Background: Using meta-analytic review techniques, this study synthesized the results of 79 unpublished studies about the nature of transformational school leadership (TSL) and its impact on the school organization, teachers, and students. This corpus of research associates TSL with 11 specific leadership practices. These practices, as a whole,…

Analyzes the organizational values and other elements that make up institutional cultures, and discusses how these cultures shape the behavior of people in the institutions. Provides administrators with practical strategies for creating effective school cultures within their own institutions. Stresses the importance of positive traditions and…

After defining school culture in terms of Organizational Culture, after Maehr and Braskamp (1986), this document presents three related studies, each based on data from a 1989 statewide assessment effort by the University of Illinois and the Illinois State Board of Education. The studies explore the relationship between school culture, motivation,…

This book examines the personal, moral, cultural, and political dimensions of teaching in the context of rapid and far-reaching change within teachers' work and in the world beyond it. The chapters in Part One examine the powerful forces for change in society and how those forces are exerting pressure on existing institutions. Issues such as the…

This monograph proposes an approach to discipline that emphasizes school community building and offers examples from the Kendall Demonstration Elementary School (KDES) and the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD), both in Washington, DC. Following discussion of the problem of violence in today's schools, the paper addresses the importance of…

Factors that can powerfully affect an educator's ability to manage school change are culture, leadership, and readiness. Movement from bureaucracy to community, from isolation to collaboration, involves cultural changes. Managing the change process within a cultural context is influenced by the structural, human resources, political, and symbolic…

Today is an opportune time for school administrators to exercise leadership in curriculum development for school achievement. Effective schools research has found a school's culture and its strategies and tactics to be foundational to an excellent school. These are explored in this article. (DCS)

Schools are taking many different steps to prevent violence, among them improving relationships with students and building on the relationship with local law enforcement. A comprehensive strategy should definitely include a good crisis plan. All school personnel should know what the plan says as well as their roles in implementation. One sidebar…

This book examines educators' norms, beliefs, and values in case studies of three "improving" high schools. The distinction between "sacred" and "profane" norms in the teaching profession is applied to the relationships among school culture, improvement efforts, and the effectiveness of change strategies. Schools'…

Catholic educators want students to do their best academically and become good Catholics. Challenges that make this goal difficult to accomplish include a changing environment within the Catholic school: staffs that were almost entirely composed of priests or religious are now almost entirely lay, and the tension between the school as an…

This book examines sociocultural factors that affect teaching and learning in today's Catholic elementary and secondary schools. The first chapter, "Cultural Diversity: An Important but Problematic Issue," discusses how demographic and societal changes have created a greater need for cultural diversity in education, and stresses the…