More recently, though, the patterns of change have begun to change radically towards the pattern of inversion noted earlier. Now the school primarily responds to change developed by external groups.

For instance, in the sponsorship of new buildings and resources, the role of local business, e.g. Citibank, has been central. There, the consent and collaboration of local business interests have begun to influence school policy. Moreover, local business groups have been hugely influential in pushing for new educational ‘standards’ and in initiating and promoting major educational changes. ‘Schools without walls’ has followed progressive practice in stressing course work and project work as a way of assessing student achievement. The school is now challenged by the new mandate pushed by the school board commissioners to have students sit the Regents’ examination. This will transform the context and control of the school’s curriculum and, in doing so, change the teaching/learning milieu. In the new change dispensation, change is externally mandated and only then internally negotiated.

In the contemporary conditions of change, combining ethnographic and historical methods of inquiry provides us with the database to develop new contextually sensitive change theory. This new theory allows us to arbitrate between the changing balance of external relations and internal affairs in contemporary historical circumstances. I have recently defined a reformulated change model which is based on the evidence gathered in our recent research projects (Goodson, 2001):

1) Change formulation. Educational changes are discussed in a variety of external arenas including business groups, associated think-tanks, new pressure groups like ‘standards mean business’, and a variety of relatively newly formed parental groups. Often these changes resemble world movements that can be traced back to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Torres, 2000). Much of the change is driven by a belief in marketization of education and the delivery of educational services to parental ‘consumers’ who are free to choose and to bargain over their provision (Kenway, 1993; Whitty, 1997; Robertson, 1998).

2) Change promotion is handled in a similar fashion by external groups with varied internal involvement. As Reid (1984) has written:

external forces and structures emerge, not merely as sources of ideas, promptings, inducements and constraints, but as definers and carriers of the categories of content, role and activity to which the practice of schools must approximate in order to attract support and legitimization. (p. 68)