Ivor Goodson

Educational Change Over Time? The Sustainability and Nonsustainability of Three Decades of Secondary School Change and Continuity

Purpose: This article presents the conceptual framework, methodological design, and key research findings from a Spencer Foundation-funded project of long-term educational change over time. Research Design: Based on more than 200 interviews, supplementary observations, and extensive archival data, it examines perceptions and experiences of educational change in eight high schools in the United States and Canada among teachers and administrators who worked in the schools in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Findings: The article indicates that most mainstream educational change theory and practice in the field of educational administration neglects the political, historical, and longitudinal aspects of change to their detriment. Educational change, it finds, is shaped by the convergence of large-scale economic and demographic shifts that produce five change forces (waves of reform, changing student demographics, teacher generations, leadership succession, and school interrelations) that have defined three distinct periods of educational change during the past 30 years. Conclusions: These forces and their convergence have ultimately reaffirmed the traditional identities and practices of conventional high schools and pulled innovative ones back toward the traditional norm in an age of standardization (though to a lesser extent where the schools are professional learning communities or have anactivist orientation). Conclusions are drawn in the form of a strategic theory of sustainable change.

The story so far: personal knowledge and the political

This paper looks critically at a number of forms of inquiry that are now developing in the field of teacher education. Narrative methods and starving are two associated genres that have emerged forcefully in the past decade as ways of seeking to represent the lived experience of schooling. It is because of the very potential of these methodologies to bring us closer to the experience of schooling that our scrutiny should focus sharply upon both the strengths and weaknesses of these methods. To help the process of identifying the cultural place of stories and narrative, the paper seeks to link the emergence of such genres inside teacher education with broader cultural patterns within contemporary societies. In particular, the use of personal stories in the global media is examined; and as a result, a series of questions is asked and issues are raised. Finally, some conclusions regarding the role of stories and narrative in educational research are provided. Here, some antidotes to the absence of historical...

Social Histories of Educational Change

This article sets out new directions for thinking about educational change theory. In particular, a number of different segments in educational change processes are examined – the internal, the external and the personal.In analyzing the importance of these different segments of educational change, a socio-historical approach is adopted. It is noted that in the expansionist period of the 1960s and 1970s internal change agentry was dominant and, as a result, modernist change theory located in that period stressed the importance of the internal processes which had become central in orchestrating the change process. In the 1980s and 1990s external change mandates have become dominant, with a number of downsides related to internal and personal missions.In the new millennium it is argued that, as well as internal and external segments, increasing attention will need to be paid to the personal missions and purposes which underpin commitment to change processes. Without a fully conceptualized notion of how the internal, external and personal will interlink, existing change theory remains underdeveloped and of progressively less use.In the final sections, a tentative model of change processes is defined. In this model, the internal, external and personal are integrated in ways that seek to provide new momentum for change processes and their study.

Subject Cultures and the Introduction of Classroom Computers

What has often been missing in research on classroom computers is an appreciation for the challenge which microcomputers may present to the well‐established cultures and subcultures of schools, and in particular to subject subcultures. This paper reports on recent research which attempted to assess some of the reciprocal effects of classroom computing and the context and culture of schooling. The distinctive characteristics of three subject areas included in the study—art, social studies, and family and technological studies—are enumerated. The meanings of these subcultures for the participant teachers are explored through interview data, and through summaries of classroom interaction patterns. The impact of the introduction of microcomputers into these school cultures is then explored using some of the same data sources. Microcomputer use is shown to have a distinct effect upon teaching styles and classroom interaction patterns, but to be independent of the effects of subject cultures. This finding sugge...

Life Histories and the Study of Schooling.

Although life histories were collected by anthropologists in the first decade of the twentieth century, the most celebrated founding fathers of the life history were the sociologists Thomas and Znaniecki. Their w o r k The Polish Peasant in Europe andAmer ica began the promot ion of the life history perspect ive as a cental research device in the emerging work of the Universi ty o f Chicago Sociology department . With the arrival of Rober t Park at the depar tment in 1916, a range o f studies o f the character o f cities and city life had been completed. No better s ta tement on the importance of the life history method has been made since Thomas and Znaniecki observed.

The Life and Work of Teachers

Writing in 1975, at the end of what Hobsbawm has called a ‘golden age’ for Western society (Hobsbawm, 1994), Lortie (1975) summarized the relationship between teachers and educational research studies in the U.S. Whilst those were very different economic and social times, his judgement stands up well today: Schooling is long on prescription, short on description. That is nowhere more evident than in the case of the two million persons who teach in the public schools. It is widely conceded that the core transactions of formal education take place where teachers and students meet.... But although books and articles instnicting teachers on how they should behave are legion, empirical studies of teaching work — and the outlook of those who staff the schools — remain rare. (p. vii)

Studying the teacher's life and work

Abstract This paper is primarily concerned with exploring the question of which strategic focus might be employed when teachers (as researchers) and externally located researchers (normally residing in Faculties of Education) collaborate. The view is advanced that a narrow focus on “practice” in collaborating on research, a panacea that is politically and academically popular at the moment, will not take us too far. A much broader focus on the teachers life and work is required and is herein advocated. In particular, the paper argues against the focus, currently employed by much of the literature on the teacher as researcher, upon practice. The paper takes a view contrary to this assumption because the parameters to practice whether they be biographical or political cover a very wide terrain. To narrow the focus to “practice as defined” is to make the focus of research a victim of historical circumstances, particularly current political tendencies. At the moment, the New Right is seeking to turn teachers practice into that of a technician, a routinized and trivianized deliverer of predesigned packages. To accept those definitions, to focus on practice so defined, is therefore to accept a particular political compromise. It is argued that the way out of the cul-de-sac of practice as defined is to focus more broadly on the teachers life and work. A range of strategies are identified and argued for. Work in this growing area is then reviewed.

Teacher Nostalgia and the Sustainability of Reform: The Generation and Degeneration of Teachers’ Missions, Memory, and Meaning

Purpose : This article focuses on the sustainability of reform through the lens of teachers’ nostalgia—the major form of memory among a demographically dominant cohort of experienced older teachers. Unwanted change evokes senses of nostalgia for these lost missions that take two forms: social and political. As teachers age, their responses to change are influenced not only by processes of degeneration (loss of commitment, energy, enthusiasm, etc.) but also by the agendas of the generation—historically situated missions formed decades ago that teachers have carried with them throughout their careers. Findings: Findings indicate that the effects of cumulative demographic and educational change and the resulting nostalgias have left teachers feeling resistant to mandated reform, insecure about their own professional capacity, disenchanted with their students, and pessimistic about their schools’ future. The results of this research have practical implications for policy makers, administrators, and classroom teachers.

Developing narrative theory : life histories and personal representation

Section 1 Studying Life Narratives 1. Introduction: studying life stories and life histories 2. The growth of individual life stories in contemporary life 3. Contemporary patterns in life stories 4. Studying Storylines: life history and personal representations 5. Developing narrative portrayals Section 2 On Forms of Narrativity 6. Studying Storylines 7. Scripted describers 8. Armchair elaborators 9. Multiple describers 10. Focussed elaborators 11. Re-selfing, reflexivity and hybridity 12. Narrativity, learning and reflexibility

On Curriculum Form: Notes toward a Theory of Curriculum.

Academic L Middle and Upper Body of Knowledge to Be Transmitted T Classes U STABILITY REFORM R