EDUCATIONAL DECISION MAKING

This paper is designed to help educational leaders improve their decision making strategies (and correspondingly educational practice) by evaluating their own strategy in concert with a model proposed in the paper. The proposed model provides eductional leaders with an enhanced context within which one can effectively analyze and evaluate policies and procedures, critical issues, and decision making processes, and determine educational practices that will result in more effective schools. The model serves as a framework for analysis and evaluation and includes the following components: (1) the foundations of education (historical, philosophical, sociological, political and organizational) and how these perspectives should be considered in the decison making process and their relationship to administrative behavior and the decision setting; (2) the functions of management and their role in th