Activity theory (AT) is a powerful tool for investigating "artefacts in use", ie, the ways technologies interrelate with their local context. AT reveals the interfaces between e-learning at the macro- (strategy, policy, "campus-wide" solutions) and the micro-organisational levels (everyday working practice, iterative change, individual…

Future leaders will have to rely upon skills that are far different from those used in the past. Action mapping serves as a meta-process for moving schools toward desired ends; it calls upon school leaders to move into action, to reflect upon such actions, and to collect stories for future reflections. This process could be helpful to a school…

Discussed is the concept of "organizational development," which is a process of planned change that is organizationwide and iterative in its examination of problems, design of strategies, and evaluation of outcomes. (Author/SB)

This article has attempted to: (1) describe several dimensions of organization-environment fit; (2) describe some concepts which can be used in diagnosing the degree to which a school system's organization matches the demands and needs of its environment; (3) present some implications of such a diagnosis for OD [organizational development]…

Discusses the concept of "organizational development," which is a process of planned change that is organizationwide and iterative in its examination of problems, design of strategies, and evaluation of outcomes, but considers two components that previous OD interventions omitted: parents and students. (Author/SB)

Discusses the concept of "organizational development" (OD) and its relationship to educational change and reviews the five articles in this issue of the journal in the preceding pages 135-238. (SB)

An increasing number of elementary school sites have begun to implement nongraded, multiage, primary developmental learning environments. Nongraded primaries are more than just a loosening of the age limits and a changing of the promotion strategies. This broad educational restructuring strategy provides a unique opportunity for creating new…

This collection of papers represents the developmental research as well as the thrust of the Regional Laboratory's (UMREL) program. UMREL has been developing behaviorally engineered educational environments through a cross-disciplinary effort in education and the behavioral sciences. The program began with the establishment of demonstration…

From a system dynamics perspective, distinctions between organizations and their environments are not objective givens, but hypothetical formulations. Wherever a reciprocal effect of variables is hypothesized, these variables are considered to be inside a single problem system. Everything outside this model system is the environment. To…

Beginning with a capsule history of United States education reform efforts and an examination of the American "myth" of the apolitical nature of education, this paper explores the political bases of education policy. Reviewing the literature on educational politics with a particular concern for recent curriculum reform efforts at the state level,…