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Rational, nonrational and mixed models of policy making in a high school change process

In many schools hours of energy and effort are dedicated to making decisions and
developing policy. At the school level issues of curriculum, faculty groupings and
structure, strategy for staff allocations and resourcing of faculties, often results in
debate before being decided upon. So often valuable time and resources are wasted in
argument, disagreement and political activity.
This study has been designed to determine what actually happens in the decision
process, with the subject of the study a single committee. The aim of the study is to
determine the style of policy development that took place and what influences
affected the decisions made.
The study is in two parts. The first section develops a Conceptual Framework and
research questions to categorise, summarise and organise data collected from policy
development processes. The Conceptual framework was designed to permit analysis
of the major components of the stages of Problem Structuring, Generation of
Alternatives and Recommending Policy Actions. The second section in includes
further Research Questions to determine whether the process applied to developing
policy was Rational, Nonrational (Incremental/Political) or a Mixed Model type.
The research method used was naturalistic and qualitative in nature and in the context
of a case study.
The main findings were that a Mixed Model of policy development was used by the
Committee with elements of both Rational and Nonrational process evident from the
research data.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218955
Date January 1992
CreatorsGilmore, Joan Maree, n/a
PublisherUniversity of Canberra. Education
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Rights), Copyright Joan Maree Gilmore

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