The remarkable spread of home education needs to be considered in light of the arguments driving its growth. While acknowledging that there are many good reasons for individuals to choose home education, this analysis examines some of the most prominent assumptions and claims that advance the practice as a mass movement. Specifically, arguments…

This paper compares the two educational sectors in Romania K-12 schools and higher education seeking to understand why reform in the K-12 educational system has failed while higher education reform has been more rapid and effective. The analysis uses concepts from U.S. organizational theory, such as school climate, school culture, and permanently…

A profile of leadership behaviors that describes principals who successfully improve schools has emerged from effective schools literature and research of the corporate world. Instructional leadership involves four technical tasks that comprise a leadership profile: curriculum development, teaching supervision, staff development, and teacher…

Current school restructuring experiments are likely to result in more balanced local education systems characterized by decentralized and centralized control. The potential leadership contributions of school district superintendents in a balanced system are described in this exploratory study, which is based on agency theory, a politics-oriented…

Because research on job characteristics as predictors of turnover is of debatable relevance to the study of school board turnover, the research reported here examines the impact of variables capable of capturing the political context. In a survey including data from 263 board members from 83 school districts in New York State, the dependent…

Theoretical concepts about situational management decisions are incorporated in an investigation of school administrators in Tennessee to determine (1) whether administrators can be identified who possess specified leadership characteristics and (2) if those leaders consider employee maturity criteria when selecting employees for tasks. The study…

The use of environmental scanning by three colleges at Northern Arizona University is discussed. The environment confronting each college is described, along with the process that was used to direct change to improve the efficient use of human and fiscal resources. The process involved: scanning the internal and external environments, establishing…

This is Volume II of a two-volume final report of a study on the exchange and use of knowledge for school improvement in three paired educational systems in Boston, Massachusetts. The pairings, which involved the collaboration of a college/university with one or more of the Boston public schools in carrying out school improvement programs, were…

Conditions that inhibit change in higher education institutions and various models of the change process are described. Attention is also directed to: organizational character, structural features, planning procedures, key individuals in the change process, and practical advice about change. The major change models for higher education…

This module discusses the theory and practice of school improvement and outlines a nine-step systematic problem-solving process for developing an action plan addressing school improvement goals. The first section describes a general model for the study of the school as a social system, as developed by Getzels and Thelen (1960). The second section…

Offering a contribution to additional clarity in the debate about the viability of "rural development" as an explanatory concept and program of action, the paper presents details of a causal model which underlies the approach to rural development taken by a W. K. Kellogg Foundation supported program in eastern Washington called "The…

The purpose of this report was to consider factors that might be important for understanding how schools as organizations respond to environmental stress. Literature from psychology, sociology, education, and political science is reviewed and an attempt is made to integrate a diverse body of findings, using concepts from general systems theory and…

The purpose of this study was to describe the meaning of supervisors' perceptions of a positive supervisory experience. Unlike most research in supervision, which focuses on specific variables related to the outcomes of supervision, this study seeks to describe the constellation of meanings inherent in the experience of positive supervision. A…

This paper reports research which utilizes a qualitative approach in order to document and describe the process of complex organizational conflict. Qualitative research methodology and conflict sociology can be relevant to analysis of organizational processes. The qualitative approach is interpreted to include techniques such as observation, event…

This document presents the negative effect on many adolescents of the typical secondary school program and outlines a proposed curriculum for education majors. The problem dealt with is the departmentalized structure of high schools, which results in fragmenting the student's life at school into a series of subject-matter-centered meetings. The…