Compares a soft system model of teaching with a hard systems model for learning, essential components of which are perception, memory, and concept formation. Proposes a combination of soft systems thinking and hard systems instruction as a scientific basis for the craft of teaching. (SK)

Analyzes 50 recent Australian vocational education and training research studies using an organizational theory framework to assess the degree of organizational and socioeconomic complexity. Finds that most explore the familiar (organizational) domain and only three investigate problems involving both organizational and socioeconomic domains.…

Defines work built around a systems view of consumers and producers to characterize work as seen through different cultures as a mingling of enjoyment. Shows how emerging agricultural settlements and cities resulted in families assuming inherited work or labor specialties to be passed to the next generation. Discusses generational concepts of work…

Some parents of children with multiple disabilities appear to deny that their children have intellectual disabilities. Health care professionals may be challenged in working with these parents during the assessment and intervention process. This article introduces the collaborative-resource approach from family systems theory in which family…

Discusses high-involvement work teams, in which groups of workers participate in improving their work activities; describes how a typical work team progresses through a project; and introduces a systems model of interrelated steps through which teams may progress to solve problems. (LRW)

Discusses the accelerating pace of change that librarians must cope with and suggests looking to the private sector for strategies to become more comfortable with change. Describes the five disciplines comprising the learning organization culture: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning. (LRW)

Highlights and organizes ideas regarding family therapy and wider contexts. Reviews the historical underpinnings of a contextual family therapy view, critiques the systems model, and offers an epistemological orientation that includes wider contexts. Also reviews related clinical practices and offers recommendations for future theory and practice…

Examines sustained use and non-use of online services within organizations using an open-systems view that overcomes limitations of traditional approaches that led to over-estimates of use. Focuses on the informational environments of firms in three industries: law, real estate, and biotech/pharmaceuticals; and discusses insights from an intranets…

Presents fundamentals of systems thinking and sustainability within an ecological theory to shape education to the needs of human development in relation to the environment. Emphasizes that effective learning is a system embedded in the web of life, giving humans the ability to see the interconnectedness of the environment, community, and the…

Describes results-based guidance, a systems approach to student support programs. Outlines factors that have contributed to the changes in the duties and responsibilities of guidance counselors and the basis of the competency-based approach in guidance counseling. Details elements of the results-based guidance program. (GCP)

A participant-observer at management and other meetings at a large urban school district attributes the district's successes to systemic governance, the district as an instructional leader, and the superintendent as a teacher on special assignment. (MLF)

Claims, despite extensive research on the role of feedback in learning, there is little theoretical understanding of the concept of feedback, because of overly broad definitions which favor certain explanations and lines of research over others. Discusses implications of feedback research for group facilitation and design of experiential learning…

Discusses the uses for soft systems methodology (SSM) in English language training (ELT) projects. It is suggested that ethnographic techniques may help in achieving the understanding needed to start an ELT project while SSM may provide a useful means for structuring ethnographic findings. (Author/VWL)

Proposes a theoretical and practical hybrid model for family counseling based on integrating the rational-emotive and family systems approach. Notes that these combined approaches offer the counselor a systematic theoretical structure for conceptualizing family dysfunction, from which additional strategies for changing inappropriate belief systems…

Explains how a model of an instructional process can be translated into an instructional processor that can be used to develop courseware for computer assisted instruction. The General Systems Theory is discussed as a conceptual framework, and models based on three levels of the decision-making process are described. (12 references) (LRW)