Journal of Educational Change最新文献

National-level educational administrators constantly face the question of how to ensure that the basic education system successfully meets complex local, national, international, and global challenges, and what is the best way to initiate and drive systemic changes in education amid such complexity and to create value for society. Studies have shown that participative approaches to reform leadership are beneficial; however, in practice, participative incentives are randomly used in national reform contexts. In this article, we present a Finnish case of national participative leadership regarding the Finnish Core Curriculum Reform of 2014 (hereafter FCCR2014). We interviewed key leaders in the FCCR2014 process (n = 23) and analyzed the data from social, personal, interpersonal, and organizational viewpoints with this question in mind: How did administrators responsible for leading the reform develop and lead the participative FCCR2014 process? Sub questions were: (1) What were their goals in developing and leading the reform, and (2) how did they succeed in developing and leading the reform in line with their goals—what was effective and what was not? The results show how participative leadership in a national curriculum reform calls for top leaders to include stakeholders, build and support strong and open collaboration processes, take the risk of losing some of their control, reject strict dichotomizations between strategy formulation and implementation, and consider change leadership a responsible act of giving stakeholders a fair chance to participate in the decision-making that affects their lives. Key aspects to participative leadership included building participation, not quasi-participation; building coherence in complexity—together; and fitting change to the education system with responsible leadership.

As we settled into a new reality with COVID-19, there were calls for educators to use the crisis as a time to initiate changes desperately needed in education (Zhao & Watterston, 2021). Highlighting an elementary school as a case study (Hungerford-Kresser et al., 2022), we now reflect on what we learned during the early stages of the pandemic, a never-before-seen international crisis, and how it contributes to the discussion on change. While learning loss remains a primary concern post-COVID, an ethic of care (Noddings, 1984) is foundational to any educational reform moving forward. Post-lockdown, and in our current reality, we are concerned the current narratives on pandemic learning loss will cause care to be ignored where it should be central.

Scholars have argued that problem formulation is an important part of successfully initiating a Networked Improvement Community (NIC/s). Yet, few scholars have studied the problem formulation process at the beginning of a NIC. This study draws upon problem formulation literature to examine how district initiators in one NIC identify and make sense of a specific improvement problem. The study seeks to understand how the problem becomes (or does not become) central to the work of a NIC and thus supportive of the learning activities that ensue. Drawing upon qualitative data collected during a 12-month exploratory study, findings suggest that the absence of a clearly specified problem coupled limited consideration of the initiators’ dispositions both contributed to incoherence in the NIC. This incoherence limited learning opportunities for network participants and the ability of the NIC to widely influence practice in the school district. The findings reinforced the importance of a learning stance, engagement in disciplined inquiry, a systems perspective, a willingness to see others’ perspectives, and a willingness to persist beyond initial efforts are key to initiation. The study contributes to the improvement science literature by defining the importance of problem formulation as a leadership disposition and elevates it as a core action in network initiation. This has implications for educational improvement and change efforts within the United States and internationally, which have shown that problem specification is an important step in successful change activities.

School improvement depends, fundamentally, upon collective agency—a group capability to work productively together and solve problems. Unfortunately, many schools operate in contexts of adversity that can pose considerable challenges with developing collective agency. Schools serving high-poverty communities of color often face chronic resource shortages, difficulties to reach their students, and negative reputations. Research has shown how such experiences of adversity can invite destructive tendencies that interfere with collective agency—including defensiveness, learned helplessness, and fragmenting conflict. However, prevailing approaches to researching school improvement have obscured insight into how collective agency may develop in adverse contexts. To study this, this paper draws on over 70 hours of participant observation and more than 50 reflective conversations conducted over 1 year with a Californian middle school facing adversity. Drawing on literature about group development and work teams, the article traces interaction patterns in three work groups, including one I led. The study finds clear efforts to develop collective agency at times, but it is a fragile emergence. Across all groups, collective agency becomes enabled when initiative to address a problem combines with manageable tasks, simple solutions, and group affirmation. However, these processes do not enable groups to fully address the complex problems they face, leaving groups vulnerable to recurrent experiences of inefficacy and overwhelm that quash collective agency. The findings offer a new understanding of school improvement amid adversity as a struggle to improve at “the next level of work,” calling for reforms designed to sustain a foundation of collective agency.

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are emerging as a promising approach for educational change by closing the gap between educational research and practice. However, these partnerships face several challenges, such as addressing cultural differences as well as relationship-building in a historically unbalanced relationship between researchers and practitioners. Scholars have argued that these cultural differences, also called boundaries, have learning potential if approached constructively, but that we need to know more about what characterizes them in an educational context. The aim of this study is to contribute to our understanding of frameworks for RPPs. By analysing 45 hours of video recordings from meetings in an RPP between four researchers and 300 practitioners, the study offers a characterization of seven different boundaries organized into three different boundary themes: a) prerequisites for collaboration, b) collaborative practices, and c) collaborative content. Moreover, the different boundaries affect the positioning of different actors in the RPP. For example, depending on the boundary expressed, teachers are positioned as either flawed implementers or co-inquirers. We argue that the boundaries and different participant positions within the RPPs they reinforce may affect their learning potentials.

Under ‘post-truth’ conditions the generation, circulation and status of knowledge are being transformed, with significant implications for institutional trust, social cohesion and public safety. These conditions raise complex challenges and opportunities within education, which plays a potentially pivotal role in supporting communities to respond in an assertive and critical manner. However, little is currently understood about the way key stakeholders within education position themselves epistemically in relation to post-truth conditions. The purpose of this research was to analyse epistemic aspects of educators’ responses to post-truth conditions using a ‘social lab’ methodology, which is a qualitative, action-oriented approach to studying complex social problems. Analysis of data from the social lab, which involved a variety of education stakeholders, identified four epistemic aims (with associated ideals, processes and actions) to orient an educational response to post-truth conditions. However, overall, epistemic aims lacked precision and contextual specificity. Furthermore, aims were associated with divergent underpinning epistemological commitments, mirroring divergences in literature on the educational implications of post-truth conditions. Teachers may require additional training to enhance epistemic reflexivity and drive more productive and inclusive conversations about post-truth in classrooms, staffrooms and ITE programs. The findings are suggestive of the complex epistemological and institutional dynamics that need to be negotiated in educational responses to post-truth conditions.

Korea is recognized around the world for its performance on international educational assessments and the economic development its educational system has facilitated. However, there is also a deficit in well-being among young Koreans. In response, Korean educators have developed alternative, whole person approaches. This article reports a study of one such approach, the “Hyukshin School” movement. We describe the theory and practice of Hyukshin Schools, drawing on interviews, school observations and artifact collection at 16 schools in Seoul. These schools embody progressive, whole person principles familiar elsewhere, and they integrate these with distinctive Korean ideas. This case of educational change illustrates how one reform movement is engaging the tension between highly competitive academic achievement and well-being.