Content area
Abstract
Using the approach of "naturalistic inquiry," the study investigated the strategy of the Office of Basic Skills Improvement of the Nebraska Department of Education to bring about improvement in basic skills instruction in Nebraska schools. The strategy was posited on a set of principles in the areas of dissemination approach, use of resources, adoption process, and content of instruction.
A thorough description of the elements of the strategy was derived from an extensive review of program documents and the author's experience with the program. Staff members of participating elementary schools and the consultants who assisted them were interviewed. Interviews and documents were analyzed to determine the validity of the underlying assumptions of the program.
Major findings of the study were that success in dissemination efforts is enhanced by personal interaction; that resource persons existing in colleges, educational service units, and large school districts may be trained to assist schools to adopt innnovative programs; that providing a detailed guide that lays out the steps of the adoption process is helpful to both the leaders and the participants in the change process, and that, given leadership by the principal, by a consultant and by a detailed guide, teachers have the knowledge and the skill needed to develop curriculum that results in improved student achievement.
The study also compared the assumptions about dissemination, resources, process and content that underlay the strategy to results of contemporaneous major studies of planned educational change such as the Rand studies and the studies of the National Diffusion Network. Findings that were similar were that the principal, particularly in elementary schools, plays the key role in planned educational change; that change is facilitated by the services of a "linker" who makes the connection between ideas and resources outside the schools and the managers of change on the inside, that incremental change is the natural mode, and that large scale diffusion programs are highly dependent on federal or state funding.
