The purpose of this study was to explore the quality of toddler childcare in Norway using the Infant Toddler Environment Rating Scale-Revised Edition (ITERS-R; [Harms, Thelma, Debby Cryer, and Richard M. Clifford. 2006. "Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scales Revised Edition." New York: Teachers College Press.]), drawing on a sample of…

With increasing competition for postgraduate research scholarships, awarding processes demand attention and scrutiny. We examine inter-rater reliability for two prestigious New Zealand scholarships, the Shirtcliffe Fellowship and the Gordon Watson Scholarship. For each scholarship, five assessors (three academic; two non-academic) independently…

Marketing instructors using simulation games as a way of inducing some realism into a marketing course are faced with many dilemmas. Two important quandaries are the optimal size of groups and how much of the students' time should ideally be devoted to the game. Using evidence from a very large sample of teams playing a simulation game, the study…

The authors sought to test Homans' proposition that small groups inevitably generate a social structure which combines subgroups (cliques) and a ranking system. We present a graph theoretical model of such a structure and prove that a necessary and sufficient condition for its existence is the absence of seven particular triad types. Expected…

Little research attention has been paid to the systematic validation of mathematical indices of social structure. The validation strategies in use remain largely implicit and generally fail to appreciate the multi-dimensionality of structure. The current paper proposes a new method designed to avoid these shortcomings and reports the results of…

Authority-task problems are organizational problems created by inconsistencies between the task process system and both the authority system and the formal hierarchy of offices. A new theory is used to develop a model that predicts how an administrator responds to an authority-task problem. (Author/IRT)

This paper reviews a variety of analytic procedures that can be applied to network data, discussing the assumptions and usefulness of each procedure when applied to the complexity of human communication. Special attention is paid to the network properties measured or implied by each procedure. Factor analysis and multidimensional scaling are among…

Reports the relationship between the teachers' participation in organizational decision-making and the perceived influence attributed to their administrative superiors, the principal and the superintendent. (Author)

Relates community structural variables to leadership arrangements, paying special attention to the results obtained when three alternative measures of "reputational" leadership (visibility, legitimacy and centralization) are used in two samples of communities. (Author/AM)

In order for teacher education students to assess children's performance related to environment, data that might influence learning was collected. Relationships emerged between contextual variables as well as between child variables. (RC)

Using Snizek's shorter version of Hall's professionalism scale assessing five attitudinal components, provincial professional profiles have been developed from 1203 Manitoba teachers based on six personal and contextual variables. Results indicated no clear-cut patterns can be established between professionalism and variables selected, with the…

This is a final report, for administrative purposes, of studies to be published in the general category of mathematical theory of social groups, with emphasis on the large groups typical of educational communities. Since the study of the large and complicated structures of high school and college communities is difficult by purely empirical…

THE PRIMARY PURPOSE OF THIS EXPERIMENT WAS TO DETERMINE WHETHER HIERARCHICALLY DIFFERENTIATED GROUPS WERE AS PRODUCTIVE ON PROBLEM-SOLVING TASKS AS HIERARCHICALLY UNDIFFERENTIATED GROUPS. THE EXPERIMENT ALSO INVESTIGATED THE EFFECTS OF FORMALLY BASED STATUS DIFFERENCES ON GROUP EFFICIENCY AND RISK-TAKING. TWENTY GROUPS CONTAINING FOUR SUBJECTS…

This essay reviews major trends in methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of organizations since the mid-sixties and espouses the political analysis of organizations, a position representing a middle ground between comparative structuralism and the loosely coupled systems approach. This position emphasizes micropolitics as well as…

Information on the development and testing of a model of spatial diffusion and adoption of an agricultural innovation is presented. The data concern the practice of artificial insemination of cattle in southern Sweden. The model is intended to predict the time at which adoption occurred in terms of the time at which the innovation became available…