Numerous methods for school reform have been promoted in the United States. Some lessons about school restructuring, reform, and improvement are offered in this report. The text examines four current educational reforms: Henry Levin's Accelerated Schools Project, Theodore R. Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools, James Comer's School Development…

Steps toward a theory of leadership must blend needed change with appropriate strategies for implementation. Discussions of leadership must begin with the concept of empowerment, since all leaders are empowerers. The theory that drives empowerment is the theory of individual differences, here based on C. G. Jung's ideas of four main personality…

This paper reviews the characteristics of effective internship field experience and programs. The internship serves an important function in preparing educational administrators, as it bridges the gap between classroom practice and professional practice. Although the internship has been an integral component of many administrator preparation…

In language which can be understood by ordinary people with college backgrounds, this book introduces philosophical hermeneutics (the interpretive theory of the humanities) to English teachers, with their role in writing instruction especially in mind. The book contrasts philosophical hermeneutics with other theories of interpretation and…

This essay examines and explicates the nature and pattern of epistemic transformations undergone by the United States academic discipline known as "speech communication." The system of examination and explication employed in the paper follows Michel Foucault's genealogical method of inquiry and, as such, offers a postmodern critical…

This paper argues that the possibility of a radical alternative is rarely examined in educational administration theory. In assuming the need for managed organizations, most researchers and practitioners perpetuate the status quo. However, the efforts of de Chardin, Jung, Schumacher, Capra, and Steiner indicate that a unified, holistic paradigm is…

Based on the thesis that language, writing, and the symbolic order are crucial considerations for understanding curriculum and schooling, this book addresses the issues of what kinds of literacy are appropriate for life and work in the late 20th century and what historically is the relationship between curriculum and literacy. After an…

This publication contains five chapters that focus on individual perspectives of reform in administrator-preparation programs. In "One Person's Links Between Administration and the Academy," Ann Weaver Hart offers a self-study that views administrative leadership as an ongoing process of social validation and socialization. Diana G. Pounder, in…

This paper examines educational research today, its status, and its contribution to the policy-making process in the United Kingdom. It argues that educational research and policy making is in crisis; centrally funded research is subject to increasing intervention and restrictions on reporting; research findings are misreported in the press; and…

Documenting an educational experiment that began in Sydney, Australia, this book presents essays by theorists and practitioners in the genre literacy movement that describe this approach to literacy instruction in a clear, practical, and accessible way. The book notes that the genre approach to literacy teaching emphasizes content, structure, and…

This paper outlines the reasons for the overall lack of synchronization between school-effectiveness knowledge and school-improvement practice at the international level. It surveys the two communities, attempts to understand the origins and distinctiveness of the two paradigms, and outlines what each community could gain from an appreciation of…

This paper asks whether postmodernist thought is helpful or harmful to education. It critiques postmodernist theory in both a favorable and critical light and studies the phenomenon within the context of historical and contemporary socioeconomic, cultural, and political developments. The author argues that postmodernism is best understood in…

This study was conceived as a systematic replication of a content analysis of published science education research conducted by Horton et al. in 1993. As such, 47 research articles published in "Science Education" between 1988 and 1992 were examined. Also, this study further extended the findings of Shaver and Norton, and Wallen and…

If the discussions of communication can be divided into those concerned with a description or theory and those concerned with prescription, then it must be understood that the former can never by itself improve communication. As a field, communication studies does not yet know enough about prescriptive language theory; that is, theory concerned…

The challenge of creating site-level support for teacher involvement in collaborative inquiry and reflective discourse is examined in this paper, which asserts that this process is an important component of school leadership in general and instructional leadership in particular. In considering the amount of "sense-making" to be…