EDLE605 Assignment 1 - Adam Taylor

EDLE 605 Assignment 1 — Adam Taylor 1

With reference to the literature, briefly trace the development of the theory and practice of educational change from the 1970's to the present day. Identify the key elements of emergent

theories of educational change and incorporate them into a framework for approaching educational change in the current context.

Adam Taylor

Assignment 1, EDLE605

Australian Catholic University

Semester 1, 2008


With reference to the literature, briefly trace the development of the theory and practice of educational change from the 1970's to the present day. Identify the key elements of emergent

theories of educational change and incorporate them into a framework for approaching educational change in the current context.

1. With reference to the literature, briefly trace the development of the theory and practice of educational change from the 70's to the present day.

1.1 Michael Fullan’s timeline

Michael Fullan in his 1998 paper The meaning of educational change: a quarter of a century of learning, outlines the development of the theory and practice of educational change of recent decades. (Fullan, 1998, pp. 217-222)

The implementation decade 1972 – 1982: The beginning of the decade acknowledged plenty of change initiatives, but not much actual change. The late 1960s that had preceded had created a period of expanding technological know-how; new and better ways of doing things were becoming available and were taken up as a matter of choice because the choice, suddenly, became an option (cf Miles, 1998, pp. 42-43). As change was top-down, however, it did not take hold. There was little or no cognisance of the fact that change involved unlearning and relearning rather than simply lumping new things on top of old. The era ended with the realisation of the need for the values inherent in any change to be internalised in the user for the change to be sustainable.

The meaning decade, 1982 – 1992: In this period, according to Fullan, a realisation dawned that the meaning associated with educational change needed to be elicited in order for change to be adopted and 'owned'. Fullan notes that “neglect of the phenomenology of change - that is, how people actually experience change as distinct from how it was intended - is at the heart of the spectacular lack of success of most social reform.”

The change capacity decade 1992 - ?: This period has seen an increased focus on the centrality of moral purpose as a critical change theme. If change does not have a moral value in bringing about a better world, in whatever degree that might apply, then it is not change that is worth pursuing. Exploring and articulating the moral purpose of change becomes a critical task in engaging those at the centre of the change and committing them to it. This era also saw a greater capacity for change agents to see — in the need for change — not problems, but opportunities (cf Miles, 1998, p. 56; Snowdon & Gorton, 1998, p. 124). Significantly, House & McQuillan, in their survey of successful change schools, noted the importance of ‘moral vision’ as a factor in their success (cf House & McQuillan, 1998, p. 211).

Matthew Miles, in his 1998 paper Finding keys to school change: a 40-year odyssey, is less concerned with pinpointing dates than he is in identifying the underlying conceptual frameworks that have driven educational change over the previous forty year period (Miles, 1998).

Miles concurs with Fullan’s assessment of the ownership of change being necessary for it to be sustainable. There is a weight of evidence that suggests that externally imposed change doesn't work, whereas local initiatives do (Miles, 1998, p. 38). This needs to be balanced against the


realities that external bodies can be conduits and urgency-generators for change, while school leaders are important initiators of change (Snowdon & Gorton, 1998, p. 122).

Miles identifies the conceptual framework underlying Fullan’s meaning decade as knowledge transfer: the school-based teacher is a constructivist worker seeking to make meaning (cf also Walker & Lambert, 1995). As such, he or she has a thirst for knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer builds capacity for change in individuals as they understand more clearly the problems and the potential solutions. The knowledge transfer model of change saw the building of networks of teachers (Miles, 1998, p. 49). Department head, assistant principal and principal networks are commonly found in NSW schools and grew out of this conceptual framework.

Fullan’s identification of the importance of understanding how change is experienced on the ground (as opposed to theorising about change from a removed professorial position) challenged the ‘Theory Movement’ of earlier decades. The Theory Movement presupposed that in time the researcher would supplant the practitioner as master of the craft of educational leadership (Greenfield and Ribbons, 1993, cited in Gunter & Ribbins, 2003, p. 256). Gunter & Ribbins note that UK researchers generally resisted the grand theorising of their US counterparts (Gunter, 2006, p. 256). This is reminiscent of the conceptually opposed researcher-centric approach and the teacher-centric approach to change, identified by Ernest House in his influential 1979 paper on curriculum change. The former seeks to research, develop and implement curriculum from outside the immediate school framework. The later seeks to embed the curriculum change process within the day-to-day work of the teacher, allowing the change to emerge out of the teacher’s experience of the needs and demands of their immediate situation (cited by Hopkins, Ainscow, & West, 1997, pp. 69-70). House’s dichotomy is somewhat artificial. Both perspectives are needed in carefully considered educational change.

1.2 Instructional versus Transformational Leadershi p

Phillip Hallinger offers a different perspective on the development of school leadership over the last twenty years. He outlines the two conceptual models of instructional leadership and transformational leadership (Hallinger, 2003, p. 329). Unlike earlier educational leadership models, instructional and transformational leadership focus, as they should, on teaching and learning outcomes (Hallinger, 2003, p. 329).

Instructional leadership sought to determine what it was that successful teachers did and how to replicate it. Instructional leadership is characterised by the Principal as coordinator, controller, supervisor and developer of the curriculum (Hallinger, 2003, p. 331). In other words, instructional leadership sought to establish the leader as curriculum guru, a perhaps unachievable or unsustainable goal. Perhaps this model can be realised in the small scale environment of the primary school, but one might question the degree to which it would ever have been possible to implement in the complex environment of the large high school.

There are few studies that affirm any relationship between the hands on Principal curriculum supervisor and student achievement (Hallinger, 2003, p. 333). Ultimately, instructional leadership fell out of vogue in the 1990s, evidently unable to deliver the transformation in schools promised by its proponents (Hallinger, 2003, p. 330).

In fairness to the instructional leadership model, it does include as its third element, the importance of the role of Principal as the promoter of school culture (Hallinger, 2003, p. 332). It is perhaps the


promotion of this element to primary importance that characterises alternative approaches to leadership such as the transformational model.

Alternative models to instructional leadership acknowledge that the principal is not necessarily the prime expert in every area within the staff (Hallinger, 2003, p. 335). This can readily be seen in the current educational context, for example, with respect to information and communications technology (ICT). Without an expert knowledge of the possibilities and limits of ICT, principals have been largely unable, on their own, to envision a future vision for the place of ICT in teaching and learning in their schools.

The alternative to instructional leadership discussed by Hallinger, namely transformational leadership, is typified by shared leadership and the empowerment of others (Hallinger, 2003, p. 330). Transformational leadership differs from instructional leadership in three key dimensions.

It is bottom-up rather than top-down in its approach to educational change

It focussed the leadership on second-order effects, i.e., it creates the conditions for others to effect change.

It focussed on being relational rather than managerial with staff (Hallinger, 2003, p. 337).

‘People effects’ are a cornerstone of the transformational leadership model (Hallinger, 2003, p. 339). This harkens back to the focus of an earlier era. Michael Fullan notes that while the 1950s were quiet on the educational front, they nonetheless recognised the key element of relationships as pivotally important to educational change (Fullan, 1998, p. 215). Mulford & Silns research affirms the significance of transformational leadership that values the work of individual staff, encouraging, supporting and empowering them to be the real agents of change within a school (Mulford & Silns, 2003, p. 179).

Mulford & Silns’ perspective is affirmed by the distributed leadership model of which Alma Harris writes (Harris, 2006, p. 41). Distributed leadership might be viewed as a subset of transformational leadership. Instructional leadership focuses on the leadership undertaken at teacher rather than the principal level, which research indicates is a far more significant factor in affecting student outcomes than principal leadership (Harris, 2006, p. 37). But it is the latter’s empowering transformational leadership that allows for distributed leadership to flower in the first instance.

The second of the features of transformational leadership identified above, namely second-order effects, promotes the significance of benefits to the teacher and the learner being past on through second-order effects. Miles refers to this phenomenon as reflecting the conceptual framework of the healthy organisation. The healthy organisation is ensconced in organisational self-renewal. Miles identifies a driving variable of organisational renewal as feedback to the organization, which leads to self-analysis, reflection and organisational change (Miles, 1998, p. 45).

Miles importantly identifies this conceptual framework as having far greater interest in developing strong adult relationships, helping co-workers work creatively together than any interest in curriculum or pedagogy. This is in marked contrast to the instructional leadership model that has a clear focus on curriculum and pedagogy. Making this important distinction helps to highlight another factor mitigating against the take-up of a transformational. As second-order effects leadership model are not so obvious on the surface, their take up can be less readily accepted in schools (Miles, 1998, p. 48).


Norris et al view transformational leadership as going beyond inter-personal relationships. As individuals who wish to make a difference in the lives of others, transformational leaders understand themselves to be deep social and moral responsibilities (Norris, Barnett, Basom, & Yerks, 2002, p. 76). Conceptualising transformational leadership as servant leadership (Norris et al., 2002, p. 80), they come closer than others to envisioning a model of leadership that reflect the gospel values on which Catholic schools are founded. Ultimately, Norris et al see transformational leadership as framed by a high moral purpose.

Given its nature, “transformational leadership requires a higher tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty from the principal, and an ability to live with the messy process of change.” (Hallinger, 2003, p. 340) To a large degree, transformational leadership is intuitive. The ability to relate to others is something very much a part of the essence of a person’s character; indeed, it is more of the realm of the spiritual dimension of the individual than it is the managerial or mechanical dimension. One could argue that an understanding of teaching as a relational exercise, in the context of the school as church community (Touhy, 2004, pp. 94-96), would suggest that transformational leadership is more in keeping with the purpose of Catholic education. Such a model, however, will never be able to satisfy educational authorities that wish to ‘teacher-proof’ the change process.

1.3 Creeping accountabilities and teacher-proofing educational change

Being able to teacher-proof educational change is a significant phenomenon in the development of the theory and practice of educational change that is not captured by Fullan’s framework quoted above. The US No Child Left Behind program is perhaps the most spectacular recent example of an educational change that has sought to limit teachers to be the mere messengers — deliverers of a narrowly fixed set of curriculum outcomes that have arguably reduced learning outcomes and student and teacher moral in US schools.

The aims of the program are laudable — that education must ensure success for all students, not just the capable. What is most striking about the No Child Left Behind program, however, has been its negative effects. The name, shame and blame approach leads to a fear of failure. Teachers teach to the external accountability tests. Classroom work moves inextricably more narrowly to the mastery of a test. Agencies external to the school have sought to make the educational process ‘idiot-proof’ by prescribing textbooks, ‘scripting of the teaching act’ and lookalike worksheets rote practicing for the final tests (Hattie, 2003, p. 1). (As an aside, this resembles much of the approach to Religious Education in Catholic schools in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s.)

Subjects and areas of school life that do not contribute to test success have been lost in the process in US schools: physical education, art and music, for example. Vocational education and career education have been eaten away as they do not ensure success on the tests. The losers are the very children whom No Child Left Behind seeks to most lift up, that is, those students not necessarily cut out for life in the regular or ‘traditional’ academic classroom (Hattie, 2005, p. 12). In addition to these negative factors, schools seek to exclude or place outside the system by creative means those children who would reduce their test results and shame them. The number of students suspended, held back a class or simply not enrolled in a school as a part of the subtext of the No Child Left Behind reform may never be quantifiable, but is a reality as reported by those who have experienced the system.


1.4 Alternative models of school and the digital re volution

Another recent phenomenon that has captured the interest of writers on educational change is the impact of globalisation on education. Brian Caldwell, in his article Global trends and expectations for the further reform of schools, identifies increased accountabilities, reduced funding and a need for vastly expanded and restructured model of schools and how they interact with the wider community as key trends. The driver of the change, he suggests, must be the utilisation of ICT to effect the radical change (Caldwell, 1997, pp. 243-244). There is no doubting the truth of Caldwell’s quoting of the twenty-first century classroom as being a “pufferbilly locomotive” (Caldwell, 1997, p. 249). Unfortunately, Caldwell indulges in a blame culture, assuming that schools can and should change and that they bloody-mindedly refuse to shift out of old paradigms.

Mark Prensky identifies the problem as one of ‘digital immigrants’ versus ‘digital natives’. The current over-40s twenty-first century teacher, who dominates teaching, is a digital immigrants (cited in Jukes & Dosaj, 2004). This is opposed to the next generation, who are digital natives The over-40s will never be digital natives, no matter how well they learn to ‘speak the language’. Even the over-40s technology innovators are still a handbrake of sorts because digital modes are not their preferred style. Digital immigrants fail to see possibilities or are fearful of the social consequences of new ways of doing things. Note, in this respect and as an example, the banning of mobile phones for students in schools because they are perceived to be antisocial. Where such a rule has existed in schools, particularly as this disruptive technology has become more ubiquitous, there is mass social disobedience from students, who bring the phone to school any way. No consideration is given as to how this technology might be useful in learning.

Digital immigrants parents often lack the basic knowledge to know what their children are doing or where they are going (or even the possibilities) of cyberspace. Many children are the technology administrators in the family home and hold the keys to keep the parents out. Ask the tech-savvy student if they will allow their children the kind of unfettered access they are given and they give, without exception, a resounding “No!” This is changing, and will be different in a generation. In the meantime, we have bred a generation who survived without the moral guidance of an adult generation in the cyberspace they experienced in their own homes.

Schools have not been so naive. But the typical response has been simply to ban. Ban YouTube. Ban MySpace. Ban mobiles. Ban MP3s. The moral and enlightened approach would be for the adult to enter the world of the child and act as their moral guide, helping to build for the child the moral compass that becomes their lifelong companion. This emerging need to provide children a moral compass in cyberspace is in keeping with Fullan’s identification of moral purpose as a critical concept in more recent educational developments around the theory and practice of educational change.

The outcomes for a digital revolution in education that Caldwell has in mind revolve around content knowledge and a skill set that allows them to take their place as instruments of the market machinations of a globalised economy. The problem with Caldwell’s conceptual framework is that the individual is objectified and lost in his construct. In the process, Christian personhood somehow lost too (Touhy, 2004, p. 95). The conceptual framework of the megatrends that he describes does not seem to include the elements of growth in young people, so highly valued in Catholic schools, which are in the affective and spiritual domain. Caldwell acknowledges this affective domain in passing (Caldwell, 1997, p. 244). But the most he goes on to say about it, and its importance in providing ‘connectedness’ for students, is that the arts have been marginalised due to cuts in government funding (Caldwell, 1997, p. 245).


A significant part of the reason for the stubbornness of the traditional form of school that Caldwell rejects is because of what it contributes to the sense of community and growth in young people from a holistic perspective, rather than because of what it takes away from school’s capacity to deliver the kind of education that the market demands of the twenty-first century student. It has value: Not value that the globalised market considers of worth, but value nonetheless.

Many of the megatrends that Caldwell points to in his paper would require a substantial breakup of the opportunity to build community that schools provide for students (and beyond students, the parents of those students). When students come together in the same place at the same time, as they do in the traditional setting, they are able to engage in the dimensions of the hidden curriculum that build community and personal growth in young people. Most of this kind of community building occurs outside the classroom: in the yard during social and play time; in recreational clubs; in sporting teams after school and on sports afternoons or on Saturdays; at liturgies and retreats; at whole school assemblies. Schools with strong learning cultures meet often outside the classroom and have highly ceremonialised and ritualised ways of celebrating achievement and recognising and heralding the school’s stated values. In what way does Caldwell’s vision of the future school cater for the real need for community that schools continue to provide? In highly urbanised environments of the big cities of Australia, the Catholic school may be the best example of community that a child is ever likely to experience. There is a danger that in moving to the challenge of the megatrends that Caldwell identifies, the baby is thrown out with the bathwater.

Despite these criticisms, Caldwell has a legitimate point in seeing the need for schools to both utilise ICT in teaching and learning and interface more creatively and widely with the society at large. Per Dalin’s vision for the 21st century school is more appealing than Caldwell’s because he continues to see a role for schools as a community hub, thus addressing the shortcomings of Caldwell’s view outlined above. Schools, he proposes, must be the meeting place for people of all ages and places “full of activities” that interest, engage and provide opportunities for personal growth and social development (Dalin, 1998, p. 1065). Ultimately, the student of tomorrow may spend less time at school and more time involved in activities and at places that have a strategic alliance with schools.

Dalin’s view is that such is the complexity of learning required of a twenty-first century child that traditional school cannot hope to meet those needs. The school operates alongside the media, peer group and the workplace as the source of knowledge and skills. This reality is here today, but the challenge remains for schools to integrate with the alternative sources of knowledge and skills to provide coherence and meaning for the student (Dalin, 1998, p. 1064).

In this context, schools will need to work politically and strategically at the local level to build alliances that draw on the resources beyond the walls of the traditional school. An inkling of this kind of alliance development is evident in Sydney Catholic schools involvement in BEPs — Business Education Partnerships. These alliances have allowed, for example, for the development of school-workplace partnerships that streamline vocational education students into work placements and seek to integrate workplace/school learning. The arrangements give schools access to resources they cannot provide; for businesses, they have access to the best young cadets, building a future potential future employee base.

1.5 League tabling of schools

Creeping accountabilities and globalism are perhaps most obviously manifested in the so-called ‘league tables’ that match schools against each other at year’s end based on performance in public


examinations. League tables are the provenance of what Zajda describes as “present conservative neoliberal models” that derive their values from the “capital-labour-market organisational system” (Zajda, 2005, p. 18).

John DeCourcy’s work on the NSW Higher School Certificate concurs with a large body of international evidence that league tables, while popular, “amplify tiny and statistically non-significant variations between schools into large differences in rank, is not effective in improving student performance.” (DeCourcy, 2005, p. 99) League tables do nothing to enhance education and much to obfuscate the direction of purposeful educational change. League tables are the product of government pressure which in turn is derived from public pressure (Hattie, 2005, p. 12). A public caught up in the insidious competitive drive that fuels the global market economy mistakes league tables for public accountability and evidence that their public money is being well spent.

2. Identify the key elements of emergent theories o f educational change

2.1 Meaning-making

The search for meaning arises as a significant element in emergent theories of educational change, as evidenced in the brief survey outlined above. Miles’ identification of teachers as constructivist workers helps makes sense of Fullan’s conception of the meaning decade of emergent theories. The failure of grand theories as noted by Gunter & Ribbins suggests a more balanced approach that allows for the interplay between the researcher and the practitioner, in a conversation that is rich and productive.

In an era of high external accountabilities, the onus will be on schools and the vertical educational structures of which they are a part (Fullan, 2005, p. 21) to provide coherence and meaning-making for young people, so that the kaleidoscope of information and skills agents do not create confusion, but are understood to be part of a whole that makes sense and serves a purpose. Creating shared meaning and identifying and articulating a vision will continue to be key qualities of the educational leader (Leithwood & Riehl, 2003, p. 5). Schools cannot do this without building on their existing sense of purpose and set of values. Schools will be the community’s moral compass through the market place of values and competing demands.

2.2 Transformational leadership

Transformational leadership, despite the challenges it faces to its acceptance, offers possibilities to change the way leadership is conceptualised in schools. Helen Gunter’s survey of the UK literature on educational leadership over forty years highlights the slowly evolving conception of educational leadership. The field itself has changed from possessing the label of educational administration, to educational management to, most recently, educational leadership (Gunter, 2004). Transformational leadership is ultimately about the relational qualities of the leader, and this speaks strongly to the Catholic school’s call to be church community.

2.3 Intelligent Accountability

While one emergent practice over recent decades has been to teacher-proof educational change by tightly scripting the processes and outcomes of the proposed change, the failure of such practices has been illustrated above by reference to the US No Child Left Behind program. Michael Fullan notes the reality of the tension between ‘local ownership' and the growing 'external accountability'


realities of recent times. The answer to balancing the competing demands of local ownership and external accountability is, on the one hand, 'a mixture of networks and collaboration' and 'intelligent accountability. Fullan borrows the term ‘intelligent accountability’ from David Miliband Minister of State for School Standards in Britain. Intelligent accountability involves building the vertical structures associated with schools. Examples might be Catholic Education Office, Department of Education, etc. These vertical structures need to be strengthened not just to strengthen public accountability, but also to provide leadership and support for educational reform. The vertical balance is hard to achieve. Too much vertical involvement devalues and demoralises people. Too little allows people and schools as institutions to drift or stagnate (Fullan, 2005, pp. 19-20).

A key tool being reapplied in UK schools (having been around for some twenty years) is school self-review instruments. The influence of UK research is evident in the Sydney Catholic Education Office's third cycle of educational audit, called School Review and Improvement. Drawing on a Scottish model, it calls on schools annually to utilise a self-review instrument to set themselves an improvement agenda for the following academic year.

Fullan acknowledges that the task of achieving the right balance of control and accountability between school-based personnel and the education agents external to the school (the vertical partners) is complex and difficult. However, in order to move towards sustainable change, each must work in a 'codependent partnership'.

2.4 The digital revolution and the re-conceptualisa tion of schooling

The imperative for schools to better utilise the technology available to them to expand schooling beyond the walls of the traditional classroom is captured well by Per Dalin. He conceptualises the school as a meeting place for people of all ages, a place full of activity, that significantly utilises ICT to provide interest, engagement and provide opportunities for personal growth and social development (Dalin, 1998, p. 1065). This concept addresses both the market-driven need for change as well as the spiritual and emotional need for schools, particularly Catholic schools, to serve society as meaning-making community builders that offer a counter-cultural view of the world (Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, 1992, p. 23). The ability of the current generation of over-40 digital immigrants to achieve this is in doubt. That group’s awareness of their limitations and their willingness to engage a younger generation of digital natives is integral to success.

3. A framework for approaching educational change i n the current context

3.1 The conceptual framework within which one opera tes makes a difference

Sven De Maeyer (et al) illustrate the importance of a conceptual model in educational leadership. Their research indicates that the measurable effectiveness of leadership on student achievement is differs depending on the conceptual model applied (De Maeyer, Rymenans, Van Petegem, Bergh, & Rijlaarsdam, 2007).

Gunter & Ribbins outline a variety of ‘knowledge provinces’. The list is useful in as much as it helps to clarify the different interests and perspectives that both practitioners and research might bring to the table when they reflect on educational change. For example, the researcher on the history of educational change may operate within the conceptual knowledge province, “concerned with issues of ontology and epistemology.” The practitioner interested in making the school-place a


counter-cultural social voice may operate within the critical knowledge province, “concerned to reveal and emancipate practitioners from injustice and oppression of established power structures” and so on (Gunter & Ribbins, 2003, p. 262). These are as much conceptual frameworks for effecting educational change as much as they are knowledge provinces in the study of educational change. (That is to say, as much about the ‘doing’ of educational change as they are about the ‘study’ of educational change.)

This idea is similar to Blenkin, Edwards & Kelly’s observation that there are a number of useful lenses through which educational change can be viewed — for example, technological, political, cultural or structural (Blenkin, Edwards, & Kelly, 1997). There are elements of each of these lenses in the survey of the emergent theories outlined above. House and McQuillan claim that ultimately school reforms will fail if they neglect the interaction of technological, political and cultural forces at work in educational change processes (House & McQuillan, 1998, pp. 200, 212). For example, a technical reform fails because it has not sufficiently taken account of the political or cultural perspectives.

3.2 Caveats to conceptual frameworking

One must be cautious, then, in putting forward a framework for educational change, because if such a framework does not account of the variety of perspectives or lenses on change, then it is open to the valid criticism that it is narrow in focus and as such will not be vigorous enough to meet the challenges of the resistance that comes as a part of all change processed (cf Hargreaves, 1998, pp. 281-282; Snowdon & Gorton, 1998, p. 129).

3.3 Connecting change to values

Thomas Sergiovanni is sceptical about change that is more about the aggrandizement of a policy-making elite, as they seek the perfect panacea for the ills of modern schooling, than it is about school improvement (Sergiovanni, 2000, p. 57). He does see, however, tremendous importance in change that can in fact not only improve school but also “protect and preserve things that are valued” (Sergiovanni, 2000, p. 61)

3.4 A framework for the current context

In his article The future of educational change: system thinkers in action, Michael Fullan outlines eight elements of a new framework for educational change (Fullan, 2006). Drawing on this framework and mindful of the key elements of emergent theories of educational change that have been discerned above, I propose a framework for educational change that will guide my response to the second half of this task, assignment two, which will describe and justify the capabilities appropriate to leading educational change in the context of Catholic education.

1. Leadership must have a moral purpose: Educational leadership as a provider of meaning in the increasingly diverse values marketplace has been recognised. Meaning-making makes in the context of the constructivist nature of teaching and learning. Only leadership with a moral purpose can provide the compelling justification for change that teachers must have in order to become willing participants as change agents. The first and central question that must be asked of any proposed change must be “what are the values that this change will preserve or bring about?” In the twenty-first century, the new world order skill for children will be to face “uncertainty and ambiguity without disorientation” (Burford, 2001, p. 3) Leaders with moral integrity can provide the this.


2. Leadership must be relational: Relational leaders listens to others and trusts their views and professionalism. Relational leadership is the precursor to achieving distributed leadership which has the greatest power to effect the greatest change in the classroom. Forming powerful professional relationships is the beginning of the empowerment of others which builds the capacity of an organisation to effect change. Relational leadership is a model that closely accords with the gospel principles and values espoused by the Catholic school. A most significant part of transformational leadership, as pointed out by Norris et al, is care (Norris et al., 2002). Care of self, care of others, care for the values for which the community stands.

3. Context matters: It will be nearly impossible to create the lighthouse school that interacts with the community and fully utilises ICT simply by placing computers around a classroom wall and placing an ad in the newspaper. In other words, a sometimes radical rethink of the entire context in which the proposed change is to happen is necessary in order to ensure the sustainability of the change. Letting go of traditional notions of what the classroom must look like are important to success. Structures in a school make a difference. They influence students, teachers and parents alike as to what is the natural way to act (in that environment). An example will illustrate the point. At a conference, if one name tags read Janeen Lamb, Professor and another reads Adam Taylor, student, a social environment has been created that will influence the language register used, even the names that these individuals use in of each other (“Yes, Professor.” “No, Adam.”) This will seem natural enough, but there is nothing natural about it. Consider what might be different in the exchange were the name tags Janeen and Adam respectively — no surnames, with a smiley face printed adjacent the name. The exchange would be quite different.

4. Educational leaders must be connected to their peers and the vertical structures in which they operate: The history of education change theory and practice outlined above strongly suggests that action needs to take place at the local level in order to be effective. At the same time, though, awareness of the social, cultural and political forces at play in society are essential. No educational institution or leader operates in isolation. The school-based educational leader needs to be both change-deliverer and change-agitator. Achieving this requires engagement with a network of peers that can reflect on trends and needs and envision a future outside the norms of the present reality. It is what Michael Fullan quotes as the ability “to be simultaneously on the dance floor and the balcony” (Fullan, 2006, p. 114). Fullan’s term is “System thinkers in action.” In order to ‘think globally and act locally’ the educational leader must be connected to the networks that allow for the expansion of his or educational thinking, challenging preconceptions and opening up new conceptual doorways. Given the importance of educational authorities in an era or high public accountability, it is essential that leaders are in touch with these vertical authorities, to both understand and influence their agendas.

5. Allow risk, encourage experimentation, do not fear failure : An environment that encourages experimentation and risk-taking has the capacity to make small changes quickly and adaptively learn from its mistakes. By analogy, the spectacular success of the Open Source software movement is evidence of the effectiveness of this change framework. While closed source software houses were releasing a new software version a year, at its peak Linux was issuing new versions more than once a week. Opening the change process to all levels of programmers and users, they began a process of evolutionary change in computing that has impacted on the very way in which modern software is written, traded and distributed (Raymond, 2002). Allowing risk and encouraging experimentation is a dimension of transformational leadership, in that it empowers others to enact change at their level.


6. Maintain a commitment short-term and long-term results: Short-term achievements provide the fuel to sustain the movement towards the longer-term desired outcome. Without the former, the latter will never be achieved. Failure to keep an eye on the long-term goal, though, will results in stagnation or loss of direction.

What drives the conceptual framework outlined above is values and moral purpose. It is only a values-based approach to change that can hope to be broad enough and all encompassing enough to account for the cultural, social, political and technical realities that are encountered in the process of change. Values and a moral purpose are what many would identify in the highly valued concept of integrity (Duignan & Bhindi, 1997, p. 195). A values-based approach to educational change will be the focus of my follow-up assignment.

This six point conceptual framework outlined here addresses the needs evidenced in the key elements of emergent theories of educational change outlined in section two of this paper. In my next assignment, I will utilise this six point conceptual framework to describe and justify the capabilities appropriate to leading educational change in the context of Catholic education. This will be done by reference to a change process in my own educational context. Through example and field evidence, substance will be given to those elements of the six point conceptual framework that have been implemented in my local context. The framework will also provide a context to discuss and critique the roadblocks to change and what might be done to address them.

Bibliography

Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. (1992). The social teaching of the Church. In Common Wealth for the Common Good (pp. 13-29). North Blackburn, Victoria, Australia: Collins Dove.

Blenkin, G., Edwards, G., & Kelly, A. (1997). Perspectives on educational change. In A. Harris, N. Bennett & M. Preedy (Eds.), Organizational effectiveness and improvement in education (pp. 216- 230). Buckingham: Open University Press.

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EDLE605 Assignment 1 - Adam Taylor