The intersection of mixed methods and social justice has implications for the role of the researcher and choices of specific paradigmatic perspectives. The transformative paradigm with its associated philosophical assumptions provides a framework for addressing inequality and injustice in society using culturally competent, mixed methods…

Suggests an empirical model to test the assumption that conflict and consensus theories of organizational management can be combined, with the central concept being power. Three studies supporting the model suggest that it has considerable heuristic and empirical potential. (JW)

Vocational psychology has recently begun examining the career development of marginalized and underrepresented populations. Social cognitive career theory provides a theoretical understanding of how cultural differences, resources, and barriers may affect the vocational choices and actions of individuals from minority populations. Contextual…

This working paper focuses on the educational planner as a bureaucratic actor. To explain planner influence or lack of influence in the policymaking process, practitioners need to explore the micropolitics of organizations and understand individual, organizational, and situational forces demanding their engagement. Planners need an engaged…

This report describes efforts to test a model of leadership effectiveness that centers on "macro variables" and "discretionary leadership." Macro variables were represented by the complexity of the environment, context, and structure of a unit. Discretionary leadership was defined as influence over and above that typically…

Educational organizations, this paper asserts, are best described using a neorationalist model, which analyzes organizations as social instruments, acknowledges structural conflict, and views individuals as active participants. The paper examines traditional and modern rationalist organization theories and contrasts these with systems theory; it…

Presents a theoretical formulation that integrates, within the framework of expectation states theory, theories of the emergence of power-and-prestige orders in status-heterogeneous and homogeneous task-oriented groups. Discusses a model based on this theoretic formulation. Offers a model for predicting participation rates in open interaction…

After criticising the prevalent assumption of organizational theory that organizational behavior is based on common typological forms, this paper proposes a political analysis of schools as organizations as a practical theory general enough to be useful to practitioners. The first section reviews the basic elements of comparative structural…

Based on an institutional-contingency view, this study focuses on ways in which public and private school sectors in six San Francisco area counties embody different organizational logistics and authority principles, including rational-legal, traditional, and local-market. Results suggest that, among other characteristics, nonreligious private…

This essay reviews major trends in methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of organizations since the mid-sixties and espouses the political analysis of organizations, a position representing a middle ground between comparative structuralism and the loosely coupled systems approach. This position emphasizes micropolitics as well as…

Recent research casts doubt on the commonly held notions that administrators affect student learning through instructional leadership and that changing administrators will improve school performance. To help construct a model for examining the process of leader succession that specifies a number of major school process and outcome variables…

Policymaking has been studied from a variety of conceptual perspectives. The political bargaining model, used in conjunction with the broader systems framework, constitutes a familiar approach to research regarding education policymaking at the state level. This paper focuses on the conceptual implications of a study which applied that approach to…

Educational research has thus far failed to greatly improve education because it is based on a model of reality that emphasizes unilateral control in both research and practice. Efforts to gain unilateral control presume that researchers or practitioners know what is significant from the outset, that they are essentially outside the situation they…

This paper proposes a model of a democratic paradigm for educational researchers and practitioners. It attempts to explore the kinds of thinking that would be required to create such a system, to determine what principles and curriculum theories are involved and how they would work. It seeks to relate this model to the new National Council for…

This book, aimed at mathematics and vocational educators and researchers, analyzes the historical, sociological, and practical elements of mathematics within vocational education against the emerging impact of technology. Focus is on the current situation of mathematics within Australian vocational and technical education and how that might be…