This new edition of Successful School Leadership brings in the latest evidence and material to what has remained a popular publication. While the fundamentals of what drives successful school leadership remain the same, new evidence further supports the arguments put forward by Christopher Day and Pam Sammons back in 2016. The growing interest in…

Working with partners including the Department of Education at Oxford University, the Centre for Equity in Education at the University of Manchester, the University of Glasgow, the University of Nottingham and the Hong Kong Institute of Education, "Education Development Trust" has commissioned a series of reviews of international…

Executing surveys is one of the most common activities of institutional research and one of the least served in institutional research literature. Survey research as practiced in institutional research faces special technical problems and challenges not embraced in much of the general-survey research literature. (Author/MLW)

This paper argues that establishing a research agenda to study the changing nature of postsecondary institutions as organizations is best done by examining their organization-environment interface, and it suggests an agenda based on historical perspective; a contingency model, or framework, of the organization-environment interaction; and a…

The effective communication of desired information between the generator and the user requires one to accommodate variances in decision-making style, behavior, and context. The premise that decision making in organizations follows the classic rational model is discussed. (Author/MLW)

A conceptual framework is proposed for describing and measuring assessment costs and linking these costs to their informational benefits. Direct resource components and incidental and opportunity costs of evaluation are discussed. (MLW)

Institutional research that examines the influence of organizational and administrative factors on student learning may be critical in improving educational performance. The role that institutional researchers might play in reducing semantic confusion and enhancing understanding of how colleges and universities improve student learning is…

Ten pitfalls for financial analysts are described: information lags, misinterpreting trend data, data shortcomings, sample institutions' problems, misuse of panel ratings, using same indicators for private and public institutions, underdevelopment of conceptual framework, arbitrary financial health scales, shaky use of discriminant analysis, and…

Enrollment management attempts to coordinate and monitor the programs and policies that influence college enrollment. A model is proposed that is designed to guide a comprehensive research framework that will inform enrollment management decisionmaking by including both student recruitment and retention as contributors to a common database. The…

The complex and sensitive question of how to introduce new ideas and approaches into postsecondary education in ways that will facilitate their consideration and implementation is discussed. Assessment and the processes of change; changes in federal, state, institutional, and individual roles; and change models are described. (MLW)

In the context of decision support systems (DSS) use, four perspectives on evaluating decisions (consensual, political, empirical, and rational) and four models of organizational effectiveness (human relations, open system, internal process, and rational goal) are examined for their implications for DSS implementation and evaluation. (MSE)

Recent literature on academic program review or evaluation is reviewed, including case study reports of ways in which systematic reviews of programs have been designed and carried out at selected colleges. Attention is given to procedures that have been used or suggested for collecting information. (MLW)

An important part of strategic or long-range planning is assessing the environment external to the institution. Many statistics are already compiled by external agencies. Some sources of information are identified, an assessment classification procedures is presented, and a sample of excerpts of the results of an assessment is provided. (MLW)

Viewing curriculum as an academic plan permits development of parallel course and program planning models that are dynamic, conceptually related to student learning, and familiar to institutional planners. Opportunities gained by using the academic plan umbrella for curriculum are described. (Author/MLW)

This paper reviews and synthesizes the literature on institutional support for student assessment, offering an organizing framework for using this information to shape institutional policies, processes, and practices in ways that lead to both improved student performance and institutional functioning. The framework, first, involves the overall…