The author recently spent part of a sabbatical from her university exploring the most current research on treating clients diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). During the sabbatical, she was struck by how her own complacency had become unintentionally disinviting to her work with these clients, as she learned that preconceptions…

The purpose of this study was to assess administrators' professionally and personally inviting behaviors and examine whether administrators' reported behaviors were correlated with school rankings, job satisfaction, school climate, or time spent on instructional leadership. Overall, both principals and assistant principals reported engaging in…

This study provides psychometric data on the Inviting School Survey (Purkey & Fuller, 1995) using a rating scale analysis within the framework of the Rasch measurement philosophy (Bond & Fox, 2001; Rasch, 1980). The Inviting School Survey's factor structure and internal consistency are examined and compared with the Invitational Education Model…

In their self-concept approach to counseling, Purkey and Schmidt (1996) introduced the tenets and assumptions of "invitational education" (Purkey & Novak, 1996) and applied them to professional helping relationships. Although their model is a general approach to helping and not specific to counseling culturally diverse clients, many of its…

Genuineness, the condition of sincerity in behaving as one's unadulterated self, is a concept that is inherently congruent with inviting behavior yet is not directly addressed in the literature concerned with Invitational Theory. The author discusses the concept of genuineness, describes how it fits Invitational Theory and argues for its inclusion…

Public schools have met with increasingly unfavorable reaction in recent years, while private schools, magnet schools and charter schools seem to be gaining interest and public support. This may be due, in part, to the fact that public schools seem to lack a welcoming atmosphere. This action research study examined how teachers and an…

In the summer of 1998, this author was appointed Principal at Cooper Elementary, one of 21 elementary schools in the Livonia Public Schools' district, the 5th largest district in the state of Michigan. Like many first-year principals, she was full of fresh ideas, lofty goals and endless enthusiasm to inspire students, staff and parents. Her…

Through the use of case examples, the authors present the concept that behavior might best be viewed from the perspective of "goal directedness" as opposed to internal or external causality. With an understanding of the individual's psychological movement, teachers and counselors might be in a better position to provide more effective and inviting…

Honoring the net is a concept presented by Purkey in his discussion of the four-corner press. In a counseling setting this concept relates to the perceptions of the counselor and the client as they encounter one another in the counseling relationship, as well as the relationship itself. This manuscript attempts to examine the dynamic of the net…

Critics of Invitational Education and other self-concept approaches to learning have long argued that there is a lack of empirical data to support the claims that approaches to student instruction based on self-concept theory are central to effective learning. Ellis (2001) examines a number of these analyses where self-concept, self-esteem, and…

The average tuition of a four-year public college is $3510 per year (Adriane, 2003). In this study, letters were sent letters to the education departments of fifteen state universities in a southern state by a school level administrator. Each university was asked to help the local education agency (LEA) find prospective teachers from the…

This study investigated the relationship between professionally and personally inviting behaviors of high school principals in the state of Mississippi and: (a) Teacher Job Satisfaction, (b) Principal Effectiveness, (c) Principal as an Agent of School Improvement, and (d) Principal's Invitational Quotient, and (e) The Computed Accreditation…

From an Invitational Education perspective, e-learning will only succeed as an educative environment if educators are able to provide an e-learning environment that preserves dignity and encourages communication. The converse: using an online environment to "throw information" at students has the opposite effect; it is experienced as deeply…

The value and importance of human intimacy is examined as a complex combination of passion, commitment, friendship, and love. Models of healthy and unhealthy conflict in relationships are offered as well as suggestions for moving from unhealthy expressions of conflict to healthy ones.

This article looks at how a social worker is able to use conflict management as described by William Purkey and John Schmidt in their book on invitational counseling in order to better engage the hardest to reach clients. (GCP)