2.2 APPROACHES TO SCHOOL CHANGE
2.2.2 The school improvement approach to school change
School improvement started in the 1960s in the United Kingdom when it focused on organisation, curriculum, and pupil-oriented outcomes. Due to lack of teacher commitment to government-initiated ‘top-down’ reforms, a new paradigm of improvement emerged in the 1980s. The ‘new’ improvement paradigm showed a preference for a bottom-up approach and emphasised that improvement should be owned by those at the school although experts would be allowed to put forward their knowledge. It therefore operates at the level of practitioners rather that at the school level (Stoll & Fink, 1996; Reynolds, 1997) which means that the people themselves play an active role in changing their practices and the school.
The school improvement approach is concerned with the ‘how’, that is, the process of changing the school. Therefore, it focuses on the processes that schools go through to become more successful and sustain improvement. Strategies for school improvement are based on the assumptions that schools can change. Hopkins (1995:
12) argues that school improvement approaches embody the long-term goal of moving towards the vision of the ‘problem solving’ or ‘thinking school’. School improvement is oriented towards whole school rather than part of the school. It also adopts a school-based rather than outside school or course-based approach to changing teacher practices (Reynolds, 1997).
School improvement as an approach to educational change rests on a number of assumptions. These are:
• The school is the centre of change. This means that external reforms need to be sensitive to the situation in individual schools rather than assuming that all schools are the same.
• There is a systematic approach to change. This means that school improvement needs to be a carefully planned and managed process that takes place over a period of several years.
• The internal conditions of schools are a key focus for change. These include the teaching-learning activities in the school, the schools’ procedures, role allocations and resource uses that support the teaching and learning process.
• Education goals are accomplished more effectively. Schools also serve the more general developmental needs of students, the professional development of teachers and the needs of its community.
• There is a multi-level perspective. Although the school is the centre of change, it does not act alone. The school is embedded in an educational system that has to work collaboratively to achieve the highest degrees of quality. This means that the roles of teachers, heads, governors, parents, support staff and local authorities should be defined, harnessed and committed to the process of school improvement
• Implementation strategies are integrated. This implies a linkage between top- down and bottom-up approaches. The former provides the framework, resources and a menu of alternatives; the latter, the energy and the school- based implementation.
• There is a drive towards institutionalisation. Change is only successful when it has become part of the natural behaviour of all those in the school (Hargreaves & Hopkins, 1991: 118).
The assumptions mentioned above should guide change proponents in planning school improvement projects such as the IP. This study attempts to establish the extent to which, according to school role players, the IP conceptualisation and implementation was guided by these assumptions.
The school improvement approach has, as one of its major goals, the enhancement of student outcomes. A related goal, necessary for the achievement of the key goal but
also in its own right, is the strengthening of a school’s capacity for managing change.
This approach thus focuses on the individual professional (educator and learner) as well as institutional development. The approach is based on the assumptions that schools can change and those in schools have the ability to control the process of change. The conceptualisation and the implementation of the IP were also based on the perception that people have the potential to change even in the most disadvantaged schools and therefore they needed to be given the tools, namely, the training (knowledge and skills), and teaching and learning materials to enhance the change process. For the reasons mentioned above, although it is believed that knowledge from school effectiveness can inform school improvement, the school improvement approach has been seen by school change protagonists as more useful for changing schools.
The role of the principal is a key focus of this thesis and therefore his/her place in the process of school improvement is subjected to critical examination. As mentioned in section 1.2.2 principals are the key to the success of any changes and innovations in the schools (Fullan, 1991). Therefore, the success of the implementation of innovations in schools depends considerably on the management capacity of the principal. Hill (2001: 15) suggests that the principal’s role as leader and manager of change can be conceptualised as one of leading and managing school improvement.
However, in reality, some principals may be managers and leaders without being actively engaged in leading or facilitating change. For this reason, there is need for promoting their professional development to enable them to learn to manage change.
The inclusion of a module on ‘managing change’ in the Conceptual Framework for the Imbewu training programme presented in Figure 1.3 therefore was in recognition of this need. The principal’s dual roles of management and leadership and the relationship between them will be presented in section 2.5.1. Although many leadership styles have been identified, only two, transformational and instructional leadership, will be discussed in section 2.5.1.1.1 and 2.5.1.1.2 respectively because I believe that they are more important in educational change.
The following roles of the school principal have been identified by Hill (2001: 15):
• Leading and managing change;
• Motivating and managing people;
• Designing and aligning systems, processes and resources.
In some instances and in contexts such as the disadvantaged schools of the EC, principals are sometimes unable to perform the roles mentioned by Hill (2001) effectively partly due to policies that excluded them from effective development opportunities and/or from socio-economic contexts that limited their opportunities for professional growth. Lack of such opportunities for development can be partly corrected through such school improvement initiatives like the IP where the individual principal has the potential and the will to change. However, there is no evidence that the effects of these change initiatives endure.
The roles identified by Hill (2001) above are linked to and can be achieved through specific functions. The following functions of the principal will be discussed: the management and the development of systems and processes for human resource productivity in the school, the management of material resources of the school and the development and management of the relations of the school with the SGBs, the parent and the community at large. Although there has been consensus among educationists on the roles and functions of the principal, some principals have either not always performed these functions effectively or have not performed them at all for different reasons.
The main aim of this study is to describe the roles and functions of principals prior to the IP intervention and then examine the extent to which the management practices of school principals who participated in the IP have changed, in what ways they have changed and the factors that have influenced those changes.
One of the issues in school improvement initiatives such as the IP is the institutionalisation and sustainability of the changes that have been introduced. This is particularly important when the intervention is externally funded and only has a short (in this case, three years) cycle. Factors that determine the institutionalisation and sustainability of such changes as well as ways of ensuring these will also be discussed.
The EC schools involved in the study are among those that suffered and still continue to suffer “setbacks in personnel management, curriculum reform, the construction of buildings and the provision of learning material” (Lemon, 2004: 274) during the apartheid era and therefore continue to lag behind other schools even in the new dispensation. These schools are also under a government that was characterised and continues to be characterised by “the low calibre of some staff involved, especially in the former homelands of Transkei and Ciskei, by grossly inadequate financial, information and human resource management systems, chronic shortages of skilled staff, lack of discipline and the prevalence of fraud and theft in many departments”
(Lemon, 2004: 273). The need for continuous INSET of teachers and principals mentioned above implies extra funding for personnel of such schools. Samoff (2001:
15) suggests that to achieve equity between disadvantaged and advantaged schools
‘structured inequalities, at least temporarily’ need to be put in place. The researcher is of the opinion that if focus is not placed on closing the gap between these disadvantaged schools and their more advantaged counterparts, the former may simply continue to lag behind in many ways and equity may never be achieved.
Most of the personnel in the district offices responsible for the monitoring and evaluation of the IP activities and education in the schools in general during the period of change belong to the same poor education system as the teachers and principals. Thus, such personnel must receive continuous training so that they can develop the knowledge, skills and the positive attitude to enable them to support and relate with schools effectively and with confidence. Therefore, the district personnel must be included in any training given to school personnel through interventions by external agents so that they understand the changes and improvements introduced and are therefore able to monitor their implementation effectively. This means that the school and the district should be closely integrated. If such integration is not achieved the changes introduced through such interventions may be lost and this may mean loss of the investment incurred.
The training of principals in management also needs to focus on the relationships between principals and the SGB members especially in schools in disadvantaged communities. While the sharing of power in school management and governance has
also meant an erosion of powers for the principals which may cause tensions.
Focussing on the relationships is particularly necessary with teachers and principals who have been in the authoritarian and undemocratic apartheid education system for a long time. Policy formulation by the Department of Education that prescribes the participation of parents should be regarded as the first step in introducing parent participation in school governance. However, such policy formulation needs to be followed by intensive training, support and monitoring of SGB members and principals by district personnel so that SGB members are not just placed there as symbols but play an active role and are actively engaged.
The success or failure of an intervention depends, to a large extent, on factors prevailing in the contexts in which it is implemented, that is, the attitudes of principals, teachers and the community towards educational change, the extent to which poor teaching practices are internalised and institutionalised, the quality and duration of the training, sustained monitoring and evaluation i.e. support and pressure, the availability of basic resources, opportunities created for continuous learning and reflection. The variability of the contexts in which the IP was implemented may therefore result in variations in the experiences of the role players and their views about the changes in the management practices resulting from their participation in the IP. The view of this study is that as a consequence of this in some schools, the changes in the management practices of principals are likely to be minimal and if any occur, they are not likely to have any significant effect on teaching and learning and transformation in general.
2.2.2.1 Restructuring
This section discusses restructuring which Fink and Stoll (1998) regard as one of the concerns of school improvement.
Restructuring involves changes in roles, rules, and relationships between and among students and teachers, teachers and administrators, and administrators at various levels from the school building to the district office to the state level, all with the aim of improving student outcomes (Hopkins & Lagerweij, 1996: 65). There are four components of successful restructuring, namely, the necessity to decentralise
authority; a basic change in accountability; more student-focussed and less-teacher- centred instruction; and the development of new forms of testing that fit the curriculum and the methods of instruction. Restructuring also involves the notion of changing the use of time, space, roles, and relationships in schools to improve learning (Fink & Stoll, 1998). The IP reflected some of the characteristics of restructuring such as changes in roles of school role players, changes in accountability, and changes in relationships and adjustments in time for periods to match the student-centred approach.
Below is a brief discussion of the relationship between school improvement and culture.
2.2.2.2 Reculturing
According to Fink and Stoll (1998: 12) school improvement has evolved from an emphasis on structures and formal processes such as development planning to a focus on the less tangible and ultimately to aspects such as cultures that have more impact on schools. Culture includes values, beliefs and norms. Among the forms of culture are observed behavioural regularities; norms that evolve in working groups, dominant values espoused by an organisation; the philosophy that guides the organisations’
policy; and the feeling conveyed in an organisation. Improving schools are characterised by a teaching staff which shares goals, collegiality as defined by joint work, continuous improvement and learning, risk-taking and mutual support, among other cultural norms. In addition, leadership in improving schools is pervasive and does not reside with the principal or other formal leaders, but is a shared activity (Fink
& Stoll, 1998).
The changing culture of the school also helps to ensure that any changes that may have been achieved are sustained. The relationship between culture and sustainability will be pursued in section 2.6.1.