Change Processes and Strategies at the Local Level

Perhaps the most vigorous movement in administration in recent years has been directed toward the development of a comprehensive theory capable of generating both hypotheses for guiding research and principles for guiding practice. Despite many specific advances in special areas, such as hospital administration, public administration, business administraton, and educational administration, there still is no general conceptual framework for systematizing and interrelating our knowledge within and among these areas. It is still impossible to speak of administration in terms that would be acceptable to, or for that matter even readily understandable by, students and practitioners in the several special fields. This failure to conceptualize administration on a general theoretical level has been a major obstacle to the development of administration as a rigorous discipline, and the elaboration of theory is accordingly receiving increased attention both in "research" and "applied" administrative settings. The purpose of the present paper is twofold: (a) to describe a socio-psychological theory of social behavior having broad application to the area of administration and (b) to illustrate the application of the theory to major issues in administration. The four major issues considered here are: the problem of institutional and individual conflict; the problem of staff effectiveness, efficiency, and satis-

School Reform: The District Policy Implications of the Effective Schools Literature

When the societies are worried about their educative process and they consider get it better, they are planning the progress in all their dimensions. There is the importance to set up politics that tend to have a high quality education. Nevertheless, the efforts in the Soledad township are not enough. In the development plan SOLEDAD CONFIABLE 2016-2019, the community indicated as a main problem the low quality education in the township. That is reflected in the performance levels measured by the ISCE. Hence, the investigation ́s objective is to analyze the continuous improvement processes of the educative quality in the successful schools of Soledad township. In other matters, this investigation used the paradigm quali- quantitative with a descriptive design to explain the academic process and the description of the factors that have influenced on this continuous process. With the help of four tools: documentary review rubric, semi-structured interview script and two questionnaires; it was achieved determine the specific practices that are using the principals and teachers to support the improvement of learnings and the integral development of the students.

An Experimental Study of Effective Teaching in First-Grade Reading Groups

American Public School Administration: A Short Analysis

The Influence of Experience on the Beginning Teacher

Mejora escolar, liderazgo y reforma sistémica: una retrospectiva (School improvement, leadership and systemic reform: a retrospective)

The Elementary School Journal Volume 85, Number 3 ? 1985 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 001 3-5984/85/8503-0003$01 .00 State policies intended to improve education generally try either to set educational standards or to shape the educational process. Although states also seek to improve education through the allocation of funds, in recent years they have placed more emphasis on regulation-setting standards in the form of tests to be passed or educational procedures to be followed. Some policies are targeted on students; others, on teachers. The policies, of course, also affect schools, school systems, and, in certain cases, schools of education. In this paper, however, we focus on how policies affect the teacher-learner relationship as it occurs in classrooms.

Teachers' Sense of Efficacy: An Important Factor in School Improvement

The Elementary School Journal Volume 83, Number 2 ? 1982 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 001 3-5984183/8302-0009$01o.00 Teachers approach their instructional tasks with a variety of perspectives and strategies that emphasize certain aspects of teaching and deemphasize others. For example, some teachers teach language skills using organized games, while other teachers teach the same skills by direct instruction. Teachers adopt different approaches to the same subject matter partly because their teaching situations differ. Their students may have different learning problems or their classrooms may have varied resources and facilities. Even in the

added by over 1,000 teachers to a survey of teachers' practices. Results of the survey of 3,700 teachers in about 600 schools in Maryland are described in Becker and Epstein (in this issue). The teachers' comments reflect the variation in years of experience and in the number and types of contacts individual teachers have had with parents. Each theme can be viewed from two perspectives-there are potential advantages, but there are also potential problems, with any parent-involvement technique. Teachers' comments reveal their contrasting opinions on the benefits expected from parent assistance at home and on the organizational structures used to conduct parent-involvement activities. Some teachers are very positive about parent involvement; others have been discouraged by their attempts to communicate and work with parents.

The primary reference employed in this paper is to view schools as social organizations. Such a perspective calls attention to the structure of the social relations in the school as well as to norms, values, and other orientations shared by school personnel. The present study builds upon earlier research in which pupil control was seen as a central feature of the organizational life of schools.2 A major concern was the socialization of teachers with regard to pupil control ideology. It was hypothesized that as teachers were absorbed into the teacher subculture their pupil control ideology would become more custodial. Cross-sectional data confirmed the prediction that more experienced teachers would be more custodial than less experienced teachers.3 Subsequent longitudinal data on a sample of beginning teachers also showed a significant increase in the custodialism of pupil control ideology both after the student teaching experience and again after the first year of teaching.4 The purpose of this inquiry is to reexamine the pupil control ideology of the same sample of beginning teachers as they acquired their second year of teaching experience. Before the empirical phase of this investigation is reported, it seems appropriate to review the conceptual framework and rationale from which the major hypothesis was developed.

? 1978 by The University of Chicago. 0013-5984/78/7803-0010$00.88 Pupils who fall behind their classmates academically fall further behind each year they remain in school (1). Part of the explanation for their continuing failure to keep pace with other pupils may lie in the fact that they spend less time on academic tasks than other pupils. The reason for such self-defeating behavior may be the desire to maintain self-esteem. If a pupil expends less effort on schoolwork than the average pupil, any resulting failure may be easier to accept. Pupils who try but fail may conclude that they do not have the ability to succeed. Pupils' involvement in tasks would seem to be a necessary condition for school achievement. If pupils are to master material, they must engage in it and react to it-read, make response. Indeed there are data to suggest that achievement is related to time for learning and opportunity to learn (2, 3). Similarly, there are data to suggest that learning is also positively related to low rates of time lost because of poor management of classrooms, for example, lengthy transitions (4). The major purpose of the present study was to find out whether pupil involvement was different for high, middle, and low achievers. Also, we wanted to find out whether pupils generally were more involved in some subjects than in others and whether certain types of classroom activities were associated with higher or with lower levels of pupil involvement. We selected two different types of schools to find out whether pupils' characteristics affect involvement. School 1

The Elementary School Journal Volume 81, Number 1 ? 1980 by The University of Chicago 0013-5984/81/8101-0008$0o1.00 In colleges and universities across the country, prospective and practicing teachers and administrators take courses on planning-curriculum-planning and instructional planning. During the courses, teachers and administrators usually study an objectives-first model of curriculumplanning. This model has four steps. Planners are expected to 1. Formulate objectives 2. Choose appropriate learning activities

to general feelings such as liking/disliking of mathematics, nor is it meant to exclude perceptions of the difficulty, usefulness, and appropriateness of mathematics as a school subject. There are several ways affective variables are related to mathematics learning. It is likely that a student who feels very positive about mathematics will achieve at a higher level than a student who has a negative attitude toward mathematics. It is also likely that a high achiever will enjoy mathematics more than a student who