1 The change context

Ideally you have a vision for your school, and have carried out a school review that identifies new goals and actions. If these goals are about changing attitudes and behaviour, you may find the units on leading improvement in teaching and learning helpful, as they focus on changing pedagogy and practice in your school. There are likely to be other changes that you have identified, such as improving punctuality, attendance, the number of students completing their homework on time or attendance at parent’s meetings. You may find that you can make quite small changes that have a huge impact or that a change in one area has a beneficial effect in another.

Activity 1: A change in your school

Figure 1 What change would you bring to your school?

Think about a change that you would like to bring about in your school. It might be improving some aspect of teaching and learning, or it might be something like changing the organisation of the school day, the homework policy or improving attendance.

Consider the following questions, noting down your thoughts in your Learning Diary:

• Why do you want to make this change in your school?
• Who will benefit from the change?
• Who will be affected the most by the change?
• Who is likely to resist the change and why?

Discussion

Before you embark on trying to change something in your school, it is important to think about the implications of the change. If you can anticipate who is likely to resist and why, then you can begin to think of strategies to involve them at the earliest possible opportunity.

Schools are under pressure. The government has set out an ambitious vision in the NCF 2005 and the ‘Right to Education for All’ Act of 2009. To realise this vision, schools will have to change. In the right conditions, Marris (1986) suggests that it is possible to transform the perception of ‘change as loss’ to one of ‘change as growth’. So when you as the school leader are considering challenging any embedded habits and practices in a school, you need to recognise that how you help others to see change as growth is probably the single most important aspect of your work in leading the change process.

Some of the changes that you need to make in your school will be externally imposed (deterministic); others will be ideas that have come from within the school community (voluntarist). The leader must work in the legal context of what is required of schools and address legislation, but how this is done is still open to interpretation. Successful headteachers in modern schools take responsibility for improving schools. This automatically means addressing change, because you are preparing students to be successful future citizens in an increasingly complex world. Changing attitudes mean that in the past, staff and community members may have readily accepted the word of the school leader as the basis for action, even if they implemented actions unwillingly or without understanding. Now leaders must develop team approaches if they are to implement change effectively.

School leaders need to promote necessary change and manage any resistance, and also prioritise the changes that will have maximum impact. This unit starts with a brief examination of a number of theories of change that will help you to understand the issues and principles behind successful change.