Offers insights and themes observed in six restructuring schools studied in 1991-92. Results show that principals' importance varies, sharing of power is fragile, leadership and power are often dispersed, changes in decision-making structures sometimes improve instruction, and power redistribution and shared purpose can foster either increased…

Describes a student-participatory death education course offered at a small private liberal arts university. As active participants, students collaborated in the design of course content and requirements that reflected their interests and concerns. Overall, students responded positively to their involvement in the learning process. Outlines course…

Describes the development and structure of Soka University of America, located near Laguna Beach, California. Planners' vision for the university is a humanistic, democratic, non-hierarchical institution infused with Buddhist values. Unusual elements include no tenure or advancement in rank and no separate administrative building. (EV)

Describes the reaction of Northeastern University when it was surprised by a major decrease in enrollment. Discusses the change process, including the involvement of the board, faculty, staff, and students. Describes major improvements that evolved from the crisis and how the involvement of all university segments made a difference as the…

James MacGregor Burns's conceptualization of transforming leadership stressed the moral and educative nature of the leader-follower relationship. However, critical examination of Burns's account uncovers philosophical and technical difficulties with some of his central claims. Transformative leadership may be structured more for domination than…

The trend toward teacher participation in policy making is the result of good practice and research over many years. Classic, bureaucratic approaches to making decisions are being replaced by collaborative efforts. There are rules to determine appropriate circumstances for encouraging teacher participation. Determining how and when to involve…

Introduces a theme issue on the politics of participation in educational reform that examines various reforms promoted in the name of participation and how they play out in practice. Discusses questions to ask of participatory reform: To what end participation? Who participates? What are the relevant spheres? What micro-level conditions are…

A number of significant studies of shared governance have been carried out in the last decade.

With the advent of network technologies, many educational web sites have been developed to assist students in the learning of subjects on computer networks. However, without proper aid, students may have difficulty in selecting appropriate web sites, that are of benefit to them; hence, studying, evaluating and recommending educational web sites…

This study examined shared governance in public, unionized community colleges and creates a national inventory of areas in which faculty participate in governance according to the language of collective-bargaining agreements. The findings suggest that community college faculty are engaged in shared governance in both the traditional academic areas…

In November 2003, Southeastern Oklahoma State University underwent a comprehensive reaccreditation visit conducted by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. Throughout the visit, Southeastern was commended for the assessment culture that had been created on campus. The team concluded that…

We consider group decision-making on an optimal stopping problem, for which large and stable individual differences have previously been established. In the problem, people are presented with a sequence of five random numbers between 0 and 100, one at a time, and are required to choose the maximum of the sequence, without being allowed to return…

This report is a summary of discussions that took place at the Young Leaders' Forum held in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (PEI), on March 9-10, 2007. The event was part of the Rural Dialogue, an on-going, two-way discussion between the Government of Canada and Canadians from rural, remote and northern regions. Launched in 1998, the Rural…

The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) was commissioned by Kent County Council (KCC) to conduct an independent survey of children and young people in Kent. The council and its partner agencies wanted to find out what children and young people thought about a range of issues related to the five Every Child Matters (ECM) outcomes.…

"Hopes, Fears, & Reality" was conceived as an annual exercise in providing objective evidence about what was going on in charter schools, how well they were doing, where they needed to improve, and what could be learned from the research on these new kinds of public schools. This is the third of these reports. Essays in the 2005 volume pointed to…