ABSTRACT

Faith in the power of local decision-making underpins decentralised democratic governance, but the evidence for its effectiveness is mixed. It is in this context that school management committees (SMCs) were established in 2009–10 in India. Training these SMCs received has been criticised for focusing only a set of high expectations built around an idealised set of roles and responsibilities, and not on the members’ decision-making capabilities. We describe how problem-solving projects can be employed to develop such capabilities, through a field experiment in 50 SMCs, with another 50 serving as controls, that studied decisional styles of 603 SMC members. The analysis was based on a confirmatory factor analysis of a two-factor (vigilant and maladaptive styles) model, with the variation among SMCs controlled through a two-level model and path analysis. There was a significant positive effect on the vigilant decision-making style of those who participated in the programme (β = 0.195, p < .05), though maladaptive styles increased in both the treatment and control groups. Given that SMCs are expected to remain a feature of local governance structures, the importance of functional partnerships between the SMCs and school principals is indicated.

摘要

对地方决策权的信念是权力下放的民主治理的基础，但其有效性的证据却参差不齐。在这种情况下，印度于2009-10年度成立了学校管理委员会（SMC）。批评对这些SMC进行培训的原因是，它们仅关注围绕理想化的角色和责任集建立的一系列高期望，而不关注成员的决策能力。我们描述了如何通过50个SMC中的现场实验，以及另外50个作为对照，研究了603个SMC成员的决策风格的解决方案项目，来开发这种功能。该分析基于对两因素（警惕和适应不良风格）模型的验证性因素分析，通过两级模型和路径分析来控制SMC之间的差异。对参与该计划的人的警惕的决策风格产生了显着的积极影响（β  = 0.195，p <.05），尽管在治疗组和对照组中适应不良的方式都增加了。鉴于SMC预计仍将是地方治理结构的特征，因此表明了SMC与学校校长之间功能性伙伴关系的重要性。