Forms of Decentralisation and Their Implications for Education

The paper argues the case for disaggregating the concept of 'decentralisation', and presents a range of types which differ as to their rationale. Under the rubric of 'political' rationales there are: federalism, populist localism, participatory democracy, and liberalism. Under rationales that mainly concern quality and efficiency, there are: pedagogic professionalism, management by objectives, the market mechanism, and deconcentration. These different forms are described and compared with special reference to their implicationsfor the distribution of authority in education, and for evaluation of schools.     

Differential Effects of Two T Group Styles

This article presents a rationale for examining the effects of the T group on introverts and extroverts. Two T group styles were examined—a sensory awareness group and a verbal cognitive group. Results indicate that the sensory awareness group is more profitable to both personality types and that there is a direct relationship between personality type and profit in a T group. Although introverts profited less than the extroverts, there was reason to believe that an extended group experience might have been more profitable for the introverts. Profit was measured by quantifying emotional reactions to the ongoing group process at timed sampling intervals via Homans' social exchange model. Poker chips were used as symbolic representations of positive and negative effect.     

SELECTION OF PROSE MATERIAL FOR TESTING

The study investigated teachers' selection of prose material for testing. Thirty elementary school social studies teachers wrote test questions based on a 1900 word passage from a commercial social studies text. Moderate consensus was observed among the teachers as to those segments of the passage chosen for testing. Additional analyses to determine the characteristics of the passage segments selected for testing were performed. The most frequently selected text segments were sentences which either contained a list or were themselves an entry in a list.