This paper describes the processes and outcomes experienced by the Marshalltown Community School District (Iowa) as it implemented a shared decision-making, school-improvement program. A district Shared Decision Making (SDM) Team and School Improvement Program (SIP) teams were trained to facilitate greater staff participation in the…

The "spirituality in the workplace" movement serves a range of interests, including personal fulfillment on the job, a growing need to reconcile personal values with those of the corporation, and corporate desires to help individuals achieve more balanced lives. In addition to being the theme at a growing number of conferences, spirituality has…

This document contains four papers from a symposium on assessing the learning organization. "Measuring Organizational Learning: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of an Organization Survey" (Jamie Callahan Fabian, Ralph O. Mueller, Dail L. Fields) compares two models for measuring four constructs inherent to Schwandt's model of…

Economic and demographic changes have affected Cooperative Extension programing. At its inception, extension's primary clientele were rural community members in production agriculture. Although extension has been urbanized, it remains agricultural. Recent declines in farm numbers are due to economic distress, environmental concern, the energy…

This study describes significant issues and learnings identified by 26 school faculties engaged in site-based, faculty-led reform initiatives over a 5-year period during participation in the National Education Association's Mastery in Learning (MIL) Project. A representative sample of MIL sites is utilized to reframe issues and learnings into…

Prairie State 2000 began as an Illinois initiative to guarantee dislocated workers access to training funds from a pool of employer and employee contributions. Although its rationale was sound and the need was great, it was beset with a number of difficulties: there was no real market for the training, its grants and loans were not worth the cost…

This case study investigated the organizational culture of a community college and how it both contributed to and prevented organizational chaos during a period of change. The study made use of themes from William G. Golding's novel, "Lord of the Flies," to analyze the setting. The period of change started with the arrival of several top…

Issues raised by the devolution of decision-making to the school level in Western Australia are described in this paper. The first part provides a background of governance structures and school organization. Prior to 1980, Western Australia had the most centralized system of educational administration in Australia. The second part describes the…

Findings of a study that examined the effect of school board administrative change strategies on the degree of community opposition to school closing decisions are presented in this paper. The study is based on Kotter and Schlesinger's (1974) conceptual model that identifies six effective change strategies: education and communication,…

Understanding what change is and how schools change determines the success of school reform. This paper addresses the nature of the change process at the individual level. Two assumptions are made about change. First, behavior is based on beliefs and values, and individuals, not groups or organizations, change. Second, change must satisfy the…

A study explored whether changes in Nebraska Extension's organizational structure and programming approach, instituted in 1988, had altered 103 extension agents' perceptions of their jobs or job satisfaction. A literature review addressed both the primary variables, including specific aspects of job change, such as issues-based programming,…

At least 154 programs administered by 14 federal departments and agencies provide about $25 billion in employment training assistance. Faced with stiff global competition, corporate restructuring, and continuing federal budget constraints, the federal government can no longer afford to invest in a system that may waste resources and may not help…

The Royal Commission of Inquiry's report on the Newfoundland (Canada) education system proposes a number of major changes. Among these are publicly elected school boards funded on the basis of need, teachers employed on professional merit, church involvement at the provincial and school levels, and appropriate religious education programs for all…

Change theories provide administrators with helpful insight into the "whys" and "hows" of successful magnet program initiation and implementation. Educational change involves two determining factors: direction (movement) and rate (speed). The actual process of change can be divided into phases of adoption, implementation, and incorporation.…

A Further Education Unit project mapped the current situation in relation to curriculum management in British further education (FE) colleges, especially in the context of incorporation. Most colleges were able to provide useful working definitions of the term "curriculum" that moved beyond the narrow notion of syllabus or teaching…