Reimagining the Purpose of Schools and Educational Organisations: Developing Critical Thinking, Agency, Beliefs in Schools and Educational Organisations

290 Pages·2016·3.71 MB·English

by  Anthony Montgomery

Anthony Montgomery · Ian Kehoe
Editors
Reimagining the
Purpose of Schools
and Educational
Organisations
Developing Critical Thinking, Agency,
Beliefs in Schools and Educational
Organisations
Reimagining the Purpose of Schools
and Educational Organisations

Anthony Montgomery (cid:129) Ian Kehoe
Editors
Reimagining the Purpose
of Schools and Educational
Organisations
Developing Critical Thinking, Agency,
Beliefs in Schools and Educational
Organisations
Editors
Anthony Montgomery Ian Kehoe
Department of Educational and Social Policy School of Education
University of Macedonia University of Sheffi eld
Thessaloniki , Greece Sheffi eld , UK
ISBN 978-3-319-24697-0 ISBN 978-3-319-24699-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-24699-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015959695
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
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Contents
Part I Introductory Chapter
Reimagining School: Is It Possible? .............................................................. 3
Anthony Montgomery , Despoina Karagianni ,
and Despoina Androutsou
Part II Analysing Schools
Reimagining Schooling as Contexts of Learning
and Pedagogy: The Example of Moving Image Education ......................... 15
George Head
Some Thoughts on the Impossibility to Imagine
Contemporary School Beyond Its Consumerist Mentality ......................... 25
Anthony L. Smyrnaios
The Future Schools Project: An Educational
Initiative to Raise Students’ Voice.................................................................. 35
Vasileios Symeonidis , Stewart Hay , Kostantinos Vasileiou ,
Antonia Psallida , Nicolas Karabasis , and Elisavet Parasidou
Re-imagining Schooling: Weaving the Picture
of School as an Affinity Space for Twenty-First
Century Through a Multiliteracies Lens ...................................................... 49
Stefania Savva
Positioning Students as Teacher Educators:
Preparing Learners to Transform Schools ................................................... 65
Alison Cook-Sather and Heather Curl
v
vi Contents
Part III Student Voice
Listening to the Voices of Young People:
Working Towards the Genuine Participating Young
People in Discussions About School Transformation ................................... 79
Carol Robinson
Student Voice: A Site for Developing Citizenship,
a Vehicle for Improving Learning .................................................................. 93
Hugh Busher
Does Schooling Teach Us Not to ‘Change the World’?
Learning About the Role of Change Agent Through School ....................... 111
Ian Kehoe
Turning On the Turned Off ............................................................................ 127
David Holloway and José Chambers
Students’ Voices About How Schooling Affects Their Lives ........................ 145
Fátima Pereira , Thiago Freires , Carolina Santos ,
Dulce Magalhães , Ana Mouraz , and Soraia Sousa
Part IV Positioning the Role of Schools in a Society
The Opportunities and Challenges of Using Digital
Learning Environments in Educational Organizations ............................... 161
Karena Morrison and Celiane Camargo-Borges
The Costs of Being the Best: Consequences of Academic
Achievement on Students’ Identity, Perfectionism,
and Vocational Development .......................................................................... 173
L. E. Damian , O. Negru-Subtirica , E. I. Pop , and A. Baban
Education, Justice and Democracy: The Struggle
over Ignorance and Opportunity ................................................................... 189
Stephen J. Ball
How Can Teacher Education Fulfill Its More
Generous Intentions? Reflections Concerning
the Pernicious Effects of Educational Evaluation ........................................ 207
Amélia Lopes , Fátima Pereira , Preciosa Fernandes ,
Leanete Thomas Dotta , and Rita Sousa
Space, Place and Neighbourhood in the Pursuit
of the ‘Socially Just School’ ........................................................................... 221
John Smyth
Contents vii
Part V New Models for Schools
Reimagining and Creating Alternative Schooling: Charter Schools .......... 235
Bulent Tarman
All-Age Schooling: Alternatives from History .............................................. 243
Tim Herrick
A Lone Star or Part of a Constellation: Creating
Synergies and Blurring Boundaries Across Formal
and Informal Settings of Learning ................................................................ 253
Dimitra Christidou
‘Ubuntu Leadership’: Learning from the South
About Becoming a Citizen of the World ....................................................... 263
John Bazalgette
Reimagining School as a Space for Building Learning
Partnerships for All ......................................................................................... 279

George K. Zarifi s and Achilleas Papadimitriou
Part I
Introductory Chapter
Reimagining School: Is It Possible?
Anthony Montgomery , Despoina Karagianni , and Despoina Androutsou
Abstract W hat does it mean to reimagine a school? It doesn’t just mean looking at
it through a different lens, it means reimagining its purpose because the meaning of
culture, values, and performance are all related to purpose. If you change the pur-
pose of a school then you allow everything else to change, but if the purpose does
not change then it is diffi cult to change anything. Thus, our aim is to directly or
indirectly question the purpose of schools. Schools have not organizationally
changed for centuries, why? Do schools teach through the organizational experi-
ence they offer as well as the curriculum? Has the narrow focus on exam perfor-
mance undermined the wider educational purpose of schools? Are there approaches
teachers and school leaders can adopt to incrementally take back the wider educa-
tional purpose of their schools? We have started with many questions, but in the
following book, we will seek to shed light on them.
Keywords Reimagining (cid:129) rethinking (cid:129) schooling (cid:129) purpose (cid:129) values (cid:129) organizational
culture
In many ways, this book is a very long response to a question that many colleagues
challenged us with; T here is a growing consensus that schooling is now overly
focused on exam performance, is inhibiting creativity and agency and is unfair,
however there seems to be little belief that this situation can really be changed. Why
do we not believe we can fundamentally transform schools for the better?
What does it mean to reimagine a school? It doesn’t just mean looking at it
through a different lens, it means reimagining its purpose because the meaning of
culture, values, and performance are all related to purpose. If you change the pur-
pose of a school then you allow everything else to change, but if the purpose does
not change then it is diffi cult to change anything. The chapters in this book directly
or indirectly question the purpose of schools. Schools have not organizationally
changed for centuries, why? Do schools teach through the organizational experi-
ence they offer as well as the curriculum? Are schools being used as a means of
A. Montgomery (*) (cid:129) D. Karagianni (cid:129) D. Androutsou
Department of Educational and Social Policy , University of Macedonia , Thessaloniki , Greece
e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 3
A. Montgomery, I. Kehoe (eds.), Reimagining the Purpose of Schools
and Educational Organisations, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-24699-4_1