Partnership as an Intervention Strategy in Self-Managing Schools

This article was downloaded by: [Northeastern University]On: 02 December 2014, At: 20:08Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

School Effectiveness and SchoolImprovement: An InternationalJournal of Research, Policy andPracticePublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nses20

Partnership as an InterventionStrategy in Self-Managing SchoolsHelen S. Timperley & Viviane M.J. RobinsonPublished online: 09 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Helen S. Timperley & Viviane M.J. Robinson (2003) Partnershipas an Intervention Strategy in Self-Managing Schools, School Effectiveness and SchoolImprovement: An International Journal of Research, Policy and Practice, 14:3, 249-274

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/sesi.14.3.249.15843

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information(the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor& Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warrantieswhatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purposeof the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are theopinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed byTaylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor andFrancis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands,costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever causedarising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of theuse of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nses20

http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/sesi.14.3.249.15843

forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

School Effectiveness and School Improvement 0924-3453/03/1403-249$16.002003, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 249–274 # Swets & Zeitlinger

Partnership as an Intervention Strategyin Self-Managing Schools

Helen S. Timperley and Viviane M.J. RobinsonSchool of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand

ABSTRACT

The alternatives of taking over failing schools or handing over resources for them to developtheir own improvement strategies are recognized as ineffective in achieving improvement.When deciding how best to intervene in 26 self-managing schools, the Ministry of Education inNew Zealand attempted to avoid the negative consequences of these alternatives by developinga partnership with the schools and their communities. This article documents both thedifficulties experienced in the first intervention phase, dominated by concerns about respectingthe schools’ autonomy, and the successes of the second phase, when the Ministry was moreexplicit about the school improvement tasks.

INTRODUCTION

The devolution of governance and management responsibilities to local

control has raised the critical policy issue of what to do when central

authorities perceive self-managing schools to be offering an inadequate

education. While education authorities and researchers alike have recognized

that self-management has changed the relationship between education

providers and central authorities (Pole & Chawla-Duggan, 1996; Whitty,

1997), there has been less discussion of what that relationship implies for

central intervention when local provision is judged inadequate.

One option for central authorities wishing to retain their interest in quality

schooling is to reassert control over local providers. Central control is rarely

Address correspondence to: Helen Timperley, School of Education, University of Auckland,Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand. Tel.: þ64 3737599 ext. 7401. E-mail:[email protected]

Manuscript submitted: July 20, 2000Accepted for publication: September 30, 2002

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

successful in bringing about sustainable change, however, because it tends to

ignore the ‘‘black box’’ of local practices, beliefs, and traditions (McLaughlin,

1990), and those involved at the school level are unlikely to develop the

capacity needed to sustain their own improvement efforts (Hatch, 1998). Even

more importantly, the schools’ capacity to self-govern is likely to be weakened

rather than strengthened.

A second option involves schools identifying their development needs and

central authorities providing the additional funding to support these self-

identified needs. The advantage of this approach is that schools are likely to

develop both the local capacity and ownership that is crucial to successful

reform (McLaughlin, 1990) and strengthen their ability to self-manage.

The disadvantage is that self-identified solutions may not challenge the

institutional norms that maintain the dysfunctional status quo (Anderson,

1998) and staff may waste time reinventing previously invented wheels

(Hatch, 1998). Datnow (1999) identified in the United States that when

schools were free to choose their own improvement strategies, their reform

preferences were for a tolerable course of action that modeled the reform

choices of other schools and fitted with rather than challenged current

practice. If the negative consequences of these ‘‘take-over’’ and ‘‘hand-over’’

approaches are to be avoided, a third alternative needs to be found.

The strategy adopted by the New Zealand Ministry of Education when

faced with the challenge of how to improve failing schools within a self-

managing system, was to develop a partnership with the schools and their

communities. After 7 years of decentralization, more than 40% of the schools

in two suburbs of New Zealand’s largest city were identified by an

independent audit and review agency as experiencing serious problems with

governance, management, and curriculum delivery (Education Review Office,

1996). It was believed that through partnership, the negative consequences of

the ‘‘hand-over’’ and ‘‘take-over’’ strategies could be avoided, and greater

commitment achieved through the combined efforts of the schools, the

communities, and the state. Partnership was also a way of minimizing political

risk because a very active local community had demonstrated that it

would insist on being involved. The purposes of this article are to offer a

theory of partnership and to use this theoretical framework to analyze the

evolving partnership between the Ministry and the schools over the first 2.5

years of the intervention. We begin by briefly reviewing some of the

issues involved in achieving school and educational improvement through

partnership.

250 HELEN S. TIMPERLEY & VIVIANE M.J. ROBINSON

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

SCHOOL REFORM THROUGH PARTNERSHIP

Although the concept of partnership is relatively easily understood at a

superficial level, there are considerable theoretical and practical complexities

in understanding how this principle should direct the relationships involved.

Little guidance was available from either international or local research, partly

because partnership is a relatively recent policy strategy in many education

systems (Crozier, 1998). In addition, most of the published literature on

partnership is context-specific and relates to partnerships between schools and

homes, businesses or universities, and does not directly address issues related

to central intervention in self-managing schools.

What this literature does identify, however, are the tensions that frequently

arise when entities attempt to work in partnership. The autonomy one enjoys

when working alone, for example, is inevitably constrained when working in

a partnership, because partnership implies some degree of power sharing

(McGowan & Powell, 1996). When partners hold different expectations about

this distribution of power, tensions arise (Peters, Williams, & Johnson, 1999).

In a study of partnership between schools and parents in Britain, Crozier

(1998) concluded that partnership is a double-edged sword. Although the

partnership between the parents and teachers was designed to encourage

greater involvement in and commitment to the task of educating children, it

also intensified the surveillance of each partner by the other. Increased

surveillance of professionals by parents was an explicit part of the British

policy strategy. By providing parents with improved sources of information

about their children and the school, it was intended that parents would know

how well schools were performing (U.K. Department for Education, 1992).

Crozier argues that the schools’ surveillance of parents also increased because

‘‘the development of the partnership is carried out through a process of teacher

domination and on the basis of the teachers’ agendas’’ (p. 126). This latter

perspective is supported by the work of Vincent and Tomlinson (1997), who

demonstrated that the rhetoric of home-school partnerships was used

increasingly as a mechanism by schools to control the behaviour of parents

and their children.

These studies of partnership, together with many others, focus on

relationship issues. The task that the partnership was formed to achieve is a

second important dimension of any partnership. Although relationships

always sit alongside the task dimension and influence its success, a good

relationship does not guarantee task success. The task both motivates the

PARTNERSHIP AS AN INTERVENTION STRATEGY 251

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

partnership and provides constraints on how the partnership is conducted, for

different partnership processes will have detectable consequences for the

success of the task. For the relationship to be a partnership, those involved

need to accept some responsibility for the task and agree that they will pursue

it in partnership.

This task dimension is usually given cursory attention in the research

literature as a statement of aims or potential for the partnership (e.g., Stevens,

1999), but it is rarely the focus of analysis. Edwards and Warin’s (1999) 5-year

study of an initiative to increase parent-school collaboration in 70 schools is

an exception. They found that it was difficult for them as researchers to discern

what exactly the schools wanted the parents to contribute and for what

purpose.

In this study, we have defined partnership in a way that attempts to capture

both the relationship and task dimensions and have structured our analysis

accordingly. We propose that two or more entities are in partnership when

they accept some responsibility for a problem or task, and establish processes

for working together that imply mutual accountability and shared power over

task-relevant decisions. Our analysis was guided by two research questions

arising from this definition. The first focuses on the relationship dimension

and asks: ‘‘What processes were established for sharing power and working

together on task-relevant decisions, and how were these perceived by each of

the partners?’’ The second examines the way in which those processes

affected task success and asks: ‘‘What implications did the relationship have

for achieving the task of strengthening education in the two districts?’’

PARTNERSHIP AND THE NEW ZEALAND

EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT

New Zealand is a small country of nearly 4 million people. Its educational

system, however, has relevance to many others. The population is roughly

equivalent to the median American state and larger than most Australian states

which have constitutional responsibility for education in these countries

(Fiske & Ladd, 2000). In addition, New Zealand faces many of the educational

issues common to others. The issues most relevant to this article are failing

schools with alienated, low-achieving urban minority populations.

Prior to 1989, New Zealand had developed one of the most highly

bureaucratized systems in the western world, but the system had become


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

cumbersome and unresponsive to changing local needs and the new economic

imperatives of a global economy (Butterworth & Butterworth, 1998). In 1989,

almost overnight, all layers of district administration were abolished and the

old central Department of Education was down-sized into a policy-only

Ministry of Education whose primary role was to give policy advice to the

Minister of Education in the government of the day (Education Act, 1989). A

central tenet of the new system was that each school was to be administered as

‘‘a partnership between the professionals and the particular community in

which it is located; and the mechanism for such a partnership be a board of

trustees’’ (Taskforce to Review Education Administration, 1988, p. 43). A

high level of autonomy was devolved to the Boards of Trustees, who were now

responsible for most operational matters, such as the employment and

performance management of administrative and professional personnel, the

quality and assessment of curriculum delivery, and financial operations. At

this time, decentralization of decision-making was gaining popularity in many

countries (Beattie, 1989; Rogers & Chung, 1983), but nowhere had it been

taken to the extremes of the restructured New Zealand system.

An independent audit and review agency, the Education Review Office, was

charged with reviewing individual school performance on a triennial basis. In

1996, the office broke with its traditional role of focusing on individual

schools and reported on concerns about the quality of educational delivery in

40% of schools in two low-income suburbs in Auckland, New Zealand’s

largest city.

When a decentralized system like that in New Zealand fails to deliver the

expected teaching and learning outcomes, the issue is whether the state should

increase or decrease its influence and if so, how. The most obvious response to

failure is to increase central control, but this approach inevitably creates

tensions as the schools’ autonomy is reduced and new relationships and

responsibilities developed. As Bryk (1999) described in Chicago when

education authorities introduced initiatives to improve the education offered in

decentralized schools, ‘‘. . . central initiatives coexist in an uneasy and

unsettled fashion with the democratic localism set in place’’ (p. 6).

Over the period from 1989 to 1994, democratic localism had become firmly

entrenched as the preferred policy option in New Zealand. Legislation

(Education Act, 1989) precluded direct state intervention in governance and

management, beyond what the school agreed to, unless current practice

violated statutory regulation or threatened the viability of the school. In these

cases, a Ministry-appointed commissioner, who was charged with running the


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

school, replaced the Board of Trustees until new elections could be held. As a

Ministry of Education official explained:

It wasn’t until 1994 that there was some sort of acknowledgement from the

government that there was a role for the Ministry in providing a safety net

for trying to minimize the number of commissioners in place. That was our

task initially. . . . So, in fact, the announcement of the money in [the two

districts] was probably the first significant announcement from government

that there was a role for government to intervene prior to the appointment of

a commissioner. As a Ministry person, I was told not to intervene.

In its 1996 report on the quality of education in the two districts, the

Education Review Office recommended direct intervention in personnel

matters and the establishment of a district level advisory service. The

Ministry, however, rejected these recommendations because they believed that

they represented a take-over of the schools’ legitimate responsibilities and

would undermine rather than strengthen self-management (Smith, 1997).

They sought to intervene more indirectly through consulting the communities

and schools, and involving them in a three-way partnership designed to

strengthen education in the district.

RESEARCH CONTEXT AND APPROACH

The target schools in the initiative were 22 state primary schools (Years 1–6

or 1–8), 3 intermediate schools (Years 7 and 8) and 1 middle school (Years

7–10). These schools varied in size from a large primary school catering for

667 students and a small intermediate school catering for 199 students.

Fourteen schools were in one suburb and 12 in the other. The suburbs’

secondary schools were not included in the initiative because they had been

participating in an alternative initiative for 2 years. Although the Education

Review Office Report (1996) on the two suburbs had identified that more

than 40% of the schools offered an inadequate education, the specific schools

about which they were concerned were not identified. The Ministry had no

independent information about the quality of education because this

responsibility had been devolved to the schools’ boards of trustees in

1989. At this time, their main concern was the declining enrolments in

intermediate, middle, and secondary schools because this was one of the few

statistics they collected.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

During the first 6 months of the initiative, a five-member Ministry team was

appointed jointly by the Ministry and a group of school and community

representatives. The Ministry team consisted of a coordinator (an ex-school

principal) and four others with a mix of school and community knowledge and

expertise. This team focused on consulting the communities and the schools

about their perception of the problems and their priorities for intervention. The

team undertook a ‘‘needs analysis’’ in each school, which consisted of asking

school principals what was needed to improve the quality of education. In

addition, they sponsored a series of meetings attended by both school and

community personnel, and held individual interviews with community

members. As a result of this consultation, a generic project called

‘‘Communities in schools via literacy’’ was developed. The emphasis was

on the community because the consultation process had identified that the

community wished to be more involved in the schools. In addition, community

confidence in many schools was so low that 70% of the secondary-aged

students (years 9–13) in one of the two districts attended schools outside the

district. Literacy was to be the focus of that involvement because at each of

the consultation meetings concerns were expressed about the low literacy

achievement of the students. Although no public data were available on

literacy standards in the primary schools, pass rates in public examinations at

secondary school level were very low.

In the first intervention phase following this consultation, each school was

invited to develop a submission for a project that involved the community in a

literacy-related activity in the school. Typically, these projects were funded

after several rounds of negotiation with the intervention team. The second

phase of the intervention began with the re-negotiation of the funded projects,

as information on the impact of the first phase became available.

The authors, who were contracted by the Ministry of Education to complete

a process evaluation of these initiatives, tracked their development and impact

over a 2.5-year period. Data were obtained through a number of different

methods summarized in Table 1. An understanding of the background to the

initiatives and the consultation process was gained through observation of a

series of community meetings held by the Ministry intervention team, and

analysis of documents from both the Education Review Office and the

Ministry of Education. Clarification of the rationale underpinning the

initiatives was sought through interviews with Ministry of Education,

Education Review Office, school, and community personnel. Relationships

between the Ministry and the schools were surveyed through a questionnaire


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

of school principals and community leaders asking about their knowledge of

the initiatives and their confidence in various aspects of the work of the

Ministry. Verification of our analysis was sought through feedback meetings

with the Ministry and the two local principals’ associations.

Table 1. Summary of Data Collection Over the Phases of the Initiative.

Phases Types of data collection Data sources Frequencies

Consultation Meeting observations Community/Ministry of Education 9phase

Document analysis Background policy papersEducation Review Office Reports

Interviews School principals 6Ministry of Education officials 16Community leaders 5

Questionnaire survey School principals 26Community leaders 33

Verification of theanalysis

Meetings 3

Partnership Meeting observations Ministry of Education/schools 26Phase One

District principals’ association 7Ministry of Education 10Community meetings 8

Document analysis Education Review Office ReportsSchools’ initial funding applications

Interviews School personnel 32Ministry of Education officials 9Community leaders 6

Questionnaire survey Schools 24Verification of the

analysisMeetings 5

Partnership Meeting observations Ministry of Education/schools 26Phase Two

District principals’ associations 5Ministry of Education 10

Document analysis Education Review Office ReportsSchools’ 2nd-year funding applications

Interviews School personnel 23Ministry of Education officials 6

Questionnaire survey Schools 19Verification of the

analysisMeetings 7


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

The evolving partnership arrangements were studied over two phases

through the data collection methods identified in Table 1. Meeting

observations in these phases mostly focused on the project negotiations

between the Ministry and nine of the schools during the submission,

monitoring, and re-negotiation process. Six of these schools were those that

the Ministry believed to be most at risk, and three were believed to be offering

a more adequate education. Clarification of the rationale for the Ministry’s

approach was sought at monthly meetings held between the researchers, the

intervention team, and those Ministry officials responsible for the initiatives.

The observations were followed-up with interviews with the Ministry, the

principals, project leaders, boards of trustees’ chairpersons, and community

representatives. In addition, interviews on specific issues were conducted with

principals and/or project leaders in 24 of the participating schools in Phase

One and 16 schools in Phase Two. The interviews for all participants focused

on their theories of intervention and theories of partnership. By theories of

intervention, we mean the actions taken, the beliefs and contextual issues

underpinning those actions, and the anticipated consequences (Robinson,

1994). By theories of partnership, we refer to beliefs about the qualities of

partnership and whether the informant believed that the various participants

were working in partnership.

The documents analyzed included reports on the schools from the

Education Review office, and other documentation relevant to the schools’

submissions for additional funding, the 6-monthly monitoring process and

re-submission documents for the second phase. Two surveys, one in each

phase, were also conducted. Respondents to these surveys included school

principals, Boards of Trustees chairpersons, and school project leaders in

each school. In the Phase One survey, respondents were asked to rate the

extent to which they felt that they had ownership of their projects and their

confidence that the projects would achieve a range of desired outcomes. The

Phase Two survey included similar questions about confidence and

ownership and also asked about any changes that were made to the projects

and their beliefs about the purpose of the initiatives. Additional questions

relevant to other aspects of the initiative were also surveyed but are not

reported in this article.

Verification of our analysis of the participants’ theories of intervention and

partnership was initially sought from an advisory group of five principals from

the two districts, followed by meetings of the two principals’ associations and

Ministry of Education officials at the end of each phase.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

The First Intervention PhaseFigure 1 presents a causal diagram summarizing the Ministry’s theory of

intervention that underpinned their approach to the initiatives in the first

phase. Various contextual factors shaped the partnership in this phase. The

first, described above, was a commitment to strengthening the schools’ self-

management capabilities. For the Ministry, this required avoiding direct

intervention in the schools’ operational autonomy. This right of schools to

manage their own operations was not only respected by the Ministry, but

also defended strongly by the schools. As one principal stated when the

coordinator of the initiatives suggested that the school employ a consultant to

assist with serious governance and management problems, ‘‘I’m happy to

receive advice, but I don’t want anyone telling us what to do.’’

The second contextual factor was the strained relationships between the

schools, the Ministry, and the communities. The fragility of the relationships

between the Ministry and the schools was reflected in the survey of schools

conducted during the consultation phase of the initiatives. Confidence in the

Ministry to deliver resources on time, in ways that were responsive to

concerns, or likely to provide an adequate return on effort, were all rated

between 3.5 and 3.7 on a 7-point rating scale. The descriptor associated with a

rating of 3 was ‘‘little confidence.’’

Similarly, the community appeared to lack confidence in the schools. In one

of the two districts, 70% of secondary school aged students (Years 9–13)

attended schools outside of the district. At the community meetings held at

this time, community members made various condemnatory statements about

the schools. For example, one person announced, ‘‘We are here because the

schools have failed. We need to do away with the traditional education

approach.’’

Rather than perceiving this kind of challenge as legitimate, negativity

developed in many of the schools towards the people expressing these

sentiments. As one principal expressed it in an interview:

At the initial meetings we were led to believe that it was going to be

community driven. These groups came out and they said . . . how terrible

schools were and they were allowed to say that . . . . They led us on a merry

dance and it was a very uncomfortable dance for a lot of principals.

The history of self-management and the strained relationships between the

Ministry, the schools, and the community meant that school leaders felt little

enthusiasm for the proposed partnership with the Ministry. What they wanted


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

Fig. 1. The Ministry of Education’s theory of intervention in Phase One.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

from the Ministry was not partnership, but empowerment, by which they

meant the right of schools to determine how they would spend the additional

funding. As one principal stated, ‘‘In the past the Ministry always dumped on

[the district] . . . . I believed . . . that here for once was an intervention and

support for [the district] which would achieve its stated objective of

empowerment – of schools and the community.’’

Faced with these contextual conditions, together with a demand to do

something positive in response to the 1996 Education Review Office Report,

the Ministry adopted the intervention strategies identified in Figure 1. Schools

had maximum freedom to define how they might strengthen the education they

offered within the overarching framework of a generic Ministry-funded

project of ‘‘Communities in Schools via Literacy.’’ This did not mean that the

Ministry intervention team was passive. Rather, it was very active in assisting

the schools to formulate their projects and frequently challenged their ideas.

As a result of this process, eight schools with weak governance and

management systems agreed to engage the services of a consultant. Consistent

with self-management policy, the schools appointed their own consultants.

The Ministry was also seeking to introduce strategies that would more

directly impact on the quality of schooling in the district. In the applications

for additional funding, each school was required to provide a data-based

analysis of its literacy provision. This analysis included a vision for the school,

identification of any discrepancies between this vision and the literacy

achievement of the students, and a review of the programs that were offered.

The power of these kinds of internal review processes to increase schools’

capacity to improve the quality of education has been demonstrated by many

school improvement researchers (Newmann, King, & Rigdon, 1997; Stoll,

1999). In addition to this internal review, the Ministry intervention team

monitored each school’s project through milestone reports, and the Education

Review Office was contracted by the Ministry to provide an independent audit

of each project, including its management.

The Ministry hoped that these strategies would result in the intermediary

outcomes identified in Figure 1. They believed that allowing schools to

develop their own projects not only respected their operational autonomy, but

also would develop ownership of the improvement process. When asked to

identify Ministry priorities for the initiatives, one Ministry official responded,

‘‘If there has to be a priority, then it would be on the side of school confidence

and security. [Ownership is] critical, critical. Without owning the task,

commitment reduces.’’


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

The overarching project of ‘‘Communities in Schools via Literacy’’ was

designed to increase parent and community participation in the schools and

the confidence of the community in the schools. These intermediary outcomes

were not considered by the Ministry to be an end in themselves, but rather a

means to the goals of strengthening self-management and improving student

literacy achievement. How this might occur was never articulated by the

Ministry nor discussed with the schools.

Phase One: The Partnership Relationship

Despite the care with which the Ministry set about the intervention process, only

one of the nine schools on which we focused perceived the relationship to be one

of partnership, with another equivocal. The schools agreed with the Ministry’s

strategies of asking them to develop their own projects and appoint their own

consultants, because the need to respect self-management and the desirability of

promoting confidence and ownership were accepted by both partners as a given.

As one principal explained, the projects offered an opportunity to deliver

something new and this would improve confidence. ‘‘I think confidence goes

with delivery . . . that’s where your confidence comes from.’’

But the Ministry wished to make a difference to the quality of education,

and sought to do so by requiring schools to show evidence of data-based self-

review in their application. This type of review, however, was new to all but

one of the schools and the language used was unfamiliar. The Ministry’s

insistence on its importance was not well understood. As a result, most schools

perceived the application process to be an imposed hierarchical requirement

to access the additional funding they believed to be rightfully theirs. The

rewriting process frustrated all of the schools and was not perceived to be

consistent with their perceptions of a partnership.

We report some of the principal’s reactions to the different phases of the

initiatives through the story of Alex. He experienced the intervention like this:

We were told to come up with a project so we had to sit down and think.

Some of the senior management went off-site for a Saturday and we sat

down and brainstormed and developed our ideas of what we wanted to do.

And this is where we felt it wasn’t a partnership. We’d come up with our

project, I got my ‘‘brains trust’’ to write it but we felt we weren’t listened to.

We got a D-fail. It wasn’t written how everybody wanted it written. We

were told that people in the Ministry and Treasury wouldn’t be able to read

it. But then when we wrote it in that way, we couldn’t really read it.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

Although Alex’s story is unique, we checked the extent to which other

principals and project leaders experienced the process in the same way. Seven

of our nine schools strongly identified with it, one was ambivalent and one

disagreed. Although the principal at this latter school was non-committal

because he was not closely involved in the initiatives, the project leader in this

school perceived the relationship with the Ministry to be a partnership because

she had found the submission process challenged her educational ideas and

practices. As she explained:

I saw it as a partnership. Right from the beginning he [the Ministry

coordinator] challenged us. He kept asking us to justify what we did and

that made us think what we needed to do. He was always available,

weekends, evenings.

The monitoring process was perceived by all the schools to be an imposed

hierarchical requirement. Under ‘‘milestone’’ reporting, each school was

required to enter monthly updates on expenditure and was visited regularly by

the intervention team to determine if they had spent the funding as specified.

Our principal, Alex, experienced the process in this way:

Milestones. I’ve spent $18,000 on such and such and then they just tick that

off. What we’re not being monitored for, or given any idea about is whether

we are on the right track. Like, what we think is wonderful is not making

any difference. We are collecting masses of achievement data but what

we’d love is to know if we’re making a difference. My cry is, have we

wasted that money?

At this time, the Ministry restricted its monitoring to financial matters and did

not monitor whether the projects were resulting in the desired outcome of

improving literacy achievement. Monitoring educational outcomes was seen

to be a school responsibility. As the Ministry official said above, ‘‘As a

Ministry person, I was told not to intervene.’’

Despite the Ministry’s efforts to respect schools’ status as self-managing,

their intervention was perceived in most cases to be a series of imposed

bureaucratic requirements. Of our nine schools, Alex and two others were

looking to the Ministry to be an educational partner. Five others considered an

educational role to be inappropriate for the Ministry and preferred it to remain

distant from educational matters. They perceived the submission, rewriting

and monitoring requirements to be excessively bureaucratic and one for which

they did not understand the need. The one project leader who strongly


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

perceived the relationship to be one of partnership did so because the

submission process challenged her educational ideas and practices. However,

she too complained about the monitoring processes.

Phase One: Achieving the Task

In such a complex intervention it is difficult to determine what counts as the

task or its success. In Figure 1, we indicate there were three types of tasks to be

accomplished – the intervention strategies, the desired intermediary outcomes

and the desired educational outcomes. The rationale for how the strategies

would result in each level of outcome was not articulated by the Ministry,

although most understood the relationship between developing projects,

creating ownership and increasing confidence. How these processes were to

strengthen self-management and improve literacy achievement were uncriti-

cally accepted as a given.

The first of the two tasks identified as strategies in Figure 1 was achieved by

all schools. Projects were developed around the concept of community

involvement with a focus on literacy. On the other hand, the data-based needs

analysis was poorly completed because it was an unfamiliar process for most

schools and its rationale and language poorly understood. Three of the nine

schools specifically mentioned that they believed it to be a ‘‘Treasury

requirement’’ to access the funding and had little to do with education because

a Treasury signature was required for funding release. One of these schools

reported that the analysis took them 240 hr to complete. Inspection of the

schools’ initial submissions for funding confirmed that only one of our nine

schools adequately documented a literacy need that was directly connected to

an intervention to address that particular need with an appropriate outcome

measure identified to find out if the need had been addressed. When asked to

rate to what extent their understanding of their school’s needs had changed

during the course of writing their funding submission, their average rating was

1.80, falling between the descriptors of ‘‘exactly the same’’ and ‘‘mostly the

same.’’

The intermediary tasks of ownership and increasing confidence through

the strategy of project development (see Table 2) were largely achieved.

Participants’ ratings on the questionnaire conducted during this phase were

very high for their sense of ownership and high for items asking about their

confidence that their projects would improve literacy achievement, school

management, student literacy achievement, and relationships between the

school and community.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

While these ratings showed that people believed that their projects would

be effective, how these intermediary outcomes would result in school

improvement was never discussed between the schools and the Ministry in this

phase. One problem with the proposed projects was that 21 of them nominated

programs that were already operating in other schools in the two districts.

None of these programs had been evaluated in terms of their impact on student

achievement. A second problem was that only six projects involved any

analysis of the quality of current literacy teaching with a focus on how to

improve it. Other projects were additional to the regular classroom program.

Two problems, both of which were evident in these initiatives, have been

identified with this add-on quality in terms of their impact on the higher level

tasks of strengthening self-management and improving literacy achievement.

McLaughlin (1990), in her review of school interventions, concluded that

special projects aimed at discrete elements of the school system usually

bypass the systemic and interconnected conditions that influence classroom

practice. Similarly, Bryk (1999) identified from his work in Chicago, that

additional programs create issues of coordination and organizational

integration. ‘‘As a result, schools became more complex and not very robust

organizations’’ (p. 73). Although we agree, as do many others (e.g., Hatch,

1998), that the intermediary processes are important in achieving the

educational tasks (Fig. 1), the causal links between them are tenuous. What

was missing in this first phase was a dialogue between the partners about the

assumptions underpinning those causal links and how they applied to the

achievement of the educational tasks.

Table 2. Average Ratingsa of School Principals, Teachers, and Project Leaders on theAchievement of Intermediary Process Tasks.

Tasks Phase One (n¼ 38) Phase Twob (n¼ 33)

1. Ownership of projects 8.1 6.82. Confidence in improving management 7.6 7.03. Confidence in improving student literacy

achievement7.6 7.6

4. Confidence in improving relationshipsbetween the school and the community

7.4 7.2

Note. aA scale of 1–10 was used with 1 representing ‘‘No sense of ownership/not at allconfident,’’ and 10 representing ‘‘strong sense of ownership/very confident.’’bResults of a t-test for paired samples indicate no significant difference in all ratings atp< .05.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

The Second Intervention PhaseThe second phase involved re-negotiation of the funding for each school for

the 2nd year. Although the Ministry intended the intervention process to be

an evolving one, this re-negotiation came as a surprise to most school leaders

who thought that the funding was assured for a 2-year period. In this phase,

the Ministry intervention team took a much stronger advocacy role for

the achievement of particular tasks by articulating their beliefs about the

characteristics of strong schools. These characteristics formed criteria against

which the quality of each school’s proposals was judged. They included a

focus on student achievement, a strong working relationship with the

community, professional development based on a needs analysis, and

organizational growth based on cycles of planning, implementation, and

evaluation (Annan, 1999). The meaning of the criteria was explained to each

school and they were asked to justify how their projects would result in

achieving the criteria or what changes were needed in the 2nd year to do so.

The schools now had a much clearer understanding of the outcomes the

Ministry wanted to achieve. Part of the Ministry’s new advocacy role included

a proposal for district-wide professional development in the analysis and use

of student achievement data. Schools could choose to be involved.

In taking this role, the Ministry moved from one in which it mainly handed

over definition of the task to the schools, to one in which it took a clearer

advocacy role in identifying the tasks to be achieved. There were two main

reasons for this change in stance on the part of the Ministry. Firstly, the

intervention team had better information on each school’s operations as a

result of negotiating and monitoring the 1st-year projects. When the initiative

began, the Ministry’s information on the schools was limited to the Education

Review Office Report (1996), which did not specify which schools were

offering an inadequate education, and the schools’ and communities’ views of

their needs. The Ministry’s new information was supplemented by detailed

Education Review Office reports on the progress of each school’s initial

submission. These reports identified both positive progress and specific

problems the schools needed to address and were used as the basis for revision

to the 2nd-year proposals. The second reason was concern about the overall

impact of the initiatives on the quality of education provided in the two

districts. The research team had reported on its perspective of the progress of

the initiatives as a whole and expressed concern that most projects focused on

peripheral rather than central practices (Timperley, Robinson, & Bullard,

1999).


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

The changes were not adopted lightly by the Ministry personnel involved in

the initiatives because they demanded a very different partnership relationship

with the schools. A new line was being drawn between the perceived right of

schools to have operational autonomy and the need to make a difference to the

quality of education offered in the two districts. An example of the tensions

was the process for appointing governance and management consultants.

Eight additional schools were identified as needing these consultants,

including Alex’s school. In the first phase, schools appointed their own

consultants. In the second phase, they were appointed jointly with the co-

ordinator of the initiatives. The issues debated within the Ministry included,

‘‘Did more direct Ministry involvement undermine rather than strengthen self-

management in keeping with the aims of the initiatives?’’ and ‘‘What were the

implications for the state’s responsibility and risk should the consultants not

perform to the satisfaction of the Board?’’ These issues had to be weighed

against the greater risk of failing to make a difference.

Phase Two: The Partnership Relationship

Although the new role adopted by the Ministry was not negotiated directly

with the school partners, six of the nine schools indicated in their interviews

that they accepted it and perceived it to be closer to a partnership relationship.

As in Phase One, all continued to find the administration of the monitoring

system unnecessarily cumbersome. The relationship was perceived to be more

like a partnership because they better understood the rationale underpinning

the Ministry’s actions. Alex, for example, was confronted by two issues in

Phase Two. One related to management and the other to the operation of his

1st-year project. This project had involved withdrawing the more able students

from the regular classroom program and providing them with specialist

teaching. The coordinator of the initiatives was concerned that this withdrawal

program was not impacting on regular classroom teaching and learning. Alex

found the process uncomfortable, but challenging and useful:

We got quite a shock when we had to reapply and rewrite and redo all those

sorts of things. I’d had this teacher released to do our project, but now all of

a sudden we were told the [withdrawal] program we were running is

supposed to be run in the classroom. We had been expected to turn things

around when we didn’t really know what was wrong in the first place. We

didn’t quite understand and of course we got prickly – people talked about

failing and we sort of thought we weren’t failing. Then [an intervention


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

team member] came in and smoothed things down. We started to feel that

the partnership came. I understand now that we maybe have to drop

something. [The coordinator] did challenge us and challenged us in a way

that my project leader said, ‘‘Well, we’re going to beat the buggers.’’ It was

more or less inferred that we wouldn’t get the money [for Year Two] unless

we had Patricia [a consultant] helping us with monitoring. I objected

because I’d never met the lady. It’s been the best thing that was pushed on

me. She’s monitoring what we’re doing and she’s also my mentor.

For me, a partnership is being honest and pragmatic and up-front. For

example, one day [in Phase One] the coordinator said, ‘‘Perhaps Julia [a

consultant] could do something for you’’ and I said, ‘‘What for? I mean is

there something wrong?’’ It wasn’t a partnership before because I didn’t

know what the problem was and who was doing the deciding. In a

partnership there should be honesty about what’s going to happen.

What was significant about Alex’s story, and others like it, was that the

intervention team’s incursions into his operational autonomy felt more like a

partnership than had the hands-off role adopted by the Ministry in the earlier

phase. Alex’s reaction was similar to the school that perceived the Phase One

relationship to be a partnership. These schools wanted a partner that was going

to challenge their educational thinking and practice, and do so in an open and

up-front way.

Given the 10-year history of self-management in New Zealand (New

Zealand Government, 1989), and the specific context of the earlier phase of

the intervention, it was predictable that some of the principals would be

unenthusiastic about the new roles and arrangements. Three of the nine

schools perceived that the Ministry intervention team had encroached on their

right to define their own projects. In a letter of complaint to the Minister of

Education (Mangere Principals’ Association, August 1999) concern was

expressed ‘‘that the role of the facilitator [had] shifted from facilitator to

director.’’ They requested that a way forward be identified ‘‘to further enhance

student achievement in such a way to affirm the role of the school in the

decision making.’’ They had neither realized, nor agreed, that acceptance of

the additional funding meant a reduction in their control over their projects or

their schools. Although they were able to continue with the substantive

content of their original projects, the intervention team’s new style of

challenge was perceived to be a ‘‘take-over’’ of their autonomy and, as such,

was resented.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

Despite the Ministry’s change in style and the objection of some people to

the change, feelings of project ownership and confidence remained at similar

levels. There was no significant difference between Phase One and Two in the

ratings of those school personnel completing both questionnaires for project

ownership or confidence that the projects would improve management,

student literacy achievement, and relationships between the school and

community (Table 2).

Phase Two: Achieving the Task

Although the re-negotiation of Phase Two projects was constrained by

commitments made during Phase One, 60% of the schools changed their

projects. In each case, the changes were designed to have more direct impact

on classroom teaching and management practices. Three schools, for

example, agreed to drop parts of their original proposals because they

believed that more focus on a single aspect was likely to have greater impact

on teaching practices and student achievement. One project leader, whose

school had become intensively involved in a whole school develop-

ment process that was designed to improve the teaching of children from

non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB), wrote in the Phase Two

questionnaire:

We were opting for [a social skills program]. Changed to continuing with

our NESB contract. The contract involves whole school philosophy,

methodology and community involvement. Even 2 years is only a

beginning. One year would be flirting, 2 years coming to grips, 3 years

embracing, 4 years RESULTS.

Although few others were as enthusiastic as this project leader, average

ratings in Phase Two for the extent to which their understanding of their

school’s needs had changed since they submitted their first proposal were

higher than the average ratings in Phase One for changed understanding

during the submission process. In Phase Two the average ratings of 2.6 fell

between the descriptors of ‘‘Mostly the same’’ and ‘‘Some differences.’’ These

ratings were significantly different from those in Phase One (t¼ 4.265,

p< .01) when the average ratings fell between the descriptors of ‘‘Exactly the

same’’ and ‘‘Mostly the same.’’

In addition, a change in perception about the purpose of the initiatives

occurred among the schools as a whole. This change was reflected in the

answers to two questions in the Phase Two questionnaire on the views they


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

held of the Ministry initiatives. Respondents were asked to indicate for Phases

One and Two what they believed the initiatives to be about. The change in

ratings for the two phases indicated a shift in perception towards a greater

understanding that they were about helping schools to undertake school self-

review (Table 3). Perceptions that the initiatives were designed to provide

money to schools to complete a project, however, still had equal weighting

with that of self-review. Schools’ understanding of the importance of

examining their own practices was still tentative.

Most indicative of change during this phase was the willingness of schools

to take part in a Ministry-initiated professional development contract in

analyzing and using student achievement data for school improvement

purposes. Twenty-four of the 26 schools indicated that they wished to be

included in this contract because they now recognized the need to conduct this

kind of review. During Phase One, only one of the nine schools had any

understanding of the requirements of this task, with others believing it to be a

waste of time.

Overall, we have interpreted the changes between the two phases as

indications of shifts towards achieving the desired educational outcome of

strengthening self-management as identified in Figure 1. Schools were making

changes to their projects to focus more on the core functions of teaching and

learning, with more recognizing the importance of self-review and making

commitments to becoming more skilled in the process.

The goal of improving literacy achievement, noted in Figure 1, was

impossible to ascertain. Despite relatively high ratings of confidence that the

projects would impact on literacy achievement, the lack of data made

Table 3. Average Ratingsa of Principals, Teachers, and Project Leaders on Beliefs About thePurpose of the Initiatives.

Beliefs Phase One (n¼ 33) Phase Two (n¼ 33)

I thought [the initiative] was about providing 4.9 4.1�more money to schools to enable them to dothe things they think best

I thought [the initiative] was about helping 3.9 4.9�schools undertake school self-review

Note. aA rating of 1 represented ‘‘Strongly disagree,’’ a rating of 4 represented ‘‘neither agreenor disagree’’ and rating of 7 represented ‘‘Strongly agree.’’�p< .05.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

assessment of impact impossible. Some schools reported achievement data in

their applications for continued funding in Phase Two. The form in which

these data were presented served to highlight the need for teacher

development in the analysis and use of student achievement data for review

purposes. Most data described the progress of individual students, without

reference to expected progress over the same time period or comparison with

others not involved in the program. For example, one school that employed a

specialist reading teacher with their additional funding provided a single

reading score for each child accompanied with a comment such as, ‘‘Knows

what to do with unknown word but not an established response.’’ An overall

comment evaluated the impact of the program, ‘‘All children have displayed

improvement in reading level except for H. Children are using the strategies of

re-running but are not confident about reading on.’’ These data and comments

gave no indication of expected reading levels or comparative progress with

other children not included in the program.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Partnership is a potentially powerful intervention process. Through partner-

ship it is possible to avoid the negative consequences of ‘‘taking over’’ failing

schools (Hatch, 1998; McLaughlin, 1990) or ‘‘handing over’’ extra resources

to fund self-identified needs that do not challenge dysfunctional institutional

norms (Anderson, 1998; Datnow, 1999). As an intervention process, however,

partnership is not an easy option, particularly where the context is one of

school self-management with expectations of continuing operational auton-

omy, strained relationships, and only one of the partners believing in a need

for fundamental change. Strained relationships and differences in perceptions

are common in the school improvement context. As more school systems

decentralize, however, expectations of continued autonomy will become more

common.

Our research questions about the implications of the partnership relation-

ship for task success were based on our definition of partnership in which we

proposed that entities are in partnership when they accept some responsibility

for a problem or task and establish processes for working together that imply

mutual accountability and shared power over task-relevant decisions. At the

beginning of the initiative, one of the problems besetting the partnership was

the failure of any individual school partner to accept that they were one of the


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

40% perceived to be offering an inadequate education. Although happy to

accept additional funding for a self-identified project peripheral to their

regular teaching programs, they had not accepted responsibility for the more

serious task of making fundamental changes to their core operations. The

processes of working together, therefore, focused on the intermediary tasks of

developing strategies to achieve project ownership and increased confidence,

rather than the more demanding task of school improvement. Not surprisingly,

the attempts by the Ministry partner to introduce improvement strategies, such

as a data-based needs analysis followed by close monitoring, was misunder-

stood and greeted with suspicion by the school partner. In the second phase,

the rationale for these activities was better understood and more widely

accepted.

It could be argued that respecting autonomy and building confidence was

appropriate in the early stages of the intervention because it developed the

positive relationships necessary for tackling the more complex task of school

improvement. We take an alternative view and argue that the educational task

itself should be used to motivate the partnership and to regulate the

relationship. In this context, the different perspectives of each partner would

need to be negotiated and resolved according to their likely impact on task

success. When partners hold different expectations, as they did at the

beginning of the initiative, this approach does not avoid conflict, but it does

provide opportunities for the conflict to be resolved in terms of task criteria.

We acknowledge that situations exist in which relationships are too strained

for partners to work on a major educational task. In this case, improving

relationships may become the task and how to achieve it becomes the joint

responsibility of the partners. For example, they may choose to do so through

working together on a relatively minor or short-term task. As the relationship

evolves, so would the significance of the tasks that are tackled. Attempting to

solve relationship problems under the guise of working on a major educational

task, such as school improvement, is liable to compromise achievement of the

task because decisions are more likely to be determined by their impact on the

relationship, than by their impact on task success.

Tasks can be defined in many different ways. In education, tasks are often

defined at the level of ownership, participation, and confidence without

making explicit the assumptions about how these qualities impact on the

educational task of improving outcomes for students. In the initiative reported

in this study, the focus on the intermediary tasks in Phase One was one

example of this approach. The New Zealand Ministry, however, is not alone in


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

defining tasks in these terms. Edwards and Warin (1999), for example, note

that evaluation of partnership initiatives between parents and schools are

usually made in terms of participation rates rather than in terms of the

educational outcomes the participation is designed to achieve. Without the

assumptions of how one impacts on the other being made explicit, processes

such as confidence and participation, may be perceived as ends in themselves.

The more explicit stance taken by the Ministry in the second phase, through

articulating desired outcomes in terms of the characteristics of a strong school,

and asking schools to justify how their projects impacted on that outcome,

brought a more direct focus on educational goals.

In our definition of partnership, we refer to processes of mutual

accountability and shared power over task-relevant decisions. In the absence

of a shared definition of the problem or task, it is almost inevitable that

partners will hold different ideas about appropriate accountabilities and that

power struggles will develop. Both the Ministry and the schools in this study

perceived that they were accountable for implementing their self-identified

projects because it was this for which they accepted responsibility. Both had

untested beliefs about how this would improve student achievement and did

not have the monitoring systems in place to test if it had been accomplished.

Schools had not been accountable for this before, so had not considered

that they should be so now. Similarly, it was not until the Ministry introduced

its list of characteristics of a strong school (Annan, 1999), had either partner

expressed what ‘‘strengthened self-management’’ might look like, let

alone how the partners could be held accountable for achieving it.

Accountabilities for the task cannot be established in the absence of its

shared definition.

In answer to our research questions, we have concluded from this study that

while a working relationship is fundamental to the success of a partnership,

the relationship must be developed within the context of a shared un-

derstanding of the task the relationship has been established to accomplish, if

the partnership is to achieve the purpose for which it was established.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to acknowledge both the financial assistance from the Ministry of Educationand the time officials from the Ministry spent with us debating the policy issues. We also wish tothank the school principals and project leaders for their ongoing participation in the research.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

REFERENCES

Anderson, G.L. (1998). Toward authentic participation: Deconstructing the discourses ofparticipatory reforms in education. American Educational Research Journal, 35(4),571–606.

Annan, B. (1999). Strengthening education in Mangere and Otara. Summary of the SEMOannual report: The evolution of a 3-way partnership, schooling and development project.Wellington, NZ: Ministry of Education.

Beattie, N. (1989). Parents as a new found land: Reflections on formal parent participation infive polities (ED308570).

Bryk, A.S. (1999). Policy lessons from Chicago’s experience with decentralization. InD. Ravitch (Ed.), Brookings papers on education policy (pp. 67–128). Washington,DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Butterworth, G., & Butterworth, S. (1998). Reforming education: The New Zealand experience1984–1996. Palmerston North, NZ: Dunmore Press.

Crozier, G. (1998). Parents and schools: Partnership or surveillance? Journal of EducationalPolicy, 13(1), 125–136.

Datnow, A. (1999). How schools choose externally developed reform designs. Report No. 35.Baltimore, MD: Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk, JohnsHopkins University.

Education Review Office. (1996). Improving schooling in Mangere and Otara. Wellington, NZ:Education Review Office.

Edwards, A., & Warin, J. (1999). Parental involvement in raising the achievement of primaryschool pupils: Why bother? Oxford Review of Education, 25(3), 325–341.

Fiske, E.B., & Ladd, H.F. (2000). When schools compete: A cautionary tale. Washington, DC:Brookings Institution Press.

Hatch, T. (1998). The differences in theory that matter in the practice of school improvement.American Educational Research Journal, 35(1), 3–31.

McGowan, T.M., & Powell, J.H. (1996). In search of autonomy: Teachers’ aspirations andexpectations from a school-university collaborative. Teaching and Teacher Education,12(3), 249–260.

McLaughlin, M.W. (1990). The RAND change agent study revisited: Macro perspectives andmicro realities. Educational Researcher, 19(9), 11–16.

Newmann, F.M., King, M.B., & Rigdon, M. (1997). Accountability and school performance:Implications from restructuring schools. Harvard Educational Review, 67(1), 41–74.

New Zealand Government. (1989). Education Act (Public Act 1989, No. 80). Wellington,New Zealand.

Peters, J., Williams, D., & Johnson, B. (1999). Academics working with schools: Revealing thetensions. Journal of Education for Teaching, 25(2), 123–133.

Pole, C., & Chawla-Duggan, R. (1996). Introduction. In C. Pole & R. Chawla-Duggan (Eds.),Reshaping education in the 1990s: Perspectives on secondary schooling (pp. 1–8).London: The Falmer Press.

Robinson, V.M.J. (1994). The practical promise of critical research in educationaladministration. Educational Administration Quarterly, 30(1), 56–76.

Rogers, D., & Chung, H. (1983). 110 Livingston Street revisited: Decentralization in action.New York: New York University Press.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

Smith, K. (1997). Schooling in Mangere and Otara: A strategy for improvement (Report to Hon.Wyatt Creech, Minister of Education). Wellington, NZ: Ministry of Education.

Stevens, D. (1999). The ideal, real and surreal in school-university partnerships: Reflections ofa boundary spanner. Teaching and Teacher Education, 15(3), 287–299.

Stoll, L. (1999). Realising our potential: Understanding and developing capacity for lastingimprovement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 10, 503–532.

Taskforce to Review Education Administration. (1988). Administrating for excellence:Effective administration in education. Wellington, NZ: Author.

Timperley, H., Robinson, V., & Bullard, T. (1999). Strengthening education in Mangere andOtara: First evaluation report. Auckland, NZ: University of Auckland.

U.K. Department for Education. (1992). Choice and diversity. A new framework for schools(CM2021). London: HMSO.

Vincent, C., & Tomlinson, S. (1997). Home-school relationships: ‘‘The swarming ofdisciplinary mechanism?’’ British Educational Research Journal, 23(3), 361–377.

Whitty, G. (1997). Marketization, the state, and the re-formation of the teaching profession. InA.H. Halsey, H. Lauder, P. Brown, & A.S. Wells (Eds.), Education: Culture, economy,and society (pp. 299–310). Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Nor

thea

ster

n U

nive

rsity

] at

20:

08 0

2 D

ecem

ber

2014

Documents

Partnership as an Intervention Strategy in Self-Managing Schools