This four-part paper examines formal and informal organizational structures at Selinsgrove Area Middle School, which serves about 1,000 students in grades 5-8. Part I presents a brief history of the founding of the school and the court battles preceding its construction, and the reasons why the initial steering committee chose a middle school…

The assessment of attitudes and perceptions of various groups toward the school choice issue is the purpose of this exploratory study. A nonrandom pilot study administered to 342 parents, administrators, board members, and students used bivariate and univariate analyses to compare attitudinal differences. Findings indicate that attitude toward the…

This chapter of "Principles of School Business Management" explores the legal context in which school business officials and other school administrators operate. The chapter considers the legal sources for the power and authority of the district and its administrators and also examines the legal process as it affects schools and the performance of…

A study looks at the economic, social, cultural, and political factors involved in conflicts between New Brunswick language communities in the last two decades. The demographic, economic, cultural, and political relationships between the French and English language communities are presented and discussed in terms of political matters and principal…

A study looks at the economic, social, cultural, and political factors at work in conflicts between Quebec language communities in recent years. The historical and current demographic, economic, cultural, and political relationships between the French and English speaking communities are presented and discussed in terms of political issues and…

Unstructured interviews conducted in 1977 with eight respected elementary and secondary school principals revealed their conceptions of the principal's role and of the skills and activities that had gone into their efforts to fill that role. The eight principals are identified in terms of their outstanding characteristics, as revealed through…

Teachers unknowingly carry certain ideologies, preconceived roles, rules, value systems, and world views into the classroom. These notions are communicated to the student by the teacher's language style, comments, body language and gestures, use and organization of things in the classroom, and choice and use of teaching methods and materials. The…

A compilation of 10 articles presents perspectives on the issue of female political participation. "The Patriarchy Takes a Ribbing" (Benoite Groult) looks at women as the primary agents for economic and political change. "Women and Political Power in Europe" (Mariette Sineau) considers variations in female responsibility and status in…

The environment within which an organization must operate is expected to influence its administrative and program characteristics. Since public schools operate in more complex and conflicting environments than do private schools, it is predicted that they will exhibit greater administrative complexity and less curricular coherence. These…

Political repression of faculty members and the use of an archive of records to help remedy this phenomenon are discussed. The focus is the use of coercion to compel the behavior of politically dissident faculty members, particularly by the use of dismissal. The archive of records would indicate faculty members fired, not hired, or harassed for…

This master's thesis presents the results of a survey designed to study the control of state documents by state document authorities. A questionnaire was developed and sent to the institutions in each state which are responsible for the official collection of their state's documents, in an effort to determine the degree of adherence to guidelines…

Female researchers conducting field research in educational politics encounter special problems of access, entry, reciprocity, and ethics. Accordingly, this study focuses first on field research methods in policy settings as a general topic, then on problems specific to women in this area. A researcher must be aware of informal coalitions or…

Numerous studies indicate that an individual's perception of internal or external control over life events ("perceived locus of control") is a personality variable that influences the perception of a situation as threatening or stress-inducing. Whether for reasons of personality or because of "situational powerlessness," the…

This paper highlights the findings of Gougeon's 1989 study of high school principals of schools with grade configurations 9 through 12 in the state of Washington, a study based on the Principal Leadership as Social Control (PLASC) theory. Accordingly, the first section describes the PLASC theory as social control of teachers through power- and…

Recent attention to literacy, rather than focusing on literacy for social mobility as in the 1960s, promotes literacy for basic, entry-level employment, a position that supports the existing power structure rather than redistributing power in our society. Therefore true universal literacy--which involves the potential redistribution of power--is…