In schools, like many business organizations, the establishment of mission statements has become common practice. In fact, many high schools are required to establish mission statements as part of an accreditation process. The intent of mission statements is to establish organizational purpose, and theoretically, once established the practice of…

Leadership is a multifaceted construct. It requires mentoring as a lifelong experience. Leadership is not an isolated phenomenon, but an activity completely interrelated with those one leads. It can never be separated from its essential community or organizational context. This makes the experience of mentoring all the more critical. Adding yet to…

An external evaluation documented what occurred in an inaugural summer camp to teach high school students how to preserve religious freedom by learning about and acting on the history and current state of church-state separation and other first amendment issues. Camp designers hoped to promote religious diversity values and civic engagement in…

The transactional approach views leader-follower relations as a social exchange relationship. While the leader provides the group with success in reaching its goals and gives followers recognition and reward, the followers give the leader responsiveness and participation in group enterprises. In addition followers give the leader esteem and…

Student discussion-group leaders were assessed on indices of facilitative empathy, respect, and genuineness, and their behaviors were analysed by Flanders' interaction categories. None of the leaders reached minimally helpful levels of the facilitative conditions, and only two out of five could be categorized as "indirect" leaders. (Author/JA)

Identifies components of group process and describes leader functions. Discusses personal elements, focus of interaction/psychological distance, group development, content, quality of interaction, and self-reflective/meaning attribution, illustrated by a case study of a group of persons (N=5) arrested for drunk driving. (JAC)

Examines the nature of development of a self-analytic seminar through stages and its impact on sex-role stereotypes and gender interactions among participants and with the seminar leaders. Explores relationships between feminist thought and psychoanalysis and supports the positive influence on recognition of mutual needs among the sexes.…

A means of reducing teacher anxiety is explored. Administrative policy geared toward a warm and friendly atmosphere that fosters group supportiveness is recommended. (JC)

The indications are that the employer-employee small group format increases anxiety level of participants. When no group leader is present, the interaction level of the group increases. (AS)

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of the interaction of leader empathy, participant motivation to change, and leader-participant relationship. When a multiple regression analysis was used to observe the relationship between changes in effective sensitivity and the three variables, a significant positive relationship was found.…

This study is an initial report in a research program to examine the nature and influence of one set of structural variables--participation patterns--on patterns of interaction in sensitivity training groups. (Author)

In response to William Coulson's article in this issue, the author is pleased that professionals are questioning their own roles in Encounter but is in general disagreement with Coulson's points regarding complete openness and feedback. (CJ)

Drawing from data generated in more than 100 hours of interaction within 15 leaderless groups, a study investigated the interaction characteristics of emergent leadership--leadership that is earned through face-to-face encounters in a group. Each group was instructed to reach consensus decisions on two tasks, both of which provided the possibility…

In order to improve the quality of classroom discussion, Group Interaction Analysis (GIA) is suggested as a means of increasing an individual's awareness of the role he assumes in group discussions. GIA is a systemized technique involving the observation of both beneficial and non-beneficial discussion activities. These activities are: (1) fact…

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of varying leader selection systems on the performance of political decision-making groups (judges). The type of leadership choice of the court was the independent variable and degree of dissent the dependent variable. As predicted, merit choice had less dissent. (NG)