This book was designed to help managers and employees to decipher the two crucial elements in work design and human resource planning: the role network that surrounds every position and the key stakeholders whose expectations define the essence of the job. It provides a structured process for analyzing one's own job as well as the jobs of…

This dissertation examines how stakeholders in an Appalachian Kentucky high school addressed educational problems that they targeted for reform. Set against the backdrop of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), this ethnographic study describes the challenges of effectively coupling top-down state mandates with bottom-up advocacy and…

Any discussion of educational transformation today should consider a community-oriented pedagogy. This paper describes the administrator-education curriculum at George Mason University's Institute for Educational Transformation, which was organized around the unifying theme of the "American Dream." The most important reason for doing this is that…

This training guide is intended to help Head Start staff and parents build the skills they need to work together on decision-making teams and to help develop ground rules by which the decision-making partnership will operate. The guide develops skills in analyzing the extent to which parents are currently encouraged to participate in the key…

This dissertation, which won the Dissertation of the Year Award, examines how stakeholders in an Appalachian Kentucky high school addressed educational problems that they had targeted for reform. Set against the backdrop of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), this ethnographic study describes the challenges of effectively coupling top-down…

This summary report presents an integration of major findings on teachers' perceptions of working conditions, based on survey and interview data from about 375 special educators in six large urban districts. The report focuses on special educators' perceptions of administrative support at two levels--building and central office. Major findings…

A formative evaluation was conducted of two elementary schools that have been engaged in the School/Community-Based Management (SCBM) process in Hawaii. The evaluation process was aligned with the SCBM philosophy, which promotes shared decision making, shared responsibility, and collaboration. Stakeholders contributed to the evaluation, which…

Since the mid 1980s, several groups including the Carnegie Forum, the Holmes Group, and the Center for Educational Renewal have conducted investigations and published reports and proposals on improving the quality of teacher education programs. This paper analyzes the various proposals and contends that current or recommended teacher education…

A democracy must tolerate many points of view without becoming divided. Therefore, public educators and the communities they serve are challenged to help students understand political and religious issues without proselytizing. This handbook provides guidelines for beginning the journey toward common ground, for moving from a climate of antagonism…

The current trend toward collaboration is having an impact on the fields of adult basic education and adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and literacy education. This digest looks at collaboration for adult ESL programs and for family bilingual and ESL literacy programs. It discusses the distinctions among cooperation, coordination, and…

Approximately 600 teachers in 32 public elementary schools and secondary schools from 1 urban southeastern school district participated in a study conducted to identify prototypes of school climate concerning decisional participation cultures. A 19-item decisional participation measure was used, and the median score of the teachers at each school…

Quality circles (QCs) are small volunteer groups of workers who meet weekly with a trained leader operating to a strict code of conduct. They use techniques of brainstorming, cause and effect classification, pareto analysis, and presentation to consider work-related problems and recommend solutions to management. QCs have been tried in educational…

Beginning in the mid-1960s, thousands of small alternative schools sprang up across the United States and Canada. These schools varied widely in programs and policies, but common factors among them were a disenchantment with conventional schooling, a desire to reform education, and (frequently) the belief that schools should be controlled by the…

At College of DuPage (CD), in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, institutional planning is a multi-level, on-going process involving continuous college-wide input. The nine schematic levels in the CD planning process are interconnected and progress from global and broad-based issues, answering such questions as why the college exists, to concrete levels…

This paper examines how selected program characteristics and attributes of key players affected two school-university collaborative efforts, and how funded grants created the need for collaborative linkages between schools and universities with little or no prior experience in joint efforts. Two programs (an alternative certification program and a…