This essay, one in a series about the priorities of the professoriate, seeks to explore variations on standard tenure practices that might be advantageous to the interests of both faculty and the institutions by proposing three modifications to traditional policies. The first, tenure by objectives, involves reconfiguration of the probationary…

This paper, one in a series about the priorities of the professoriate, is premised on the belief that academic tenure in higher education, if not doomed, is likely to play a diminishing role in the employment of college and university professors in coming generations. The paper argues against the belief that institutions of higher education have a…

This paper explores the dynamic nature of the power relationship within social research, concentrating on the production and reproduction of a text of the field and focusing on the processes of recording, writing, and reading. It draws on ethnographic research conducted in a United Kingdom office of an international firm of chartered accountants…

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of four urban schools that sought to develop professional community as part of a restructuring process. The study focuses on how restructuring affected teachers' work over a 3-year period. It reports that the absence of structural conditions can impede the growth of professional community; however, their…

A study was done to examine the expectations and aspirations of teachers participating in a school-university collaborative effort, called a Professional Development School (PDS). A PDS is a working relationship between school and university personnel to merge the worlds of theory and practice in which both parties achieve parity in governance and…

A conceptual framework is presented for discussing teacher autonomy in a historical perspective against the background of a profound decentralization in the Swedish educational system introduced in the early 1980s. The way teachers use a broadened space of action cannot be fully understood unless a distinction is made between private and…

This report is a descriptive summary of preliminary findings from the second year of research in 16 secondary schools in California and Michigan conducted by the Center for Research on the Context of Secondary Teaching (CRC). Further analyses of the data will proceed over the year and will be informed by comments of teachers, administrators, and…

The internal politics of colleges and the influence of a current emphasis on efficiency on the traditional independence of the academician are analyzed. It is suggested that the academician does not work in the same differentiated, and therefore interdependent, way as someone in industry or a bureaucracy. Academic activity is segmented, which…

Building on previous investigations of the effects of team-organized instructional arrangements on elementary school teachers' sense of autonomy, this report reexamines data from 14 multiunit schools which still retained the team instructional plan at the end of the second year of implementation. Indicators measured were interdependent teaching…

Eight issues concerning academic freedom are discussed. The issues are: (1) the question of who should have the right to decide what should be taught; (2) the extent to which school districts should impose specific restrictions on subjects discussed in the classroom; (3) the controversy over the rights of teachers to refuse to teach content that…

This paper discusses the problems of the teaching profession from the perspective of the classroom teacher, and attempts to develop a set of policy recommendations related to improving teaching conditions and teacher effectiveness. Information collection focused on data obtained from in-depth interviews conducted with 73 elementary and secondary…

Discussions of higher education in the U.S. are driven today by the language of finance rather than of pedagogy--more specifically, the language of financial hardship. Terms like "shortfall," "cutback," and "retrenchment" set the tone and shape the policies that force austerities and lead to "triage" in…

Recommends the following considerations for teachers who must cope with censorship in public schools: (1) clarify professional role, (2) keep community aware of curricular goals and content, (3) develop clear selection policies for materials and rationales for using controversial materials, (4) handle complaints with carefully constructed…

This paper considers the question of faculty as "community." The study examined community-building efforts at one institution, which had been initiated in response to negative outside judgment about faculty effectiveness and that threatened the continued existence of the teacher preparation program. A "community committee" survey asked 32 faculty…

This study examined institutional researchers' perceptions regarding their effectiveness in influencing institutional policy changes, the factors that make institutional researchers effective in the policy arena, and researchers perspectives regarding job-related rewards; challenges encountered in seeking to establish influential roles in decision…