A staff development process that uses group-building activities to foster staff collegiality is described in this paper. As schools become involved in restructuring, cooperation and positive working relationships become more crucial for effective school teams involved in participative decision making. Five characteristics of group-building…

This paper examines how institutions of higher education can achieve more diverse academic communities. It is argued that modernist interpretations of organizations limit academic change designed to encourage the voiceless members of society through an overemphasis on outcomes and efficiency. Section 1 discusses the general debate between…

This digest summarizes a longer document with the same title concerning the introduction of enduring innovations into a higher education organization. Organizational change involves three steps: (1) mobilization, (2) implementation, and (3) institutionalization. Without institutionalization, the innovation is likely to be terminated no matter how…

This paper discusses the problems encountered in applying rational and participatory models to school reform and presents an alternative model based on action research. The group processes of a school-improvement team (SIT) at a high school are examined. Data were collected through participant observation, interviews with three faculty members,…

This workbook is designed for people interested in facilitating Personal Futures Planning, a person-centered creative planning process designed to help people craft a life of meaning and contribution for a person with developmental disabilities. The facilitator of the Futures Planning process organizes a group to listen to the dreams and desires…

Interviews with 34 teachers at a rural high school in northeastern Connecticut examined cognitive constraints affecting teacher involvement in participative decision making. The principal recently restructured the school in an attempt to ensure teacher decision making. Data collection consisted of a standardized open-ended interview conducted at…

In rural coastal communities, trade-offs between conserving and developing environmentally sensitive resources are acute. At the community level, part-time volunteers and citizen officials are asked to make complex decisions based on ambiguous and frequently contradictory "scientific" evidence of economic and environmental relationships.…

This paper reports on a project to create and integrate an institutional research function into the executive-level policy decision making process at a private university. The paper identifies ten problems that needed to be overcome; they include: timeliness, consideration of qualitative factors, the limited scope of institutional research…

This study sought to understand how executive committee members and deans experience and perceive the process of governance within their institutions. Following a brief review of the literature, the paper reviews three models of academic governance: the academic bureaucracy, the political institution, and the collegium and discusses previous…

Research suggests that school reform initiatives have had minimal success in engendering systemic instructional improvement in schools. Within this evaluative context, this paper explores the means through which the paradigm of thinking about school instruction dominant in the profession (that is, Hirsch's "thoughtworld") potentially…

Oregon's School Improvement and Professional Development Program (SIPD) was created to: (1) assist local district goal achievement; (2) establish site committees to initiate school improvement and shared decision making; and (3) provide professional development opportunities. The following outcomes are evaluated in this report: development of…

The failure of many international development projects is prompting project planners and implementers to reexamine the process of technological transfer between countries. This process involves one culture imposing change upon another in such a way that the recipient culture not only accepts the change but also adopts it as its own and expands…

Findings of a study that explored problems in the development of two newly created metropolitan middle schools are presented in this paper. Based on a framework of organizational change, the main premise contends that as new organizations, schools are also inherently vulnerable to the generic problems that face all organizations undergoing change.…

Quality Circles (QC's) consist of small groups of people who perform the same work and who voluntarily meet on a regular basis to discuss problems, seek solutions, and cooperate with management in the implementation of those solutions. QC's operate on the premise that employee participation in decision making and problem solving improves the…

At the core of the professional development school movement is the assumption that teachers' voices must be welcomed in the wider educational community through participation in mutual collaborative inquiry with university faculty. However, little thought has been given to the nature of teachers' voices, the dilemmas that arise when those voices…