Austin Community College (ACC) is undergoing reorganization in an attempt to create a "single college" organizational structure to replace its current "campus with five competing colleges" model. By doing so, ACC hopes to create an atmosphere in which short and long range planning efforts are aimed at the overall good of the…

At a time when school leaders are trying to move from educational fads to transforming schools into effective learning communities, strategies to accomplish this end continue to elude many administrators even though they may be familiar with the desired results. School transformations, which are long-lasting and fad resistant, require all…

Two reports on institutional change and its effect on the education of limited-English-proficient (LEP) students are presented. The Task 12 report addresses the content and processes of change through which federal efforts can best benefit LEP students. It gives an overview of the review, discusses that nature of educational and institutional…

Decentralization has been one of the centerpieces of education reform in the United States over the past decade, yet the results so far are not encouraging. This booklet presents findings of a study that explored the hypothesis that decentralization efforts have failed to relax external constraints on schools or to enable school staffs to make…

This paper examines elements that support the creation of a Motivational Learning Environment. Is it possible to motivate students or should educators focus their energy on creating a motivational learning environment in which students become self-directed and self-motivated learners? The paper focuses on the topics of paradigms, purpose, people,…

Many small and midsized businesses seeking to change by purchasing new technology, restructuring their work processes, and/or upgrading their employees' skills require outside assistance from educational institutions (including community colleges, universities, and state literacy and training programs), nonprofit organizations, and private…

Sweden has recently introduced a new curriculum and grading system in its school system. Earlier change strategies based on information dissemination failed because teachers did not view the reforms as being based on reality. This paper presents a research design to identify the internal and external factors that influence change in Swedish…

This guidebook describes how successful change happens and how change agents can organize their work to make it happen. It is designed to help change agents in various organizational settings understand the dimensions of the problem and the social situation; organize a plan for change; know what to look for and what to avoid in one's self, team,…

State legislative policies for educational restructuring are examined in this handbook, with a focus on restructuring from the perspective of state elected officials. Following an executive summary and introduction, the second and third parts explain the need for restructuring and features of the restructuring movement. Problems and obstacles are…

Findings of a study that examined school organizational change associated with the implementation of open enrollment in Minnesota are presented in this paper. Data were derived from mailed surveys completed by 126 principals at the end of the 1989-90 school year. A three-way multivariate research design with seven dependent variables was used to…

This book argues that the modern university has forgotten its spiritual foundations and that it needs to reappropriate these foundations before it can creatively and responsibly reform itself. The book first offers a critical examination of the ethos of the modern academy, especially its understanding of knowledge, teaching, and learning, and then…

Following up on similar studies done in 1971 and 1982-83, a study surveyed American journalists in 1992 to develop a statistical profile of the "typical" journalist and to see how today's journalists compare with those of 10 or 20 years ago. Telephone interviews were conducted during the summer of 1992 with 1410 journalists. Subjects in…

This paper offers a process for organizational decision making that will assist educators involved in school restructuring. The first part, which focuses on the nature of theory and the relationship of theory to practice, concludes that current organizational theory on decision making is inadequate. The next section outlines four stages of a…

Based on the premise that women are important to school reform, this book focuses on changes that women educators can bring to schools. Following the introduction, chapter 1 discusses schools and the people in them as mosaic, tapestry, and web. The public character of the school and changing characteristics of school constituents are addressed…

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact that computer based information systems (CBIS) could have on U.S. multinational corporations operating in Canada, particularly in the province of Quebec, and the implications for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that went into effect on January 1, 1994. The study focused on how the…