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Extending Educational Change pp 17–41Cite as

Educational Change: Easier Said than Done

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Abstract

In the opening chapter to this section of the Handbook, Fink and Stoll review the contemporary field of educational change and ask why educational change is so difficult to understand and achieve in present times. They begin by discussing the historical, social and organizational forces that create continuity in education; which sustain structures and practices that in many cases may be outliving their usefulness. They then discuss four common and widely used approaches to bringing about educational change in the face of such continuity: school effectiveness, school improvement, school restructuring, and more recent orientations to school reculturing. Each of these approaches is examined clearly and also critically.

Finally, Fink and Stoll turn to a number of agendas which they argue will continue to challenge the theory and practice of educational change in years to come — the need for a tighter connection between organizational change and developing better approaches to teaching and learning; the problem of motivating students in contexts of economic uncertainty; the difficulty of determining what kinds of leadership work best and are most practical in contexts of great complexity; the perennial problem of assessment and accountability; the relationship of change to teachers’ lives, and the importance of micropolitics. Reculturing, they propose, offers one of the most hopeful ways of providing an integrated solution to these many different challenges.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Educational Development Consultant, Dean Fink Consulting Associates, Canada

    Dean Fink

  2. Institute of Education, University of London, London

    Louise Stoll

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  1. Dean Fink
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  2. Louise Stoll
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Teacher Education, Curriculum and Instruction Lynch School of Education, Boston College, MA, USA

    Andy Hargreaves

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Fink, D., Stoll, L. (2005). Educational Change: Easier Said than Done. In: Hargreaves, A. (eds) Extending Educational Change. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4453-4_2

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