The self‐evaluating school — a case study of a special school

Abstract

School self‐evaluation allows staff to review the quality of their work in relation to local contexts. In this article, Peter Neil, senior lecturer in education, Alex McEwen, professor of education, and Karen Carlisle and Damian Knipe, both research assistants in the Graduate School of Education at Queen’s University, Belfast, discuss a research project focusing on the process of self‐evaluation carried out by staff at a special school in Northern Ireland. The project involved the participants in the completion of a research journal over a four‐week period. The authors describe the ways in which the outcomes of the project were fed back to staff and the impact the project had on a range of issues, including teaching and learning and the school’s professional development agenda.

Facilitating the Implementation and Sustainability of Second Step

“…Correspondingly, within the literature on school leadership, a distinction can be made between principals' leadership and principals' management (Neil, McEwen, Carlisle, & Knipe, 2001). When implementing a programme in a school, effective management requires the monitoring of the short-term progress of the implementation, in addition to structuring and facilitating teachers' use of the programme.…”

Implementation of National Guidelines for Healthy School Meals: The Relationship Between Process and Outcome

“…Research highlights the importance of school leadership support for building innovationspecific organizational capacity for the implementation process (Elliott & Mihalic, 2004;Fagan & Mihalic, 2003;Flaspohler et al, 2008;Livet, Courser, & Wandersman, 2008;Roberts-Gray, Gingiss, & Boerm, 2007), although there should be a distinction drawn between leadership and management in schools (Fullan & Huberman, 1992;Larsen & Samdal, 2008;Neil, McEwen, Carlisle, & Knipe, 2001). In the leadership role, a key focus would be to build capacity through alignment processes.…”

An Approach to Analysing Professional Discourse in a School Self-Evaluation Project

“…The first part centred on generating information about activity during lessons. The results of this can be found elsewhere (Neil et al, 2001). In this article we report and discuss the methodology and findings from the data generated by the second part of the journal, namely the professional discourse which featured within the school.…”