In times of racing innovation and structural mega transformations, leaders of today's organisations need a map that helps them estimate several things: the complex and changing context, the transformation of their organisation and that of their own personality. The Value Grid is a basic model of the overall concept of the 1492.// School of Business. Those who internalise it are able to navigate themselves and their organisations through the currents of an uncertain development of their env...

An authentic leader is true to himself and helps others to be true to themselves, always seeking to leave mediocrity behind and striving for mastery. In organisations that work like this, people become happy and are committed to their performances and their passion.

What are the differences between leadership and management? How are they connected? What is the common goal? What methods do leaders and managers use? The essence of leadership is to create meaning and to formulate the appropriate goal while giving explanations for actions. The essence of management is to pave the way and to ensure the implementation of necessary steps to achieve the goal. It is possible to distinguish between the choices of having to or wishing to do something. If the chi...

The role of men in early childhood education and care is crucial for the future of all children growing up in a gender sensitive world. Achieving greater diversity and gender balance in the workforce has proved a challenging goal, despite concerted efforts on the part of individuals, institutions, and governments around the world. Many men remain reluctant to enter the profession, and once they choose this work many leave. This book explores how men in the field make their career decisions...

Public education, once considered a dogmatic institution in the 20th century, now finds itself challenged at almost every level in todays sociopolitical environment. New realities, as evidenced by the political complexities of the global village, widespread technological advances that undermine established educational practices, and ever mounting pressures on the curriculum to appease corporate interests have altered the face of public education forever, leaving educators seemingly strande...

Facilitating Practitioner Research: Developing transformational partnerships addresses the complex dilemmas and issues that arise in practitioner inquiry. It recognises that facilitating practitioner research is far more than providing advice about method adoption, important as that contribution is; or even modelling research practices and drawing

Being socially competent is essential in late modern society. We expect people to find their own accommodation, partner, job, community and lifestyle and struggle to find answers for those who are not able or do not have the opportunity to achieve these things. By placing social complexity, social vulnerability and social efficacy within a framework of social policy and social practice, Complexity and Social Work argues that growing social complexity excludes more and more citizen...

Recent worldwide education policy has reinvented teachers as agents of change and professional developers of the school curriculum. Academic literature has analyzed changes in how teacher professionalism is conceived in policy and in practice but Teacher Agency provides a fresh perspective on this issue, drawing upon an ecological theory of agency. Using this model for understanding agency, Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Sarah Robinson explore empirical findings from the 'Teacher...

Tools for Teaching in an Educationally Mobile World examines the challenges that undergraduate and postgraduate teachers often encounter when working with students from different national and cultural backgrounds. It focuses on the consequences for interactive teaching and for course design in a world where students, ideas and courses are mobile, using examples and experiences from a wide range of disciplines and national contexts. It not only considers Anglophone countries, inclu...

In their day-to-day practice, social work and human services practitioners frequently find themselves in confusing ethical quandaries, trying to balance the numerous competing interests of protecting children from harm and promoting family and community capacity. This book explores the ethical issues surrounding child protection interventions and offers a process-oriented approach to ethical practice and decision making in child protection and family welfare practice. Its aim is to prepare...

Leading schools is becoming almost daily a more complex and demanding job. Connecting Leadership and Learning reassesses the purpose of schools, the nature of learning and the qualities of leadership that make schools authentic places of learning.Starting with a review of what we can claim to know – and not know – about learning, leadership and their inter-relationship, this book explores what it means to lead schools that place learning at the centre. Drawing on research ...

Over the last two decades, large-scale national, or provincial, standardised testing has become prominent in the schools of many countries around the globe. National Testing in Schools: An Australian Assessment draws on research to consider the nature of national testing and its multiple effects, including:media responses and constructions such as league tables of performancepressures within school systems and on schools