In 1994, I was a graduate student. It was the onset of the "systemic change" era. Funders, professional organizations and education leaders alike were painting a picture of a new "paradigm"; a shift away from what was framed as a traditional conception of reform — individual programmatic efforts— to a more comprehensive, integrated, "systemic" approach (Fuhrman & Massell, 1992; St. John, 1993). As I wrote then, "this new language of reform is exciting; conjuring up images of a revolution in education that may finally have the strength to cure the ills of the weakened competitive spirit and "mediocrity," of our "nation at risk" of the last decade..."
Twenty-three years later, as a member of Working Group One, I was asked to respond to the following prompt: What does systemic change mean to you? As I mulled this over, I reflected on all of the literature I had reviewed in my nearly 30-year career working to bring change to the K-12 education system. My thoughts wandered from Everett Rogers' work on diffusion of innovations to Jim Dearing's work on dissemination; from the work of Loucks & Hall on teacher change all the way to the more recent emerging lexicon of "implementation science" and design-based implementation research. All grappled with the challenge of understanding how change happens.
That year in graduate school, I wrote about systemic change. Then, I expressed, "without discounting the importance of past lessons learned, reformers must recognize that systemic change is different; the stakes are much higher and the challenge is greater. Not only are philosophical and personal tenets in question, but so are the political structures, organizational relationships, realms of power and supervision, and ultimately the might of educating our nation's children." I continued, "Systemic change means more than changing the components in tandem, it means changing the "culture" of the system (Fullan & Miles, 1992). McLauglin's reflections on the RAND [change agent] study remind us of the importance of recognizing the personalization of change: "policy can't mandate what matters. What matters most to policy outcomes are local capacity and will" (McLaughlin,1989).
I hadn't read McLaughlin's words in some time. But I knew she had it right: capacity and will. The perennial zeitgeist of education reform focuses on "finding what works." Even some who embraced systemic reform used that frame to identify strategies around which to change the other system components. Capacity is easy – developing knowledge, skills, expertise (human capacity) or communication systems and processes (organizational capacity) and even raising capital (financial capacity) are elementary compared with the task of building will; true will.
I'm not referring to simple incentives for enacting one behavior or another. I'm referring to our own willingness; our commitment to behave in ways that are different, uncomfortable, and risky. Talking about changing the system is gives us a chance to point over "there" and say, "it's the system that isn't working." But the fact is, we are the system. And changing the system means changing ourselves. It means giving up the privileges that come with our position; it means truly hearing others and committing to co-creating solutions rather than doing "grassroots" work to convince "them to do it our way." (I've heard that many times.). So, I'll respond to the question "what does systemic change mean to me?" with a question. Do we have the courage; the will, to change ourselves?
References
Fuhrman, S. and Massel, D. "Issues and Strategies in Systemic Reform" Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). CPRE Research Report Series RR-025. October, 1992.
Fullan, M and Miles, M. "Getting Reform Right: What Works and What Doesn't." Phi Delta Kappan. June, 1992. Pp. 745-752.
McLaughlin, M. "The RAND Change Agent Study Ten Years Later: Macro Perspectives and Micro Realities." Paper based on an address given at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (San Francisco, CA, Mary 27-30, 1989). Center for Research on the Context of Secondary School Teaching. Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). ERIC document ED 342 085.
St. John, M. "Perspectives on Systemic Change," in Science Education Partnerships. Art Sussman, Ph.D., ed. San Francisco: University of California, 1993.
Suggested Citation
Century, M. (2017, April 24). What does systemic change mean to you? [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://ascnhighered.org/ASCN/posts/courage_change.html
Great post! I couldn't agree more that all of our attention on finding "what works" is misguided. Things don't actually work if people do not have the capacity and will to make them work. I also agree with you that we *are* the system. What I struggle with a lot is that there are certain educational practices that everyone basically agrees are bad and should be replaced, but yet they remain. I am thinking of things like standard student evaluations of teaching or "traditional" teaching methods focused on memorization. This not only happens in education, but in all areas of life. Take gerrymandering for example. A strong majority of people (generally bipartisan, but a bit skewed based on which party is controlling the process) think it is a bad idea and not helpful for democracy. Yet, it persists. So, the system that we create is more than the sum of its parts. We need to figure out how to change ourselves in a way that also changes the system.
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Thanks for the comment Charles. Yes, it is true not only do we not do what "works" but we continue to do "what doesn't work." Why? I think it just comes down to fear and avoiding discomfort. Like systems as a whole, the human beings that comprise the systems tend to stay as they are. That is, we just don't like change - it's generally uncomfortable. That's why after thirty years of looking at system mechanisms for change (organizational structures, policies, curricula, standards, etc.) I'm arriving at the conclusion that we need to do more personal work. Meaning, we (as individuals) need to practice getting comfortable with change. I figure, that's the answer anyway. We won't ever find "solutions" to the most challenging problems - the contexts and conditions we are working in change too fast (relatively speaking). So, instead, let's work on getting comfortable with new ways of working - on explicit on-going change (and with it, improvement).
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