Community colleges enroll almost half of the undergraduates in the United States and provide students the option to earn a degree at a lower cost and offer more flexible class schedules than four-year colleges. However, among first-time, full-time degree-seeking students entering public two-year schools, only about 20 percent graduate with a…

Effective administrative decisions result from the continuous and systematic appraisal of past decisions and of current conditions. Forty observations that may guide secondary school administrators in assessing and improving the effectiveness of their own decision-making processes are presented in this publication. Each observation is accompanied…

Critically examines participative decision making (PDM) in education, reviewing literature of the past 15 years and evaluating the current status of research on the subject; suggests how to appropriately use PDM in schools; and surveys gaps in knowledge. (MCG)

Asserts that organizations do not have wills of their own but are only groups of individuals acting in concert. Argues that trying to run an organization by consensus results in the loss of accountability and merely relocates conflict without eliminating it. Urges adopting leadership by consent in educational organizations. (PGD)

At a time when collaborative leadership is much heralded in American institutional life as the antidote to discontent with power structures, colleges and universities have illustrated that shared governance is not inherently collaborative. The sense of common cause on campus should come from a shared knowledge base, concern with external…

This practical guidebook is designed for managers and leaders who have responsibility for the creation and success of teams. First, a team is described as a workgroup whose members are dependent upon one another for the completion of a given task, and whose members possess different but complementary skill sets. A team manages its own work within…

Evaluates the importance of mutual trust and understanding in the workplace, and presents practices that promote the sense of ownership and the steps necessary to instill an environment in which leadership is everyone's business. (Contains 11 references.) (Author/MLF)

Leadership was the primary issue when the Lincoln Institute of Health Sciences (Victoria, Australia) introduced academic governance regulations in 1978. The issue resurfaced in 1982, prompting a regulations review. This paper analyzes review findings and relates them to contemporary theory viewing leadership as a relationship between leaders and…

This paper discusses "moral imagination" or vision by strong-minded task-oriented contemporary educational leaders like New Jersey's Joe Clark. These are principals and superintendents who will challenge traditional assumptions about the nature of the school's relationships with its internal and external publics in favor of their own…

This booklet reviews decision-making, an important part of administrative processes, from the perspective of school teachers and other educators. The two most commonly used processes are the rational decision-making process (identify the problem, evaluate the problem, collect information, identify alternative solutions, select and implement…

A case study was done of the possible role of strategic planning processes for smoothing the transition period experienced by colleges and universities when changes in top leadership occur. The study was conducted in a medium-sized midwestern state university that had begun, 3 years earlier, a strategic planning process which had been…

This essay argues that the development of leadership skills in the education of college students should be on the agenda of all faculty and describes ways to build the development of leadership skills into virtually any course or program of study through a technique called Reflective Controversy. An opening phase of the essay describes the signs…

Responding to the crisis in leadership at community colleges, scholars and practitioners alike have called for a new style of leadership capable of adapting and responding easily to an uncertain political and social climate. Although community colleges are rooted historically in a hierarchical leadership mode, there seems to be broad consensus…

To improve secondary school organization, operation, and outcomes, a research report presents major results from 13 studies of leadership, decision-making, and change conducted by Project on the Administration and Organization for Instruction staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in cooperation with over 100 schools. National and statewide…

The context of and the participatory strategic planning process at the University of Texas, El Paso, from 1993 to 1996 is described. The internal and external factors that influence the intensive interactive process are reviewed; the university's conceptual framework for strategic planning is described; and the role of the university's planning…