The first of two questions investigated in this paper concerns the relationships among three measures of teachers' expectations: that their students can succeed, that they can be successful as teachers, and that they can influence what happens in their classrooms and schools. The second question involves relationships between these three types of…

Superintendents and principals from 50 Pennsylvania school districts were asked to complete two questionnaires each to test, first, the relationships between superintendents' and principals' role conflict and ambiguity and, second, the relationship between superintendents' role conflict and ambiguity and their perceptions of their districts'…

A test of the effects of school organization, the school environment, and the larger community context on school attendance showed that environmental and contextual factors have the strongest impact. Using a model based on organizational theory, researchers hypothesized that, within the community context, environmental factors would affect school…

The patterns of development of mass higher education in France and Belgium are compared. Student enrollment data, governmental measures taken to meet needs, and effects of the action within higher education are examined. Results of mass higher education in terms of its principal expectations and future prospects are also analyzed. France and…

During the past two decades federal, state, and local school leaders have attempted to institute major changes in educational programs and organizational arrangements. Recent assessment studies reveal that the great majority of change efforts did not meet intended objectives. As a result, policy formulators have developed serious reservations…

Research symposia were held at the 1977, 1978, and 1979 annual conferences of the National Middle School Association. This document reproduces 14 selected studies relating to middle schools from the papers presented during those symposia. Topics covered are effects of teaching behaviors; teacher-managed inservice training; relationships among…

This study examines how much organizational theories can be applied to understanding schools. According to one organizational theory, certain pressures can force an organization to use more sophisticated methods of coordination. In a school, this would mean that staff and parents would be forced to work together to find ways to deal with…

This report examines the relationship between school type and the participation and influence of teachers in school management, and between school type and the principal's influence in certain issues and professional interaction with teachers in elementary schools. The principals were the chief source of information. An introduction explains the…

This document is the final draft of a preliminary design for a new kind of urban school. It is published in the expectation that the school it describes can and will be built and operated, in the near future. The New School is designed to be a replicatable model for the reform of urban education. The design has its origins in the conviction that…

Two related questions are investigated in this research: (1) the characteristics which differentiate those schools which extensively use educational innovations from those which do not; and (2) the factors that determine whether innovation will be a carefully thought-out and discriminating process, rather than a process primarily influenced by…

The purposes of the project reported here were (1) to explore and describe the formal and informal relationships among black and white students in a large, racially mixed, urban high school, and (2) to attempt to explain how those relationships affect student behavior, administrator and teacher behavior, and other facets of the school…

The Middle College High School, an experimental school at La Guardia Community College (New York) which incorporates the last three years of high school and the first two years of college, was designed for adolescents of average ability but deficient computational and communication skills. Remediation was viewed as a social as well as…

Surveys effect of enrollment size on 117 teachers and 892 middle and junior high school students in Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. Finds middle school teachers prefer small schools, junior high teachers prefer larger schools, and middle school students' self concept may increase with enrollment size. Analyzes school organizational structures. (LFL)

This collection of research reports is intended to advance the understanding of schools through empirical study and theoretical analysis. The reports are as follows: "The Punctuated Equilibrium of National Reading Policy: Literacy's Changing Images and Venues" (Celia Sims and Cecil Miskel); "Productive Campus Leadership Responses to…

It has become more and more common to read and hear that the essential factor underlying effective schools is an ethos or culture of excellence and that effective school leaders are culture builders. The main purpose of this study was to ascertain administrators' views of their schools' climate. The second purpose was to examine imperative skills…