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ERIC Number: ED249660
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1983-Apr
Pages: 13
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Emulation and Replication as a Scenario for Successful School Improvement.
Crandall, David P.
Visits to 146 schools in the winter of 1978-79 and interviews with teachers, administrators, and others involved with the implementation of 61 different instructional innovations revealed stability and durability in these innovations and fidelity to the original innovation. The innovations are those associated with federally funded projects attempting to improve educational practice. The best known are those of the National Diffusion Network. An explanation of innovation adoptions is that responses to the federal projects led to the forming of a community of local practitioners who suddenly had new channels of communication open to them. To share this information, professional conferences were held with participants, who shared the following characteristics: (1) other teachers served as their role models, (2) their attendance at the conferences was approved by their principals, and (3) they have figured out how to survive in a very grueling job. For schools, innovation is largely a process of imitation or emulation under conditions of noncompetition. Given the opportunity to try out new practices perceived as attractive and constituting an improvement, teachers change. (MLF)
Publication Type: Opinion Papers; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: Researchers
Language: English
Sponsor: Department of Education, Washington, DC. Office of Planning, Budget, and Evaluation.
Authoring Institution: Network of Innovative Schools, Inc., Andover, MA.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Montreal, Quebec, Canada, April 11-15, 1983).