Professional learning communities (PLCs), with their attributes of shared values, high expectations, and collaboration, have the potential to change school culture. The 4 elementary schools in this study have been unable to sustain ongoing, effective teamwork, resulting in a failure to attain adequate progress, and in 2 schools, in the placement…

The purpose of this study was to consider the political dimensions of teachers' work through a conceptual comparison to the work of social activists. The author developed a four-part analysis of the work of activists through a reading of the social movement literature and compared that analysis to the work of teachers according to four…

The 21st century has been a time of major change for women's colleges (Calefati, 2009; Harwarth, et al, 1997; Powers, 2007). From an all time high of close to 300 in operation, now less than 100 exist (Calefati, 2009). The decade of the 1980s saw a convergence of a perfect storm of challenges: declining birth rates that produced fewer…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss how communication and cooperation in inter-organizational networks may bring about organizational learning. A case study of 13 inter-organizational school networks in Germany is carried out for this purpose. Design/methodology/approach: Results of a quantitative survey assessing the performance of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how social networks can help to produce the "magic" of extraordinary results for organizations. Design/methodology/approach: In this exploratory study four cases (from published reports) are compared in order to illustrate different management approaches to utilizing the power of networks.…

The Environmental Education and Training Partnership Cultural Diversity Workshops were based on theoretical models and designed to increase individuals' awareness, knowledge, and intentions toward increasing culturally sensitivity. This study reports on the evaluation results from 191 participants. Their responses indicate significant changes in…

Whenever the author talks to audiences about transforming school systems, without exception people raise objections. The half dozen most common objections often come in the form of "Yes, nice idea but..." What follows the "but" is the objection. The author learned a technique for responding to these "buts" from family members who work in sales.…

One of the biggest roadblocks to addressing instructional rigor in schools is the resistance to change that is displayed by teachers, students, parents, and other building and district leaders. Every person deals differently with change. Some are more accepting, others more resistant. No change is successful if the people being asked to change…

Even in an industry where rapid change is the status quo, it takes a special kind of company to handle the training challenges posed by a major corporate acquisition and massive product rollout. No one has ever accused Verizon of thinking small-scale when it comes to training initiatives, but over the last year, the telecommunications giant…

Superintendents have the burden and the opportunity to exert leadership through the budget-building process. This article details a dozen tenets which can be implemented by practicing superintendents. Doing so increases the chances of building trust among the stakeholders of administrators, staff, community, and school board members. The district…

During the 1990s it became evident that technology was changing instructional delivery and many student and academic support services in a major way. These changes, coupled with increasing interest in and demand for more flexible scheduling for courses and programs, paved the way for colleges and universities to develop online (Web-based) courses.…

Institutional change entails balancing multiple competing, inconsistent and often loosely coupled demands and concerns, often simultaneously. This article poses the following question: How are patterns of internationalisation of research among academic staff at universities balancing two worlds of change, that is, governance by the university…

This study is a quantitative analysis of FTE staffing levels at academic libraries at 176 U.S. research universities between 2000 and 2008. Results showed that overall staffing levels at these libraries declined but that the average number of professional librarian FTE positions modestly increased. Other professional staff positions increased at a…

This research focused on individual responses to organizational change by exploring the relationships among individual resistance, organizational justice, and commitment to change following organizational change implementations in three organizations. To accomplish this, Web-based questionnaires were used to gather individual-level quantitative…

Over the past few years, access to quality and meaningful training opportunities has become more challenging. Library training coordinators across the United States express the same frustration of trying to fill classes with staff members from library branches that often cannot spare a team member for training. In this article, the author, who is…