The Bruderhof communities in the United States have organized their own private schools with a distinctly Christian philosophy of education, adding to the interesting mix of American private and religious schools. Rooted in early 20th century German pedagogy, romanticism, and shared responsibility, Bruderhof schools represent the essence of a…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between change interventions and organizational learning. It seeks to identify the process through which team learning is developed, the factors that affect organizational learning and its influences on organizational effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach: Two groups of…

This article draws on the Sustainability Education in European Primary Schools (SEEPS) Project, which was an EU-funded project examining approaches to sustainability education. As part of that project the team developed a case study approach to the individual country contributions to the overall project, which concluded by developing a model based…

This study examines the role that community networks can take in fulfilling McQuail's call for a more democratic-participant form of mass media. Community networks, which are online grassroots organizations designed to promote local community initiatives, increased their Internet presence in the 1990s. However, their number has declined in recent…

This article is based on a pilot study which sought to directly engage pupils in a current government policy initiative using a variety of e-consultation mechanisms and explores how this innovative use of technology could support citizenship education in schools. Drawing on qualitative data collected from interviews with pupils and teachers it…

In reviewing research from three successive research studies in one school district in Ontario, Canada, I trace the influence of leadership on the building of capacity in schools and the district. In so doing, it has become clear that the style of leadership has shifted to a more distributed approach, in which more teachers are becoming engaged in…

In this article, we discuss key requirements for collecting behavioural data concerning technology-supported collaborative learning activities. It is argued that the common practice of analysis of computer generated log files of user interactions with software tools is not enough for building a thorough view of the activity. Instead, more…

Purpose: Despite the importance of principals' satisfaction with their school's performance (PSS), few empirical studies have addressed the components and predictors of principals' satisfaction with their school. The purpose of this study is to identify the most salient components of PSS among school satisfaction indices, districts'…

Many schools across the United States are attempting to implement some form of decentralization and shared decision making. This paper identifies some of the challenges associated with implementing school-based decision making and describes ways in which some schools and their principals have dealt effectively with them. Three particular…

In a study of how decisions were made in 24 restructuring schools (Kirby and Bogotch 1993), teachers claimed to have considerable decision authority. Teachers in most of the schools, however, reported that decision making was based on existing knowledge of the internal group. The Kirby and Bogotch (1993) model, developed from that study, links two…

School reform has taken many shapes over the years. Among the most pervasive of school-reform theories is school-based management (SBM), which is examined in detail in this book. The introductory chapter locates the current round of SBM in the longer cycle of educational reform, describes the extent of SBM activity over the past decade in the…

Sixty-one graduate student teachers (from seven urban, rural, and suburban districts) responded to five questions relating to how they viewed their involvement and importance in making decisions in the operation of their schools. Questions were designed by 14 teachers who met twice for about 2 hours each meeting. This development group believed…

Is the work of democracy too hard for schools to implement? This paper presents findings of a study that examined the dialectical relationship between the espoused values of democracy in schools and the actual practice of equity and inclusion in site-based decision making. Specifically, it examines the lived experience of the people inside schools…

The link between time and learning is one of the most consistent findings in educational research. This handbook describes a process for developing effective use of instructional time through the identification of important decision-making criteria and the use of these criteria to create a school schedule. The handbook describes an 11-step…

Despite the recent attention to shared decision making, there has been little research investigating the process. This paper presents and compares three case studies describing the leadership and decision making of three shared-decision-making teams over 4 years. The teams--from one primary, one middle, and one high school--were set in one school…