It is possible to restate this model of school subject change as a more general educational change model. Hence:

1. Invention might be seen as change formulation;
2. Promotion as change implementation;
3. Legislation as policy establishment;
4. Mythologisation as established or permanent change.
But the most important conclusion from studying these patterns of change in the 1960s and 1970s is to evidence how internally generated change works its way towards external legitimation. Of course, it is true that such internally generated change exists in externally contrived climates of opinion, but the important point is that the invention and generation of the change idea begins internally and then works for external legitimation. As we have seen, during the period following the Second World War, and well into the 1970s and 1980s, public service provision was left largely in the hands of professional groups. In this sense, education was left in the hands of teachers and educationalists to initiate and promote educational change. Whilst occasionally these changes were responses to external stimuli, by and large, the development of external opinion came in the later states of change establishment. Educational change was, therefore, defined, instigated and promoted internally, and then went on to sustain and win external support in order to ensure establishment and legislation.

External Relations of Change

Until the late 1970s, internally generated change remained the lynchpin of the change theory that was subsequently codified and written. Since the triumph of western corporatism in 1989, it is important to revisit the assumption that change is internally generated and analyse the kinds of patterns of educational change which now prevail.

I recently argued that internal change agents faced a ‘crisis of positionality’ (Goodson, 1999). This crisis of positionality prevails where the balance of change forces is substantially inverted. Now change can be seen as invented and originating within external constituencies. In this situation, internal change agents find themselves responding to, not initiating, changes. Thus, instead of being progressive change agents, they often take up the role of conservative respondents to the externally initiated change. Since educational change is not in line with their own defined missions, it is often seen as alien, unwelcome and hostile. The crisis of positionality for internal change agents is, then, that the progressive internal change agent can become the conservative, resistant and reluctant change agent of external wishes.