Compares a 1970s-era Canadian high school's failure to sustain its innovative character with challenges faced by a similar, recently founded high school. Both schools experienced problems with leadership succession, staff recruitment and retention, expanding enrollments, district and policy context, and community support. Recommendations are…

Uses data on 682 day-care centers (DCCs) operating in metropolitan Toronto, 1971-89, to examine how DCCs alter their organizational niches, defined by productive capacities and targeted resources, in response to competition, and resulting influences on their survival. Finds that evolution of the DCC population was a joint function of adaptation…

This article recounts the legal battles that ensued when the Saskatchewan (Canada) Minister of Education closed a special school for the deaf. The case, "Trofimenkoff versus Saskatchewan," is analyzed in terms of the plaintiffs' case against closure and decisions against the plaintiffs by the Minister, the Court of the Queen's Bench, and…

During the 1990s, the school has become the center of blame. Policymakers seem more interested in identifying failing schools than celebrating successes. This paper uses case-study research on a once-innovative Ontario high school to show that "deadwood" schools do not kill themselves, but need outsiders' help. (42 references) (MLH)

Since January 1998, when six former Metro Toronto (Ontario) school boards were consolidated into one board, Toronto's outdoor education centers have experienced restructuring, work stoppages, strikes, relocation, and threats of closure. Outdoor education advocates must form a new united group, preferably from the bottom up, to lobby for adequate…

Successful organizations, even when subjected to competitive pressures, soon become complacent and begin to fail. A strategic planning process that considers the dangers in a strong, shared culture might avert such complacency. Schools should take a wider development view than embodied in the (British) government's preoccupation with exam scores.…

Interviews and a literature review found that outdoor recreation contributes significantly to Scotland's tourist income, particularly in rural areas; outdoor education centers are significant employers in certain rural areas; the provision of outdoor education by secondary schools has decreased in the last 20 years; and therapeutic outdoor…

Organisational ecology and world cultural perspectives are used to analyse the struggle of the former East German textbook publisher Volk und Wissen after reunification. We argue that the normative expectations of Western Germany with respect to instructional materials clearly emulate world cultural principles, and so Volk und Wissen's transition…

Reviews the impact of local-management-of-schools funding formulae on schools of different size. Examines the ways that over 80 local education authorities (LEAs) have defined formulae to protect their small schools and reports the effect of the change to formula funding from 27 LEAs to describe the pattern of "winning" and…

Explains two problems of the postmodern era-fragmentation (disintegration of social, economic, and political institutions) and symbolic consumption. Discusses two postmodernist epistemological challenges to educational marketers-anti-foundationalism and poststructuralism. Transactional views of marketing must yield to relational and interactive…

One school in Canada's Exemplary Schools Project, Grandy's River Collegiate, is a rural high school threatened with closure because it does not meet Newfoundland's new "viability" requirements (primarily involving school size). Compares characteristics of several types of schools, and suggests that schools such as Grandy's are suited to…

After a period of rapid expansion, two-thirds of the branch campuses of United States universities in Japan have closed. A study suggests that the branch campuses were established largely to capitalize on short-term political, demographic, and financial factors, with little benefit. A deeper commitment to sustaining the overseas program and to…

Discusses academic discourses of "rural,""sustainability," and "community" and approaches to these concepts in New Zealand government policy. Examines social sustainability issues in the Mangakahia Valley, New Zealand: urban-rural migration of "lifestyle" newcomers and Maori returning to ancestral lands,…

Helen Gunter's "Rethinking Education: the Consequences of Jurassic Management" (1997) tackles the relevance of fashionable school management practices. Educational management has become a huge, lucrative multimedia enterprise that promotes management language and culture at the expense of pedagogy, professional collegiality, and scrutiny…

Agricultural education has been an essential factor in the success of agricultural development in the Netherlands. At present, as in many countries throughout the world, the position of agricultural education is threatened. Does agricultural education have a future in the Netherlands, and if so, what strategies are being used for its survive? This…