I am sorry to hear how poorly change worked out in your school. For one thing, change needs time to take root. You can not decide if it is successful in one year. You need a minimum of three years. Also, as others have stated, you need to choose the best way to measure the success of your school's changes. The choice of how to measure success has a lot to do with the
goals you set for the change. What kinds of change were you trying to implement? What tools align with those types of changes? Standardized test scores are not always the most appropriate measures for a whole host of innovations. It is usually the default one that is chosen without any thought.
Change is very difficult. Change involves a lot of unlearning, giving up ways of enacting our work that are comfortable and taking risks. There is a preliminary process that must take place where everyone is involved in thinking about the "change" or innovation and what it entails. The current culture of the school may be upended with the change and that needs to be reviewed and discussed. The school culture that has been built up can be a barrier to successful implementation of change or innovation. Seymour Sarason has written about this in a book written many years ago (1971),
The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change.I would like to add another book and a chapter in a business book that addresses issues dealing with innovation. I would rather think about this as innovation, rather than change as a whole.
Ann Pelo and Margie Carter's book,
From Teaching to Thinking: A Pedagogy for Reimagining Our Work, from Exchange Press. This book is a beautifully written and thoughtful analysis of how to guide everyone who is associated with a school through reimagining and rethinking their work.
Chapter 8 in Clayton M. Christensen"s book,
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, from Harvard Business Review Press.
Chapter 8 in Christensen's book examines areas of an organization that need to be appraised in order to determine what structures and supports the organization needs in order to proceed with innovation. Leaders need to examine the organization's capabilities through a framework that Christensen put forward. He claims that there are three factors in his framework that must be examined that affect what an organization can and cannot do: its resources, processes, and values.
In addition, books and papers written by Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves, together and individually, deal extensively with issues related to change.
I hope this helps.
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Nora Krieger, PhD
Associate Professor Emerita/Past Chair NJEEPRE
Bloomfield College/NJ Educators Exploring the Practices of Reggio Emilia
Highland Park, NJ
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-15-2020 08:55 AM
From: Elizabeth Menninga
Subject: Implementing and sustaining change in schools
Catherine,
In case it might be helpful, I wanted to share an Exchange article that my colleagues and I wrote about sustaining change in a program. This was a complex professional development initiative implemented in a Head Start program, so there may be some parallels and useful information for you. I'd be happy to talk further if you wanted to connect via e-mail, please let me know.
Here is the article: https://www.childcareexchange.com/catalog/product/sustaining-change-in-every-classroom/5017840/
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Beth Menninga
St. Paul, MN
Original Message:
Sent: 01-13-2020 04:10 AM
From: Catherine Akpan
Subject: Implementing and sustaining change in schools
Hello everyone,
Recently, the institution where I work experienced a complex change initiated at the school level that wasn't successful at the end. This left staff overwhelmed and stressed as there were too many things to handle all at once. I am currently reading up to gain insight into why it failed even though the vision behind the change was welcomed by all. If anyone has any ideas on how to successfully implement and sustain change or has any change model that has worked for them, I will be grateful if you could share your ideas or thoughts.
Thanks
Catherine
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Catherine Akpan
Teacher/Instructional coach
FCT
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