Cultures of Teaching and Educational Change

Abstract

Over the previous quarter century, research on educational change has come to attain stature and significance as an important and legitimate field of study in its own right. This evolving field of educational change is grounded in and has also influenced a complex collection of approaches to bringing about educational change in practice. Thus, studies of educational change have been variously concerned with the implementation of organizational innovations (Gross, Giacquinta, & Bernstein, 1971; Havelock, 1973; House; 1974; Huberman & Miles, 1984), with managed or planned educational change (Hall & Loucks, 1977; Leithwood, 1986), and with mandated educational reform (Berman & McLaughlin, 1978; McLaughlin, 1990; Sikes, 1992). Studies have also been conducted of how educational change is experienced or initiated by educators themselves in relation to the contingencies of their own practice (Richardson, 1991), their stage of career development (Huberman, 1993), the context of their school or subject department (Hargreaves, Davis, Fullan, Wignall, Stager, & Macmillan, 1992; Lieberman, Saxl, & Miles, 1988; Louis & Miles, 1990; McLaughlin & Talbert, 1993) and a host of other subjectively relevant phenomena as described in Fullan's (1991) definitive review of the field.