The educational landscape around standards, assessment, professional development, and funding is changing at a rapid pace. This article asks how can education institutions--and educators--respond with a balance of urgency and coherence? How can education institutions temper the need for risk-taking and innovation with the responsibility to deliver…

How do schools maintain momentum with change and enter new cycles of growth when they are attempting to do things differently? This article draws on a two-year evaluation of the "Positive Behaviour for Learning School-Wide" initiative to identify key factors that enabled schools to engage in a long-term and iterative change process.…

Interest on the part of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) Board of Directors in the development of a set of descriptions of the core competencies for AACRAO professions goes back several years, with more active discussion beginning in 2011 under the leadership of AACRAO President Nora McLaughlin. At…

Universities in Europe face a variety of reform initiatives, and university reform can be seen as a wicked problem that should be resolved through collaborative efforts. In Finland, there has been considerable resistance to proposed reforms, with university personnel complaining that they have not been heard. Students, on the other hand, seem…

Successful in Japan and in American industry, quality circles are a specific way to involve staff members in solving organization problems. A growing number of school administrators are examining this technique to see if it can reduce the costs of education and improve morale. (Author/JM)

Elements that the University of Akron, Furman University, and Wichita State University believe to be essential for mounting a successful program for change are identified: definition of institutional mission, top administrative support, leadership development, comprehensive change programs, emphasis on communication and process, and merging of…

Strengths of the committee system and its value for colleges and universities are discussed. College committees provide more people with the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process. Leadership is provided to a committee by a chairperson who acts as a facilitator. The value of a committee depends on the scope of its mission, the…

Factors that contributed to the demoralization of junior faculty at a university with 214 teaching and professional staff were identified and change strategies were recommended. A consultant held interviews with 65 current and 8 former staff members. Themes that emerged from the interviews were used to develop suggestions for improving specific…

This paper explores the dynamics of managing collective problem solving and decision making, and the application of tools and strategies to deal with the emergent complexity of systems in which educators work. Schools and educational programs are complex adaptive systems that respond to changes in internal and external environments. Functioning…

This study examines a naturally occurring experiment in a large urban hospital faced with budget cuts, in which departments were ordered to reduce employees' overtime without jeopardizing service quality. The study focuses on two departments that chose to use behavior modification techniques. In one department (Radiology) the intervention combined…

Discusses expanding the "evaluate solutions" step of problem-solving strategy to develop a guidance plan to solve children's troublesome behaviors. Parents and teacher determine the goals for the child, the child's relevant individual characteristics, the needs of the people involved, and the feelings of those involved as a guide to…

The Dade County, Florida, school system selected 32 schools to participate in a pilot program for shared decision making. Evaluators found similar problems and solutions in a variety of school settings and classified them into 9 categories. (MLF)

This training guide and reference manual helps educational leaders learn to be facilitators in the program called "Improving the Human Environment of Schools" (IHES), a participative problem-solving method designed to improve a school's "quality of life." An introductory chapter reviews the history of IHES and outlines IHES…

Although the "what" of schooling has become clearer through a convergence of research findings, educators still do not understand the "hows" of effectively using that knowledge to make necessary changes. This paper's objectives are to argue the necessity of fundamental changes in the patterns of schooling (the "whys") and to present a conceptual…

Problems that threaten the future careers of faculty and the quality of education at colleges and universities are reviewed, based on a literature review. It is suggested that new federalism, decreased revenue, declining enrollments, increased state and federal regulations, and public demand for accountability have threatened the ability of higher…