Changes in the organizational climate of selected elementary schools as a function of a planned program for changing communication processes and levels of decision-making

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to determine if a planned professional development program that focused on communication and decision-making processes would alter the organizational climate of selected elementary schools in a large urban school district. Procedures. Thirty sample schools were randomly selected from the pool of elementary schools that met the three conditions of having (a) a closed organizational climate, (b) a principal incumbent at least one year as of September 30, 1970, and (c) less than twenty per cent faculty turn-over between the time of pretest administration and September 30, 1970. The thirty schools were randomly assigned to five treatment groups of six schools each. Group I, a control group, was not included in the program, except for administration of the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire posttest in March, 1971. The schools of Group II were visited by the researcher and given an interpretation of results of the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire pretest, but no planned program for altering the organizational climate was implemented in these schools. The remaining groups were involved--Group III, principals only; Group IV, principals and faculty; Group V, faculty only--in a professional development program structured to alter communication processes and levels of decision-making in the sample schools. The Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire was administered as a posttest in March, 1971, to determine the extent and nature of changes in teachers' perceptions of the organizational climates of their schools. [...]Education, College o