Discusses the hierarchical chain of command in schools. Describes a three-year program to help urban schoolteachers bring about school improvement. Notes that state-mandated tests can result in increasing powerlessness among teachers. Argues that unless the present hierarchies are flattened, the best and brightest will be discouraged from entering…

Analyzes the stories of three teachers/teacher teams who participated in a grant program designed to empower teachers to integrate technology in the classroom. Instead of experiencing empowerment, the teachers/teams experienced alienation. Two sources of alienation were: resources obtained by teachers through grant acquisition disrupted the…

Discusses how professional school counselors can enhance academic achievement by empowering all students to become self-regulated learners. Presents a framework for integrating current research on self-regulated learning, outlines components of the school context that encourage this development, and identifies learning strategies and the steps…

Interviewed 257 impoverished, urban public housing residents regarding how empowerment, sense of community, and neighboring behavior affected the likelihood of their engaging in discussion about community issues directly affecting their lives and the lives of their neighbors. Overall, sense of community and neighboring behaviors predicted…

A strength-based externalization intervention is described that can be used with clients in establishing counseling objectives and goals. The intervention can be useful in encouraging discrimination between DSM diagnostic labels and the client and his or her strengths, developing strength-based counseling goals, and increasing client empowerment.…

Argues that U.S. students are not being educated to succeed in a world dominated by the globalization of the economics, politics, and cultures of developed and developing countries. Suggests what educators can do to remedy this situation based on observations of Swedish school system. Suggestions include restructuring education, empowering…

Analyses of national survey data on workplace democracy found both managers and workers support worker participation in manager selection and worker control of production processes. Experience of class-related practices strongly predicts attitudes; location in the class hierarchy does not. Once workers gain some control, they seek to broaden it to…

So far, the results of school restructuring efforts have been more rhetorical than real. As several University of Georgia projects illustrate, the work of newly decentralized, empowered schools embodies both high excitement and high anxiety. The contradictions of empowerment lie in attempting inimitable innovations while withstanding uncertainty…

Although the process of participative, school-based budgeting might seem tedious and time-consuming, it can truly empower teachers and administrators. One cannot set instructional and budgetary priorities without knowing costs. A costing formula to help facilitate the budgeting process is presented. Includes 18 references. (MLH)

Discusses positive developments occurring in the teaching profession and the changes needed to nurture them. Teacher empowerment does not mean banishing principals, but enabling teachers to participate in group decision-making and make key choices affecting their own work. Teachers have always been critical to effective schooling. (MLH)

Constructivist listening is a tool for empowerment, community building, and educational change. It enables teachers and principals to think of themselves and their schools as centers for learning and change rather than as the target of change efforts for others. It enables people to assume responsibility for their actions and feelings. (Author)

School reformers must reclaim schools in the interest of extending democracy, combating domestic tyranny, and preventing assaults on human dignity, rather than myopically pursuing competitive test scores. The role of the teacher must be socially redefined, and learning for empowerment advanced. Techniques for financing education must also be…

Reliance on the "delegation model" in public education has created a fundamental gap between families and schools. The Accelerated Schools Project has helped two poverty-afflicted, minority-populated elementary schools in the San Francisco Bay Area enlist parents and mobilize community agencies to achieve shared improvement goals.…

Explores how nine U.S. schools participating in a project to create empowered schools defined empowerment, structured the change process, and transformed school culture. Participating schools fell into three categories (the opportunity school, the shifter school, and the no-go school) regarding their success in changing school culture, creation of…

Questionnaires, interviews, and nonformal education workshops involved 200 female participants in 4 Caribbean and 4 South Pacific countries. Women had opportunities to participate in education and training, and programs contributed to their personal and political empowerment. However, there was a tendency to offer programs as isolated events and…