Leading change in Schools and Regions

Lecture 3: Change in Schools: 1

Alfred J. Sant Fournier

If you always do the things you have always done…

You will always get the results you have always got.

“successful school improvement […] depends on an understanding of the

problem of change at the level of practice and the development of
corresponding strategies for bringing about beneficial reforms”

Fullan (1992) p. 27

Real change, then, whether desired or not represents a serious personal and
collective experience characterized by ambivalence and uncertainty; and if the
change works out it can result in a sense of mastery, accomplishment, and
personal growth. The anxieties of uncertainty and the joys of mastery are
central to the subjective meaning of educational change, and to the success
or failure hereof – facts that have not been recognized or appreciated in most
attempts of reform.

Fullan (2001)

School improvement

Enhances pupil outcomes

Focuses on teaching and learning
Builds the capacity to take charge of change regardless of its source
Defines its own direction
Assesses its current culture and works to develop cultural norms

School improvement (cont.)

Has strategies to achieve its goals

Addresses the internal conditions that enhance change
Maintains momentum during periods of turbulence
Monitors and evaluates its process, progress, achievement and
development
 V ictoria
Educa tion
Authority
Website

“Low morale, depressed, feeling unfairly blamed for the ills of society? You
must be a teacher.”
TES (1997)

Classroom press
Press for immediacy and concreteness
Press for multidimensionality and simultaneity
Press for adapting to every changing conditions
Press for personal involvement
Huberman 1983

Headship issues

Role change
Heads or teachers?
Chief executives or professional leaders?
Organizational managers or school leaders?
Increased paper work
Dealing with many agents
Not owning change!
Bush T, et al (ed.) (1999 )
“Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly.. “Would you tell me, please, which
way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don't much care where—” said Alice.

“Then it doesn't matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you're sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“a good school does not emerge like a pre packaged frozen dinner stuck for
15 minutes in a radar range; it develops from the slow simmering of careful
blended ingredients”

T. R. Sizer (1985) Common Sense,

Educational Leadership p 21

School improvement is unique to each school because each school’s context

is unique. Schools will address these processes in different ways …. No
blueprint can be proposed for all schools.

But what about us? THE STUDENTS

INSIDE DOORS

Research
Self-evaluation
Curriculum
Teaching & learning
Leadershio
Partnerships
Problems
School development planning

Joyce (1991)

Other doors are opened by those outside the school:

National curricula
Published test and examination results
Inspection
Governing bodies or school councils
Teacher appraisal and evaluation
Quality approaches
High reliability organisations

Joyce (1991)

Addressing some internal conditions to ensure improvement

Climate setting
Vision
Joint planning
Leadership
Involvement and empowerment
Partnership
Monitoring & evaluation
Problem seeking and problem solving
Stoll & Fink (1995)

School growth plan has four stages of development:

Where are we now? (assessment)

Where would we like to be in the future? (planning)
How best can we move in that direction? (implementation)
How do we evaluate the changes we are making? (evaluation)
Some considerations in SDP

Co-ordination of the process

Attention to fundamental conditions of school culture
Commitment to a few key goals
Engagement in an ongoing, dynamic process
Getting a fix on current reality
The significance of monitoring and evaluation
A focus on teaching and the improvement of learning
Recognition that each school is unique
The reality of multiple innovations and the need for interconnections
The benefits of a support infrastructure
The fundamental question of impact
The developmental nature of development planning

School Development Planning

needs
a
Staff Development Programme

Co-operation
Dialogue
Negotiation

Personal professional growth plan

From a principal’s point of view the process provides an opportunity to
involve the teacher in the school’s growth plan.
From a teacher’s perspective, if conducted with integrity, it breaks
down isolation, provides a vehicle to develop a personal growth plan
and a connection to the larger school and system structures

Stoll & Fink (1995) p. 21

Concluding thoughts

Attention to plan as a document

Recognition that the process rather than the plan is central
Realisation that the quality of the management of planning is the key to its
success.
(Hargreaves & Hopkins 1994)

Concluding thoughts cont…

In the early phase – more attention on prerequites e.g. student behaviour,
physical environment, communication and collaboration, parental involvement
with some teaching and learning objectives.
Later phase of SDP – schools more actively engaged in teaching and
learning issues, using some of earlier elements
(Hargreaves & Hopkins 1991)