In this resource sheet, Dr Higgins examines child abuse and neglect in Indigenous communities from a societal perspective: applying a community development framework to understand effective strategies for reducing risks and enhancing children's safety and wellbeing. To be effective, strategies to address the problem of child abuse in Indigenous…

We are, for the second time in a hundred years, experiencing a revolution in the politics of education. In the 1890s municipal reform wrested control of urban school systems from city political machines and their neighborhood subunits. Since then the structure of school government has rested on two types of legitimacy. These are a belief in…

In contrast to the traditional model of diffusion from the top down, an information-seeking model focuses on the individual who is looking for a source to meet an information need. The change agent's role involves organizing the community and assisting in finding information sources. (SK)

Questions whether the interests of children are served by the active intervention of collective bargaining in program development and the educational processes. (Author/JF)

An examination of the relevant literature reveals that "policy" means different things to different people. Among the concepts that emerge when these meanings are reviewed are that policies are intentional, decision-based, goal-oriented, and conditional; they lead to results, balance facts and values, and allocate resources; and they…

Examines some evidence about public understanding of education policy, compares it to similar understandings of other public policy fields, and discusses some of the steps that may be taken to deal with the prevailing levels of understanding. (Author)

A major component of the decentralization concept has been the focus on the participation of community, staff, and students in the process of educational decision making. On June 28, 1971, the Los Angeles City Board of Education mandated that a school-community advisory council be established in every regular elementary and secondary school in the…

School/Community-Based Management (SCBM) improves the quality of education by providing schools with administrative flexibility and by empowering each school's community to make and implement decisions that will directly affect its members and students. To help individual school communities that are considering adopting SCBM understand how shared…

Article examined the question of whether we as a society will be better off in the long run if our colleges are run by experts, by people who work full-time as toilers in the educational vineyard, or by laymen who devote part-time efforts to their trusteeship. (Author/RK)

Summarizes the organizational process and political bargaining models of policy change, and considers the rational decision-making model as an alternative. Models are interrelated with each other to show how each reveals a dimension of the politics of school decentralization. (Author/AM)

State departments of education, administrators, educational testing systems, and the media are demanding uniformity of instructional units and of performance objectives for community college English courses. Limited funds and the desire to promote a favorable public image are factors encouraging standardization of instruction. Presently, policy…

This paper presents a conceptual model for determining patterns of predecisional behavior of school administrators, and a method for empirical verification of the model through content analysis of subjects' responses to complex problem-solving situations. The discussion concerns the concept of the relationship among identifiable patterns of…

The focus of this paper is on the delineation of three popular reform measures: decentralization, citizen participation, and community control and assessment of recent efforts to implement these. It develops a model that realistically combines decentralization with community decision making. (Author/AM)

Argues that ways exist to include parents and communities in educational decision making without sacrificing the gains which teachers' unions have won. Describes and assesses several strategies for opening up the bargaining process. (Editor/RK)

Six school board members discuss the most crucial community relations problems facing their school system and what their school boards can and should do about them. (MF)