Background: School improvement planning is a common school leadership practice built on assumptions that schools increase organizational performance if rational yearly plans are developed and then enacted with fidelity. A quality school improvement plan (SIP) should position subsequent critical leadership and instructional moves in a more holistic…

Online learning continues to grow at unprecedented rates. K-12 had more than 275,000 students enrolled in full-time virtual schools in 2011--2012 and over 2 million participating in at least one online course. Despite this growth, there is little research on model formation and model validation for online learning. Two research-based models were…

The introduction of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model has challenged professionals working in school health to inspire school districts to embrace WSCC's philosophical and practical components. Adopting the WSCC model to foster wellness priorities in school districts encourages healthy people and healthy environments to…

Twenty years ago, reflecting on the possibilities for service-learning (SL) to help re-envision higher education, Zlotkowski (1995) considered the question, "Does service-learning have a future?" and concluded "nothing less than a transformation of contemporary academic culture," a transformation of higher education…

Without a doubt the authors' proposal of viewing gifted education in systemic terms is a promising one. In fact, it is most refreshing to read something eclectic like this with an aim to synthesize a field of research and practice which for too long has lacked consensus in both practice and theory. The author agrees with them that a mechanistic…

This book deals with the relevance of recognition, validation and accreditation (RVA) of non-formal and informal learning in education and training, the workplace and society. It examines RVA's strategic policy objectives and best practice features as well as the challenges faced and ways forward as reported by Member States. Special attention is…

Some days seem like bouts in an endless game of tug-of-war. At one end of the rope, facilities professionals must do more--tackle deferred maintenance, develop a climate strategy, and meet the energy and operational needs for a complex mix of building types and stakeholders. Tugging on the other end are the obstacles of less money, staff, and…

Immigrant college student populations continue to grow, but the complexity of their unique needs and issues remain relatively unknown. To gain a better understanding of the multiple contextual factors impacting immigrant students from a systems-based approach, I applied Bronfenbrenner's (1977) human ecology framework to the study. Students…

This paper recommends a holistic curriculum, conceived and created without the direction of preestablished rules, responsive to the conditions of constant change and unpredictability, accepting the notion of emergence, and inviting synthesis rather than fragmentation of thinking. (SM)

The primary cause of difficulties in the implementation phase of planned change in business organizations is the lack of a parallel communication plan to facilitate the changes implied by new strategy. Planners usually concentrate on content (the strategy itself) to the neglect of process (how the strategy should be developed and implemented).…

Kurt Lewin's seminal work in organizational communication could potentially help solve many dilemmas faced by workplace literacy programs as they attempt to ensure that program participants not only learn basic skills but also use them in the context of work. According to Lewin's "field theory" approach, an individual's behavior is a…

This document consists of three papers presented at a symposium on the learning organization moderated by Roger Miller at the 1996 conference of the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD). "Creating a Learning Organization: A Case Study of Outcomes and Lessons Learned" (Laura L. Bierema, David M. Berdish) reports a study…

This paper addresses societal transformations and higher education's response to these changes and argues that a much larger and deeper change is occurring which should be examined within the context of a paradigm shift. The paper begins with a brief review of the theoretical literature on paradigms; then it demonstrates the use of these…

Because schools must operate in a changing environment, educators must manage change whether they wish to or not. Administrators must plan accordingly, and the best plans arise from a solid theoretical base. This book provides that base, by drawing on systems theory to develop effective approaches to strategic and operational planning in…

This document consists of four papers presented at a symposium on core directions in human resource development (HRD) moderated by Verna Willis at the 1996 conference of the Academy of Human Resource Development. "Reengineering the Organizational HRD Function: Two Case Studies" (Neal Chalofsky) reports an action research study in which…