Strategic Planning in Schools: An oxymoron?

This paper argues that traditional approaches to school planning no longer serve the needs of schools. In particular, it puts forward the view that strategy, as applied to school planning, is only of partial use. It argues that there should be a new way forward for schools seeking to meet the challenge of effective leadership and management in the new millennium. This would utilise the concept of 'strategic intent' encapsulated in a new model which replaces the limited 'school development planning' framework.     

Beat the Instructor: An Introductory Forecasting Game

This teaching brief describes a 30‐minute game where student groups compete in‐class in an introductory time‐series forecasting exercise. The students are challenged to “beat the instructor” who competes using forecasting techniques that will be subsequently taught. All forecasts are graphed prior to revealing the randomly generated actual demand. Experiential learning and forecasting exercises are reviewed before detailing how the game is administered and debriefed. Student survey results (n = 247) provide evidence of teaching effectiveness, including that 78% of students said that playing the game increased their interest in learning the forecasting techniques that were used by the instructor.     

General Communications

Brent D. Ruben, ed. Communication Yearbook 2 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books (Rutgers), 1978---$24.95)

Eric A. Havelock and Jackson P. Hershbell, eds. Communication Arts in the Ancient World (New York: Hastings House, J978---$12.50)

Kit Laybourne and Pauline Cianciolo's Doing the Media (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978---$6.95, paper, with both library and trade hardbacks also available)

Periodicals: just begun under the (temporary) auspices of the Institute of Communication Research (122B Armory, University of Illinois, Champaign, Ill. 61820)

Warren K. Agee, Phillip H. Ault, and Edwin Emery's Introduction to Mass Communications (New York: Harper & Row, 1979---$7.95, paper)

Godwin C. Chu and Brent Cassan, Modern Communication Technology in a Changing Society: A Bibliography (1977, 162 pp., $1.50)

Syed A. Rahim, et al. Planning Methods, Models, and Organization: A Review Study for Communication Policy Making and Planning (1978, 260 pp., $3.00):     

Effects of Instructor Speech Rate on Student Affective Learning,Recall, and Perceptions of Nonverbal Immediacy,Credibility, and Clarity

Although research indicates that speech rate affects perceptions of speaker credibility as well as persuasiveness and information recall, research has failed to address how instructor speech rate affects student perceptions and learning. This study randomly assigned basic communication course students to one of three speech rate conditions (slow, moderate, fast), using a videotaped lesson by an instructor. Findings revealed significant differences for credibility, affective leaning, and nonverbal immediacy, but did not reveal significant differences for recall or clarity. Implications for instructional practice and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Stability for Development,Development for Stability: The Relationship Between Regional Organizations and Social Cohesion Through the Lens of the EU and MERCOSUR

Strategies aiming to foster social cohesion seek to enhance predictability and trust among heterogeneous actors. Although undoubtedly nation-states remain the dominant context for examining social cohesion, in Europe and in South America, nation-states have formed regional organizations to support political stability and economic cooperation in a world increasingly shaped by political and economic forces beyond the reach of any single nation-state. The comparative extent to which the regional political bodies of the European Union (EU) and the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) impact social cohesion within and across member states relates to their capacity to engender reciprocal patterns of political stability and economic development in the region. This article examines the EU and MERCOSUR's stake in social cohesion and how these organizations impact social cohesion in their respective regions through the establishment of institutionalized standards and norms, the content of specific regional policies, and the processes that accompany institutional governance at the regional level. The article finds that the existence of collective support and trust in the institutions that enable these regional organizations to effectively create desired political and economic conditions has implications for the depth of these integration projects and their ability to foster social cohesion across a region.     

Curriculum forms: On the assumed shapes of knowing and knowledge

Historically, the logico-rational mode of argumentation co-evolved with particular mathematical systems and particular geometrically-informed manners of interpreting experience and perception. We examine some of the ways these geometries continue to shape the sensibilities, practices and structures of much of curriculum discourse, in spite of the well-developed critiques of their associated logics. We draw on fractal geometry, a new field of mathematical study, to illustrate the pervasiveness and the constraining tendencies of classical geometries. We develop the suggestion that fractal geometry is a mathematical analogue to such discourse fields as post-modernism, post-structuralism and ecological theory. We attempt to show how, through the visual metaphor of a fractal image, conventional theories of knowing and knowledge might be seen as not only compatible, but as nested in and suggestive of one another. We briefly examine how fractal geometry can complement and inform other emergent sensibilities in curriculum, in particular, those discussions critical of the linear structures associated with classical logic.     

A Doubled Heterotopia: Shifting Spatial and Visual Symbolism in the Jewish Museum Berlin's Development

This essay considers the rhetoric of space in a rapidly transforming culture. Using Michel Foucault's concept of “heterotopias” to understand the rhetorical power of a building's disposition, it is argued that the Jewish Museum Berlin contains two heterotopias, one within the other. The first is Daniel Libeskind's original building design in relation to the surrounding city, but the second is the placement of an art installation, Menashe Kadishman's Shalechet, in a central location within the museum. The doubling of heterotopian space uses dialectical–rhetorical transcendence to build identification with the museum's message for an increasingly international audience.     

Communication with feeling: Emotion,publicness, and embodiment

AN EMOTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. Edited by Peter Stearns and Jan Lewis. New York & London: New York University Press, 1998; pp. 476. $22.50.

ANOTHER SELF: MIDDLE CLASS AMERICAN WOMEN AND THEIR FRIENDS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. By Linda W. Rosenzweig. New York & London: New York University Press, 1999; pp. 225. $35.00.

BATTLEGROUND OF DESIRE: THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF CONTROL IN MODERN AMERICA. By Peter Stearns. New York & London: New York University Press, 1999; pp. 434. $28.95.

CRYING: THE NATURAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY OF TEARS. By Tom Lutz. New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999; pp. 352. $25.95.

EMOTIONS IN SOCIAL LIFE: CRITICAL THEMES AND CONTEMPORARY ISSUES. Edited by Gillian Bendelow and Simon J. Williams. London & New York: Routledge, 1998; pp. 336. $29.99.     

An Operant Model for Skill Acquisition

Despite the familiar claim that participation in the Olympic sports is broadly educational and developmental, a growing body of empirical evaluation suggests otherwise—so much so, that at the very least, beneficial results can no longer be left to chance. However important, most of what is called Olympic education addresses other concerns. This paper, written by an active participant in the Olympic Movement, argues for a formal, outcomes-based pedagogy of the Olympic sports and the Olympic Games, and offers several proposals on how it may be realized.