4) History of intensive educational change is less than fifty years old
4) National Training Laboratories (NTL, 1950s); improvement of relationships (Fullan, 2001).
5) Progressives; good ideas travel on their own; but, large Scale is elusive
5) Federal government launches large-scale national curriculum reform
5) Man, a course of Study (MACOS), open plan schools, flexible scheduling, team teaching
5) By the 1970s, the yield is miniscule
5) Fullan and Pomfret (1977); first major review of research; failure of reform
6) Civil rights movement looks at disadvantaged
6) Not much progress has been made since the 1960s
6) Conclusion: Educational system and its partners have failed to produce citizens who can contribute to and benefit from a world that offers enormous opportunity…
7) Large-scale reform has returned in the 1990s
7) Forces reinforcing the status quo are systemic
7) What is needed now: changing the cultures of classrooms; joint planning; observation; continuously revising practice…
8) The little picture of piecemeal change; the big picture of comprehensive change is essential
8) phenomenology of change; the meaning of how they experience it
8) The “what” and the “how” of change
8) Solutions must come through the development of shared meaning
9-16) Plan of the book
16) Unfinished business of Dewey: Schools were to become counter-cultural agencies that would “correct the human and social devastation of industrial capitalism” (Cohen, 1998, p. 427).
16) Schools are a much more conservative agency for the status quo than a revolutionary force for transformation
17) To become committed to the development of social and intellectual capital is to understand the goal of moral purpose; to address it productively is to delve into the intricacies of complexity and change.
17) Turn around schools: Elementary = 3 years; high school = 6 years; school district = 8 years; college = 9 years; graduate school, can’t be done;)
18) Can intensive change occur, yes
18) Examples of turnaround are small
18) Results are fragile because infrastructure around change is weak
18) Transform the system
19) Finding meaning in complex systems is as difficult as it is rewarding

CHAPTER 2 - SOURCES OF EDUCATIONAL CHANGE

21) Bryk (1998); Christmas tree problem, projecting out meaninglessly
22) Innovation overload reigning down from hierarchical bureaucracies
22) Urban districts engaged in as many as 11 major initiatives of reform
22) Principals/teachers: “we don’t want anything else, we are over our heads.”
23) Multiple innovations collide
23) Silencing the voices of teachers and children
23) “It is as if the ‘whole child’ has become a stick figure” (McNeil, 2000, p. 733)
23) Haney (forthcoming) 1978 in Texas, 70% Whites, 60% Latinos graduate; 1999 in Texas, 75% Whites and 50% Latinos graduate
24) Innovations—even promising-looking ones—turn out to be burdens in disguise
25) Innovations abound — Catalogue of school reform Models (NWREL, 1998); American Institutes for Research (AIR, 1999); Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program (Feds); New American Schools (NAS, 1991-); Charter Schools; Annenberg Challenge; National literacy and Numeracy Strategy (NLNS, England)
26) National Research Council (NRC): (1) Teaching that builds on student’s prior learning; (2) teaching for deep understanding; (3) Effective transfer of knowledge to new situations; (4) Building an environment that supports learning (NRC, 1999, 24-28)

CHAPTER 3 - THE MEANING OF EDUCATIONAL CHANGE

30) All real change involves loss, anxiety, and struggle (Marris, 1975)
31) No one can resolve the crisis of reintegration on behalf of another…the process of implementing them must still allow the impulse of rejection to play itself out (Marris, 1975, p. 166).
31) Dynamic Conservatism (Marris, 1975, p. 51)
33) Huberman’s “the press of teaching”
34) Stigler and Hiebert’s (1999) the teaching gap reveals low-level content and miss-applied reform ideas with no change in teaching practice.
36) Rational solutions ignore cultures of schools
36) General goals and standardized requirements
37) Abstract goals asking teachers to operationalize them leads to false clarity
37) Painful unclarity comes from undeveloped meanings of change
39) Change is multi-dimensional and involves: Materials, teaching approaches, and beliefs
46) Rosenholtz’s (1989) shared meaning teachers were more likely to change
46) Oakes’ (1999) shared moral commitments

CHAPTER 4 - THE CAUSES AND PROCESSES OF INITIATION

50) Initiation, Implementation, continuation
51) Outcomes: Student Learning and Organization Capacity
52) Change is a process, not an event
53) Multiple innovations
54) Since 1983 the struggle is between standardization and Restructuring
54) Program clarity and quality are big problems
55) AIR’s review of 24 models
55) Quality is difficult to assess and agree upon
55) Greater definitions and more specific implementation examples of Success for All, and Victoria, BC
57) Access to information is important
58) Advocacy from central district or school administrators is crucial
59) Teacher Advocacy
59) Teachers have less personal contact with innovative ideas
59) Most teachers innovate!
59) Change Literature under-reports thousands of small changes teachers make everyday
60) Professional Learning communities
61) External change agents
62) Community pressure
63) Problem-solving versus bureaucratic safety
64) Adoption versus implementing
66) Initiation dilemma: majority agreement versus being assertive
66) Hatch (2000) observes that the agreement may be more likely to reflect how effective the campaigns for and against a proposed program have been rather than to demonstrate whether or not a school actually has learned enough about a program to make an informed choice or to embark on successful implementation (p. 38).
67) Ideally, local capacity is developed at the school level.

CHAPTER 5 - CAUSES/PROCESSES OF IMPLEMENTATION AND CONTINUATION

70) Change is a learning experience for the adults involved
72) Interactive factors affecting implementation: A, B, C
72) A/ Characteristics of change: Need, clarity, complexity, quality/practicality
72) B/ Local characteristics: District, community, principal, teacher
72) C/ External factors: Government and other agencies
72) Examples of implementation: ECS (1999); Education Trust (1999)…
75) Need
76) Clarity
77) Complexity
77) Quality and practicality of the program
80) School district
82) Board and community characteristics
82) Principal
83) The role of teachers
84) Little (1981): School Improvement happens when:

• Teachers engage in frequent, continuous, and increasingly concrete talk about teaching practice
• Teachers and administrators frequently observe and feedback developing shared language
• Teachers and administrators planned, designed, and evaluated materials and practices together

88) Continuation fails for lack of interest, money, or Principal’s support
88) Continuation works when project’s special status transitions to core
89) Problems of continuation, or “longevity of reform,” persist to this day
89) Infrastructure is All
90) Continuation worries: Oversimplify, pathways, passion and commitment
91) Continuation depends on four factors:

• Active initiation and participation
• Pressure and support
• Changes in behavior and beliefs
• Over-riding problem of ownership
  

CHAPTER 6 - PLANNING, DOING, COPING WITH CHANGE

96) Commitment to what should be changed often varies inversely with knowledge about how to work through a process of change
96) Educational change is the process of coming to grips with the multiple- realities of people
97) Innovators need to be open to the realities of others
98) GBS: “Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity”
98) Wise (1977) hyperrationalization leads to wishful thinking
99) Resistors have some good ideas, ignore them at your peril
100) Gurus cultivate dependent disciples, not independent thinkers
100) charisma of certainty entraps the uncertain child latent in all of us
101) Complex problems is rocket science
102) Chaos: all organizations are paradoxes
103) Managers have to use reasoning by analogy
103) Managers create and Discover their environments and the long-term futures of the organizations
105) Four logical types of change situations
108) Ten dos and don’ts
110) The scope of change: get Policy on the books; we must do large-scale

CHAPTER 7 - THE TEACHER

115) Classrooms and schools become effective when
(1) quality people are recruited to teaching and
(2) the workplace is organized to energize teachers and reward accomplishments
115) Professionally rewarding work-place conditions attract and retain good people
117) Goodlad (1984), “We want it all”
118-120) Lortie (1975) found that:
(1) teacher training does not equip teachers for the realities of the classroom; tension between task-oriented control and the relational reaching-the-student aspect,
(2) cellular organization of classrooms,
(3) teachers do not develop a common technical culture: a shared body of viable knowledge and practice
(4) when teachers do get help, the most effective source tends to be fellow teachers, and secondly administrators and specialists,
(5) effectiveness of teaching is gauged by their own informal, general observation of students,
(6) Greatest reward: “psychic rewards,” a time they reached a student
(7) striking success with one student is predominant source of pride,
(8) the predominant feeling of teachers is uncertainty,
(9) additional work time would be spent on individualistic classroom activities because of a feeling of unfinished work.
121) Goodlad (1984), The theme of autonomous isolation stands out.
121) Rosenholtz (1989), 65 of the 78 schools were, “stuck” or “learning impoverished”
122) Hargreaves (1995), “the intensification of teachers’ work”
123) Increase teacher capacity for change
123) Isolation vs. Collegiality
124) Significant educational change consists of changes in beliefs, teaching style, and materials, which can come about only through a process of personal development in a social context
124) Primacy of personal contact
124) Professional Learning Community, or collaborative work cultures (Fullan & Hargreaves, 1992)
125) Rosenholtz (1989) collaborative work cultures in 13 “moving,” or “learning- enriched” environments: teacher learning, teacher commitment, teacher certainty, teacher collaboration, shared school goals, student learning.
127) assessment Literate (Hargreaves & Fullan, 1998)
128) Restructuring of teachers’ work (Bryk et al., 1998, p. 128)
130) Three patterns of teaching practice (1) Enacting traditional practice in which traditional student do well, (2) lowering expectations and standards, and (3) innovating to engage learners (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001, p. 13).
136) Reculturing the teaching profession – everyone is implicated

CHAPTER 8 - THE PRINCIPAL

137) Effective principals attack incoherence (Bryk et al., 1998)
137) In the field of education, everyone feels misunderstood
138) The principal is the gatekeeper of change
139) The discouragement felt by principals in attempting to cover all the bases
140) Principals need autonomy and support (Duke, 1988, p.312)
141) I know of no improving school that doesn’t have a principal who is good at leading improvement (Sammons, 1999)
142) Successful principals had:

1. Inclusive, facilitative orientation,
2. Institutional focus on student learning,
3. Efficient management,
4. Combined pressure and support (Bryk et al., 1998)

145) Newmann et al. (2000) define school capacity as consisting of teachers’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions; professional community; program coherence; technical resources; principal leadership. The role of the principal is to cause the previous four factors to get better and better.
148) Goleman’s (2000) anlaysis of 3,871 executives identified six leadership styles:

1. Coercive
2. Authoritative
3. Affiliative
4. Democratic
5. Pacesetting
6. Coaching

Corercive and pacesetting negatively affected climate.
150) Six prescriptive practices for principals:

• Steer clear of false certainty
• Base risk on security
• Respect those you want to silence
• Move toward the danger in forming new alliances
• Manage emotionally as well as rationally
• Fight for lost causes
  

CHAPTER 9 - THE STUDENT

151) They think of achievement, results, skills, attitudes, and jobs. They rarely think of students as participants in a process of change and organizational life.
152) The new common ground for both cognitive scientists and sociologists concerns motivation and relationships, that is, it is only when school operates in a way that connects students relationally in a relevant, engaging, and worthwhile experience that substantial learning will occur.
156) Somewhere, I suspect, down in the Elementary School, probably in the fifth and sixth grades, a subtle shift occurs. The curriculum—subjects, topics, textbooks, workbooks, and the rest—comes between the teacher and student.
162) But more than that, involving students in constructing their own meaning and learning is fundamentally pedagogically essential—they learn more, and are more motivated to go even further.

CHAPTER 10 - THE DISTRICT ADMINISTRATOR

175) District 2, Tony Alvarado and Reculturing: Seven organizing principles:

1. It’s about instruction and only instruction
2. Instructional improvement is a long multi-stage process involving awareness, planning, implementation, and reflection
3. Shared expertise is the driver of instructional change
4. The focus is on system-wide improvement
5. Good ideas come from talented people, working together
6. Set clear expectations, then decentralize
7. Collegiality, caring and respect

177) Chicago’s four critical exraschool functions must be developed:

1. Policy making to support decentralization
2. A focus on local capacity-building
3. A commitment to rigorous accountability
4. Stimulation of innovation (Bryk et al., 1998, pp. 279-281)

183) It seems clear that administrators in the districts that are improving avoid pointless and distracting arguments about centralization and decentralization. Instead, they spend a lot of time building a sense of urgency and support in specific schools and communities around issue of standards and performance.

CHAPTER 11 - THE CONSULTANT

186) Change becomes “one damned thing after another.” Planned change becomes the preoccupation of the administrators who continue to try to fix the system. For teachers, change becomes a matter of coping with the management’s penchant for educational fads (Baker and associates).
187) We do consistently find that improving school and districts reaches outside the school.
187) Stokes, Sato, McLaughlin and Talbert (1997) found that those models of reform that go high marks for focusing on both Pedagogy and local context got better results in terms of student learning.
188) “Theory-based Change” (McLaughlin and Mitra, 2000) has five key components:

1. Resources
2. Knowledge of first principles
3. A supportive community of practice
4. A supportive principal
5. A compatible school district

190) Hill’s models of change found that all contained “zones of wishful thinking”
191) Conditions under which reforms worked need replicating:
Analogy is implementation is 25% good ideas and 75% figuring out how to put them in place; effective consultancy is 25% having good products and 75% helping to develop local conditions. Success stories are success stories because they replicate the conditions which give rise to the reform in the first place (Healey & De Stefano, 1997).
193) Block places special emphasis on implementation…so start measuring your work by the optimism and self-sufficiency you leave behind. Consulting is fundamentally an educational and capacity-building function (p. 324).
195) Thus the first order of business is to combine good ideas (theories of learning) and being very sophisticated about the complexities of relationships and motivations (theories of change) and with the more difficult process of building commitment over time.

CHAPTER 12 - THE PARENT AND THE COMMUNITY

198) The closer the parent is to the education of the child, the greater the impact on child development and educational achievement.
199) Coleman’s (1998) “the power of three” (parent, student, and teacher).
202) Epstein (1998) identifies six types of school and parent involvement:

1. Parent skills
2. Communication
3. Volunteering
4. Learning at home
5. School decision making
6. Collaboration with communities agencies

214) Hargreaves and Fullan suggest four guidelines for parents:

1. Press governments to create the kind of teachers you want
2. Leave nostalgia behind you
3. Ask what you can do for your school as well as what your school can do for you
4. Put praise before blame
   

CHAPTER 13 - GOVERNMENTS
CHAPTER 14 - PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION OF TEACHERS
CHAPTER 15 - Professional Development OF EDUCATORS
CHAPTER 16 - THE FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL CHANGE