Managing Change and the Language of Change

Abstract

Talk of educational reform and of the importance of ‘the management of change’ in education as well as other dimensions of public life is still widespread, even if it now has to compete with simplistic, and less humane, ideas about improving education, such as by reading off effective teaching techniques –‘what works’ – from the data. There are oddities in much talk of educational change, not least that it invariably presages deterioration in the working conditions of teachers and other education professionals. The literature on the management of change often seems concerned to persuade us that if we engage fully with change rather than resisting it we will find our lives more meaningful, thus omitting what might be thought to be the important matter of the goal of the change in question. In this it resembles various other historical movements for change in coming to identify the process or means of change with its ultimate end. Strangest of all, perhaps, is that recent interest in change seldom deals with the idea of an ever-changing, labile world but is concerned with how to make the transition – and make others make the transition – from one stable condition of things to another. A different way of thinking about change and a different language and literature for doing so might help us grasp the limitations of many of the ways in which we are currently being asked to respond to educational change and reform.

Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul. (Margaret Thatcher, The Sunday Times, May 1981)

My mind turns now to human bodies changed

Into new shapes and forms. Immortal gods,

Look kindly on what I’m attempting here,

Itself a change of theme that you inspired. (Ovid, Metamorphoses I, 1–3 (my translation))