Attitudes, as measured by the College Student Questionnaire (CSQ), of the members of a college freshman class grouped according to high school backgrounds were studied. Various high school backgrounds, private and public were included. It was hypothesized that: (1) members of the four intraclass groups would have different attitude patterns as a…

Based on questionnaires sent to a random sample of 140 debate coaches in Kansas in December 1973, three aspects of Kansas high school debate programs--general characteristics of programs active in debate, budget characteristics of these programs, and general characteristics of the professional staff associated with the programs--are examined. Ten…

This paper argues that research on innovation and organizational change should shift its focus from the impact of individuals to that of organizational structure and environmental factors. The results of two research projects carried out in 1968-69 and 1969-70 on organizational change in school districts are presented to support the premise that…

This report summarizes the procedures and results of a 2-year project carried our collaboratively by a university-based research and development center and a nearby high school. The first section summarizes the setting and rationale of the project (the Focused Flexibility project.) The ideas basic to the project were (1) a school should try to…

This discussion of what constitutes the optimum school organization for early adolescents includes a review of the following questions: (1) what critics say about schools for early adolescents?; (2) what does research indicate about the physical, social, and emotional growth of early adolescents?; (3) what is the most appropriate size of a school…

This paper presents an analysis of factors related to student absenteeism. Absenteeism, long utilized in industrial and business settings as an indicator of employee adjustment and satisfaction, is suggested as a similar indicator in studying the school as an organization. Characteristics of absence as a variable are explored. The influences of…

This study investigated the relationship between role strain and several personal and organizational variables for teachers in self-contained classrooms and team teaching settings. Role strain was identified by the Job Related Tension Index; personal variables were identified by the Teacher Conception of the Educative Process Questionnaire; and…

This study consists of a review of the literature, a discussion of some of the vital questions concerning the year-round school, and a bibliography. Discussed are (1) quarter schedules of various types and their applications to school calendars, (2) transitions to quarter schedules from conventional schedules, (3) teacher and staff assignments,…

This paper provides part of the theoretical underpinning for a series of studies on the environment for teaching. Addressed primarily to organizational researchers, it deals with the relation between educational innovation and the organizational structure of schools. Three assumptions made widely in previous studies relating technology to…

Population trends, curriculum, staffing demands, and new methods of financing education are placing the small school in an increasingly precarious position. The purpose of this paper is to submit data showing that 68% of Iowa schools face a serious dilemma. Declining rural populations could reduce by half the enrollment in at least half of Iowa's…

This document is an English-language abstract (approximately 1,500 words) of a report dealing with the arguments for school reform, aims of elementary education, student development, elementary school activities, educational administration, and the measures leading to school reform in Finland. The purpose of elementary education in Finland is to…

Current school district organization fails to provide the environment necessary to develop and use analytical techniques in educational planning. Current organization often acts as a barrier to the acceptance of the results of analysis. A program-oriented management system enhances the environment for systems analysis and promotes both the…

This paper presents a study of curriculum reorganization in schools of education. It used knowledge as the principle by which a college of education should be organized in order to maximize effectiveness and elicit the best efforts from its staff. In the search for this principle or organization, some criteria were first established: (1) that the…

The University of Texas Medical Branch instituted a series of interdisciplinary courses as part of a major curriculum reform in September, 1970. After an evaluation of this change, some general trends were discovered, such as the dependence of course effectiveness on the quality of the course leadership; the need for more logistic and…

This article, using Bolivian data to test a model based on American theoretical formulations, shows that interpersonal influences mediate the effects of structural variables on educational aspirations. (Author/DE)