Discusses career patterns of administrators within a public school system administrative hierarchy, using flows of people between positions as measures of connections between positions. Specific career patterns studied included promotion to superintendency via central office administration and via secondary school supervision. (Author/DB)

An argument is built for the investigation of the activity of schooling through an understanding of the personal ideologies of those people through whose actions schools are created and maintained. Provides an example of how recent developments in the inquiry into organizational life may complement current curriculum reconceptualization. (Author)

The application of nonequilibrium thermodynamics could lead to new ways of understanding social processes. (BB)

The failure of Western industrial societies to fulfill the individual's need for a sense of community as it existed in the social structure of Medieval Europe, and the implications of this failure for both the individual and society as a whole are discussed. (RW)

Discusses research in three Australian secondary schools planning to implement school-based decision-making and planning procedures as part of a "corporate-managerialist" restructuring program. Results showed that secondary schools are open social systems comprised of complex relationship patterns. A unitary view of secondary schools is…

Two trends in postmodernist thought are discernible: one redefines modernist principles such as democracy, reason, and equality; the other deconstructs and rejects these principles. However, the redefinition of modernist principles offers educators the most hopeful and useful conception of dialogue across differences. (SK)

Reviews the theoretical background, methodology, and preliminary results of a planned study of what teachers think about power to be conducted in three stages with kindergarten and comprehensive school teachers in Finland. Preliminary results from 22 teachers identify power most clearly as a social category. (SLD)

Reviews sociological gerontology in Canada in four areas: (1) inequality, population aging, and the social construction of aging; (2) retirement and income security; (3) health, health care services, and health policy; and (4) family relations and caregiving. Identifies the importance of social structures for individual experience of aging.…

Honors Phil Smith for his outstanding contribution to the English profession. Notes that as chair of his department, Phil Smith understood the social complexity of the organization he administered, and his example is particularly instructive when it reveals the thoughtfulness with which he addressed the issue of work for all his colleagues. (SG)

Overview of the origins, development, rapid diffusion, and current usage of the concept of social capital in the literature. Focuses on three approaches to operationalizing the concept: those of James Coleman, Pierre Bourdieu, and Robert Putnam. Discusses social capital as a resource, as goal-oriented, and as a contributor to social control and…

Girls' bodies are often constructed negatively and passively in their dominant cultures, but at the same time, girls may collectively construct menstruation and the body in creative ways. By exploring menstrual talk in individual and group interview data from mostly white, high school age girls and boys in the US, this study finds that girls draw…

This paper begins by weighing the term sustainability and considering its meaning in "common culture" terms as people outside the academy might understand it. The first implication is that none of our current behaviour meets the simplest criteria of sustainability. The question "why?" is raised. In responding to this question I suggest that our…

In this article, the author brings a historical perspective to the perennial question, "Should social studies teachers work to transmit the status quo or to transform it?" Should they transmit or transform the social order? When one looks at the question of education for social transformation in the context of American history, three prevailing…

This paper looks at the behaviour of private landowners in rural Scotland in relation to housing supply, particularly renting and low-cost housing. The theme is one that has received relatively little research. In consequence, the paper is set in the context of two rather broader traditions in the literature of examining investor/developer…