This paper examines a typology of metanarratives in educational administration. "Metanarratives" represent "a global, overarching, encompassing set of rules that tell us...the necessary and sufficient conditions for the constructs we use and how to use them." From this perspective, logical positivism is considered one of the…

This paper offers reflections on personal beliefs and practices used to construct and communicate knowledge about social studies teaching and learning with preservice elementary teachers. The paper draws upon one person's personal experiences, student journals, student interviews, course documents, field notes, and audio tapes of an instructor.…

What differentiates nonviolent individuals from violent individuals? This paper addresses the question by linking current psychological literature on human values with literature on nonviolence. Recent contributions to values theory have begun to establish a universal structure of human values. The theoretical case is made that nonviolent…

Research in social gerontology has become increasingly concerned with issues related to race, ethnicity, national origin and gender. The bulk of this research has merely described interesting differences among groups. This presentation suggests that theory and research on race, ethnicity, and gender groups, particularly in a noncomparative…

By applying Kenneth Burke's concepts of Order, the Secret, and the Kill to the newspaper-audience-advertiser relationship, the narrow imagery that depicts that relationship only in economic terms can be counteracted. Burke's maps of hierarchy, mystery, and transcendence in human action allow the depiction of a complex meshing of patterns,…

Crime problems in rapidly growing communities have been viewed from a number of different theoretical perspectives. This paper offers a structural analysis that focuses on the density of acquaintanceship. When a small and stable rural community suddenly experiences rapid growth, one of the expected consequences can be a significant decline in the…

Prompted by the dichotomy in mass communication research between active audience and passive audience, this paper (1) establishes and analyzes the theoretical components of the concepts of "activity" and "active audience," (2) traces the intellectual origins of the concepts and their implicit ideological agenda, and (3)…

Social and ethnic differences in moral judgment are examined, and a critique of the cognitive-developmental model is presented in this paper. In opposition to Piaget and Kohlberg, the thesis advanced is that morality and moral development are culturally and socially determined constructs. While Piaget postulated the presence of qualitatively…

This paper presents findings of a study that examined the role of social networks in promoting or inhibiting student achievement. The study was based on the convoy model--a "convoy" is a dynamic, hierarchical structure of social relations that provide the individual with a supportive base from which to develop personal competencies. The premise of…

This paper offers a critique of Evers' and Lakomski's 1991 book, "Knowing Educational Administration," and their discussion of neo-Marxist and critical theory. This paper argues that the science of educational administration is a historically contingent product of particular social forces and interests at a particular time. The kind of…

Outcomes Based Education (OBE) is viewed as a drastic break from current educational practices and a means of providing educational success for all students. OBE is also advocated as a practice that lead to educational inequity. This paper reexamines OBE from a multiparadigm perspective of organizations and educational administration. OBE is based…

Biological sex remains a powerful source of differential socialization and experience. These studies were designed to enhance the understanding of gender identity, the psychosocial aspects of sexual differentiation. The focus was upon changes and continuities, in terms of development along the adult life course and as reflective of social change.…

From its beginning, the United States has been a multiracial society, and from the beginning relations between and among the races have been strained by cultural, economic, social, political, and psychological conflicts. Social psychology came of age in the early 1900's as a disciplined inquiry into the psycho-social problems of the people, and…

In the first part of the paper, the author discusses his observation that teachers perceive any form of theorizing in schools to be intellectually dependent on educational researchers. Teachers assume that their access to educational theories depends on a group external to themselves and that theory has little practical value in the classroom. In…

The influence of the academic culture that academics learn from mentors and senior colleagues is considered, with attention to the socialization process, social learning theory, and the psychology of awareness. The nature of deliberation and decision-making in a typical college or university and the issue of whether the university operates on a…