This article presents a practice theory for diagnosing organizations--that is, a combination of many ideas in a relatively simple framework that can be applied in various settings. It brings together organization/environment, sociotechnical, and formal/informal systems concepts, and proposes six broad categories for looking at an organization.…

The detailed organization of an integrated medical sciences curriculum from its initial planning to the final state of "automatic" administration are described. Flexibility and scope for controlled change and experiment are retained in spite of some reduction in departmental autonomy. (Author/LBH)

This study examines how educational leaders in California used the change process to accomplish positive new outcomes in their schools, and tests the hypothesis that skilled leadership is required for successful change. Data were gathered from a review of literature and a survey of leaders from 39 Distinguished Schools. Questions focused on the…

This chapter reviews the myths and stories of counseling over the past several decades and proposes that the twenty-first century story of counseling must be counseling in community. This paradigm change will involve counselors joining with mental health professionals, career development specialists, and educators to write the story of…

Restructuring has come to mean fundamentally substantive change leading to improvement in students' education, while offering the promise of power sharing. Organizational, curricular, relational, and fiscal changes were part of the restructuring initiatives of four urban districts. Unfortunately, the efforts generally fell short of genuine…

Voluntary organizations offer a unique opportunity to interpret participant relationships, leadership influences, and organizational effectiveness unencumbered by employment relationships. Regardless of organizational structure or purpose, all organizations are affected to some degree by their leadership and their membership. Based on the…

A practical view is offered to leaders, managers, and teams of how to think about their companies and reinvent them without losing the value and knowledge embedded in their current organization. Organizations can break through challenges and recognize entirely new business opportunities through the creation of interlocking, boundary-crossing…

This document contains a self-assessment tool allowing colleges to measure themselves against the criteria for an ideal learning college and identify where to focus their efforts for improvement. The tool consists of nine sections, each outlining a different area crucial to the functioning of learning colleges. Section 1 focuses on the learning…

This document is a report of the proceedings of the fifth National Monitoring Conference. The contents include a brief background on monitoring and a synopsis of each of the conference sessions. The opening plenary covered the states' monitoring experiences in the first year of the new federal process following the reauthorization of the…

This paper describes the experiences of a recent change process that focused on the delivery of reference services at the University of Western Australia (UWA). UWA reference librarians felt that they could not fulfill all of their duties while working from the reference desk for a significant period of time each day; they wanted time away from…

This report focuses on the nature of restructuring in a sample of Washington State schools, and the degree to which those changes improved student learning. The research attempted to distinguish between simply changing school or classroom practices and the broader concept of restructuring a school. A restructured school was defined as one that has…

This paper describes ways that administrators can empower teachers and build strong, effective teams in a school. It opens by defining power and explains that traditional organizational hierarchical structures tend to motivate people to use power in self-protective ways. It claims that for empowerment to work, leaders must help people use their…

The author sanctions the involvement of student personnel workers not only in facilitating individual development but in building curriculum and improving methods of instruction. To build a development team of faculty and student personnel workers, he suggests alterations in administrative structure, equal involvement in campus decision-making,…

In order to present new options in teaching and learning administrators must provide incentive toward adapting to educational change. (RK)

Describes several systems or modes of individualized instruction in terms that will help educators match, at least in gross terms, their school needs with the strengths of each of four approaches to individualization. (Author)