Professor Verner argues that the use of adult education instructional techniques is determined by the nature of specific learning tasks and the experience and ability of learners rather than by cultural settings. (LY)

Represents and assesses critical dimensions of individual innovation adopters and proposes use in a school setting. (Author)

A critical task facing educators is that of uniting those schools that have need of a successful solution to a specific problem with those schools that already have produced such a solution. This guide suggests how practitioners might pursue the problem of sharing educational success in their State. Included are a brief summary of how…

Discusses management by objectives in the public sector and its relationship to contingency management. (Available from Public Personnel Management, Room 240, 1313 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637; $15.00 annually, $3.00 single copy.) (IRT)

The fatal weaknesses of school innovations develop in the early stages of implementation. The authors present guidelines and suggestions for educators who wish to implement and maintain innovative programs. (Author/IRT)

Explains the diffusion of an innovative administrative structure (the "M-Form") by using a simple deterministic model commonly employed to represent the diffusion of technological innovations. The performance of the model suggests that additional insights from the study of technological innovation can be applied to the study of…

The chemical model for autocatalytic reactions is adapted to the process of adopting educational innovations and is then applied to six sets of historical data. (Author/IRT)

A study attempted to specify a set of attributes of innovations and explore the extent to which these attributes have general utility in accounting for acceptance of innovations. It was hypothesized that (1) it should be possible to select the best predictors of acceptance of innovations from among the set of attribute variables and (2) attributes…

Two research traditions in communication are compared: the Adoption-Diffusion tradition and the Hermeneutic-Dialectic tradition. The former has been concerned with innovations, while the latter has been concerned with texts. These are compared on eight background assumptions: ontology, language, intentionality, understanding, communications model,…

This analysis of selected diffusion and dissemination methods used by developer-demonstrator projects in the National Diffusion Network discusses strategies under the following headings: managing the project, developing materials, disseminating information, conducting awareness sessions, training personnel, using certified trainers, providing…

An article in the April 1970 issue of Social Education, "A Critical Appraisal of Twenty-Six National Social Studies Projects (EJ 018 397)," was discussed in a series of informal meetings of the Long Island Council for the Social Studies. In the process a number of questions were raised: 1) Just which of these projects are used locally?…

This paper analyzes some of the problems of using diffusion models to formulate marketing strategies for new products. Though future work in this area appears justified, many unresolved problems limit its application. There is no theory for adoption and diffusion processes; such a theory is outlined in this paper. The present models are too…

The author postulates that insufficient and inefficient diffusion and evaluation rather than lack of research and development are responsible for slow educational change. Breakdown points are discussed. Adoption or change efforts should be based on principles supported by research to maximize diffusion and make early adopters aware of a program or…

A description of the communication behaviors in high innovation societies depends on the application of selected principles from modern systems theory. The first is the principle of equifinality which explains the activities of open systems. If the researcher views society as an open system, he frees himself from the client approach since society…