Profiles of Organizational Culture and Effective Schools∗

This study intends to investigate how school organizational culture is related to important organizational characteristics and observe how the profiles of strong culture‐effective schools are different from those of weak culture‐ineffective schools in terms of organizational variables (such as principal's leadership, organizational structure, and teachers’ social interactions), teachers’ job attitudes, and school effectiveness criteria. It is a cross‐sectional survey research involving 54 randomly sampled Hong Kong secondary schools and 588 teachers. The unit of analysis is the school.

Organizational ideology index was found to be substantially correlated with schools’ perceived organizational effectiveness. Among the 10 measures of these organizational variables, teachers’ esprit and principal's charismatic leadership can contribute substantially to the prediction of school's strength of organizational culture. The organizational profile of perceived strong culture‐effective schools is contrastingly different from that of perceived weak culture‐ineffective schools. The findings suggest that difference in organizational culture can be reflected at least in three overt levels: 1. organizational level in terms of principal's leadership behaviors, organizational formalization and participation, and teachers’ social norms; 2. teachers’ attitudinal level in terms of organizational commitment, social job satisfaction, intrinsic job satisfaction, and influence job satisfaction; and 3. school effectiveness level in terms of perceived overall organizational effectiveness and academic achievements in public examinations.

The findings reinforce the importance of organizational culture to the ongoing effort and discussion of school improvement and school effectiveness.

     

A School‐Based Management Mechanism for School Effectiveness and Development

The paper aims to report on an integration of my recent research and thinking on school effectiveness and school‐based management and to develop a school‐based management mechanism for continuous pursuit of school effectiveness and development.

The matrix of school effectiveness in terms of four categories and seven different conceptions provides a framework for examining the basic issues of conceptualization, measurement and maximization of school effectiveness. Furthermore, a dynamic perspective can be used to reconceptualize school effectiveness and explore the relationship of school effectiveness to school‐based management and strategic management. The characteristics of school‐based management based on a strategic management system can reflect the emphases of different conceptions of school effectiveness and constitute a mechanism for pursuing long‐term school effectiveness, even in different categories. Based on the matrix of school process and the principle of congruence, the management concept should be shifted from the cell management to the layer management in establishing an effective school‐based management mechanism for school development. This article also reports the experience on training school administrators to establish such a school‐based management mechanism.     

The Perfect Storm—Genetic Engineering,Science, and Ethics

Uncertainty about ethics has been a major factor in societal rejection of biotechnology. Six factors help create a societal “perfect storm” regarding ethics and biotechnology: Social demand for ethical discussion; societal scientific illiteracy; poor social understanding of ethics; a “Gresham’s Law for Ethics;” Scientific Ideology; vested interests dominating ethical discussion. How this can be remedied is discussed.     

Do Costs Differ Between For-Profit and Not-for-Profit Producers of Higher Education?

In theory, not-for-profit organizations will be characterized by higher production costs per unit of output than for-profit producers of otherwise-identical goods/services, since profit maximization implies cost minimization per unit of output; breaking even does not imply cost minimization and, indeed, may imply inflated costs. We explore the empirical validity of this hypothesis in the context of higher education. Using 1996 data, we estimate multiproduct cost functions for 1,450 public, 1,316 private, not-for-profit, and 176 private, for-profit institutions of higher education in the United States. We fail to find a statistically significant difference between for-profit and not-for-profit private providers, but do find a statistically significant difference between private, not-for-profit institutions and public institutions.     

An Observational and Planning Tool for Professional Development in Science Education

Since there is an increasing recognition to address the need to move practicing teachers to a higher standard of practice, mentoring or coaching has been receiving increasing attention. A variety of tools has been developed to make these relationships more effective. Work within a recent mentor project indicated current tools were not detailed enough for mentors to provide effective feedback to mentees. This paper presents a more detailed tool and describes categories of pedagogical practices related to an extended inquiry-cycle model. During the course of the project, mentors and mentees also used this tool for adapting existing curriculum to a more standards-based mode of instruction, thus having it function as a planning tool.

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Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Theories of Motivation from an Attributional Perspective

Two related attribution theories of motivation are examined. One, an intrapersonal theory, includes self-directed thoughts (particularly expectancy of success) and self-directed emotions (pride, guilt, and shame). The second is an interpersonal theory and includes beliefs about the responsibility of others and other-directed affects of anger and sympathy. These two theories are respectively guided by the disparate metaphors of the person as a scientist and the person as a judge. Some experimental evidence supporting the conceptions and the range of phenomena that they incorporate are examined.