Change Processes and Historical Periods

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.

For these reasons, above all, change theory has to now develop a finer sense of history. Where change was the internal mission of educators and external relations were developed later, educational goodwill and a sense of purpose and passion might be assumed. Now the educator groups are less initiating agents or partners, and more deliverers of externally defined purposes.
For this reason, Andy Hargreaves and I have been working on a new multi-site project examining change in American and Canadian schools. Our primary concern has been to analyse and historically compare the changing conditions of change. Our methodology has, as a result, been both historical and ethnographic (see Hargreaves, 1994; Goodson, 1995).

In the schools we are studying, we have developed a historical archive of the changes and reforms that have been attempted within the school. We have begun to see how educational change follows a series of cycles, not unlike that of the economy. Indeed, we begin to see how, just as Kondratiev (1984) argued, economic change often went in long as well as short wave cycles - so too does educational change.

In these cycles, the powers of internal professional groups and external constituencies oscillate quite markedly and, in doing so, affect the change forces and associated change theories that we analyse and define.

Let me provide an example: Durant School in an industrial city in upper New York State was initiated and promoted by internal educator groups in the late 1960s. One group was concerned to establish an urban learning environment of a broadly progressive character and began to build up a new educational infrastructure in the city centre. A student clientele was attracted as the educators defined and promoted their educational mission. In due course, a loose coalition of like-minded schools grew up and ideas and materials were exchanged. The change forces, then, had some of the features of a social movement. In the later stages, the school began to negotiate with external constituencies - parents, local business, school boards - and, in due course, became a member, albeit a radical one, of the local school system.