Transforming Education challenges the current global orthodoxy that ‘educational transformation’ can be achieved through a step-by-step implementation of centralised, performance-based strategies for school improvement.
Complex responsive processes theory is utilised in an original way to critique leadership myths and explore the alternative, deeper meanings of educational transformation. The theory opens up new forms of understanding about how ordinary practitioners negotiate the meanings of ‘improvement’ in their everyday practice. It is in the gap between the emergence of these local interactions and the predetermined designs of policy-makers that educational transformation can be lost or found.
This book is an essential read for education professionals and students interested in the fields of complexity, education policy, leadership and management.
Contents
Part I The universe of complexity thinking
1 Educational transformation in the global age
2 (Un)certainty and the myth of control
3 Complex responsive processes theory
4 Researching complexity
Part II 'Global' policies and local interactions
5 The myth of 'spectacular' solutions: the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies
and their (un)desirable consequences
6 Everyday practice and the myth of perpetual crisis
7 Rethinking policy, strategy and educational leadership
Part III Complex responsive processes theory and educational ends
8 'Tremendous power', ethics and responsibility
9 Educational beginnings and ends
Appendix
Index
Biography
Dr Agnieszka Bates lectures in Education at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia, UK.
