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The Construction Of A 5-Dimension Framework For Curriculum Leadership

Posted on:2006-09-22Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:J L YuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1117360152991241Subject:Comparison of education
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The quality of curriculum leadership is one of the key factors determining whether curricular activities can achieve desired results. As far as Chinese mainland concerned, curriculum leadership unheard before has become an impatiently-awaiting-to-be-addressed issue in its current curriculum reform.Although nearly three decades has passed since curriculum leadership was initially treated as a research area, it seems that the issue of which dimensions curriculum leadership including has not been raised yet, let alone the construction of the curriculum leadership framework based on these dimensions. This paper proposes that curriculum leadership be made up of five dimensions: structural leadership, human leadership, political leadership, cultural leadership and educational leadership. The five dimensions are borrowed from the 5-dimension hypothesis of school leadership well-grounded in different organizational theories.Considering that the educational leadership defined in the five dimensions of curriculum leadership covers the technological aspects of curriculum planning and design, implementation and evaluation which have been most intensively explored so far in curriculum research, this paper only deals with the other four dimensions.This paper is divided into three main parts. The first part 'Establishing the dimensions of curriculum leadership', including the first two chapters, primarily concerns how the five dimensions of curriculum leadership is derived. The second part 'Making sense of the four perspectives of curriculum reform', being made up of the following four chapters, focuses on clarifying what is meant by each of the four perspectives this paper intend to deal with, in an attempt to offer theoretical base for the upcoming discussion of the corresponding dimensions of curriculum leadership. The third part 'Improving curriculum leadership practice', consisting of the last three chapters, delves into how each dimension of the curriculum leadership should be employed.Chapter One begins with briefing the contexts in which why curriculum leadership has become important both home and abroad, then probes into the multi-annotations of curriculum leadership as well as management, proceeding to survey much literature of "what to be led" in curriculum leadership, from which theconclusion that the dimensions of curriculum leadership needs reframing is formed.Chapter Two introduces the derivation of the hypothesis that school leadership includes the five dimensions of structural leadership, human leadership, political leadership, cultural leadership and educational leadership, then argues for its appropriateness when the five dimensions are applied to curriculum leadership, and their significances for achieving school success.Chapter Three firstly deciphers what the phrase "getting organized " often mentioned in native curriculum reforms means in terms of organizational theories, then analyzes the basic elements which need considering in structuring and restructuring, with the hope of clarifying the essence of the approach to structure which has been most used in curriculum reforms.Chapter Four, centering on the core issue of the fitness between individuals and organization in human resource theories, begins with expounding the major themes concerned, then introduces many efforts devoted to solving these problems.Chapter Five firstly introduces political views about curriculum reform, then analyzes the political ecology that has been evolving in China's on-going curriculum reform, ending up with pinning down some aspects to which political leadership should pay attention.Chapter Six, with teachers' culture as its focus, covers the implications teachers' culture has for curriculum reform, and the analysis of generic characteristics of teacher's culture and the discussion of collaborative culture.Chapter Seven comments on the strengths and limits of the four perspectives of curriculum reform respectively, and explores how to integrate them in practice, thereby illustrating the praxis dialectic which the dimensions of cur...
Keywords/Search Tags:curriculum leadership, 5-dimension curriculum leadership, structural leadership, human leadership, political leadership, cultural leadership, educational leadership
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