Observations of and interviews with teachers and administrators in three elementary and three secondary schools provided support for the hypothesis that the social organization of the school as a workplace affects the fruitfulness of staff development efforts and the effectiveness of the school as a whole. This report reviews the relevant…

Children in a family system establish their identities through the interplay of roles and relationships. As they move from home into school, children become a part of another system. Both systems overlap and events in one system may affect the child's behavior in the other system. A systematic understanding of a child's behavior considers the…

Ways in which the shape and design of curriculum and the direction of curriculum research are influenced by sociopolitical forces are examined. Intended as a means of raising the level of professional consciousness and giving practical guidance to curriculum developers, the paper discusses the relationship of prejudice, bias, and self-reference to…

Noting that a major problem confronting competency based teacher education (CBTE) programs was the development of mutually acceptable perceptions of teacher education among college faculty, school personnel, and prospective teachers, a cluster of competencies developed by the State University College at Oneonta (SUCO), New York, was critiqued by…

A questionnaire describing 87 environmental characteristics of schools is administered to entering freshmen at a predominantly black university to study the relationships of racial composition to various dimensions of school environment and social climate. Both racial and nonracial aspects of school environments are examined. Correlation of the…

Despite gains in many areas, minorities remain underrepresented as scientists and science students. On of the reasons for this absence may be the presence of a common stereotype of scientists as white males. This paper argues that recent research in cognitive and social psychology shows that stereotypic processes are not automatic and that…

This study was designed to explore an experienced teacher's thinking and teaching within the social and cultural environment of the classroom. It investigated the thinking, planning, subsequent action and reflection processes and relationships in a real situation of learning. A naturalistic approach was used to investigate the socio-cultural…

Guided by interpretive ethnographic methods and by instructional leadership concepts, this comparative study of secondary principals in Japan and America discovers characteristics of excellent principals and examines their values in relation to dominant cultural themes. The investigation applies anthropologist Clifford Goertz's assumptions (1973,…

This progress report of ethnographic research on instructional leadership focuses on a new elementary school principal's role formation in relation to teaching staff and district organizational culture. The project, which examines the prevailing notion of instructional leadership in school effectiveness literature, reveals a gap in perspective…

An examination of the university dean's role and its conflicts and ambiguities considered the type, frequency, nature, and the dynamics of the liberal arts dean's interactions with his faculty and staff and the central administration. Relations with staff and the provost and the dean's role as an individual in an organization are given major…

Based on theory and previous research done on the factors that affect student ratings of college instruction, it seems clear that different types of students prefer different types of instructors. The type is apparently a function of naturally occurring needs in the students' personalities and naturally occurring teacher behaviors which student…

To study internal psychological barriers to women's equity in formerly male education and occupational domains, Matthew's scale of attitudes toward women's roles in society was administered to 294 male and 261 female graduate students pursuing degrees in one of six professional areas, three male-dominated and three traditionally female-dominated.…

This paper investigates the isolation of the local black community within the social/cultural perspective. A profile of the community is given in terms of data collected from personal and family interviews. Personal interviews assessed how the Appalachian black viewed his group. Among the 13 variables studied are: trustworthiness, religion, work…

The best way to determine the scope of the clinical education of medical students is to define competencies expected of newly graduated physicians (exit objectives). These objectives ensure that the scope of education includes the content, teaching/learning methods, and evaluation techniques that will result in a competent, professional product.…

This paper describes a study of the development of professional identity among employees in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) participating in large-scale company-wide training programs. Managers and employees in 175 SMEs in Finland participated. These two research questions were posed: (1) are there differences in the perceptions of…