, but is not context bound by them. The curriculum in its entirety is regarded as a social intervention which schools administer on behalf of society, and which has a moral dimension requiring the legitimate access to information by different members of different audiences regarding its design, implementation and effectiveness. Given the inherent complexity of revisionary knowledge, and the need to develop certain types of skills and higher order thinking processes, a relevant curriculum for today's world requires updating and maintenance on a continual basis. The curriculum review, for example, conducted by examining each subject area, returning to each after a number of years, is unlikely to meet the needs of tomorrow's schools as the lead time between the generation of new knowledge and its application steadily decreases. </p> <p>The dynamic nature of the curriculum is not simply two-dimensional in its scope and sequence, except perhaps in its latent form. The manifest curriculum is multidimensional and thus two-dimensional models appearing in a range of curriculum documents do not, and cannot, adequately represent the dynamic nature of learning milieux curriculum processes and attendant knowledge structures. For optimal responsiveness to the latter as well as meeting the needs of their communities, the curriculum of each school necessitates that it be locally crafted in order to capitalise on local talents, with local insights in order to meet local needs. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-6"> Alignment </hd> <p>At the macro level, society has legitimate expectations from its schools as a sociocultural form regarding their performance and modus operandi. It gives expression to the former through a range of agencies, professional organisations and institutional constraints and obligations, backed by mandates, which individually and collectively set standards and external references which the schools are constrained to address. This is acknowledged and addressed within the model, which incorporates provisions for alignment of curricula at the school level with external cross-references or bench-marks. These may be framed as syllabus statements, needs, standardised tests, public examinations and a range of outcome statements at different levels of specificity (see also Figure 2). There are likely to be many relationships between curriculum and external standards and outcomes, however, but all of the relationships are not important all of the time. </p> <p>Within the model, standards and outcomes framed at the national, state or district level are deemed to transcend locally developed curricular structures, content and instruction. Hence there is a need to contemplate external referents on the part of those who develop school-level curriculum; assess student performance against outcomes; use these data as feedback to learners and evaluate teaching and learning effectiveness. Where the external references and standards appear as published documents, the reality is that they are rarely contemplated when developing and examining the web of relationships existing between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Where they appear on-line and can be readily retrieved there are immense benefits to be gained in curriculum alignment. At source there exists a need to articulate purpose or intention with delivery and to align these with contingent processes. That in effect is what gives meaning to outcomes-based education. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-7"> Pedagogy </hd> <p>An underlying assumption of the model is that instruction makes a difference, and for the full potential of this to be realised in practice, teachers must be able to capitalise on new knowledge, exercise data-based professional judgements, and acquire intimate knowledge of the changing needs of the learner in the exercise of their own creativity and spontaneity. </p> <p>Within the dynamics of the model it is important not to seek to control all the activities that take place under the rubric of instruction, but to be able to ascertain its nature at will, and to direct it differentially to learners as needed and in the full knowledge of the extent to which external agencies are also influencing and guiding instructional processes. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-8"> Assessment </hd> <p>The functions of those forms of assessment that are learning centred and those which are essentially for the purpose of accountability, credentialing and reporting need to be held separate. Both dimensions imply different sets of relationships with teachers and learners and learners with each other. A more accurate and useful set of performance points for the enhancement of teaching and learning processes, we would argue, are more likely to be achieved by reducing the emphasis on a few highly precise measurements and by increasing the value of many varied and less precise measurements along the lines of the UK experience with profiling and records of achievement, for example. </p> <p>For the increased effectiveness of processes such as these to be realised, student progress needs to be interpreted via professional judgements, together with contextrelated student performance and samples of student work, with both formalised and informal assessments gathered over time. By the same token, mastery is likely to be more validly inferred via patterns of performance over time and in various contexts than from single events narrowly related to highly explicit criterion-referenced student 'exit outcome' statements. Assessment data themselves can feed back, in an evaluative sense, to further inform instructional, planning, and organisational decisions. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-9"> Validation </hd> <p>Whilst the model implies the school and its community are central to the set of relationships between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment that apply in a given context, these cannot be 'self-referent' and especially so on the validity criterion. Business, commerce and industry, other institutions, prospective students and their parents and representatives of 'the system' have a public right to know among other things about the school, its programmes and performance. Institutional relationships between the school and its contiguous societal structures, therefore, need to be monitored accurately and comprehensively with information feedback loops established to facilitate cross-validation of processes and reporting between schools and organisations and legitimate interest groups resident in the external environment. Responsiveness of the curriculum to demands emanating from a number of external sources necessitates the broad involvement of all those who teach, administer and assess under its rubric. </p> <p>The management, control and directing of information is the glue which binds the various elements of the curriculum information management model together. This is a basic requirement necessary for reporting purposes; also to guide and inform decision-making taking place within and across the institutional environments pertinent to the separate elements of the model, as well as in the micro environment of the school and the macro environment of society. A final element for monitoring and maintenance is the need to conduct frequent analyses of data accumulated through self-monitoring of information flow to guide and inform personal decision-making and enhance professional understanding of phenomena which may be of interest. This is depicted by the inner circle in Figure 1. </p> <p>The model is dynamic with data accumulating unobtrusively through the normal operation of the school and its educational processes conducted over time. Accumulated data on the functions and operations of the school from multiple curriculum development perspectives, lesson planning, student, parent and teacher, and assessment dimensions cross-referenced to external frames, can now be managed with an IMS. Relational data base technology makes them readily accessible to guide and inform decision-making serving a variety of needs and purposes. Hardware considerations aside, the upper limit of accessing these data in a variety of forms rests with the ability of the teacher, administrator, parent, school nurse, aide, school psychologist and student to interrogate the data base to elicit the accumulated information they are seeking in a form they require. </p> <p>Archived data which was previously lost to the school and the system as 'noise', but which, in an information rich environment can be unobtrusively and continuously accumulated through the normal operation of school routines, can be queried, probed, fragmented and restructured in ways that support and enable systematic inquiry into the operation and functioning of the school. Systematic inquiry or research, in the context with which it is being used here, is designed to increase the sensitivity of organisations which can learn, populated by professionals in the service of their clients who are in a real sense students of their own professional practice[<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref2">2</reflink>]. By this means the intellectual, social, economic and organisational aspects of the school may be apprehended and revealed using accumulated data approached from a problem-finding, and problem-solving point of view. Obvious uses here, for example, are for the management and utilisation of the schools' material resources, the conduct of programmes evaluations and audit trails, supervision of beginning teachers and the induction of new staff, performance appraisal (where access to ongoing data can readily support formative processes) and the tracking of 'at risk' students. </p> <p>To make the model operational the human dimension has to be complemented with new information technology for the purpose of information management. There are two ways of using technology to achieve these ends. One is the purpose of automating: the other for informating. While there are some who clearly seek to use technology for the former purpose, it tends to become mechanistic and to isolate the human dimension from the process itself. It is not advocated as a satisfactory means for supporting educators and as a means of educational problem-solving. The view of teachers and administrators as students of their own profession has already been expressed. To informate is to empower professionals within this deal. It is here that 'management sits down with workers' to use an industrial analogy, in order to resolve the question of what information has to be readily available and easily accessible to both understand and execute certain processes. From this standpoint the technology ought to be useful in helping teachers and administrators give effect to this requirement. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-10"> Educational Improvement and Information Management </hd> <p>The history of educational reform shows that planned change tends to be imposed from the top down and managed by the imposition of regulations and mandates increase the monitoring and reporting requirements of local schools (Carter &amp; Hacker, 1988; Lawton, 1992). School administrators tend to comply with increased regulations by adopting technical solutions, which, for the sake of better reporting and monitoring, constrain their schools and systems leading to increased uniformity, thereby reducing the development of the full potential of students and staff. The 'lock' of such systems may be useful in helping to establish and maintain 'well run' schools from month to month and year by year, but this is largely at the cost of inhibiting creativity, local diversity and productivity on the part of all those who populate the nation's schools. </p> <p>To summarise thus far, well-constructed IMSs are designed specifically to allow for the unobtrusive and automatic acquisition of data describing the key operations associated with the interlocking cycle of relationships between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment (Hextall, 1988). These sources of data are crucial in determining programme effectiveness and can serve to guide school improvement processes, but in so doing they must be gathered thoroughly, automatically and unobtrusively to ensure that they accurately represent what is being implemented. IMS generated data provide access to the requisite information relevant to a situation or problem. The data potentially allow for all the relevant decision alternatives affecting a particular situation or problem to be contemplated and the consequences of these to be more readily perceived. Timely information can thus be made available through different levels of accessibility to students, parents, teachers and administrators in the exercise of information rich, data-based decisionmaking. </p> <p>Given the complexity of educational environments in an age of public accountability, it is difficult to comprehend how student performance and the overall achievement of outcomes individually and in the aggregate can be monitored and supported adequately without access to relevant data-yet emerging curricula require just this (Bernet et al., 1992). By acquiring skills in the use of IMSs integrating data on curriculum, state and national guidelines, attendance, discipline and demographics, for example, educators can begin to identify and understand which relationships and patterns contribute to overall system improvement. In an era where powerful computing systems are well within the reach of most budgets, an imperative is presented to us to acquire and implement, wholescale, IMSs with the transformative potential described above if we are to transcend reflexive conservatism (Lortie, 1975, p. 232) and realise new possibilities for the conduct of instruction and learning. </p> <p>The implementation of IMSs needs to be accompanied by research and analytical skills, as a function of professional development, which allow educators to ask those questions which will help improve education. Thus it is the creative dialectic of the technology interacting with an informed mind that releases its potential and allows for the perceptions of yet further possibilities. In such a context, information technology is essential to guiding and informing educational decision-making-not driving it. It will not make life any easier for educators but it will improve their effectiveness where it counts. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-11"> Theory into Practice--an exemplar of IMS software </hd> <p>IMSeries[tm] software consists of a set of powerful information management tools for educators and is among the first of a new generation of instructional management systems. In one integrated set of tools it enables educators to manage critical information at each stage of the entire curriculum and instructional design process. It thus provides educators with a powerful set of information tools that can be used to: </p> <ulist> <item> capitalise on an individual's training, skills and experience as s/he plans, delivers, and assesses instruction; </item> <item> co-ordinate planning and assessment with colleagues and share ideas and expertise; </item> <item> determine, improve and manage the quality of instructional processes, and outcomes; </item> <item> build longitudinal data bases which can serve as references for research on instructional effectiveness and for programme development (for both curriculum and staff); </item> <item> increase the flexibility of instructional programmes by enabling educators to manage complex data; </item> <item> track performance of any student over time against any curricular or instructional reference point; </item> <item> respond to accountability concerns without giving up professional abilities, the need to make flexible decisions, or the desire to be creative; and </item> <item> allow all those who have vested interests in the quality of instructional programmes to participate in, and review information associated with those programmes. </item> </ulist> <p>A brief description of each of the four modules that in sum comprise the IMS[tm] software package follows. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-12"> Curriculum Developer (CD)</hd> <p>With school restructuring a priority, in several states in the USA, educators are using this package to design, review, analyse, align, maintain, and generate reports concerning their curriculum. Once curricula are built, educators can align them dynamically to any combination of external standards (e.g. state guidelines, outcome statements, or standards from professional organisations). It becomes possible for teachers and administrators to view their curricula from an unlimited number of perspectives, because analyses can be performed across any boundaries that may exist in its structure. This is delineated, from an Outcomes-based Education (OBE) perspective in Figure 2. </p> <p>Use of this tool can facilitate the restructuring of curricula into innovative formats. Even though extensive latitude remains in the hands of the co-ordinator/ developer to determine the scope, sequence, structure, and philosophy around which curricula are built, the package enables practitioners to align their curriculum with external standards including school district goals for accountability, quality control, and auditing purposes. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-13"> Lesson Planner (LP)</hd> <p>This allows teachers to manage the massive amounts of information they need to be able to access and manipulate and to design and deliver the high quality instruction that effective educators have always endeavoured to provide. Used collaboratively, when installed in a network environment, for example, teachers can share information with each other and select from, or extend, curriculum options that are available to other teachers and their students. </p> <p>While maintaining a focus on student outcomes, standards and performance, the technology assists teachers to plan and monitor instruction on a class, subgroup, or individual learner basis. Questions about what has been taught, including to which students, how, when, and how often, can be ascertained and analysed at any time. The software can also be used by teachers to assess, manage, analyse, and report flexibly student performance with the latter analysed in context and reported by averages, performance profiles, and through electronic portfolios (see next section). </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-14"> Student Data Manager (SDM)</hd> <p>'Student Data Manager' enables teachers to integrate extensive demographic, attendance, and discipline reporting, accounting, and analysis with instructional planning, delivery, and performance. By this means performance is monitored ecologically and not removed from this context of teaching and learning and other aspects that affect the process of feedback and counselling. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-15"> Educational Researcher (ER)</hd> <p>Finally, 'Educational Researcher' serves as a set of tools which educators can use to examine complex data sets, generated continuously and unobtrusively, as the software is being used to serve the range of purposes described above. It is thus intended to be useful as a means for helping practitioners, researchers and evaluators determine instructional effectiveness. In addition it may serve as a research tool in order to help educators generate and test hypotheses regarding how and why certain practices may or may not be working in support of school improvement. </p> <hd1 id="AN9511032508-16"> IMS Support for Instructional Leadership and Supervision </hd1> <p>As implied above, the IMS can be used by school administrators to provide access to and interpretation of data associated with the planning and evaluation of instruction-an area that receives a lot of attention within the supervisory process. Any effective programme of staff evaluation and development is likely to contain three crucial elements, namely, appraisal, planning and follow-up. Cumulative data, collected continuously and unobtrusively and stored within the system, provide the supervisor with teacher, student, and curriculum information as well as providing an overview of student performance and teacher-developed lesson plans across these areas. </p> <p>The IMS uses relational data base technologies to maintain connections between and among the various information types (see Figure 2). Thus, for example, particular students and elements of curricula are linked to teachers via the sections they teach, and lesson plans link students with dates, times, teachers, and specific curriculum events. Through ad hoc queries, practitioners are able to obtain reports on command and answers to their questions as these arise. Without any claims to comprehensiveness some illustrative questions within the supervisory process are listed below. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-17"> Appraisal</hd> <p>Teacher information. </p> <ulist> <item> To what extent does the teacher's instruction contemplate the district or state scope and sequence recommendations and guidelines? </item> <item> Does the teacher's instruction include a broad range of objectives covering basic as well as higher order statements of purpose? </item> <item> Do the evaluation methods used by the teacher align with instruction that is delivered, and does the teacher use a variety of methods to evaluate student performance? </item> <item> How is the teacher adjusting instruction by altering content or grouping strategies to match student characteristics and needs? </item> </ulist> <hd id="AN9511032508-18"> Student.</hd> <ulist> <item> Do instructional records indicate that students are being given opportunities to reinforce learning via remediation and/or enrichment activities? </item> <item> Which components of the curriculum have been delivered to which students, by whom, how often and when? </item> <item> Is there evidence that evaluation methods reflect student capabilities? </item> <item> Are low socio-economic status (SES) students receiving the same quality of instruction as other students? </item> </ulist> <hd id="AN9511032508-19"> Curriculum.</hd> <ulist> <item> To what extent are core curricula (both scope and sequence) being included in classroom instruction? </item> <item> How much variety is there in instructional activities and resources which are available for inclusion in lesson plans? </item> <item> Which elements of the curricula are not being used by any teachers in their instruction? </item> </ulist> <hd id="AN9511032508-20"> Lesson plan.</hd> <ulist> <item> Are cross references (e.g. state and local curriculum guidelines) being integrated into lesson plans? </item> <item> Are students being evaluated on the instruction they are actually receiving? </item> <item> How do different teachers approach long-term instruction when addressing similar content? </item> </ulist> <hd id="AN9511032508-21"> Planning</hd> <p>IMS technology provides access to key data by which supervisors and instructional leaders can design effective staff development plans and subsequent coaching protocols. Information can be used as an objective, time-based reference by supervisors and teachers which they can use collaboratively to design development plans which are based on performance issues as reflected in records of the teacher's own instruction. In addition, data obtained from other staff members can be used to model effective practice and to obtain guidance for development plan design. </p> <hd id="AN9511032508-22"> Follow-up</hd> <p>The third and final phase of the supervisory cycle presented here involves follow-up. An effective supervisor must be able to ascertain if a given development plan brings about mutually negotiated improvement(s). The IMS provides the supervisor and teacher(s) with an unobtrusive monitoring and tracking facility from which progress related to a given development plan can be reviewed on a daily basis if this is so desired. </p> <p>Changes, where and when they occur, are likely to be revealed in altered patterns in which the relevant data can be 'unpacked' through ad hoc queries via a search editor supplemented with normal data analysis procedures. If it is determined, by means of extant patterns in the data, that the desired effects are not in fact becoming evident it is possible for corrections and alternatives to be attempted and reviewed on a continuing basis in order to make progress towards the realisation of the desired results. </p> <hd1 id="AN9511032508-23"> Conclusion </hd1> <p>In this paper it has been argued that IMS software is an essential element to be integrated into the conceptualisation, adoption and maintenance of any curricula we care to design and implement, allowing for stringent public accountability criteria to be met while still providing an education for all students which can be justified in its own terms. Where learner outcomes are clearly stated; agreed upon and progress towards their achievement unobtrusively monitored by the use of new information technology as described in this paper, instructional leadership, albeit from the superintendent, principal and those charged with supervisory responsibilities, can be more clearly focused, data based and hence potentially enhanced. </p> <p>From a vocational education point of view it is argued that fundamental changes in the structures of schools and systems and the loosening of their constraints are essential to competitive success in a world economy. According to one study, "The schools must learn the lessons of our most successful and productive enterprises: they must be client centred and performance driven, incorporating new learning systems which focus on the individual" (Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, 1988, p. 92). Moving toward outcome-based curricula will help schools monitor their performance more effectively and thereby is likely to improve the quality of teaching and learning. </p> <p>Realising this in practice is likely to place heavy demands on curriculum management and require the exercise of high quality leadership. As already asserted in this paper, and developed as one of its main themes, we have new information technology available, which, when allied with human capacities and a vision of the future that we hold, can assist in the transformation of our schools. Under this scenario, in creating our future, the dimensions of change can be more easily perceived in human terms and thus managed, using new information technology, so that as a process it takes on a quite different meaning. </p> <p>DIAGRAM: FIG. 1. A normative curriculum model for information management. </p> <p>DIAGRAM: FIG. 2. The hierarchical arrangement of curriculum elements managed by IMSeries[tm] software. </p> <ref id="AN9511032508-24"> <title>NOTES</title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref1" type="bt">[1]</bibl> <bibtext>It is useful to distinguish between technology specifically designed for the task of education, and the use of technology to make education possible. See, for example, Scriven (1987) for an elaboration of these two different conceptions of technology. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref2" type="bt">[2]</bibl> <bibtext>Sarason (1990) makes an observation to the effect that if teachers as learners do not perceive that the appropriate conditions for their own growth obtain, they cannot create and sustain similar conditions for students. </bibtext> </blist> </ref> <p>REFERENCES </p> <p>BENNETT, S.N., WRAGG, E.C., CARRE, C.G. &amp; CARTER, D.S.G. (1992) A longitudinal study of teachers perceived competence in, and concerns about national curriculum implementation, Research Papers in Education, 7, pp. 53-78. </p> <p>CARTER, D.S.G. (1990) Knowledge transmitter, social scientist or reflective thinker: three images of the practitioner in Western Australian high schools, Theory and Research in Social Education, 18, pp. 274-317. </p> <p>CARTER, D.S.G. (1991) Social studies: purpose, pattern and possibility, in: C. J. MARSH (Ed.) Teaching Social Studies, 2nd edn (Sydney, Prentice Hall). </p> <p>CARTER, D.S.G. (1993) Structural reform and curriculum implementation in an Australian education system, International Journal of Educational Reform, 2, pp. 56-67. </p> <p>CARTER, D.S.G. &amp; HACKER, R.G. (1988) A study of the efficacy of a centre-periphery curriculum implementation strategy, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 20, pp. 549-252. </p> <p>HEXTALL, I. (1988) The education agenda of the new right with specific reference to the assessment of secondary school pupils, paper presented to the International Sociology of Education Conference, Westhill College, Birmingham. </p> <p>KELLY, H. (1991) Technology and the transformation of American education, Curriculum Perspectives, newsletter edition, pp. 9-12. </p> <p>LANIER, J.E. &amp; LITTLE, J.W. (1986) Research on teacher education, in: M. WITTROCK (Ed.) Handbook of Research on Teaching 3rd edn (New York, Macmillan). </p> <p>LAWTON, D. (1992) Education and Politics in the 1990s. Conflict or Consensus (London, Falmer Press). </p> <p>LORTIE, D. (1975) Schoolteacher (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press). </p> <p>LYNDON, B. JOHNSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS (1988) Education, Technology and the Texas economy: the economics of education, Vol. 1 (Austin, TX, University of Texas Press). </p> <p>SARASON, S.B. (1990) The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform (San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass). </p> <p>SCRIVEN, M. (1987) A hard look at the cost-effectiveness of technology in education, paper presented to the Joint Conference of the Australian College of Education and the Australian Council for Educational Administration, Perth, Western Australia. </p> <p>TOFFLER, A. (1980) The Third Wave (New York, William Morrow). </p> <p>ZANETIC, S., CLARKE, R. &amp; MANSFIELD, O. (1990) . . . Good Teachers Make Good Schools, Report of the Ministerial Task Force on the Condition and Status of Teaching in Western Australian Government Schools (Perth, Government Printer). </p> <aug> <p>D. S. G. CARTER; College of Education, The University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, Western Australia </p> <p>M. BURGER; Learning Technology Systems Inc., Bryan, Texas, USA </p> </aug> |
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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: Curriculum Management, Instructional Leadership and New Information Technology. – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Carter%2C+D%2E+S%2E+G%2E%22">Carter, D. S. G.</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Burger%2C+M%2E%22">Burger, M.</searchLink> – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22School+Organisation%22"><i>School Organisation</i></searchLink>. 1994 14(2):153-168. – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 16 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 1994 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Reports - Evaluative<br />Journal Articles – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Change+Strategies%22">Change Strategies</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Elementary+Secondary+Education%22">Elementary Secondary Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Information+Management%22">Information Management</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Instructional+Leadership%22">Instructional Leadership</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Models%22">Models</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22School+Effectiveness%22">School Effectiveness</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Supervision%22">Supervision</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Technological+Advancement%22">Technological Advancement</searchLink> – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 0260-1362 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: Advocates taking advantage of pedagogically driven new-generation information management systems (IMSs) to manage curriculum, instruction, and assessment in change-oriented schools seeking to enhance effectiveness. Delineates a curriculum information management model and describes an exemplar of a new generation of IMS software. Suggests applications of IMS technology to supervision and instructional leadership. (Contains 15 references.) (MLH) – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 1994 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ487885 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 16 StartPage: 153 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Change Strategies Type: general – SubjectFull: Elementary Secondary Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Information Management Type: general – SubjectFull: Instructional Leadership Type: general – SubjectFull: Models Type: general – SubjectFull: School Effectiveness Type: general – SubjectFull: Supervision Type: general – SubjectFull: Technological Advancement Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: Curriculum Management, Instructional Leadership and New Information Technology. Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Carter, D. S. G. – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Burger, M. IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 01 Type: published Y: 1994 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0260-1362 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 14 – Type: issue Value: 2 Titles: – TitleFull: School Organisation Type: main |
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