This study examined the views held by five teachers in an adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) program concerning their processes of curriculum implementation in a Canadian immigrant program, focusing on how the teachers assess their own autonomy over curriculum decision-making. Data were gathered in a series of interviews, in which key themes…

This paper revisits the literature on the nature of school organizations and presents a view of secondary schools as complex social systems, as opposed to bureaucratic-rational structures. Research was conducted into three Western Australia secondary schools planning to implement school-based decision making and planning procedures. The…

Interviews were conducted with teachers who chaired the steering committees for 3 of the 25 National Education Association Mastery in Learning (MIL) Project schools with the purpose of eliciting their viewpoints on teacher empowerment and leadership. The schools (Orchards Elementary School in Lewiston, Idaho; Willow Creek Junior High in Rochester,…

The future of academic content reforms relies on the relationship between policies and the decisions of teachers. Because the agreement of teachers with district policies is congruent with teacher autonomy, the dichotomy of district control and teacher autonomy is invalid. Districts execute instructional leadership by providing teacher autonomy or…

To determine if visual excellence in television news is related to photographers' professionalism, a six-page questionnaire was mailed to 438 full-time news photographers asking them about the working conditions at their shops, their opinions about television news, and their rating of professionalism scales. For comparison, a purposive sample was…

A survey of public high school principals asked which policies, programs, and practices designed to improve learning were currently in operation at their schools, and whether these policies were instituted or substantially strengthened in the past 5 years. These policies reflect the school-level recommendations for education reform made in "A…

The first paper in this volume, "What Must Be Done to Improve Teacher Education," which consists of remarks delivered at the National Forum on Excellence in Education (Indianapolis, December 1983), notes that while a number of problems with teacher education have been identified, the proposed solutions lack the coherence and…

This article constitutes an attempt to investigate how student teachers and teacher educators in the context of Swedish early childhood teacher education are invented and reinvented by practices that are inspired by feminist and post-structural thinking. I give examples of practice that explicitly make use of different aspects of the personal,…

Maintains that more education--five years of education for teacher certification--will not guarantee a classroom teacher the kind of responsibility, control, and power over children's learning that an expert in the field should have. (BB)

Consists of six articles dealing with the need to have both a personal and a professional life and ways to do so. Topics include burnout, overcoming workaholism, ways to balance roles, the administrator's view, and the two-career family. (CH)

This case study examined the influences of autonomy and uncertain expectations of accountability on the functioning of an urban charter school during its initial years of development. The school studied was a charter school in its second year of development that was attempting to measure student improvement in challenging areas such as social…

Certain dissatisfactions emerged as a universal theme among 200 teachers observed and interviewed during a study of school environments. Teachers are charged with increased responsibility, while they suffer from a loss of authority. Reasons for the loss of authority and its effects on teacher morale are discussed. (PP)

The connections between class and gender must be recognized if attempts to rationalize and proletarianize teaching are to be understood. Behaviorally-specified curriculum, prepackaged programs, and repeated testing and accountability measures represent attempts by state governments and by male administrators to wrest control of instruction from a…

Describes a contractually negotiated income/leisure substitution provision commonly used in Canada. The deferred-salary leave plan gives teachers greater control over their work lives by letting them set aside monies to underwrite future leaves of absence. The plan may help teachers alleviate job stress, offset increased demands of reform…

Academics in both the industrial world and developing countries face funding declines, growing state intervention, public hostility, and corporate pressure. Simultaneously, they are experiencing internal wars over policy, curriculum, and nature of scholarly communities. In North America debates about academic freedom center on tenure and free…