The Crisis of Curriculum Change

Studies of cultures and structures of schooling have often worked with snapshot notions of time and context. Cross-site case studies of secondary school change (e.g. Louis & Miles, 1990; Lieberman, 1995) have not permitted the change efforts to be grounded in patterns of influence and causation in the past, or to be followed longitudinally into the future. By comparison, historical studies of school change have tended to focus on broad patterns of organisational persistence and development (Cuban, 1984); on the fate of particular reform policies (Tyack & Robin, 1994), or on reforms in particular areas such as curriculum (Goodson, 1993). Alongside these have been more intensive historical case studies of single schools and their experiences of curriculum change (e.g. Grant, 1988; Labaree, 1988; Goodson & Anstead, 1993; Fink, 2000).

One important exception is Brouillette’s (1996) doctoral study of the geology of school reform in a small school district, which shows how school change processes are embedded in the contradictory constraints and reform trajectories of the wider system and indeed, Jan Nespor’s new work, published in Tangled up in Schools (1997).

One of the most detailed and complete case studies of school change in one institution over a significant period of time is Smith and his colleagues’ study of Kensington School (Smith et al., 1986, 1987, 1988). At the beginning of a study that would span a quarter century, Smith, Prunty, Dwyer and Kleine predicted with uncanny accuracy that this innovative, open plan school with team teaching, democratic decision-making and students organised by divisions rather than by grades, would ultimately fall back into line with the rest of the school district. This reversion, they said would come about because of community pressure, changes in central office administration along with other school-level staff changes. Historical and longitudinal case studies of this kind serve as a strong warning to those who might be inclined to become overly optimistic about contemporary school change efforts when snapshots are taken of their early stages (e.g. Lieberman, 1995; Wasley, 1994). What is now needed is a set of historical and longitudinal investigations of school change across multiple sites, where the change trajectories and the conditions in which they are grounded vary.

Our study of secondary school cultures and change over time will take a particular approach to the study of historical time. This is grounded in and adopted from the Annaliste methodology for understanding historical change (Ladurie, 1975; Goodson & Anstead, 1998). Historians and social scientists in the Annaliste school see change as operating at three layers or levels of time - long, medium and short - which interpenetrate in a complex manner. These theorists provide an oceanic allegory to capture the three categories or levels and their interdependent mode of operation.