The purpose of this paper is to define HETFIRE (the title of a report by the Higher Education Task Force on Improvement and Reform in American Education), and to identify and discuss the key elements contained in HETFIRE. The task force was established in 1972 to determine and conceptualize the best thinking of the higher education teacher…

Critics of the National Education Association (NEA) have often charged that it has been dominated by school and college administrators and, therefore, has failed to reflect adequately the views of teachers, who constitute the vast majority of its membership. However, the growing militance of the NEA during the 1960's would make paradoxical the…

This practicum report describes a year-long effort to reorganize a large urban junior high school according to the "house plan" concept, in which the school is organized administratively and geographically by grade level, rather than by academic department. The reorganization plan involved five major changes, including relocation of departments…

The problem of public school education in today's environment is presented, and a case is made for restructuring public school organizations and/or management processes along the pattern of an open systems approach. The closed system of operating allows externalities to impact on it, and there is a continuing emphasis on reacting. With the benefit…

Begun in 1948, The National Health Service was organized in a "functional" pattern of three main groups: hospital service, primary health care, and community health services and personal social services. Dissatisfaction led to a reorganization in 1974 along geographical divisions for region, area, and district levels, necessitating a…

The object of this practicum was to help the small North Smithfield (Rhode Island) School System convert its budgetary procedures from a traditional Function/Object Budget to a Planning, Programing, Budgeting System (PPBS) format. The practicum effort incorporated an inservice training component for key staff members, plus a cooperative effort…

As academic libraries increase in size and become more complex, their organization tends to become more bureaucratic in nature and resistant to change. This paper describes a range of both internal and external strategies which have been used to introduce constructive change into the management of academic libraries in North America and the major…

Research into the process of educational change has centered largely around the diffusion concept--the spread or permeation of an innovation from system to system or from school to school throughout a particular state or number of states. It is as if many teachers and administrators have understood the purpose of educational change to be the…

A school administrator is influenced by the roles and expectations of the school, the school district, and the clientele, as much as the school is influenced by his personal style as administrator. This notion necessitates a reexamination of the so-called administrative leadership tradition which presumes that the power, authority, and influence…

To help solve the organizational and administrative problems preventing the educational system from fully meeting society's present and future needs, this project sought to: (1) analyze the system's strengths and weaknesses, (2) develop tentative guidelines for reorganization of 16 state vocational education systems, and (3) field test an…

Based on the assumption that educators can adopt new patterns of organization and management to improve the quality of decision and change in education, this paper attempts to make decision theory and small group process theory relevant to practical decision situations confronting educational managers. Included are (1) a discussion of the…

This monograph provides an analytical comparison of the background and evaluation of apprenticeship in the eight European countries of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, The Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Its primary purpose is to determine how the rules and conditions of apprenticeship…

Designed to discover the influence of rapidly increasing commercial recreation on social interaction, this study dealt with the nature and changing significance of community institutions. The study was conducted from 1963 to 1965 in the emerging community of Osage Beach, Missouri, as a basis for the author's doctoral dissertation. Data for the…

Although sustained social relations between staff and students are built into the organization of English colleges of education, expansion tends to reduce social interaction and devalue the communal life of the colleges. A high level of social activity, universal participation and plentiful and close staff-student relations were evident at…

This paper describes procedures, exercises, methods, sequences, and data used by the authors in organizational training with schools and school districts. The technology described is aimed at improving working relationships within a school building or district. The focus of intervention is on the organizational interactions of role occupants, not…