Meaningful and useful evaluations of teaching and teachers must not only identify and define all the mitigating contexts, but must also account for their influences, both constructive and negative. Among the contextual factors that need to be considered in planning teacher evaluations are: student characteristics; goals, objectives and curriculum…

Fifty Navy recruits were given 11 paper-and-pencil tests of cognitive styles, abilities, and aptitudes. Visual, auditory, and bimodal brain event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes were recorded from each of these subjects. Product-moment and canonical correlational analyses, as well as principal-factor analysis and varimax rotation, were…

Some of the justifiable criticisms of our educational system are due to the inadequacy of the current educational structure for our information society, and the inability of the current system to motivate students to learn. An alternative structure would involve the use of teachers as educational guides, with parents choosing a guide based on…

This booklet outlines specific strategies to help teachers prepare an effective self-study course for students enrolled in nontraditional study. The guide is organized in four chapters that cover the following topics: (1) consideration of students and their motivation; (2) preparation of an effective course (conceptualization--goals, expectations,…

This booklet discusses the organization, competence, and motivation that make part-time instructors effective. It shows part-time teachers ways to develop motivation, prepare for each class, conduct sound and enjoyable courses, and find the most useful ways to build their skills. The booklet is organized in four chapters that cover the following…

This document examines recent state school reform efforts from two perspectives: the strategies states adopt to improve educational excellence and the influence those strategies have on the functional dimensions of education policy. The paper reports the research findings of a study that examined state reform strategies nationally. The study…

In 10 chapters, this book gives administrators and teachers a better understanding of how schools operate for the purpose of providing them with conceptual tools to improve performance. Chapter 1 relates what schools do and ought to do. Chapter 2 discusses the influence, power, authority, and role of the school principal. Chapter 3 analyzes…

Collaboration as a strategy to improve the instructional effectiveness of a school's faculty is examined in this bulletin. The first of four chapters provides a brief discussion of teacher isolation and its consequences and the positive effects of collaboration on school renewal, teacher satisfaction, teacher learning, cooperation among students,…

The Salt Lake City Board of Education appointed a committee in May 1988 to review shared governance concepts and as a part of the deliberations this handbook was revised. The handbook has seven sections: (1) basic history and philosophy; (2) policies and agreements regarding shared governance; (3) the principles of shared governance; (4) the…

The way in which an all-women's department, the Department of Home Economics at the University of California (Berkeley), tried to raise its status and adhere to academic values of a research university after starting out as a low prestige undergraduate program is analyzed. Some of the related research questions are: whether academic departments…

The first report of an ongoing case study examining the impact of using a laboratory of microcomputers as a tool for teaching science and social science courses in a high school, this paper reports on a sociological investigation of the organizational change in the structure and functioning of the school brought about by the introduction of the…

A description is provided of Rancho Santiago College's institutional research program, which uses a traditional centralized research model, augmented with alternative, decentralized approaches. First, background information is presented on the college and the role of the research office in management, decision-making, and educational support.…

Although there is controversy as to whether middle-level education should be more comparable to high school or to elementary school, this paper argues that the school within a school (SWAS) concept effectively makes large schools seem small so that they have more in common with a typical K-5 school than with a grade-10-through-12 high school. The…

This paper highlights the findings of Gougeon's 1989 study of high school principals of schools with grade configurations 9 through 12 in the state of Washington, a study based on the Principal Leadership as Social Control (PLASC) theory. Accordingly, the first section describes the PLASC theory as social control of teachers through power- and…

This digest discusses the issue of school-based management (SBM), defined as a system of administration in which the school is the primary unit of educational decision making. Responsibility for certain decisions about the budget, personnel, and the curriculum is placed at the school level rather than the district level. Several aspects of SBM are…