The contributors to this issue ground their articles on one or more of these principles: (1) Evaluation theory and practice should reflect a society that advances democracy; (2) In an evaluation context, there should be a redistribution of power relationships accomplished by "democratizing knowledge" and acknowledging the value of different types…

Nonprofit organizations, private foundations, and for-profit corporations interested in shaping public education regularly partner with charter schools in New York. State law allows charter schools to pursue external partners to help meet their fiscal, facilities, operational, and instructional needs. This qualitative study of 10 schools in New…

Employing participant observation methodology, this paper analyzes a 4-hour meeting held among the representatives of a large religious organization in Taiwan. The analysis focuses on the influence of seniority on the Chinese decision making process. Five components of decision making proposed by Stewart (1985) and Kume (1985) were used for the…

There is ample evidence that the success or failure of school reform lies not only in the soundness and appropriateness of the reform model chosen, but primarily in its perception, acceptance, and endorsement by teachers. This essay expresses the concept of power as it applies to school reform that focuses on teacher empowerment and…

This book recognizes the political nature of management knowledge, as a discourse produced from, and reproducing, power processes within and between organizations. Critical examinations of certain current management theories--lean production, excellence, entrepreneurship--are examples of relations of power that intermingle with relations of…

For U.S. neo-idealists, the 1990s represented a moment to be seized, a time in which the strategies of conflict and confrontation of the Cold War period could be replaced by strategies designed to enhance cooperation among the nation-states. In 2001, the George W. Bush administration found itself in the position of continuing the same Bill Clinton…

This book explores the power of narrative in understanding the complexities and contradictions of what it means to develop as a teacher. It argues that the development of a professional identity is inextricable from personal identity, suggesting that when teachers have the opportunity to compose their own stories of learning within a supportive…

This study tested the validity and reliability of a survey instrument designed to measure students' perceptions of teacher's power and students' affinity for a teacher. Respondents were 30 students enrolled in two basic communication courses at a midsize public university. The researcher distributed a survey that contained measures of affinity and…

This paper considers how Australian young people living in relative poverty, per se, are portrayed in media reports and how a specific group of socioeconomically disadvantaged young people are constituted in teachers' classroom talk. The paper begins with the examination of several newspaper reports, part of an archive of articles concerned with…

A new conceptual view of organizational structure is presented, which integrates the two implicit views of structure found in the literature. In addition, some unique measures of a person's position in the organizational structure are shown. (Author)

A study, made of how a southern city school system successfully complied with court orders to integrate, found that social change and innovation in school desegregation were directly attributable to the elitist nature of leadership and decision-making in Southern City.'' (Author/JM)

Article by the Regional Development Section, United Nations, deals with the relationship between community development and government, at the national and local levels. Includes a section on the manner in which community development and broad policies of social institutional reform are interrelated, using land reform as a case in point. (Author/DR)

Article describes how our system does not develop a social responsibility and sense of belonging among students. (MM)

Employs a systems analysis framework to categorize the available research literature on the politics of education and draws future research suggestions from this analysis. (JF)

Speech by New York University School of Education professor at the Consultation for Educational Justice sponsored by the New York City National Council of Churches. Discusses high school unrest as indicating the need for redistributing power throughout the schools, and the crisis of legitimacy of the schools. (JM)