Heather Price

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Research Manager at Learning Policy Institute

Background paper prepared for the 2024/5 Global Education Monitoring Report: leadership in education

In this paper, we report on teachers’ and principals’ shared perceptions regarding beliefs, rules, trust, and encouragement of new initiatives. Collectively, these are aspects of leadership for learning (LFL) describing an overall shared climate in schools. We demonstrate how these perceptions on school climate differ across teachers and principals...

Purpose Studies demonstrate the central role of principals in developing and sustaining teacher commitment to their school. Teachers' commitment to their school impacts teaching, learning, innovation and school climate and manifests job satisfaction. Commitment strongly relates to teacher attrition. Attrition is important in the study of school suc...

This book walks readers through the stages of the high school college prep pipeline that introduces interlocked structural barriers to students. The author shows how these barriers reinforce segregated structures that unfairly distribute the public good of education to some students and not others. Price argues that the college prep pipeline of Adv...

To identify the dominant cultural models among parents transmitting faith to their children, we find few methodological guidelines to guide coding and analysis of semi-structured interviews. We thus developed a three-phase procedure for our research team. Phase-one follows Campbell et al. by unitizing on meanings rather than words/pages, including...

The rise in college preparatory coursework across American high schools appears not to affect college enrollment and graduation rates. This study uses the Civil Rights Data Collection to evaluate three stages along the college preparatory pipeline: access to, enrollment in, and mastery of Advanced Placement® and International Baccalaureate® coursew...

Large-scale datasets allow for the tracking of persistent patterns of inequality and inequity in education. This chapter demonstrates how inequality in students’ learning opportunities compounds in high schools. This chapter uses the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) of Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) curricula to dem...

To better understand the status of the teaching profession, we present a conceptual framework outlining the 4 domains of knowledge-worker professionals: professional benchmarks, professional discretion, room for promotion, and workplace conditions and use the TALIS 2013 survey data to show that these domains exist globally and vary within countries...

In chapter 4 social psychological approaches to investigating the why question of American generosity are explored. Theoretical background consists of Mead-inspired symbolic interactionism, Cooley-inspired “looking glass self,” theories of action, Durkheim-inspired social solidarity, Marx-inspired collective consciousness, and Weber-inspired social...

Chapter 1 answers the how much question of American generosity and describes participation rates in nine different forms of generous behaviors. Drawing on a wealth of social science literature ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Putnam, this chapter finds somewhat low levels of voluntary participation in the United States today. Snapshots...

To put generosity within the context of real social lives, twelve case studies are presented that illustrate the broader quantitative themes presented throughout the book. These qualitative cases help explain real-life processes involved in giving behaviors and guide understanding of the broader quantitative patterns presented in the book. Understa...

Chapter 5 presents a sociorelational approach to explaining generosity behaviors. Situated within broader theories of industrialization, modernity, social differentiation, community, and association, the analysis applies a Simmelian-inspired theory of webs of affiliations. Generous self-identity is explored in relation to alignment with spouse in g...

In chapter 2, the who and where questions of American generosity are studied in a Blau-inspired social differentiation analysis. Rates of participation in the “Big 3”generosity forms—financial giving, volunteering, and political action—are investigated with the social status characteristics: age, gender, racial/ethnic identification, marital status...

The conclusion summarizes the central contributions of the book and offers a Maslow-inspired theory of “circles of generosity” that represent meaningful bundles of giving ability, intended targets, and motivations that ripple outward in their societal impacts. These include self-sufficiency generosity, parental-familial generosity, community-religi...

The how question of American generosity is investigated in chapter 3. An innovative analytical method, called fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, is used to construct Weberian-inspired ideal types along with an atypical group that does not fit into one of these types. The types show how processes of giving group together into discernible co...

The school quality assessment process under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is criticized for oversimplifying and overemphasizing standardized test results and unfairly targeting diverse, urban schools. There has been much development in alternative test score evaluations, especially value-added models. These developments have tilted the public discour...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to link the social interactions between principals and their teachers to teachers’ perceptions of their students’ engagement with school, empirically testing the theoretical proposition that principals influence students through their teachers in the US charter school environment. The mediating influence of la...

The authors examine changes in the level and dispersion of student engagement across the transition to high school. Changes in the total dispersion in engagement among all students, as well as divergence in engagement between students of differing gender, race, socioeconomic background, and initial levels of achievement are reported.

The authors examine changes in the level and dispersion of student engagement across the transition to high school. Changes in the total dispersion in engagement among all students, as well as divergence in engagement between students of differing gender, race, socioeconomic background, and initial levels of achievement are reported.

The social network of an individual is shown to highly condition people’s life outcomes (Grannovetter, 1973) – from education to earnings to health outcomes. Although sociologists may differ on their ideas as to how social capital is developed and produced, the educational outcomes from it are clear: the social relations that students have with the...

Purpose-Organizational and work studies consistently find an interrelationship between employees' relationships with coworkers to their morale, as indicated by their satisfaction and commitment levels. This same research shows organizational climate, as indicated by levels of trust and shared values and norms in the organization, strongly benefitin...

Relationships, interactions, and communities are foundational to sociological thinking. As natural and intuitive as it is for us to think and talk about interactions in our human experiences, it is difficult to concretely capture and measure these relational characteristics of people. In the past, social scientists have been limited to qualitativel...

Recent experimental work in social exchange offers keen insight into factors that enhance commitment to individuals, groups, and relationships. In this article we explore the relevance of this work to school settings. Specifically, we use structural equation modeling and data from the 2004 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) to test whether the comm...

Purpose: Research finds that the attitudes of principals and teachers create an atmosphere for learning, often referred to as school climate, that influences school effectiveness. Other research shows that atmospheres of trust, shared vision, and openness create positive school climate conditions. Little is known, however, about how these climates...

The school effectiveness and school climate research solidly identifies the variables associated with successful schools; shared values and norms, openness of governance, and trusting relationships produce committed and contented school community members (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010).

In this analysis, the authors explore the relationship between the social context of high schools and school-to-school variation in tracking policies. The authors consider three explanations for the implementation of highly elaborated tracking systems: opportunity hoarding, status competition, and a technical-functional explanation. Building on the...

Before revising the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation under the new administration, policy makers need to be informed as to whether or not the NCLB labeling formula adequately distinguishes good-quality schools from poor-quality schools. This study tests this question, using rich descriptive data for Milwaukee’s urban school district (MPS). A...

Students’ social psychological adjustment to school is an important determinant of achievement growth as well as school continuation and post-secondary educational attainment. Yet many students begin high school with low levels of efficacy and self-worth, and low levels of identification with and liking of school. In this study, we investigate the...