This case study describes the management system of Dickinson College Library. Highlights include a rotating chair instead of a director; collegiality in decision making; rotating departmental responsibilities; developing an acceptable level of expertise in both technical and public services; and an emphasis on professionalism. (Author/LRW)

Advice on making facilities facilitate education includes: an educational vision comes first, involve all stakeholders, working smarter requires a systems approach, systems-focused planning takes time, partnerships stretch limited resources, "beautiful" is not expensive, change is tough, building a community is as important as building a…

Considers strategies for the implementation of quality improvement in libraries. Highlights include structured quality improvement, especially Total Quality Management; organizational change; customer focus; continuous improvement; data-based decision making; systems thinking; employee involvement in decision making; diffusion of innovation;…

Successful development and implementation of outcome-based education requires long-range planning and ongoing commitment from all planning partners. District-level planning is essential. A well-designed strategic plan embraces OBE philosophies, premises, and principles and should consist of a district philosophy, vision, and mission and a set of…

Reflects on the nature of power and the value of collaboration in Writing Program Administration work. Argues that the WPA position is a contradictory one which contains within it the paradox of powerless power (having responsibility and little authority, having insider knowledge and being institutionally ignorant, and needing to cooperate and…

Tries to encourage teachers, principals, and others to strive to achieve authentic practices of teacher leadership and community building. Narrates the efforts of St. Patrick School in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada since 1996 to build a collaborative culture based on trust and good will so that the entire staff was transformed into a team of…

A 3-year project of school-wide change undertaken by a team of school counselors, administrators and counselor educators was initiated to create strong working relationships among a school's counselors, teachers, and students' families. This article delineates the goals and history of this consultation project and gives detailed examples of the…

Cultural and symbolic processes--that is, communication--quite frequently play as important a role as structural issues in enabling effective governance.

In this article, the authors feature the model, Under Control: The Damming of the Missouri River, which was designed to engage middle school students in a real-world geographic issue: investigating the long term environmental, economic and cultural impacts of the 1944 Pick-Sloan Plan, which resulted in the construction of six dams on the Missouri…

After the 2001 meeting of the European Ministers of Education held in Prague, higher education institutions in Turkey took serious actions in order to implement the goals of the Bologna Declaration (1999). Arrangements made for the democratization of universities and student participation in the decision-making process formed one of the…

This 18-month ethnographic study provides a snapshot of teachers' use of space and voice as they work in a newly formed Professional Development School (PDS) committed to shared responsibility for teacher education and developing a culture of simultaneous renewal through inquiry. The study identified the tensions produced when a PDS functions…

Few empirical studies have been undertaken concerning successful leadership practices within challenging urban schools. Given that much of the school leadership literature relies on principals as the source of evidence for school improvement, this article explores, through multiperspective case study methodology, how one failing urban elementary…

Much has been written about student accountability, teacher accountability, and school accountability. More limited research is available on administrator accountability. Recently there have been substantial initiatives undertaken world-wide to increase educational accountability. With increasing demands and changing expectations in the role of…

Argentine Universities like similar institutions all around the world are facing a complex and challenging environment that demands a more sophisticated leadership and the development of complex managerial skills. In this paper we propose that enhancing the quality of collective decision making, and building more complex teams as a way to preserve…

The recent school reform movement of the 1980s and 1990s has been characterized by school-based management (SBM) initiatives and participatory decision-making arrangements. While much has been written about the need for teacher, parental and community involvement in school decision-making, the role of the student in these experiments has remained…