Recent trends in the Illinois River indicated by fish populations: Havana, Ill.,

INHS Technical Report submitted as part of the Flowing Water Ecosystems Section in the Critical Trends Assessment Projec

Sykes's problem of order in and out of context:Returning to the source in <i>The Society of Captives</i>

Sykes’s influence on sociological studies of prisons, and indeed many other institutions, has been profound and pervasive. This paper argues that whilst there are strong and continuing reasons for this ubiquity, the prestige and familiarity of certain field-defining classic texts can also serve to produce and sustain a certain set of limited, ‘standard’ readings. In the case of The Society of Captives, there is a risk that the very resonance of certain of his observations – perhaps especially his famous depiction of the ‘pains of imprisonment’ – may serve to divert attention from other aspects of his purpose. This paper proposes a re-reading of this classic text that refocuses on Sykes’s analysis of the prison as a ‘system of power’. Sykes’s understanding of power in prisons, it argues, is centrally informed by his preoccupations with totalitarian political regimes and with his concerns for the future of American democracy at the end of the 1950s. In this regard, Sykes’s view of prisons is much more intensely engaged with the social and political contexts of the time than the standard readings tend to acknowledge. Some of these themes, it argues, are also continuous with his later work on the policing of social protest during the civil rights movement, which by contrast with The Society of Captives is almost entirely unread today

Elementary School Principal Inservice: Practices And Perceptions Related To Pupil Academic Achievement Among Selected California School Districts (Staff Development)

Purpose. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the relationships that exist between current practices employed by California school districts to provide inservice training for elementary principals and pupil academic achievement. Procedure. The extreme high and low school districts with respect to pupil academic achievement were identified using 1981 district scores and comparison score bands for the California Assessment Program, grade six test. The superintendents in all of the districts and all principals in a systematically selected sample of those districts were surveyed by mail to determine practices, policies and perceptions pertaining to inservice training for elementary principals. Content of the survey instruments was based on the recommendations from the Managers Report and research validated characteristics of effective inservice programs. Differences and relationships between the high and low achieving districts were determined using t-tests, point-biserial and Pearson product-moment correlations. Findings. In general, there was found to be no significant difference or relationship between district achievement level and the policies, practices and perceptions pertaining to principal inservice among either the district administrators or the principals. Based on five components on the principals\u27 survey, however, there was an indication that the principals in the high achieving districts perceive themselves to be more involved in planning, conducting and participating in inservice training activities than those in the low achieving districts. Implications for Further Study. (1) Replicate the study of principals\u27 perceptions using a larger sample or another method for selecting the sample. (2) Apply statistical methods to the data collected for this study to determine within group differences among the inservice components. (3) Explore the specifics of principal involvement in inservice planning and decision-making. (4) Replicate this study based on the identification of the high and low achieving schools throughout the state rather than districts. (5) Explore other variables which may differentiate the high from the low achieving districts (e.g., principals\u27 experience, training, administrative structure of the district, economic base of the area in which the district is located)