A Brief History of Educational Change
Students are too distracted by a host of other matters to pay much attention to all of the uproar. For most students, traditional schooling is boring. Indeed, many teachers are increasingly bored or dissatisfied. (Page 18)
Educational change stands or falls on whether educators, students, and other learners find personal meaning in what they are learning and how they are learning. This is difficult because groups must find meaning, not just individuals. (Page 18)
We can produce many examples of how educational practice could look different, but we can produce few, if any, examples of large numbers of teachers engaging in these practices in large scale institutions designed to deliver education to most children. (Page 20)
Great pressure and incentives to become innovative resulted in many schools adopting reforms that they did not have the capacity (individually or organizationally) to put into practice. Thus, innovations were adopted on the surface, with some of the language and structures becoming altered, but not the practice of teaching. (Page 21)
The alarm bells for system change rang loudly in 1983 (at least within the United States) with the publication of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) and its memorable phrase that the education system is characterized by “a rising tide of mediocrity.” Unfortunately, neither the report nor what followed presented any ideas on what to do about the dismal situation. (Page 21)
Ironically, given our theme, policymakers seem to find meaning in stating the problems, but they do not find (or do not seem to look for) much meaning in engaging people in the solutions. (Page 23)
The factors reinforcing the status quo are systemic. The current system is held together in many different crosscutting ways. Confronting the isolationism and privatism of education systems is a tall order. It requires intensive action sustained over several years to make it possible both physically and attitudinally for teachers to work naturally together in joint planning; observing one another’s practice; and seeking, testing, and revising teaching strategies on a continuous basis. Reform is not just putting into place the latest policy. It means changing the cultures of classrooms, schools, districts, universities, and so on. There is much more to educational reform than most people realize. (Page 23)
If a healthy respect for and mastery of the change process do not become a priority, even well-intentioned change initiatives will continue to wreak havoc among those who are on the firing line. (Page 24)
The problem of meaning is central to making sense of educational change. In order to achieve greater meaning, we must come to understand both the small and the big pictures. The small picture concerns the subjective meaning or lack of meaning for individuals at all levels of the education system. More and more we are finding the solution in shared meaning, which conveys the idea that change processes that engage individuals and groups to develop new solutions will be essential. In the meantime, the neglect of the phenomenology of change—that is, how people actually experience change as distinct from how it might have been intended—is at the heart of the spectacular lack of success of most social reforms. It is also necessary to build and understand the big picture, because educational change, after all, is a sociopolitical process. (Page 24)
The problem of meaning is one of how those involved in change can come to understand what it is that should change, and how it can be best accomplished, while realizing that the what and how constantly interact with and reshape each other. (Page 25)
The main dilemmas in large-scale reform are all a variation on what I call the too-tight/ too-loose problem. Top-down change doesn’t work because it fails to garner ownership of, commitment to, or even clarity about the nature of the reforms. Bottom-up change—the so-called “let a thousand flowers bloom”—does not produce success on any scale. A thousand flowers do not bloom, and those that do are not perennial! The strategies that are needed have a “bias for action” and pursue this by reconciling and combining top-down and bottom-up forces for change. In our work, we call this strategy capacity building with a focus on results (Page 27)
I consider what I call the traditional model, which traces how specific programs get put into practice, or not. I then add a newer model called the lean startup, in which the change process is more dynamic and especially suited for the digital age (Page 29)
The history of implementation research is not pleasant. It shows that planned change attempts rarely succeed as intended. (Page 29)
I will show that, ironically, in many ways, the more committed an individual is to a specific form of change, the less effective he or she will be in getting others to implement it. As we say, “being right” is not a strategy. (Page 29)
We will also see in the new lean startup model that many innovations are best developed through a fast-paced trial and development process with potential implementers. (Page 30)
Paradoxically, and entirely consistent with the message of this book, planning is more about doing (reflective doing) than it is about pre-action planning. I endorse a bias for action not just because I am committed to change on the ground, but equally because it is only through action that we come to understand and develop the skills and clarity needed to actually make change successful. (Page 30)
The principal is absolutely key when it comes to developing the school (and district) capacity to manage change. Ironically, the more that we have recognized the vital importance of the principal, the more we have overloaded the principalship. Today the problem is to figure out how principals can be supported to become lead change agents. (Page 32)
In many ways we now know what works. Unfortunately, this formulation itself is partly a theory of change rather than of changing—to know what works in some situations does not mean we can get it to work in other situations. (Page 34)
The main reason that change fails to occur in the first place on any scale, and is not sustained when it does, is that the infrastructure is weak, unhelpful, or working at cross-purposes. By the infrastructure I mean the next layers above whatever is the unit of focus. In terms of successive levels, for example, a teacher cannot sustain change if he or she is working in a negative school culture; similarly, a school can initiate and implement successful change, but cannot sustain it if the school is operating in a less-than-supportive district; and a district cannot keep change going in a state that is not committed to sustaining reform. (Page 35)
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Meaning is key, but only if it is shared. And you cannot get shared meaning without purposeful action on many fronts. The subsequent chapters flesh out what this looks like in practice. The good news is that we can identify the characteristics of effective change leaders. The bad news is that skilled change leaders are in short supply. (Page 36)
The Meaning of Educational Change
Although there is a difference between voluntary and imposed change, Marris (1975) makes the case that all real change involves loss, anxiety, and struggle. Failure to recognize this phenomenon as natural and inevitable has meant that we tend to ignore important aspects of change and misinterpret others. (Page 39)
New experiences are always reacted to initially in the context of some “familiar, reliable construction of reality” in which people must be able to attach personal meaning to the experiences, regardless of how meaningful they might be to others. Marris does not see this “conservative impulse” as incompatible with growth: “It seeks to consolidate skills and attachments, whose secure possession provides the assurance to master something new” (p. 22). (Page 40)
No one can resolve the crisis of reintegration on behalf of another. Every attempt to pre-empt conflict, argument, protest by rational planning, can only be abortive: however reasonable the proposed changes, the process of implementing them must still allow the impulse of rejection to play itself out. When those who have power to manipulate changes act as if they have only to explain, and when their explanations are not at once accepted, shrug off opposition as ignorance or prejudice, they express a profound contempt for the meaning of lives other than their own. For the reformers have already assimilated these changes to their purposes, and worked out a reformulation which makes sense to them, perhaps through months or years of analysis and debate. If they deny others the chance to do the same, they treat them as puppets dangling by the threads of their own conceptions. (p. 166) (Page 40)
Dynamic conservatism is by no means always attributable to the stupidity of individuals within social systems, although their stupidity is frequently invoked by those seeking to introduce change. The power of social systems over individuals becomes understandable, I think, only if we see that social systems provide a framework of theory, values and related technology which enables individuals to make sense of their lives. Threats to the social system threaten this framework. (Marris, 1975, p. 51) (Page 41)
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 professional growth. (Page 41)
The bottom line is not so much how we seek change on our own terms, but rather how we handle it when it inevitably occurs. (Page 42)
The picture is one of limited development of technical culture: Teachers are uncertain about how to influence students, and even about whether they are having an influence; they experience students as individuals in specific circumstances who are being buffeted by multiple and differing forces for which generalizations are not possible. Teaching decisions often are made on pragmatic trial-and-error grounds with little chance for reflection or thinking through the rationale. Teachers must deal with constant daily disruptions, both within the classroom, such as managing discipline and interpersonal conflicts, and from outside the classroom, such as collecting money for school events, making announcements, and dealing with the principal, parents, and central office staff. Teachers must get through the daily grind; the rewards are having a few good days, covering the curriculum, getting a lesson across, and having an impact on one or two individual students (success stories). Teachers constantly feel the critical shortage of time. And there are few intensive, ongoing learning opportunities for teachers individually or in concert to deeply acquire new learning concepts and skills. (Page 42)
This “classroom press,” according to Huberman (1983), affects teachers in a number of different ways: It draws their focus to day-to-day effects or a short-term perspective; it isolates them from other adults, especially meaningful interaction with colleagues; it exhausts their energy; and it limits their opportunities for sustained reflection. (Page 44)
As I have said elsewhere (Fullan, 1993, 1999), restructuring (which can be done by fiat) occurs time and time again, whereas reculturing (how teachers come to question and change their beliefs and habits) is what is needed. (Page 44)
Ball and Cohen (1999) and Cohen and Hill (2001) talk about the persistent superficiality of teacher learning: “Although a good deal of money is spent on staff development in the United States, most is spent on sessions and workshops that are often intellectually superficial, disconnected from deep issues of curriculum and learning, fragmented and noncumulative” (Ball & Cohen, 1999, pp. 3–4). (Page 44)
A particularly revealing problem of meaning, or, more accurately, different worlds of meaning, is contained in Timperley and Parr’s (2005) research on the national literacy initiative in New Zealand. The essence of change, they say, revolves around three concepts (which will be familiar to readers of NMEC): beliefs and values, knowledge and skills, and outcomes. What their study demonstrates is that the government’s “theory of change” relative to generating new beliefs, knowledge, and outcomes was different than the schools’ conceptions. Most problematic was that the strategy of change employed failed to engage these two different worlds, and hence failed to produce positive outcomes. All of this is less a criticism of teachers and more a problem of the way in which change is introduced, and especially the lack of opportunity for teachers to engage in deeper questioning and sustained learning. As a result, meaningful reform escapes the typical teacher, in favor of superficial, episodic reform that makes matters worse. (Page 47)
We know that most teachers, even over the length of their careers, do not develop deep learning capacities. Both studies of evidence-based practice (e.g., Hattie, 2009) and assessment of professional learning find time and again that what is learned is not well implemented nor does it go very deep. (Page 48)
Lack of focus and clarity represents what I referred to earlier as the “too-loose” problem. Directly addressing this problem, as many jurisdictions have done, with standards-based reform gets us into the dysfunctions of the “too-tight” solution. (Page 49)
At this stage I draw two basic conclusions. First, change will always fail until we find some way of developing infrastructures and processes that engage teachers in developing and applying new knowledge, skills, and understandings. Second, I am talking not about surface meaning, but rather deep meaning about new approaches to teaching and learning. This deep meaning will not be easy to come by given existing cultures and conditions. More and more, we will see that the future depends on education that provides more active student and teacher engagement in learning—what we will call in Chapter 8 new pedagogies, linked to deeper learning outcomes essential for the 21st century. (Page 49)
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The difficulty is that educational change is not a single entity, even if we keep the analysis at the simplest level of an innovation in a classroom. Innovation is multidimensional. There are at least three components or dimensions at stake in implementing any new program or policy: The possible use of new or revised materials (instructional resources such as curriculum materials, standards, or technologies) The possible use of new teaching approaches (i.e., new pedagogies, especially learning partnerships with students) The possible alteration of beliefs (e.g., pedagogical assumptions and theories underlying particular new policies or programs) (Page 51)
I suggest that the majority of educational innovations extant in the field involve substantial changes with regard to the three components of curriculum, behavior, and beliefs. In fact, innovations that do not include changes on these dimensions are probably not significant changes at all. (Page 53)
The second example concerns the deep and expanding work in cognitive science. The best single source of these new theories is the companion volumes published by the National Academy Press under the title How People Learn (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Donovan, Bransford, & Pellegrino, 1999). Donovan and associates summarize the key findings with respect to students and teachers. With respect to students: Students come to the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information taught, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom. To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must: (a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, (b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and (c) organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application. A “metacognitive” approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them. Concerning teachers: Teachers must draw out and work with the preexisting understandings that their students bring with them. Teachers must teach some subject matter in depth, providing many examples in which the same concept is at work and providing a firm foundation of factual knowledge. The teaching of metacognitive skills should be integrated into the curriculum in a variety of subject areas. (Page 56)
Students and teachers by and large are bored and alienated with traditional schooling. They find little intrinsic meaning currently in schools. Thus, I have argued, the solution must integrate the digital and the learning, meeting four criteria: Be irresistibly engaging for both students and teachers Be elegantly efficient and easy to use Have ubiquitous technology 24/ 7 Be steeped in real-life problem solving (Fullan, 2013b, p. 33) These criteria mean that learning will have to be radically altered in both outcomes and pedagogies. We call the deep-learning outcomes the six Cs: character education, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. In order to address the six Cs, teaching or pedagogy must be changed to what we call a learning partnership between and among students, teachers, and families. (Page 57)
because students (and teachers) are by and large bored or otherwise alienated by traditional schooling, they are attracted to any approaches that are based on engagement—even here we have to be careful as involvement may not mean depth. For this reason we stress “deep learning,” which by definition signifies deep meaning. (Page 58)
developing meaning requires a change process that involves all key actors in a process of continuous learning, assessment, and correction. (Page 58)
The real crunch comes in the relationships between these new ideas and the thousands of subjective realities embedded in people’s individual and organizational contexts and their personal histories. How these subjective realities are addressed or ignored is crucial for whether potential changes become meaningful at the level of individual use and effectiveness. (Page 59)
Rosenholtz describes teachers’ subjective construction of reality as part and parcel of their everyday activities. Her study indicates that schools in which teachers have a shared consensus about the goals and organization of their work are more likely to incorporate new ideas directed to student learning. In contrast, teachers who worked in “low-consensus schools” more commonly “skirted the edge of catastrophe alone,” learning the lesson that they must shoulder classroom burdens by themselves, not imposing on one another. In Rosenholtz’s study, “shared meaning” among teachers and others characterized those schools that were continually improving. (Page 60)
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But unless they were bound together by a moral commitment to growth, empathy, and shared responsibility, teachers were as likely to replicate the prevailing school culture as to change it. Unless they applied their collaboration to educative, caring, socially just, and participatory activities they continued to closely guard their classroom autonomy, be suspicious of the capacity of teaming to divide and balkanize their faculty, and distrust collaboration with those outside the school. (p. 285) (Page 61)
Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) talk about the critical importance of knowledge creation in successful organizations. They found that collaborative cultures constantly convert tacit knowledge into shared knowledge through interaction. (Page 61)
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What I have been saying has nothing to do with the intentions of promoters of change. No matter how honorable the motives, each and every individual who is necessary for effective implementation will experience some concerns about the meaning of new practices, goals, beliefs, and means of implementation. Clear statements at the outset may help, but do not eliminate the problem; the psychological process of learning and understanding something new does not happen in a flash. The presence or absence of mechanisms to address the ongoing problem of meaning—at the beginning and as people try out ideas—is crucial for success, because it is at the individual level that change does or does not occur. Of course, in saying that change occurs at the individual level, it should be recognized that organizational changes are often necessary to provide supportive or stimulating conditions to foster change in practice. (Page 62)
Perhaps the most important conclusion of this chapter is the realization that finding moral and intellectual meaning is not just to make teachers feel better. It is fundamentally related to whether teachers are likely to find the considerable energy required to transform the status quo. Meaning fuels motivation, and know-how feeds on itself to produce ongoing problem solving. Their opposites—confusion, overload, and low sense of efficacy—deplete energy at the very time that it is sorely needed. So far I have dwelled on the problem of meaning in relation to the content of innovations. (Page 62)
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Success is not just about being right; it is about engaging diverse groups and individuals who likely have many different versions about what is right and wrong. (Page 63)
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Insights into the Change Process
We do know one thing: All successful change processes have a “bias for action.” There is a reason for this, which is wrapped up in several related insights. Dewey (1997 edition) mentioned it first when he said that people learn not by doing per se but by thinking about their new doing. Of course, this is right up our “meaning” alley. Ultimately it comes down to what is going on in one’s head, but the stimulation comes from new experiences that give us something new to think and learn about. (Page 66)
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behaviors and emotions often change before beliefs—we need to act in a new way before we get insights and feelings related to new beliefs; (Page 66)
If people were given a literal choice of “change or die,” do you think most people would choose change? If you said yes, think again. Deutschman (2005) writes, “What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think and act, and if you didn’t you would die soon?” The scientifically studied odds that you would change, he writes, are 9 to 1 against you. Medical research shows that 80% of the health-care budget is consumed by five behavioral issues: smoking, drinking, eating, stress, and not enough exercise. (Page 67)
“Behavior change happens mostly by speaking to people’s feelings. In highly successful change efforts, people find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought” (Deutschman, 2005, p. 2). (Page 68)
In “reframing change,” Deutschman argues that we must figure out how to motivate people on the basis of their seeing and experiencing that they can feel better (not, in this case, just live longer). The key, then, is how to help people feel and become better at what they are trying to accomplish. If feelings and emotions are the key factors, one would think that an appeal to moral purpose in situations of terrible failure would be a great motivator. Not so. Even in extremely difficult circumstances, moral purpose by itself is insufficient. One also must feel and see that there is a means of moving forward. (Page 68)
effective change processes shape and reshape good ideas, as they build capacity and ownership among participants. You can see that there are two components: the ideas and capacity/ ownership. If either factor is missing, the change will fail. If you have a good idea and a poor process it will go nowhere (this is why we say “being right is not by itself a strategy of change”). And if you have a good process and good relationships they will amount to nothing if they are not fueled by good ideas. The two aspects are both variables—as a leader you can do something about them. As both get integrated in given situations, the success rate dramatically increases. (Page 69)
The wrong drivers are punitive accountability, individualistic solutions, technology, and ad hoc policies. It is not so much that these four factors have no role to play, but rather they should not be “front-end” drivers. The corresponding right drivers are capacity building, teamwork or collaborative work, pedagogy, and systemic or coordinated policies. (Page 70)
For whole-system reform to occur, lead drivers, as I have said, must get at the motivation and competency development of the vast majority of educators. Accountability measures plus sticks and carrots do not and cannot, ever, accomplish this feat. Higher, clearer standards, combined with correlated assessments, are essential along the way, but they will not drive the system forward. (Page 71)
focusing on individuals. In short, individual rewards and incentives do not motivate the masses. If you want to reach a goal faster, you must invest in capacity building and use the group to get there. Heaps of evidence show that it is the collaborative group that accelerates performance, including squeezing out poor performers as teaching becomes less private and more collaborative (Page 72)
The shift, then, is to the harder job of tapping into and developing intrinsic motivation of the masses, which is harder to get started—but, once unleashed, whole-system reform will move rapidly, including embedding some of the conditions necessary for its own sustainability. (Page 76)
this we need to be exquisitely aware that successful whole-system reform is not just a matter of lofty ambitions, but also of having a clear strategy that stimulates and supports large numbers of people working diligently day after day, monitoring progress, and taking corrective action—and, above all, doing this with the kind of meaning that makes this a deeply satisfying and motivating human endeavor. (Page 78)
A core strategy, then, must be to improve relationships. All successful change initiatives develop collaboration where there was none before. When relationships develop, trust increases, as do other measures of social capital and social cohesion. (Page 78)
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I speak here of the well-known research finding that variations in student achievement are greater across classrooms within a school than across schools. Once you factor out the role of input qualities (that is, once you start to measure the value added by the school), the biggest factor at work is teachers, and this differs from classroom to classroom and school to school. (Page 79)
As we move toward the solution we find, time and again, that it is teachers working together in a focused manner that makes the difference. Social learning and shared meaning are at the center of school and system success. (Page 79)
This emphasis on capacity building at the early stages is consistent with our knowledge about how people change. To secure new beliefs and higher expectations—critical to improvement—people first need new experiences that lead them to different beliefs. (Page 80)
Sobre cómo exponerse a experiencias distintas (y reflexionar sobre ellas) es un factor crítico para promover el cambio en las personas.
Leaders developing other leaders is at the heart of sustainability. This is Hargreaves and Fink’s (2006) third principle, that “sustainable leadership spreads: It sustains as well as depends on the leadership of others” (p. 95). It is the last of my own eight principles of sustainability: “the long lever of leadership” (Fullan, 2005, p. 27). It is why I have concluded, for example, that the main mark of a principal at the end of his or her tenure is not just the impact on the bottom line of student achievement, but, equally, how many good teachers the principal leaves behind who can go even further. You have to be around for a while to accomplish that, and the system must develop leadership succession policies with this goal in mind. (Page 81)
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Data can be empowering or disabling; details, metrics, measurements, analyses, charts, tests, assessments, performance evaluations, report cards, and grades are the tools of accountability, but they are not neutral tools. They do not restore confidence by themselves. What matters is the culture that surrounds them. For losers, this is another sign that they are watched too closely, not trusted, and about to be punished. For winners, they are useful, even vital, means for understanding and improving performance. People embrace tools of accountability when they are in control—when the information empowers them and helps them succeed. (Page 82)
One final and fundamental point: In our successful cases, we see a deep shift from “my” to “our.” In the school, individual teachers stop thinking about “my classroom” and start thinking about “our school.” In the districts, individual school leaders stop thinking about “my school” and start thinking about “our schools or districts.” Across districts, individual district leaders stop thinking about “my district” and start thinking about “our districts, or state, or province.” Across states or provinces, state leaders stop thinking about “my state” and start thinking about “our country.” These developments represent individual and collective responsibility. This phenomenon literally signifies “meaning writ large.” We see here a powerful new phenomenon that we call systemness—the new recognition that each of us must contribute to the betterment of the bigger system, and benefit from it. We are the system! This is what the new meaning of change is all about. (Page 84)