Intended to help those interested in developing ways of coping effectively with the wide variety of meeting and decision-making styles that are available throughout the world, the booklet integrates a number of ideas and approaches discussed at a recent convention of the Society of Intercultural Education, Training, and Research (SIETAR). An…

To work well together, school boards and superintendents must reach agreement in certain sensitive areas of their relations. Five of these, briefly discussed, are (1) the degree to which administrators become involved in policymaking, and boards, in procedural issues; (2) the superintendent's authority over administrative appointments; (3) board…

To provide a theoretical base for investigating the influence of inferential error on group decision making, current literature on both inferential error and decision making is reviewed and applied to the Watergate incident. Although groups tend to make fewer inferential errors because members' inferences are generally not biased in the same…

In her model of opinion formation, Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann postulates a spiral of silence: to avoid isolation, people holding minority views either alter their ideas to conform to the majority's stance or remain silent, thus increasing the impression of the majority view's dominance. While providing a helpful integration of disparate ideas in…

Chapter 11 of a revised volume on school leadership, this chapter offers suggestions for administrators desiring to communicate more effectively with various groups within and outside the school. The most valuable business executives excel at giving employees timely feedback, accepting criticism without being defensive, speaking clearly and…

This paper analyzes the content of a subculture in an organization, that of the faculty of a public middle school. The paper tries to articulate the substance of the subculture and to discover its sources in the shared experience of the teachers and in the way in which they wove that experience into a coherent and satisfying pattern of meaning.…

Assumptions about nature and personhood and the relationship between the two are implicated in the aim of doing philosophy with elementary school students and transforming classrooms into communities of inquiry. Assumptions are also made about dialogue; truth; knowledge; and the ability of children to form communities that will engender care for…

A three-phase study spanned five areas of interest: (1) the school as organization and social system, (2) roles and role behavior in organizations, (3) communication structure in organizations, (4) network analysis concepts, and (5) Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior (FIRO-B). In phase one of the study, staff members listed…

A classroom communication course combines both the study of communication variables in the classroom and the opportunity for students to practice some communication skills they might use as classroom teachers. The course has three major objectives. In seminar style, the students and teacher together will identify questions worth exploring in the…

By structuring the manner group members use to reach a decision, managers can affect the processes and outcomes of decision making. Business administration undergraduates (N=78) were randomly assigned to three groups and told to make group decisions based on the process their manager selected, i.e., they were either to seek concurrence, debate…

Books, journal articles, and dissertations are included in this bibliography of 47 references related to adventure-based counseling. Titles refer to the therapeutic uses of various outdoor activities and include mention of wilderness camps, family camps, recreational and initiative games, wilderness solitude, canoeing, wilderness survival, and…

This manual is a general operations guidebook designed to support staff and inmates in the operation of Network, an innovative, state-of-the-art, corrections and personal growth program. Section 1 provides a detailed overview of the program, which establishes living/learning units within correctional facilities supervised and operated by specially…

This study examines a specific Indian/Metis teacher education program which uses the group as a support system--the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program (SUNTEP) at Regina. SUNTEP is a part of the Elementary Teacher Education Program of the Univesity of Regina. This paper: (1) discusses the support services and systems provided as a…

Since very little investigation has been made of stories told in organizations, a pilot study was designed to examine story types, values, and recurring themes in stories of a regional planning agency employing 21 staff members. In order to collect stories, tape recorded interviews were conducted with each staff member. Open-ended questions…

This paper is informed by one clear guiding principle: collaborative learning provides the platform on which independent learning is nurtured. The nature of collaborative learning in musicology as well as performance is considered. The focus is on learning rather than achievement, on process rather than presentation, on how students are encouraged…