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Fullan - Educational Change
Fullan - Educational Change
Ellsworth (2001) pointed out that the issues that Fullan's model helps the change agent
to deal with include:
Fullan (1982, 1991) proposed that there are four broad phases in the change process:
initiation, implementation, continuation, and outcome.
Initiation
The factors that affecting the initiation phases include:
Implementation
Fullan and Stigelbauer (1991) identified three areas of the major factors affecting
implementation: characteristics of change, local characteristics and external factors
(government and other agencies). They identified different stakeholders in local, and
federal and governmental levels. They also identified characterizations of change to
each stakeholder and the issues that each stakeholder should consider before
committing a change effort or rejecting it.
Quality and
practicality of the
program
Continuation
Continuation is a decision about institutionalization of an innovation based on the
reaction to the change, which may be negative or positive. Continuation depends on
whether or not:
1. Active initiation & participation: change does not end in recognizing or initial
context with the innovation, but starts with the contact and evolves along with
the continuous interaction with it and the environmental changes that it brings
forth
2. Pressure, support and negotiation
3. Changes in skills, thinking, and committed actions
4. Overriding problem of ownership
1. You can't mandate what matters: complexity of change in skills, thinking and
committed actions in educational enterprise. Fullan commented that "effective
change agents neither embrace nor ignore mandates. They use them as catalysts
to reexamine what they are doing." (p.24)
2. Change is a journey not a blueprint: changes entails uncertainty with positive
and negative forces of change.
3. Problems are our friends: problems are the route to deeper change and deeper
satisfaction; conflict is essential to any successful change effort.
4. Vision and strategic planning come later: vision comes later because the
process of merging personal and shared visions take time. This different from
Rogers'conception of innovation, as an idea, practice or object, that drives the
change process. Rogers' model is similar to what Fullan's critics on Beckhard
and Pritchard's (1992) vision-driven, which emphasizing the creating and
setting of the vision, communicating the vision, building commitment to the
vision, and organizing people and what they do so that they are aligned to the
vision. People learn about the innovation through their interactions with the
innovation and others in the context of innovation. Deep ownership comes
through the learning that arise form full engagement in solving problems.
5. Individualism and collectivism must have equal power: Stacy's concept of
"dynamic system" helps clarify Fullan's ideas of innovation collaboration:
6. Neither centralization nor decentralization works: the center and local units
need each other. Successful changes require a dynamic two-way relationship of
pressure, support and continuous negotiation.
7. Connection with the wider environment is critical for success: change should
recognize a broader context, to which change asserts its constant action.
8. Every person is a change agent: " It is only by individuals taking action to alter
their own environments that there is any change for deep change."
The ability to work with polar opposites: imposition of change vs. self-learning;
planning vs. uncertainty; problems vs. creative resolution; vision vs. fixed
direction; individual vs. groups; centralizing vs. decentralizing; personal
change vs. system change
Dynamic interdependency of state accountability and local autonomy
Combination of individuals and societal agencies
Internal connection within oneself and within one's organization and external
connections to others and to the environment
Fullan (1999) pointed out the importance of the recognition that the educational
change process is complex. To deal with such complexity is not to control the change,
but to guide it. Fullan provides eight new lessons about guiding change.
Fullan, M. (1982). The meaning of educational change. New York: Teachaers College
Press.
Fullan, M. G. (1999). Change Forces: The sequel. Philadelphia, PA: Falmer Press.
Fullan, M., & Stiegelbauer, S. (1991). The new meaning of educational change. 2nd
ed. New York: Teachers College Press.