This volume is part of a series of monographs from Australia devoted to outlining an alternative approach, based on neo-Marxist concepts, to educational administration. The introductory essay in the volume is an argument for the democratization of education by establishing a case for changing schools: by discussing industrial democracy as a…

Some of the justifiable criticisms of our educational system are due to the inadequacy of the current educational structure for our information society, and the inability of the current system to motivate students to learn. An alternative structure would involve the use of teachers as educational guides, with parents choosing a guide based on…

Although there is controversy as to whether middle-level education should be more comparable to high school or to elementary school, this paper argues that the school within a school (SWAS) concept effectively makes large schools seem small so that they have more in common with a typical K-5 school than with a grade-10-through-12 high school. The…

This case study focuses on the Forsokgymnaset, Oslo, (FGO), Norway, which came into being as a new type of school without any influence from lifelong education but whose features, especially the emphasis on students' responsibility for their own growth, are applicable to lifelong learning. Chapter 1, an introduction to lifelong education,…

This study compares open education groups and traditional education groups with respect to student attitudes toward high school; creative thinking of students; collaborative behavior among students; and student preferences for intellectual activities, activities involving change or sameness, and activities involving autonomy or dependence. Groups…

Seminar papers focus on two sequentially-related projects concerning the implementation phase of educational innovation: (1) a set of observational case studies of schools in their first year's effort to initiate differentiated staffing plans and (2) briefer but more pointed case studies of elementary schools that reputedly had succeeded in…

This 349-item annotated bibliography covers five major subject fields of primary education: general policy (universalization, wastage); organization and management of primary schools; content of primary teaching programs; teaching methods at primary level; reforms and innovations in primary education. A sixth section contains miscellaneous…

This paper examines how to encourage widespread adoption of comprehensive school-reform models--adoption outside the schools and districts that took part in the development process. It refers to such models as "design-based" schools. The paper defines what is meant by a school design and describes receptive school and district…

Reviews investigations conducted to determine students' attitudes toward (1) graded v nongraded schools; (2) open v self-contained classrooms; (3) program organization and arrangement; and (4) the structure and design of curriculum and instruction. (Author/SJL)

The Bunche-Da Vinci case described in this article presents a situation at Bunche Elementary School that four theorists were asked to address in their evaluation designs (see EJ791771, EJ719772, EJ791773, and EJ792694). The Bunche-Da Vinci Learning Partnership Academy, an elementary school located between an urban port city and a historically…

In Australian educational policy debate, advocacy of choice and diversity has come to be linked to support for educational markets and therefore with educational reform and restructuring associated with "economic rationalism." This paper argues that choice and diversity are better conceived within a framework of democratic educational…

This publication contains a brief description of secondary education in Spain. It constitutes one part of a series entitled "Guide to Secondary Education in Europe," developed as part of a Council of Europe project. Chapter 1 presents a general overview of the Spanish education system, with a focus on secondary education. Chapter 2…

The use of microcomputers in elementary education is described by focusing on an empirical study of computer use in a 10% random sample of elementary schools in one large local education authority. The inclusion of people at the "grass roots" level was considered to be a priority. Interviews of school-level administrators, teachers, and…

The effective implementation of school redesign, based on a social systems approach, is discussed in this paper. A basic assumption is that the interdependence of system elements has implications for a complex change process. Seven barriers to redesign and five critical issues for successful redesign strategy are presented. Seven linear steps for…

The admission that no one best method exists for educating all children was the beginning of the alternative school movement. Alternative education, in whatever form it assumes, must allow for real parent/student choice through the creation of a number of educational options. These optional public schools take many forms and may be classified…