Recently, authoritative researchers published their findings about successful large scale innovation. Ben Levin published “How to change 5000 schools, A practical and Positive Approach for Leading Change at Every Level” (2009). His research focused on the macro level, on the strategic, and structural aspects of innovations. He describes eight factors for successful innovation :
- Formulate clear and undisputed goals.
- Stop talking about policies, start “doing” policies.
- Include all schools in the policies and challenge them to enter the strategy.
- Be aware that leadership at the policy level should be visible, take part in the national debate and be well inform.
- Create a meaningful infrastructure for parents, Professionals, policy makers, and politicians.
- Provide sufficient support nearby.
- Keep teachers, school leaders, and lecturers focused.
- Manage the distractions proactively.
The second author, Michael Fullan, publishedn ”The secrets of Change, What the Best Leaders Do to Help Their Organizations Survive and Thrive” (2008). His research focuses on the process of change with special attention to leaderships, the balance between pressure and support, and proffesional peer to peer interaction. The title of the book elucidates his findings. The six secrets can only be understood properly with the addition of scales containing two opposed poles per secret. Fullan argues in his book that according to the culture of the school, LPTK, or faculty of a university the proper “balance” (position on the scale between the opposed poles) will have to be created between the two poles of the scales.
- Love your employees
- Connect peers with purpose
- Capacity building prevails
- Learning is the work
- Transparency rules
- Systems learn
The third author, Andy Hagreaves, disclosed, in Change Wars (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2009) his “five pillars of purpose and partnership” :
- An inspiring and inclusive vision.
- Public engagement.
- No achievement without investment.
- Corporate educational responsibility.
- Students as partners in change.
Hargreaves is an advocate of strong social responsibility and justice. School leaders and teachers are the ultimate arbiters of change.
They are also often the initiators of change within their own schools and classrooms. The classroom door is the gateway to implementation or the drawbridge that holds it at the bay. No theory-in-action of sustainable educational change can ignore or bypass the teacher. It must involve teachers not just in delivering the basic purposes of their work (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2009).
He describes three principles of preffessionalism, which, in his research, findings are crucial for successful innovations :
- High-quality teachers
- Powerful proffessionalism
- Lively learning communities
Hargreaves warns us:
The hardest part of any theory of action in educational change …….Pilot projects almost always show promise, but most attempts to increase their scale produce pale imitations of the original ……….. The challenge of coherence is not to clone or align everything so it looks the same in all schools. Indeed, if we are all at the same page, then nobody is reading the whole book. The challenge, rather is how to bring diverse people together to work skillful and effectively for a common cause that lifts them up and has them moving in the same direction. The Fourth Way has four catalysts that created that coherence :
- Sustainable leadership
- A net with no nanny
- Responsibility before accountability
- Build from the bottom; steer from the top
(Hargreaves & Fullan, 2009).
By Gerard H. Van den Hoven