Educational administration must abandon its focus on organization, based on hierarchy, legitimacy, and self-interest and develop its own identity. Families, communities, and friendship networks constitute alternative collections of people. To understand schools as communities, educational administration would need to address new questions,…

This issue is a collection of scholarship on school as community--a subject with prolific writings, but a sparse research base. Not another educational fad, community should be disentangled from the instrumental values (improving measurable student outcomes) that pervade education policy. In-depth field studies are needed. (MLH)

Four contiguous chapters in the new "Handbook of Research on Educational Administration" examine evolving views of school organizations. Schools are conceived as facing certain enduring dilemmas or viewed as cultures, polities, or communities. Authors describe rumblings (debates, rhetoric, and prescriptions) in the cracks of conventional…

Considers the tension between shared, constitutive values and the premises of liberal inclusiveness in school communities. Evaluates three candidates for school-community values (comprehensive doctrines, caring, and democracy). Concludes that constitutive values are inconsistent with liberal inclusiveness. Advocates a vaguer, thicker middle ground…

Uses data from a longitudinal, ethnographic study of two predominantly Navajo schools to reexamine the concept of community. Explores issues of bilingualism, diverse community goals and attitudes, cultural understandings, and conflicting values embedded within the schools' social and educational contexts. Conceiving the school as a moral…

With President Clinton's election, the Democratic party's neoliberal wing came to power--a change with important educational policy implications. This study, based on a content analysis of neoliberal political communication, concludes that the policy values most emphasized are economic growth, community, and equity. This represents a shift away…

Develops and estimates a causal model describing the relationship between bureaucracy, legitimacy, and community as predictors of teachers' job satisfaction, using data from a national survey of National Education Association teacher members. Bureaucracy has important effects on community via legitimacy. Legitimacy has greater effects than…

Analyzes four middle schools' experiences with interdisciplinary teams. Although teaming is often considered a vehicle for developing community in schools, it may also present tensions for developing cohesiveness across teams. Too little time may be devoted to discussing important whole-school issues. The demands of teacher empowerment within the…

Explains fundamental shifts dominating education's transition at technical, managerial, and institutional levels. Since the first edition of the "Handbook of Research on Educational Administration," school administration has been reconfigured and recultured. Social justice, democratic community, and school improvement comprise major…

Since 1980, most English-speaking nations have experienced a sea change in how people think about educational policy and school management. This article argues for scrutinizing both paradigms or theories influencing our thinking and consequences of built-in biases. Drawing on the British and U.S. experience, the article examines dramatic…

The articles in the December 1997 "Educational Administration Quarterly" about replacing the American comprehensive high school lacked historical perspective. Despite contributors' efforts to dissociate them from such schools, certain "innovative" restructuring measures (community building, team teaching, and block scheduling) have historically…