Supervision based on collaboration, participative decision making, and reflective practice is the hallmark of a viable school improvement program that is designed to promote teaching and learning. Action research has gradually emerged as an important form of instructional supervision to engage teachers in reflective practice about their teaching…

Profound changes taking place in communities and in universities are bringing researchers and community members new opportunities for joint research endeavors and new problems that must be resolved. In such partnerships, questions about shared decision making--about the ethics of collaboration--arise at every stage: Who decides which problems are…

This paper reports upon a study on the effectiveness of participatory school administration, leadership and management (PSALM) as perceived by 282 stakeholders in one school division in the Philippines. The study also examined the correlation between the indicators of PSALM effectiveness and the trust levels of the stakeholders. Questionnaires…

Superintendent Gillet, lacking sensitivity to the environment of the school, allows issues to surface without resolving them within the context of the prevailing climate. He discovers the hard way that shared decision making, collaboration, and other participatory governance models should be implemented for resolving divergent issues. Rather than…

According to Erlandson and Bifano (1987), teacher empowerment is a vital dimension of the school's organization. Lieberman (1989) defined teacher empowerment as "empowering teachers to participate in group decisions and to have real decision-making roles in the school community" (p. 24). Furthermore, Summers (2006) addressed the need for…

In 1997 a new governance act, based on the principles of New Public Management (NPM) was introduced at Dutch universities. The aims were to realise integrated management, to strengthen the position of executives at the central (executive board) and faculty (dean) levels, to introduce a Supervisory Board at the institution's central level, and to…

Objective: This study evaluated the effectiveness of a Participatory Empowerment Group (PEG) for Chinese type 2 diabetes patients in Shanghai. Method: A randomized waiting list control and pretest and posttest comparisons were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention by comparing blood sugar level and health-related quality of life.…

Assistive technology (AT) has the potential to support the literacy skills of students with disabilities as they participate in the general education curriculum. Empirical evidence is presented to support the use of AT, at least for some students. A case study interwoven within the article illustrates team decision-making regarding software and…

This paper seeks to make use of later works of Habermas in the field of education. The theme, developed out of the pragmatic tradition, is that of deliberative communication as a central form of activity in schools. This implies a displacement of traditional teaching and learning as the central form of activity to the creation of meaning through…

Many kinds of educational reform, especially site-based management, have contributed to teacher empowerment. The success of these reforms, however, is contingent upon administrative leadership that is willing to share power. This paper describes the attitudes of teachers toward site-based management (SBM), with a focus on the effects of…

A checklist for critiquing participatory planning and evaluation projects is introduced. Under the legislative mandate of "Florida Blueprint 2000: A System of School Improvement and Accountability," Florida schools must reorganize before the year 2000 by involving and connecting stakeholders in improvement processes. Every public school…

This paper examines the effects that the adoption of school-based management (SBM) and subsequent efforts to generate curriculum and instructional reforms have on school staff members. Specifically, it explores the leadership behaviors exhibited by administrators, faculty, and staff in 17 elementary and secondary schools from eight locations.…

Successful implementation of school-based management (SBM) begins with effective principal leadership. This paper describes findings of a study that examined the principal's role in implementing school-based decision making. Ethnographic data were collected over a 3-year period in 4 elementary schools that implemented SBM. Methods included…

This study explored ways that nursery school staff work with parents, involve parents in evaluation, and improve the nursery experience for both parents and children. The process of assessing parents' and staff's views about all aspects of nursery life, and the use of these views to form the basis of an action plan, are described. The staff and…

This paper describes outcomes of a partnership between the Rochester City School District (New York) and the Kodak 21st Century Learning Challenge consulting program for improving school-based planning team (S-BPT) operations. The purpose of the school-based planning team is to involve the entire school community in improving school effectiveness.…