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The first two papers, by Fullan and Stiegelbauer, address our understanding of how systems work and change and new paradigms that move us away from an organizational basis for understanding education to an understanding of education as an individual-driven, learner- centered activity.
Michael Fullan's paper, "Coordinating Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategies for Educational Reform", begins by reviewing the failure of top-down and bottom-up reforms to effect change when undertaken separately. Fullan makes the argument for combining the strengths of each to create a more comprehensive and coherent model for change. With the framework for change from above and the flexibility from below, effective change can take place. This change is largely the work of individuals working together. Learning new behaviors, Fullan argues, is the result of personal interactions. This reculturation probably precedes and is more important to change than is organizational restructuring itself.
Suzanne Stiegelbauer directs our attention to four critical elements of change: people, practices, process and policies in her paper "Change Has Changed: Implications for Implementation of Assessments from the Organizational Change Literature". She focuses on the importance of people especially, noting the highly personal character of change and its underlying evolutionary qualities. Her paper makes us realize that we are engaged in changing the way people think about not only what they are doing and but who they are in that process. If people can positively engage change, the somewhat organic and "messy" business of changing for the better can be furthered. This must be done in a context of useful practices and enabling policy support that allows all the actors to work together.
The next three papers, by Cambone, by Wohlstetter, Smyer and Mohrman and by Little, give us new understandings of how to reconsider the organization of school and learning and the role of the individual, in particular teachers, in generating effective change.
Joseph Cambone has raised a fundamental question about how we approach our efforts at reforming the education system: Do we envision time, as seen by individuals in that system, in a way that will allow them to carry out reform? While many theories of and policies for reform understand the need to use time in new ways, Cambone in "Time for Teachers in School Restructuring", suggests that there are three constructs of time - the rational, the phenomenological and the cyclical, and many subsets of these, that need attention if reform is to succeed. Using a metaphor of meshed gears, in which teachers experience various kinds of time, usually simultaneously, Cambone argues that the individual's experience of time is a powerful determinant of effective reform.
Priscilla Wohlstetter, Roxane Smyer and Susan Mohrman have looked beyond the traditional approach of devolving power through school based management as a lever for reform to a broader definition of the necessary resources for effective reform. "New Boundaries for School-Based Management: The High Involvement Model", uses the construct from E. E. Lawler's book, High Involvement Management, that identifies four resources needed to make school based management a powerful lever for reform. In addition to devolving power, knowledge and skills must be developed, information about the context and goals of the organization must be available, and rewards must be based on performance. They looked at four districts that, to differing degrees, exhibited high involvement management coupled with a push for curriculum and instruction reform. They found that success was tied to more shared power among many participants, extensive training to take advantage of opportunities and a system of collaboration and information sharing. For a number of reasons, extrinsic rewards did not figure into the equation for a successful change effort. The authors then raise the question of whether sustained change can be expected without these extrinsic rewards.
In her paper Judith Warren Little highlights the contradiction between the dominant training model of professional development and the requirements of the current reform movement. "Teachers' Professional Development in a Climate of Educational Reform", rightly points out the need for a new focus on the development of teachers' abilities to integrate reform broadly into their individual teaching context. Collaboration of various kinds is needed that leads to individual interaction, support, and personal and intellectual growth. The complexity of the current reform is a challenge to the teacher both as an individual and an actor in the system. By attending to the development of teachers, we begin to move away from the institutional perspective to the individual perspective on change.
The final three papers by David, Shields and Tharp bring to the table necessary new considerations that must be addressed if effective change is to be managed, not just for the present, but for the future. While much of our effort in reform is directed toward understanding and redirecting the current phenomenon of education, there are rapidly appearing in our education system forces that will necessarily redirect our energies. These last three papers suggest ways in which we might manage this with more, rather than less, understanding.
Jane David makes the point in her paper, "Realizing the Promise of Technology: The Need for Systemic Reform", that changing the goals, structure and supports of the education system are critical prerequisites to effectively harnessing the power of technology to promote change. Technology itself is not the answer to questions of reform, but can be a powerful part of the answer. However, it must be accessible, functional and be supported by proper training. David provides some rules of thumb for thinking about the use of technology in terms of ongoing planning, decentralized decision making, professional development and equity issues. But David warns that the larger and more difficult agenda of reform must move ahead if we are to make effective use of technology in its behalf.
Pedagogically, politically, and practically, argues Patrick Shields, schools and communities will have to be brought together as school reform moves into the 21st century. His paper, "Bringing Schools and Communities Together in Preparation for the 21st Century: Implications of the Current Educational Reform Movement for Family and Community Involvement Policies", argues that public policy must include families and communities more directly in the education of all students, just as earlier programs and policies directed inclusion of a variety of non-mainstream parents and communities. He bases his argument on research on past inclusion efforts that shows a positive relationship between parent and community involvement and improved educational outcomes. But now that schools are seen as not working very well for any students, we must apply these lessons more broadly. This breaking down of the long standing barriers between school and community derives also from new understandings of how learning best takes place. Shields provides a set of 7 public policies that will promote and support further family and community involvement in schools and bolster current efforts at broad based reform of education.
The final paper in the volume, "Research Knowledge and Policy Issues in Cultural Diversity and Education", by Roland Tharp, addresses a problem that will become increasingly important in the future if demographic projections are correct. The problem is summarized in the four questions he addresses in his paper: 1) Can we account for important current student features in term of the historical forces operating on his or her ancestors in a time frame of hundreds to thousands of years and can this contribute to the design of effective programs? 2) Are culture members privileged in the capacity to teach, administer or investigate the education of their children? 3) Are there forms of education that are specifically or uniquely suited for the treatment of children of different cultures? or 4) Are there general or universal forms of schooling and teaching that will equally and adequately address students of diverse cultures? Despite the answers to the first three questions that suggest the possibility for a highly fragmented system of schooling, Tharp's resolution of the fourth question yields four principles that bring the diversity of the population together in a way that enriches all and promotes current approaches to effective learning.
[A More Personal Education System: The Future]