Decision-making and change models can take many forms. One researcher (Nordvall, 1982) has suggested five conceptual models for introducing change: a political model; a rational decision-making model; a social interaction decision model; the problem-solving method; and an adaptive/linkage model which is an amalgam of each of the other models.…

With the growing demand for accountability by legislators, outcomes assessment has become a much higher institutional priority for community colleges. According to a recent survey, two-thirds of the states have implemented formal assessment initiatives, compared to a very few states only 1 year earlier. Institutions, however, must be careful that…

Major cultural differences impeded the smooth transfer of a 14 day management education program, which had been very successfully used in Western settings, to an Asian situation. Thirteen Chinese and two Caucasians, all of whom worked in Southeast Asia and had management degrees, attended the program to improve their skills in influencing those…

In times of economic recession, dollars for job training and job placement programs grow scarcer, and those that are available tend to go to middle-class workers who are displaced or temporarily unemployed. The structurally unemployed--primarily the poor, the less educated, and minority youth--find it harder to compete for the needed training, and…

Activities of the Federal Interagency Committee (FIC) during the 1981 International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP) are highlighted. In chapter I, a management report provides the goals established by the FIC, how they were met, and the processes used to meet them. Agency actions are reported in chapter II. The superior accomplishments of five…

This document is intended to provide evaluation researchers with information about vocational education as a substantive area to be evaluated, existing methodologies for evaluating vocational education programs, and the theoretical basis for a proposed evaluation method termed critical inquiry. Addressed in the individual chapters of the monograph…

UNESCO's International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems recommends that a new world information and communication order be established. This order advocates that the news media serve the public directly, and that the public in turn hold the media accountable. Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics paradigm is one system that can…

Communication theory can be used by medical practitioners to enhance significantly their ability to provide appropriate treatment. Complete understanding of the communication experience for an individual must include three dimensions: (1) intrapersonal communication that serves to unite the parts of the self, (2) interpersonal communication to…

This paper examines the effect of using a systems thinking approach in existing secondary school curricula to teach content-specific knowledge as well as general problem solving skills, and the effect of using STELLA (Structural Thinking Experimental Learning Laboratory with Animation), a simulation-modeling software program, as a tool by which to…

Actions that a college might pursue if they have difficulty meeting their financial obligations on dormitory construction loans are discussed by the president of Kansas Wesleyan University. It is noted that when the administration of the loan program was shifted to the new Department of Education (the Department), the agency pushed to collect all…

Research studies on classroom questions and on learning models can provide information on how art criticism can be integrated into art education so that students are involved in exploratory experiences that tap higher levels of thinking. First, teachers need to be trained specifically in art criticism questioning formats in which there is an…

This paper presents a general framework for the process of answering questions from memory. The focus is primarily on verification and recognition tasks. Six experiments support the assumptions of the proposed framework. The experiments are designed to address the following categories of inquiry: (1) Can we adjust our strategy preference to mirror…

The focus is on the formulation and solution of mathematical models with the idea of a population employed mainly as a pedogogical tool. If the biological setting is stripped away, the material can be interpreted as topics or the qualitative behavior of differential and difference equations. The first group of models investigate the dynamics of a…

Ideas that have been developed in the decision support systems (DSS) literature that seem particularly relevant to institutional research, planning, and analysis (IRPA) are reviewed. In addition, a survey of practitioners in Canadian universities that provides new information on the rapidly changing current state of information technology,…

This overview of the treatment of ethnic minorities in the curricula of library schools includes a brief review of research on sexism, racism, and library services for minority groups; a discussion of library school programs for minority students; and an examination of contemporary library school course content in which courses covering topics…