Keeping a uniform, basic arrangement of the school library is essential if students are to be comfortable finding resources in other libraries. Two questions that must be answered if a new system were to be devised are: Who would decide on the particulars of that system? What criteria would be used to make the decision to ensure that use of the…

As the oldest implementation of Web 2.0 technologies, blogs present an opportunity to understand how community college administrators are addressing two conundrums: conundrum of control and the conundrum of adaptability. These problems arise from the need of leaders to put organizational controls in place even as these controls limit the tool's…

The need for organizations to adapt nimbly in a fast-paced global society is a given. But ask any education leader or business person how to do that in a way that truly drives the organization forward and one may get silence--or worse, a weary look that bespeaks a grievous experience. Leaders know all too well that the gap between a new idea and…

Efforts to make substantial and substantive improvements related to mental health in schools and student/learning supports requires much more than implementing a few demonstrations. Improved approaches are only as good as a school district's ability to develop and institutionalize them equitably in all its schools. This process often is called…

Educational change is a process occurring through time, a systemic and dynamic phenomenon in which every action leads to reactions in related areas of the system, and a multidimensional phenomenon requiring examination from the perspective of several disciplines. The success of an innovation depends on how the change process is managed, how the…

It is important for all Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) members to understand the ways society is changing as people evolve deeper into the information age, and to recognize that these changes require a change in paradigm for education and training systems to be most effective in meeting the needs of individuals…

Paper read at the American Educational Research Association Convention, Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 2-6, 1970. Describes an approach to planned organizational change in school systems built on the effective features of both the open-systems approach to understanding organizations, and the T-Group-Consultant school of small group methods. (JM)

The authors argue that organizational development (OD) has evolved as one response to the need for strategies and approaches to planned change. The "stream analysis" approach presented here can be used to understand and plan the change process. This approach can facilitate insight into the state of the change process, before and after…

This field guide provides a look into education in relation to a concept that has already been established in science, business and therapy. This book will encourage and educate readers about systemic thinking through examples and ideas pertinent to education and its reform. Following a Foreword (Michael Fullan) and Introduction (Blane Despres),…

A library automation plan must not only produce an optimum system, but prepare staff, institution, and clientele for far-reaching change. This change can be accommodated by a functional model consisting of three phases: organization and overview; project expansion; project consolidation and preparation of system plan. Twenty-eight references are…

The Essex County College Learning Resources Center was established within a two-month period in 1968, allowing no time to train personnel, develop procedures, or do organized planning. Consequently, the Director developed a tight central leadership and decision-making system. It was decided that the organization needed a management system that…

Community psychologists have a long-standing interest in promoting systems change to improve the lives of individuals and communities. To more fully illuminate a multilevel model of those factors involved in the promotion of systems change, the current study examined individual- and organizational-level characteristics related to health care…

The drive for systemic reform in education reflects a widespread hunger in all sectors of society to make sense of the whole, as is shown in the increasing recognition of people in organizations of the interrelatedness of the organizations' parts. However, many attempts at systemic reform are hampered by the lack of a common view of what an…

The system approach to planning and managing educational change features the use of an adaptive framework and a strategy for planned system change. The approach focuses management attention upon (1) relevant future states of expectations or goals, (2) present and future state variables and contexts, (3) human organization factors, and (4)…

I synthesize some of the lessons we have learned about systemic school reform in order and derive two explicit hypotheses about when such reforms are likely to be more and less successful. The first hypothesis focuses on program implementation: to achieve success, any systemic reform must overcome challenges at each stage of the policy-making…