The educational community must acquire the organizational capability to engage in systems design, envision new stages of education, and bring the image to life. The first stage probes the essence of education: its relationship to society, the designation of social functions, the kind of learning to be offered, and the feasibility of organizational…

The five key elements comprising any school organization may be described as structural, professional, renewal-oriented, curricular, and collaborative. School leaders committed to change must recognize three realities: (1) change is hard, even painful work; (2) the parts cannot be treated without treating the whole; and (3) reform starts at the…

Before "unstructuring" or "restructuring," a school or district or state should think first about students, adopt successful learning as the criterion for judging the appropriateness of all daily activities, expect all adults to be successful learners, and identify the rules, roles, and relationships (the social structure) needed to support…

Interdisciplinary high schools are characterized by the decentralization of specialized areas and organization of space into modules that reinforce student communication as well as flexibility. Starting with an interdisciplinary cluster approach and then overlaying the departments aids the process. (MLF)

Although telecommunications technology is transforming almost every sector of American society, education still reflects the industrial age. We are approaching a time when a publicly financed and managed satellite-based communications network dedicated to educational purposes is in the nation's best interest. Key national educators must join the…

A San Jose (California) school district's voucher experiment illustrates the difficulty of implementing organizational and structural innovation in an education system. Successful implementation of technology-mediated education requires identification of the critical problem, negotiated decision making, component integration, authority and role…

"Turning Points," Carnegie's report on young adolescents, rejects small-scale, incremental school reform in favor of sweeping transformation. The report takes aim at twin targets: junior high schools that have not grappled with developmental appropriateness issues and middle schools that have developmentally appropriate forms, but have weakened…

Explores relationship between teacher perceptions of structural coupling in their schools and their perceptions of school robustness and effectiveness in study of 79 participating schools. Results suggested that teacher perceptions of relatively tight coupling of goal direction and work supervision structures and relatively loose coupling of…

Only when the organizational structure and staff are aligned with the school vision can productive and exciting change happen. Change is thwarted when the school vision is uninspiring, developed incorrectly, not used immediately, or misaligned with staff or organization. Values, missions, outcomes, and visions have a short shelf-life; they must…

Discusses how schools are seen as powerful sources of health promotion in South Africa and how organization development is a potent strategy for managing change and enhancing the school's growth towards becoming a healthy learning environment. Addresses the implications for the role of school psychologists in contributing towards the development…

Explores whether primary schoolchildren's success in reading and writing depends on managing of literacy teaching at different levels, not simply the underlying pedagogic principles. Communication breakdowns in England's Catch Up Project illustrate how increasingly complex variables become in a top-down approach. (Contains 38 references.) (MLH)

Based on current empirical data, school-based management is failing to produce radical changes in school practice. SBM, which holds untapped potential for democratizing the workplace and equitably addressing students' needs, can be analyzed in terms of formal and informal dimensions characterizing a site's scope of authority, involvement, and…

Aims to apply structural, human resource, political, and cultural perspectives to review and analyze the case of Hong Kong in implementing school-based management. Hopes this analysis can provide a useful illustration of applying multi-perspectives to support development of school-based management and draw useful implications for school reforms in…

Examines the administrative and organizational practices in a selected group of secondary vocational schools in Turkey from the point of view of school administrators, teachers, and industrial managers. Finds that the Turkish vocational education system is characterized by a centralized, top-down bureaucracy, which inhibits innovative capacity.…

Most means of differentiating higher education institutions emphasize their structural characteristics: faculty size; highest and kind of degree granted; level of external support; size of endowment; number of students; average board scores; admissions selectivity; tuition; and so on. In this article, the author offers a view of differentiating…