This guide was designed for use in home education programs aimed at helping both children and parents improve their self-confidence, as a preliminary step toward helping children succeed at school. Specific behavioral goals for the parent trainer, the parent, and the child are presented in five areas: (1) relationship to self, (2) relationship to…

In order to determine the communication factors of group leadership, 500 undergraduates enrolled in an introductory communication theory course at a large New England university were randomly assigned to laboratory sections of 25 students each. Over an eight week period the students in each group redistributed into different groups varying in size…

The "climate of opinion" is the dominant direction of opinions and perceptions as expressed by existing or assumed activities of constituent individuals, groups, and institutions. There are three regional definitions of this concept: macrolevel, local level, and individual level. A model of climate of opinion contains the following features: (1)…

In outline form, this monograph presents an analysis of specific cues that can assist those responsible for instruction to develop and analyze classroom environments that maximize opportunities for students to grow. It is divided into the following four areas: (1) evidence of effective organization; (2) evidence of effective resource management;…

This booklet describes the learning experiences that take place in and as a result of a learning laboratory. Part one presents a brief history of the group dynamics movement, focusing especially upon the history of the National Training Laboratory of the National Education Association. Some significant characteristics of laboratory learning are…

The idea of using groups, rather than individuals, as the basic building blocks for an organization is suggested in this paper. Although this idea is not new in theory, it is new in practice. To design an organization from scratch around groups appears to violate the American value of individualism. Groups, however, have advantages over…

The Collaboration Model Project Council, at the University of Florida, represents an attempt to establish interinstitutional collaboration among (1) a university and two community colleges, (2) three county public school systems, (3) the teachers' associations of three counties, (4) community parents and citizens of three counties, and (5) college…

As part of the Midwest Center/Consortium for Planned Change, the University of Louisville School of Education and the Louisville Public Schools designed a program for the training of a "new professional" to help alleviate problems of inner-city students. Main goals of the program were: (1) to improve the competence of pupil personnel…

This study was designed to investigate the effects of male versus female deviants on the small discussion group. One hundred undergraduates were assigned to 25 discussion groups, with two male students and two female students in each group. They were presented with a decision-making task, which was presented to group members as an exercise in…

This paper describes four cases of intervention in the relations between groups of widely differing social status and power. "Dialogs" between high corporate executives and social activities from urban poverty areas in three cities were supported by a foundation interested in promoting long term cooperation between the groups on social projects of…

The purpose of this essay was to propose a new explanation of collective behavior and to hypothesize the role of communication in this process. Unlike previous theories, which rely on a group effect, this explanation is based on the behavior of individual members of the collectivity. Using the experimental finding of the "risky shift,"…

The readings in this anthology explore different aspects of leadership in education, an area that has been slighted in texts on educational administration. Frequently leadership is equated with administration. The result is that the dynamics of effective management have been left unexamined. Boles has drawn his readings from many disciplines,…

In the process of developing a coherent bargaining position, the school board's chief negotiator functions as a group leader, responsible for controlling behavioral dynamics so that the school board is productive and cohesive. Dissonance and dissent are expected components of the position-formulating process, and the negotiator should be…

The second unit of the second grade level of the Focus on Inner City Social Studies (FICSS) series (see SO 008 271) continues to build upon the economic principles introduced in grade one. Specifically, the focus is on the procurement of essential and non-essential clothing. The learning activities help students to learn the sources of fabrics,…

Encounter groups, in which blacks and whites were brought together to reduce their mutual fear and hatred, are discussed. Major goals of the groups were: (1) to decrease isolation and separation between the races, thereby reducing distorted interracial conceptions; and (2) to help group members feel accepted as fellow human beings by members of…