MEDD8937 Chap.7 Organisational Changes for Curriculum Renewals
Organisational Changes for Curriculum Renewals
Renewal asks an institution to change what it exists to produce
Curriculum renewal is described in this session as asking an institution to remake the very thing it was set up to produce, so a leader is working on the design of a better curriculum and on the whole tangle of human and organisational behaviour at the same time.
The stated range of outcomes is that an innovation may be enacted, resisted, stalled or institutionalised, and the two middle possibilities are where most plans actually end.
The session then contrasts a twentieth-century reading of organisational change with a twenty-first-century one: change as one theme among many against change as a preoccupation; participation and involvement against political motives and actions; a rational-linear project management model against an untidy mixture of reasons and motives; a handful of senior change agents against many spread across the organisation; getting the method right against cutting the implementation to fit the context; speed against careful timing and pacing; improvement against innovation; and organisational effectiveness against competitive advantage and survival.
Eight depths of change, and why the rung matters
The session sets out eight levels with a school example for each.
Fine-tuning smooths an existing arrangement, as when a shared template and deadline replace teachers reformatting papers each term, leaving curriculum, assessment philosophy and reporting lines untouched. Restructuring reconfigures authority without changing content, as when subject decisions move to school committees under central moderation.
Resource reallocation replaces a structure to serve a higher priority, as when a remedial group is disbanded and its hours move to a cross-curricular team. Planning improvement changes how planning is approached, as when isolated scheme writing is replaced by a backwards-design cycle with shared mapping. Leadership change shifts priorities, funding and development as staff adapt to a new direction.
Redefinition of success rewrites the measures, as when a school moves from examination pass rates to targets on wellbeing, inquiry and self-directed learning. Change of espoused culture rewrites mission, vision and values.
A paradigm shift puts in question what knowledge is taken to be, how teaching is taken to work, and where one subject stops and the next begins, along with the line between the classroom and the world outside.
A seven-step sequence, and the steps that get skipped
The renewal sequence runs from carrying out a needs assessment, orienting target groups and evaluating the need to introduce changes, through creating the conditions for implementation and implementing the innovation, to conducting formative evaluation and then refining and institutionalising.
Read against the depth ladder the relationship is clear: the first three steps decide how deep the change has to be, the fourth builds the rungs, and the last two are the only part that converts a change into something the school keeps.
Institutionalisation means an innovation surviving the departure of the people who championed it, which requires that it has been written into the documents, the timetable and the appraisal criteria that outlast them.
The climate that lets innovation continue
Three components are named for an organisational climate for creativity.
Encouraging ideas means unassigned time with nothing booked into it in which something new can be tried, suggestions met constructively rather than defensively, freedom to learn, talk, decide and start things, and argument in which a wide range of views is welcome.
A stimulating environment means things moving quickly, decisions and actions taken fast and aimed at real experiment, and work that people find meaningful and pitched at the right level. Emotionally safe relationships mean enough trust that an idea can be said out loud without fear, an atmosphere relaxed enough for people to be spontaneous, and disagreement about work that never becomes disagreement about people.
A study of a national core curriculum reform adds a caution about participation: where people are asked into a reform and then discover that what they said was never really wanted and changed nothing, that hollow version of participation can influence implementation negatively.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Renewal as transforming what an institution exists to produce
- 02
Enacted, resisted, stalled or institutionalised as the four outcomes
- 03
Eight contrasts between the older and newer readings of change
- 04
The eight depths of change with their school examples
- 05
Why the middle rungs are the ones that require judgement
- 06
The seven-step renewal sequence and where plans skip
- 07
Institutionalising as a step rather than a consequence
- 08
Three components of a climate for creativity and innovation
- 09
Participative reform, and the risk of quasi-participation
Rate an announcement and its plan on the depth ladder
- 3Rate the announcement and justify the rung.
- 3Rate each element of the plan.
- 3Name the missing rung that will bite first, and the advice that follows.
Key terms
- Curriculum Renewal
- Change that asks an institution to remake the very thing it was set up to produce, with four possible fates: enacted, resisted, stalled or institutionalised.
- Fine-tuning
- The shallowest depth of change, smoothing an existing arrangement so that it runs better while leaving curriculum, assessment philosophy and reporting lines untouched.
- Restructuring
- A depth of change that reconfigures authority and decision rights without altering the content of what is taught.
- Resource Reallocation
- A depth of change in which an existing structure is replaced so that staff time and funding serve a higher-priority task.
- Redefinition Of Success
- A depth of change that rewrites the measures by which an organisation judges itself, altering what counts as a good year before classroom practices change.
- Paradigm Shift
- The deepest rung, putting in question what knowledge is taken to be, how teaching is taken to work, and where one subject stops and the next begins.
- Institutionalisation
- The final step of a renewal sequence, in which an innovation is written into documents, timetables and appraisal criteria so that it survives the departure of its champions.
- Quasi-participation
- Consultation in which stakeholders are invited to contribute and then find their input is not genuinely welcomed, which can influence implementation negatively rather than neutrally.
Organisational Changes for Curriculum Renewals FAQ
How do I decide which depth a change sits at?
Ask what has to move for the change to be real, and check whether the plan moves it. Smoothing an arrangement, reconfiguring authority, moving resources, changing how planning happens, changing who leads, changing the measures, changing the stated values and challenging assumptions about knowledge are eight different demands.
The rung is set by the deepest thing that must change, not by how ambitious the language of the announcement is.
Why is redefining success not enough on its own?
Because rewriting the measures changes what counts as a good year before practices change, so it buys permission and nothing else. A plan that stops there has removed the old incentive without building the new capability, and the year that follows measures teachers on something nobody has shown them how to produce. Pair it with the step that creates the conditions for implementation.
What does institutionalising actually require?
That the innovation survives the people who championed it. In practice that means it appears in the documents the school keeps, in the timetable, and in the criteria by which staff are appraised. Those are the same organisational factors that decide implementation in the first place, which is why the last step of the renewal sequence and the organisational factor group keep meeting.
Assessment move
Take any change announced where you work and rate the announcement and the resourcing separately on the eight rungs. Where the two ratings differ by more than one level you have located the exact reason the change will stall, and that sentence is worth more in a case study than a paragraph about resistance.
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