The ACCE position statement for creating media enriched learning communities targets all stakeholders in educational policy and practice who influence the future of learning, schools, and systems. Stakeholders include policy-makers in government, national and international organisations, professional networks and institutions, school leaders,…

This design proposal for "Schools of the Marketplace" describes a system that does not rely on government bureaucracy to operate. Instead, it allows parents and students to choose their teachers, evaluates student performance more on results of projects and papers than on standardized tests, empowers teachers to form professional groups…

Arguments for beginning new schools as a robust alternative to the incremental improvement of existing schools are presented in this paper. The educational improvement approach of starting new schools or programs, rather than making incremental improvements or generating comprehensive change in existing schools, is advocated. Two major types of…

Trends of educational change in (formerly) East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria are examined as restructuring takes place during the establishment of democratic political processes. These trends are culled from over 50 onsite semistructured interviews in August 1990, as part of a longitudinal study to document educational…

A school improvement effort that provided individually tailored reports on school effectiveness to 93 schools across the Commonwealth of Kentucky is analyzed. Dilemmas confronted by the individualized school reports explain why so little change was generated. The background for the research project from which the individual school reports were…

To analyze organizational development of Swedish universities and colleges, decision theory and implementation theory were examined. Attention was directed to the following models of decision-making: the demographic model, the incremental model, the garbage-can model, and the political model. The focus was on system decision-making, and empirical…

In this paper the authors extend an earlier study that developed images of what schools are like as social entities. That study found that elementary schools correspond to the rational bureaucratic image, whereas secondary schools are more loosely coupled systems. The study was limited by a small sample. In this paper the research was extended to…

Conditions that influence a school's readiness for change are analyzed in this monograph for the purpose of providing practitioners, especially those who provide assistance to schools, with specific guides for diagnosing readiness for change. The publication is a tool to help school personnel and others make wise and deliberate decisions about…

A PLANNED APPROACH TO EDUCATIONAL CHANGE FOCUSES UPON THE INTERNAL FUNCTIONING OF THE SCHOOL SYSTEM. RESEARCH GENERALIZATIONS INDICATING CONDITIONS WHICH INFLUENCE LEARNING ARE CITED AS A BASIS FOR A CONCEPTUAL MODEL. FROM THIS MODEL, SOME ORGANIZATIONAL FUNCTIONS WHICH NEED TO BE DEVELOPED WITHIN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM ARE DERIVED. FIVE LEVELS OF…

Since educational organizations must constantly change to meet the demands of a changing society, educational administrators might look to the social sciences for help in managing change and innovation. This paper argues that an organizational approach to educational innovation is likely to be more successful than an individualistic approach.…

The Center for Education Professions (CEP) coordinated contacts between the University of Wisconsin's College of Education and the public and private schools of the La Crosse area. The synchronization was accomplished through the grouping of 23 multiunit area schools into a network called "Area Movement for Educationally New Dimensions" (AMEND).…

For a school to have a community of leaders, teachers must have opportunities to assume more responsibility, more decision-making power, and more accountability for the results. Teacher leadership can help build collegiality and break down communication barriers. Shared leadership models will persevere only if they are used to reorganize the work…

Twelve recent books by business-oriented authors are reviewed and translated directly into the educational context. Productive environments and leadership are discussed. Recommendations for education are made. (MT)

The structure of schooling has been accepted as a given, and demands for reform have centered on changes within the structure rather than on the structure itself. The workplace shapes the behavior of teachers and students in significant ways, and therefore cannot be ignored in the councils of reform. (MT)