The idea of collective decision making in schools has been a popular democratic educational reform model. One of its claims is that participation in school decision making empowers teachers and improves teaching. This research investigates this claim by exploring seven teachers' experiences with a unique democratic school reform in Porto Alegre,…

Schools have been intractable to change and the attainment of goals set by reformers. A major failure has been the inability of reformers to confront this intractability. As a result, each new wave of reform learns nothing from earlier efforts and comes up with recommendations that have failed in the past. Nine chapters explore why reform efforts…

Findings of a study that examined the implementation of school-based management in an elementary and a secondary school are presented in this paper. The study attempted to identify certain phenomena that might be directly linked to attitudes or perceptions generated specifically by the differences inherent in elementary-secondary school settings.…

This paper describes a study of teachers in an elementary school, how they constructed and viewed their understandings of social and professional organization, how these understandings were modified as the central values of the organization, and how its social and political context underwent significant changes. The report focuses on the values…

All too often, rhetoric has become the guide for change, rather than philosophical assumptions and value systems. This paper presents three organizational constructs to assist schools in successfully transforming their work cultures into learning organizations. The three components include systems thinking and quality concepts, social…

Partnerships between universities and public schools that recognize the interdependence and mutual benefits derived from an alliance have become a cornerstone of educational restructuring (C. Dean, P. Lauer, & V. Urquhart, 2005; J. L. Goodlad, 1991; Holmes Group, 1990). Although interrelated, these partners exist in distinctive milieus in which…

This is a critique of the current system of governance in public education. Chapters include: (1) "Statement of the Problem," which introduces the issues related to educational reform and provides some examples of previous successes and failures; (2) "The Non-Learning, Non-Self-Correcting System," in which the current system is…

This paper compares the two educational sectors in Romania K-12 schools and higher education seeking to understand why reform in the K-12 educational system has failed while higher education reform has been more rapid and effective. The analysis uses concepts from U.S. organizational theory, such as school climate, school culture, and permanently…