ABSTRACT
Organization Development (OD) involves the organizational members themselves in the diagnosis, transformation, and evaluation of their own social system. OD is as much a philosophy or a way of life as it is a design and technology for school improvement. In 1978, Michael Fullan, Miles, and Taylor carried out the first large-scale analysis of OD in schools in North America. Their study consisted of a comprehensive assessment of the state of knowledge of educational OD and the nature and extent of its use in school districts in the United States and Canada. The conference used as its starting point the state of the art study by Fullan, Miles, and Taylor. The chapter describes an important conference in New York City for building an agenda for educational OD in the '80s, and to explain how a Clearinghouse and Exchange on OD in schools could offer a useful integrating structure for stimulating both research and dissemination.
