This paper is an edited transcript of a panel discussion which took place at an educational conference about the current state of popular culture studies at American colleges and universities. First touching on the number of university media departments being disbanded in general across the country, the discussion focuses on several questions:…

This study examined the perceptions of early childhood center directors regarding their organizations, their roles, and their specific jobs. Data were obtained from 257 directors completing the Directors' Role Perceptions Questionnaire. The metaphoric images used in the directors' responses were analyzed to generate dominant themes in the way…

In response to the growing need for highly competent school administrators, Kentucky has mandated an administrator preparation program to reflect recommendations specified by the University Council for Educational Administration and reforms advocated by other national organizations. Designed to provide prospective principals with an appropriate…

Principals can be categorized as initiators, managers, or responders according to the extent to which they initiate significant change, accommodate change through effective management, or react to developments only as they occur. An interview-based study of 12 elementary school principals, four of whom were placed in each of the three categories…

The "Handbook," a review designed to present the best of educational administration research from the 1950s to the 1980s, is examined to determine how reasonable it was to limit the coverage to these 30 years, how well the publication covered the major topics during the chosen time frame, and how well it included the major contributors in the…

Recent developments in cognitive anthropology, in particular the development of ethnographic semantics, make ethnographic methods more systematic. The goal is to replace intuition with an operationally explicit methodology for discerning how people construe their world of experience from the way they talk about it. The first part of this paper…

School principals tend to be well enough trained to serve as superintendents or assistant superintendents and to expect and receive high salaries as a result. This training ought to be put to use by involving school principals more thoroughly in the decision-making process. While boards of education retain the authority for fixing the budget and…

Responses by 247 special education directors, superintendents of schools, and principals of schools with special education teachers to a questionnaire listing 43 tasks of the perceived role of the special education director revealed greater consensus among the three groups than had been expected. Frequency distributions, analysis of variance, and…

What principals are taught about their roles differs markedly from how they actually perceive and experience their roles. To discover the principals' views, comments made in discussion groups by 44 principals in a large urban Midwest school system over a four-month period were analyzed. Their descriptions of their roles and desired role changes…

A reduction in force (RIF), coupled with today's inflation and cost of living increases, impacts on school systems. This paper discusses the effects on an urban school system--the Atlanta Public Schools--and offers suggestions to school administrators on moves to make and pitfalls to avoid when faced with RIF. Some topics covered include legal…

From education's present emphasis, a student would logically conclude that he needs to know a lot about what happened hundreds of years ago, a little about what is happening now, and nothing about the future. Actually, just the opposite is true. The speed of change makes it likely that most occupations known today will, within a dozen years, be…

The importance of an institution's goals and objectives is discussed, and ways in which a chief executive can foster teamwork toward organizational goals are described. Points to be remembered by the college president when selecting his management team are stressed. (DB)

The ombudsman, often defined as a kind of inspector general, is usually empowered to: (1) investigate in confidence, without restraint, either upon receipt of a complaint or on the ombudsman's initiative; (2) recommend to any official appropriate review of the facts; and (3) publicize findings or publicly criticize malfeasance. Various…

This paper examines personal challenges that academic leaders face, attributes that institutional leaders should possess to succeed in transforming the university, how institutions of higher education can build the capacity for preparing new leaders, and how universities can respond to the leadership crisis in this time of transformation. Personal…

The accountability mismatch between the theory and the reality of charter schools and charter-school authorizers in the United States is identified in this report. The roles and characteristics of charter-school authorizers are not well understood, but they are positioned to play a key role in ensuring and enforcing charter-school accountability.…