Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce the papers in this special issue and some issues surrounding choosing management as a career. A jointly developed questionnaire is also presented. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is descriptive in nature. Findings: It is crucial for researchers and practitioners to expand their perspectives…

The field of educational leadership in England is seriously ill and it could be terminal. Peter Ribbins recent paper, "Seven Precepts for Research in Leadership in Education" makes an important contribution to helping the field to examine research purposes and practice. The author has taken up the invitation to examine Ribbins' list…

Discusses strategies for handling those who don't respond to mail questionnaires so that evaluation results are generalizable and valid. (JOW)

Questions about the future of business education have been asked and answered throughout its long history. The author posed six of these questions at the 2002 Peter L. Agnew Lecture at New York University. These six questions, all pointing to the year 2020, are: (1) What will business education be?; (2) Where will it be?; (3) How will it be…

The adoption of a more "open" national training market in vocational education and training (VET) in Australia has led to considerable changes in VET organizations and considerable challenges for VET managers. Recent research has established the critical role that 'strategy' plays in leading and managing these organizations and the…

Six stages are hypothesized that define the behavior of returning mailed questionnaires: receiving the questionnaire, opening the mail, forming an overall impression, answering the questions, returning the questionnaire, and dealing with nonrespondents. The researcher must provide incentives at each stage if potential respondents are to complete a…

Offers a four-step process to close the gaps between the ideal and the actual in the way staff, customers, and vendors are treated: (1) conducting a self-examination; (2) making a commitment; (3) developing a code of ethics; and (4) continuing the process. Includes a list of resources and an ethics questionnaire with responses of 240 small…

Provides 14 guidelines that can be applied in questionnaire construction to ensure that the researcher obtains useful and accurate data and results. (Author)

Globalisation has extended the competition between nation-states to that between metropolises of the same or different nations. Many studies have shown how nation-states respond to the challenge of globalisation by reconfiguring their citizenship education curriculum into a multileveled framework comprising personal, social, local, national and…

Presents a successful, systematic, legally defensible training needs assessment (TNA) and discusses the importance of conducting one. Includes sample materials. (JOW)

Presents results from a questionnaire concerning provision for foreign language teaching in the various states of West Germany. The questionnaire was based on the assumption that school radio is a valuable feature in the diversification of foreign language teaching. (IFS/WGA)

Unstated beliefs adults bring to training may conflict with what they are being taught. Rather than identifying learning objectives, trainers should identify trainee assumptions through questionnaires that force people to confront their beliefs and help unblock them. (JOW)

Presents a rationale for graduate students' use of semistructured interviews to enhance the interpretation of data derived from questionnaire returns. The writer experienced deeper understanding of the data and intense satisfaction with results when using this technique in a research project involving new teachers. Includes eight references. (MLH)

Argues that today's blacks feel compelled to interact, share, and participate with European Americans on the latter's terms. The paper suggests that whites' desires to learn about the black condition are considered offensive, intrusive, and disingenuous. A study attempts to understand these interactions and why they fail. (GLR)

In this article, the author discusses Deliberative Polling as the most credible and practical method of public consultation. As compared with self-selected forums or samples of convenience, it employs scientific random samples. As compared with the snapshots of an inattentive public often offered by conventional polls, it assesses informed public…