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This article focuses on the strategic importance of framing cultural changes in special education through a critical lens. The article explores why cultural responsivity must be understood from a critical perspective that accounts for the historical sedimentation of racism that exists within special education organizational policies and practices. This sedimentation affects current and future organizational features that sustain historical, persistent and pernicious racial and ableist structures, relationships and outcomes.

By examining the role of power within organizational systems, the authors trace its contribution to reproduction of these systems through special education leadership. Special education leaders along with their peers in general education can frame transformative change through a systemic lens designed to address structural, regulatory and cultural practices that perpetuate raced and ableist outcomes. The pernicious and sustaining structures and practices that have created unequal outcomes in our educational systems need strategic intervention, prevention and re-creation to create equitable supports and services programs.

By examining the role of power within organizational systems, the authors trace its contribution to reproduction of these systems through special education leadership. Special education leaders along with their peers in general education can frame transformative change through a systemic lens designed to address structural, regulatory and cultural practices that perpetuate raced and ableist outcomes.

With clear outcomes that are responsive to all students, including those identified with dis/abilities, education leaders can make consequential shifts in access, opportunity and the distribution of social and intellectual capital throughout education.

The pernicious and sustaining structures and practices that have created unequal outcomes in our educational systems need strategic intervention, prevention and re-creation to create equitable supports and services programs.

The application of DisCrit to educational leadership practices offers an opportunity to frame leadership through a powerful equity lens.

The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical review of the educational innovation field in the USA. It outlines classification of innovations, discusses the hurdles to innovation, and offers ways to increase the scale and rate of innovation-based transformations in the education system.

The paper is based on a literature survey and author research.

US education badly needs effective innovations of scale that can help produce the needed high-quality learning outcomes across the system. The primary focus of educational innovations should be on teaching and learning theory and practice, as well as on the learner, parents, community, society, and its culture. Technology applications need a solid theoretical foundation based on purposeful, systemic research, and a sound pedagogy. One of the critical areas of research and innovation can be cost and time efficiency of the learning.

Several practical recommendations stem out of this paper: how to create a base for large-scale innovations and their implementation; how to increase effectiveness of technology innovations in education, particularly online learning; how to raise time and cost efficiency of education.

Innovations in education are regarded, along with the education system, within the context of a societal supersystem demonstrating their interrelations and interdependencies at all levels. Raising the quality and scale of innovations in education will positively affect education itself and benefit the whole society.

Originality is in the systemic approach to education and educational innovations, in offering a comprehensive classification of innovations; in exposing the hurdles to innovations, in new arguments about effectiveness of technology applications, and in time efficiency of education.

The purpose of this paper is to design an experimentally‐oriented program for the training of a new generation of educational a administrators. The rationale for the program is based on selected concepts and propositions of occupational sociology, organization theory, and systems theory. Some of the salient features of the program are as follows: (i) The design is guided by the logic of Campbell's quasi‐experiment. (ii) A principal goal is to stimulate the professionalization of educational administration by increasing (a) the body of systematic knowledge: and (b) the commitment to an ideal of service in education. (iii) Another major goal is to sensitize educational administrators to the dilemmas of organizational change and to strategies for inducing change. (iv) A systems analysis is set forth of five sequentially interrelated processes: goal formation, recruitment of faculty and students, specification of the content of the curriculum, placement of graduates, and an evaluation of the program. (v) A sample curriculum for a three‐year period, guided by six pedagogical conceptions. (vi) A design for an experimental program for four cohorts of students is outlined.

An emerging synthesis between natural and social sciences is discussed and the new science of “chaos” which originates in chemical researches is introduced. Educational systems are seen to be dissipative structures allowing analysis of them in “chaotic” terms. Such structures have a self‐organising dynamic which produces “second order” changes to a new regime. This has long been associated with analysis of leadership. The creative input of a single individual, though small, may lead to far‐reaching effects if guided by vision.

This account aims to introduce contrasting perspectives on teaching and learning methods, and to detail the growth of new forms and vocabularies of access to learning. As we move towards the new millennium, the development of national, yet diversified, credit frameworks and systems will provide an essential underpinning for the organisational culture that will be needed to sustain the wellbeing and growth of the educational system. These new systems are already being incorporated into the practice of ‘virtual’ education. Lifelong learning has widespread support across the social and political spectrum and its importance can hardly be over‐stated as we seek to maintain competitiveness in a changing world. Increasing knowledge and understanding to serve both the needs of the economy and of individuals to play a major role in democratic life has become an agenda of necessity as well as desire. An open society requires open systems of knowledge. A prognosis for the future is submitted where the significance of part‐time modular and open flexible learning is evaluated in terms of a curriculum rooted in useful knowledge and competences, acquired at different sites of learning, including the workplace. It is argued that modular structures, using the potential offered by credit accumulation and transfer to different institutions with different missions, can transcend and transform the learning opportunities for students in a mass system of higher education which is rapidly becoming part of a global market economy and society. Continuous lifelong learning involving its key features of open access, recognition of learning wherever it takes place and the growth of new learning networks and partnerships, is at the conceptual heart of the development of the virtual university.

Proposes a new model of teacher receptivity to system‐wide educational change, where the change is planned and implemented in a centrally controlled educational system involving teachers in their classrooms. Suggests a measure of teacher receptivity (based on the model) to help administrators plan a change and manage the implementation. Teacher receptivity is proposed to consist of four first‐order aspects, operationally defined by a number of second‐order aspects. These are: characteristics of the change (comparison with the previous system and practicality in my classroom), managing the change at school (alleviation of concerns, learning about the change and participation in decisions at my school), value for the teacher (personal cost appraisal, collaboration with other teachers and opportunities for teacher improvement) and teacher perceived value for students. Teacher receptivity is measured with three aspects for each of the 50 stem‐items and there is an ordered set of response categories relating to these aspects.

Educational change and improvement are constant processes. Practically every country in the world today is attempting to improve, reform, transform or change its educational system. The results of these development efforts have generally been disappointing. A general consensus seems to be that the gap between societal expectations and educational achievements is wide and becoming greater. The perceived failures of education are particularly difficult for political and educational leaders to understand given the massive influx of resources invested in educational systems in recent years. This is a result of a linear expectation wherein output is proportional to the input. Non‐linear theory, proposed in this paper as a more valid way of conceptualizing educational development efforts, does not assume this proportional relationship. This paper addresses non‐linear theory by using it to examine educational development efforts in Western and Eastern European nations.

This article employs a system analytic framework to categorize the available research literature on the politics of education in order to explain the inter‐relationship of private and public interests and of different levels in primary and secondary American schools. The objectives are several: to explain and develop the analytical framework of David Easton; to illustrate its heuristic utility by categorizing empirically‐based research within the components of that framework, and to suggest and encourage future research directions in the subject. Education has escaped application of traditional policy analysis in America because educators have convinced scholars and laymen that they are “non‐political,” a label which even most political scientists have accepted without challenge. However, during the 1960s, a few scholars in education and political science began to apply political analytical methods to public school conflict. This research has begun to change perceptions of education and to provide a beginning set of research projects whose data support tentative generalization about the policy‐making process and the total system of public schools. This orientation is bound to increase because of increasing national government intervention in local schools, both through integration and financial policies. These have provoked growing conflict locally over the proper direction of school policies. In this article, we see how such stress is transmitted in the form of “demands” and “supports” into the “political system”, that persistent social mechanism known in all societies in different forms provides an “authoritative allocation of values and resources”. The political system, in this case public school bodies, “converts” such “inputs” into “outputs” of public policy, which in their administration create outcomes which later cause a “feedback” into the political system as the material for new policy demands. For each component of this Eastonian system, this article examines relevant research, providing an extensive annotated bibliography. From this review, it is possible to suggest lines of needed research.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

This paper proposes a new conception of school systems arising out of the collision of three forces: (1) a longstanding press to rationalize the technical work of schools in the service of educational excellence; (2) a growing democratic press to equitably engage community members in the process of defining educational excellence; which together are (3) heightening legacy uncertainties that pervade educational organizations. It then draws on paradox theory to explore how leaders might navigate the growing uncertainties that are central to the work of organizing for excellence and equity.

Integrating scholarship related to organizational institutionalism, paradox theory, learning sciences, social justice leadership and educational system building, this paper examines the changing organization of schools, the growing uncertainty facing educators and the implications for leaders and preparation programs.

This paper introduces two perspectives on how to navigate the growing uncertainty facing educators and educational leaders: one that centers on mitigating uncertainty, the other that prioritizes leveraging uncertainty. Both perspectives have affordances and limitations when considering the twin goals of educational excellence and equitable involvement in decision-making, and leaders should thus view uncertainty as a paradox—an interdependent, persistent, contradiction—that can never be fully resolved, but can be managed. A paradox perspective makes visible the complex work of effectively moving between mitigating and leveraging uncertainty, especially in a field where the latter garners more support and legitimacy.

This paper synthesizes recent educational and organizational scholarship to develop a new conception of educational organizations and a corresponding approach to educational leadership capable of navigating the growing complexity and uncertainty that pervades school systems.