School Management and Effectiveness in Developing Countries: The Post-Bureaucratic School (Continuum Collection Series) - Softcover

Davies, Lynn; Harber, Clive

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826479103 ISBN 13: 9780826479105

Publisher: Continuum International Publishing, 2005

Synopsis

This book is quite different from existing 'Western' books on school effectiveness. It describes and analyses the way in which schools operate in developing countries and also tries to explain why they are as they are. Examining them at three levels - the macro, the meso and the micro - the authors use a theoretical framework that they have termed 'post-bureaucracy.'

The book has four interlinked sections. First the authors examine the existing economic and theoretical contexts around school effectiveness, including an analysis of the causes of economic crisis and its impact on school management. In the second section the analysis of schools as bureaucratic facades is proposed. The reality of school life, from which any theory of school effectiveness must derive, is illustrated by an ethnographic account of the job of the headteacher in developing countries. The third section explores different ways to understand this reality, operating on three levels: global relationships, national and community cultures, and individual agency. In the final section Haber and Davies draw these levels and realities together. They argue for the democratization of schools as the only way forward for effective education fordevelopment.

About this title

About the Author

Clive Harber is Emeritus Professor of International Education at the University of Birmingham, UK, and Honorary Professor of Education at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

Edition details

• Publisher: Continuum International Publishing
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0826479103
• ISBN 13: 9780826479105
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200