The teacher's "tool kit" of symbols, stories, rituals and world views all too frequently perpetuates the "sacred norms" of school culture. The notion of critical reflection as a means of cultural interruption has a built-in potential to interrogate, challenge, and change the structures that constrain teachers. (92 references)…

The links between research and development (R&D) and business planning were investigated through interviews with R&D and business executives in nine industrial corporations. Results show planning is generally program or project oriented, with little evidence strategic planning is the norm. Suggestions for improving R&D planning are…

Reviews articles by Herr, Ivey and Rigazio-DiGilio, and Dinkmeyer on "macrostrategies" for delivery of mental health counseling services. Claims future intervention strategies need to address changing social times and be sensitive to cultural diversity. Notes counselors will need to acquire knowledge and skills required to practice in a…

Through the Human Rights Education Program, teachers in Long Island's predominantly white, middle class Shoreham-Wading River School District are teaching students to see past the confines of their own cultural experience. Gaining perspectives about the dominant culture and its perpetuation of inequality helps students grasp how things might be…

Thinking globally, acting locally has come to be a maxim for an emerging myth about ordinary people acting heroically, from the grassroots, to save the world from environmental contamination. The characteristics of social movements and ideologies concerned with the environment are examined. (SLD)

In 1985, the Medicine Hat School District in southern Alberta, Canada, initiated the Model for Teacher Supervision and Evaluation to change school district culture and promote teachers' professional development and empowerment. The change mechanism was clinical supervision--a process allowing teachers to determine and achieve their own goals. The…

Integration is suggested to handle faculty specialization and fragmentation in higher education. First, however, the roots and processes of specialization and fragmentation must be analyzed beginning with relationships among professionalization, problem setting, and paradigmatic communities. An analytical frame of reference emphasizes…

Self-directed work teams need coaches, not managers. The process of turning middle managers into coaches involves sensitivity, negotiation, and training in adjusting to the new role. (SK)

The 1988 Chicago reforms require the school system to raise its student achievement levels to national norms in five years, reallocate resources away from the administration and toward schools, and establish local school councils as the basis for school-based management. So far, this reform implementation has not significantly affected student…

Three problem areas are identified in mainstreaming gifted students: (1) teachers who feel that gifted children do not need differentiated opportunities; (2) teachers who do not address students' needs in subject areas in which they feel uncomfortable; and (3) insecure teachers who feel threatened by the confrontational nature of some gifted…

Compares traditional and nontraditional curricula in the area of organization of information and proposes a new model for organization of information in which information is redefined and cataloging is perceived as a mode of organizational behavior. Some implications of this model on the core curriculum for organization of information are…

Presents guidelines for staff developers who wish to create and sustain changes in schools. The article explains why staff development must be reconceptualized, discusses the emerging systems roles for staff developers, and shares information gained from extensive experience in applying a reconceptualized model of staff development. (SM)

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a process of continuous improvement where decisions are based on data. TQM works for those organizations that are prepared to make it work for them. Discusses seven common mistakes that many organizations make when implementing TQM. (MLF)

Staff and students at an Illinois high school recently decided to challenge all previously held assumptions about all school operations. For this group, school was best viewed as culture (not bureaucracy) dependent on collaboration, shared leadership, and flat organizational structure. Group identified communication styles matching their approach,…

After voters in Cincinnati, Ohio, defeated a tax increase, the school board hired a new superintendent, released a study that provided 38 hard-hitting recommendations, and convinced the citizens to pass a tax increase. Changes adopted included a voluntary administrator-reduction plan and a reversal of the top-down administrative structure. (MLF)