Local school districts must strengthen their innovative capacity in order to respond effectively to the problems facing them. Success depends on both an organization's technical capacity to match problems with appropriate solutions and its political capacity to move an innovation through the process from adoption to incorporation. Research shows…

The relationship between career orientation of college institutional research/planning officers and perceptions of organizational and political environments was investigated, based on a survey of 154 officers in public doctoral-granting institutions. Of the 106 respondents, 53 percent were directors of institutional research/planning; 26 percent…

Issues concerning administrator evaluation at the University of Toledo, including internal political realities and the need to incorporate qualitative dimensions, were evaluated. The overall framework for the analysis of administrator evaluation at Toledo was based on the political model of J. Victor Baldridge (1971), complemented by Bacharach and…

Purposes of this guide for change agents are to (1) present four methods for identifying community power actors (community leaders), (2) provide a description of how change agents might use each of the four methods, (3) compare the four methods, (4) suggest ways to use a combination of methods or combine elements from various methods, and (5)…

Sociological perspectives are employed in this study of two desegregated junior high schools with racially and socioeconomically similar student bodies. The different ways staff members, students and administrators in the two schools address the tasks of pursuing education while maintaining safety and order are analyzed. Situations and incidents…

THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE DEVELOPED IN THIS MONOGRAPH (PART OF A KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY SERIES ON COMMUNITY PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT) FOCUSES ON THE DEMOGRAPHIC AND ECOLOGICAL STRUCTURING OF COMMUNITIES BOTH LARGE AND SMALL, THE CHARACTER OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND OF INTERACTION IN COMMUNITIES, (INCLUDING PATTERNS OF VOLUNTARY PARTICIPATION…

A CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR STUDYING THE OPERATION OF SOCIAL POWER IN SCHOOL SYSTEMS WAS DEVELOPED ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT A SCHOOL SYSTEM MUST BE UNDERSTOOD IN TERMS OF ITS SUPPORTING ENVIRONMENT. TWELVE DIRECTIONAL HYPOTHESES WERE TESTED TO DETERMINE CORRELATIONS BETWEEN FOUR TYPES OF COMMUNITY POWER STRUCTURES (DOMINATED, FACTIONAL, PLURALISTIC, AND…

The issue of professional women in academia is attracting increasing attention in the literature. A female psychologist, who was the only woman faculty member in a 35-member psychology department for three years, personally experienced and identified issues such as tokenism, isolation, representativeness, exploitation, family and occupational…

Addressed primarily to practitioners--legislators, administrators, and their staffs--this monograph is structured around a series of hypothetical exchanges between legislators and administrators concerning the implementation of a basic skills program. The author asserts that the hierarchical control that legislators traditionally rely on for…

An exploratory pilot study to determine the personal characteristics of women community leaders and their position in the power structure was conducted in Chippewa and Eau Claire Counties, Wisconsin. The research design involved a comparison of three samples: the traditional power structure identified through reputational techniques; the active…

School decision making opportunities available to teachers were identified, and possible reasons for the existence of so little teacher decision making authority in the public schools were explored. While there was some evidence that many teachers may not desire increased involvement, the question was raised of whether or not such involvement…

The erosion of the credibility of the classical diffusion paradigm by recent challenges to its fundamental assumptions has resulted in a "paradigmatic crisis" as related to research on the diffusion of agricultural innovations. Such basic assumptions as that of a harmonious and cooperative society and of agricultural research guided by endogenous…

This Personalized Activity Kit is concerned with managing change in the schools. A six-stage procedure for managing change is outlined--building a trust relationship between the client and the agent of change, diagnosing the problem, acquiring relevant resources, choosing the solution, gaining acceptance, and stabilizing the innovation and…

Quebec colleges remained firmly entrenched in the pure classicism of prerevolutionary France until well into the twentieth century. Formal Roman Catholic Church control of Laval University, a Jesuit university, ceased in 1965 at a time when the institution and its administration were expanding greatly, and the faculty quickly began to resent the…

The inequality of opportunity that sometimes results from educational reform may not be an artifact or an aberration but may be the intended result of most programs. Although the ostensible goal of most educational reform is equal opportunity, very few programs achieve this goal. It is possible that the real goal of educational reform is continued…