Educational technology in the broadest sense is knowledgeand competence forimproving the educational process: forusing hardware (equipment), software (methods), and"underware" (underlying organizational structures).This volume in the Special Programme on Advanced EducationalTechnology presents the results of a NATO Advanced ResearchWorkshop on educational systems design as a new educationaltechnology. The objective of the workshop was toadvance ourknowledge about the comprehensive systems design approachfor improving educational systems. The workshop wasorganized for the transdisciplinary interaction of threescientific groups representing design scienceorganizational/systems science, and educationaltechnology.Participants were selected based on their scholarship asmembers of one or more of these three groups.The book opens with theframing papers sent by the editorsto participants prior to the workshop, then presents fivesets of thematic contributions: the conceptual and empiricalcontexts of comprehensive systems design, the systems designfocus, a systems view of designing educational systems, theeducational context of systems design, and high technologyfocus in systems design.

This NATO volume in the Special Programme on Advanced Educational Technology presents results on the comprehensive systems design approach for improving educational systems. It is based on a workshop organized as a transdisciplinary interaction of design science, organizational/systems science, and educational technology.

Systems Design: A Creative Response to the Current Educational Predicament.- Principles of Educational Systems Design.- Structuring the Program of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop: An Architecture of Decision-Oriented Disciplined Enquiry.- Education as a Process of Increasing Access to Societal Resources: Design and Methodology.- Human Learning and Its Relation to Evolution and Needs Satisfaction: Implications for the Design of Educational Systems.- The Empirical Grounding of System Performance Measurements.- The Designing Community: A Learning Community.- Definition of Education and Meta-Design of Educational Systems.- Assessing the Adequacy of a Social System Design.- Design Inquiry as an Intellectual Technology for the Design of Educational Systems.- The Evolution of a Design Approach: A Historical Perspective and Its Relevance to the Design of Educational Systems.- Surrendering to the Environment in Educational System Design.- 'Jumping Out' of the Existing System During Design Genesis: Penetrating the Anxiety Barrier.- Designing Value-Based Educational Systems.- Retrospective Design Analysis: A New Educational Technology.- The Application of Systems Thinking to the Design of Educational Systems.- A Systems-Approach Knowledge Base for Education.- Approaches and Methods of Systems Design: Critical Pedagogy.- A Systems View of Restructuring Education.- Openness in a General Process Model for Systems Design in Education.- School Reform Movements: Tinkering with the System.- Characteristics of Educational Systems and Their Development: A Contribution to Understanding Differences in System in Europe and the United States.- Applying Systems Theory Through the Lens of Learning: What Does Learning Research Say?.- The Next Step in Educational Systems Design: SomeContributions From Learning Systems Design.- Learning Systems: Is There a Need for Change?.- Systems Design Guidelines for Change.- A Conceptual Framework for Systems Design of Education.- Hypersystems: A Base for Specification of Computer-Supported Self-Learning Social Systems.- New Educational Technologies Cannot be Fully Integrated in Existing Educational Systems.- Educational Technology Planning: Scanning the North American K-12 Education Environment.- Index of Authors.