Despite commission reports and journal articles advocating mastery learning and effective instruction, grassroots influence is conspicuously missing from the current reform movement. Creative teachers continue to leave the profession, and top students refuse to enter it. Teachers remain essentially powerless, while open education enthusiasts await…

This article on open education and the direction it is taking is a kind of "state of the wave (movement)" message-a necessary caution not only for those moving along nicely with the current, but also for those who may already be over their heads and those who have yet to test the water. (Editor/RK)

Cautions against rush to import British informal-style classrooms asserting that open education can't be brought about by mandate, questionable motivations, or by a quick, band-aid approach. More long-range planning and better evaluation methods are urged. (ST)

Describes the roots and components of the alternative schools movement. (JF)

Describes Philadelphia's massive program of alternatives at the secondary school level. According to the author, more than fifty alternative programs are now in existence -- some within a school, some functioning as annexes in off-site locations, and others operating as semiautonomous organizations. (Author/JF)

Purpose: This paper aims to provide a framework for the development and implementation of educational administration programs that encourage practitioners and educational administration faculty to push application and preparation beyond reproducing tendencies of the status quo as well as to open education to the potential of embracing silenced or…

The philosophy of the open classroom is examined in detail by constructing two ideal typical classrooms to summarize both the open and closed classroom models, demonstrating how the open education approach responds favorably to three major areas of criticism for the present system: the classroom environment, teaching and learning, and…

Although this analysis deals with the psychological consequences of the teacher's attempt to change her style of teaching, the issues explored should prove of interest to anyone concerned with educational change. (CS)

Discusses how open education arose in the United States, what its relations are to the society around it, and what it has to offer to the American scene by examining past attempts to institute it in two other countries, noting that the two examples each present graphic examples of the interrelationship between education and politics. (Author/JM)

Three professors of education examine constructively the kinds of environments, relationships, concepts of content and curriculums, evaluations, and settings for learning that the struggle for humane educational change requires. They propose an alternative model of education that emphasizes values and processes consistent with a commitment to an…

Conventional education has impeded human progress. It has had a mistaken sense of values, established systems of evaluation that blocked real learning, and upheld a routine that made the school an experiment in endurance. It has cherished patience rather than enthusiasm and given the teacher mainly a custodial function, so that he has become a…

This annotated bibliography lists British publications useful to American educators' understanding of educational reform in England and the British primary schools. Since American enthusiasm for open and informal educational methods has grown so quickly, this bibliographic tool is a necessary first step in the systematic, thorough study of British…

This report describes a conference co-sponsored in April of 1972 by Educational Facilities Laboratory and the Institute for Development of Educational Activities, in which 35 educators met to seek ways of making secondary schools healthier, happier, more productive places for young people. The point was made that since America has produced a new…