Recent studies on educational effectiveness in the United States have criticized deficiencies of the educational system, rather than acknowledging its achievements. The eight characteristics of excellent schools described in "Search for Excellence" by Peters and Waterman (1982) provide a comparative framework for an assessment of organizational…

Environmental scanning (ES) is a formal process of assessing trends and forecasting events which can influence an institution so that the potential challenges and opportunities can be effectively anticipated during strategic planning activities. The goal of ES is the implementation of proactive, anticipatory policies that will be robust under a…

Guided by interpretive ethnographic methods and by instructional leadership concepts, this comparative study of secondary principals in Japan and America discovers characteristics of excellent principals and examines their values in relation to dominant cultural themes. The investigation applies anthropologist Clifford Goertz's assumptions (1973,…

Designed for small-group inservice training at a Connecticut state school, the working manual offers a philosophical framework and a collection of practical ideas and techniques for educators working with severely disabled, multihandicapped persons toward the ultimate goal of community integration. Chapters have the following titles and emphases:…

Discussion focuses on teachers' beliefs and values as they relate to working with young children. Specific attention is given to (1) whether the reported blurring of the boundaries between child-life and adult-life has affected the education of young children; (2) parental pressure to provide very young children with persistently optimal…

Help-seeking has become a topic of growing interest in the past 5 years for educators and psychologists concerned with the development and enhancement of children's active learning skills. This paper explains the instrumental role of help-seeking in learning. Major conceptualizations of help-seeking are examined and evaluated for their utility in…

The inconsistency of results to be found in the study of the impact of school desegregation arises in part from the failure to appreciate the complexity of the phenomenon. This report takes a broader view of school desegregation; the basic dependent variables are school level means in the following basic areas: (1) racial attitudes, (2) political…

Fiscal reductions as well as growing conservatism may have a profound impact on many university programs, including Chicano Studies programs, which are expanding into research, publications, and other areas. To frame the issues of greatest concern to Chicano Studies programs, a small research effort at the University of New Mexico involved the…

In the first phase of a study of factors affecting knowledge dissemination and knowledge use in staff development programs, a conceptual model was developed, and from it a 15 page questionnaire was derived to collect data on workshop participants' background and personal characteristics, school characteristics, and workshop characteristics. This…

In 1981, TDR Associates, a private, independent research organization in Newton, Massachusetts, began a two and one-half year study of "Knowledge Utilization and School Improvement Through Staff Initiated Inservice Programs." This study was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Education and conducted under an arrangement with…

Dropout prevention is emerging as the most important new issue in education. Broad demographic trends predict a continuing growth in the population of at-risk youth, those most likely to drop out of school. The overall goal of any dropout prevention activity is to reduce the number of at-risk students. This issue is devoted to what research and…

Using a microanalytic case study approach, school effectiveness/school improvement strategies in a Northeastern urban public school district are examined. Recent research findings have indicated inconclusive and, at times, negative results related to the implementation of such strategies. The 202,469 students enrolled in 257 schools within the…

The overall focus of this booklet is on planning for change that allows for integration of computers into articulated learning environments that will enhance the learning goal of students. The first chapter presents four major themes to increase the likelihood of combining computers and individualized instruction in schools: (1) a revitalized form…

In an attempt to correlate effective school practices with actual observed student achievement, a survey instrument concerning principal leadership and school climate was distributed to classroom teachers in the Oklahoma City Public Schools. Responses by more than half of the teachers yielded 1,294 usable questionnaires representing all 94 schools…

A study examined various characteristics of learning environments that promote or retard the development of basic skills proficiency. Data on four school programs--vocational noncooperative, vocational cooperative, general education, and college preparatory--were collected in a repeated measure design via observations, testing, and interviews. A…