This research identifies those practices and/or conditions that facilitate (or hinder) school and/or system based innovation in ACT high schools. It examines teachers� ways of making meaning of change in their working lives. It draws on narrative inquiry and teacher in-depth interviews. The work story is used to engage teachers� individual agency as a way to conceptualise the requirements of innovation. The data is represented as teachers� narrative categorized as the Red Hots and Unfreezables. The primary themes or motifs emerging in the teachers� talk�teacher agency, resistance and leadership�provide collective insight into teachers� working lives and the capacity of schools to cope with change. Analyses of the �lived experiences� of teachers suggest that innovative practice is linked to teacher agency and the presence of professional learning communities, and that those leading change must focus on the realities of the teachers implementing change. This study also explores the culture of teacher resistance, supporting the research that school cultures are characteristically and strongly resistant to change from within the organization. As a result of this study, we have an improved understanding of the conditions that contribute to effective school change, and the importance for teachers to conduct their own research. This study contains important recommendations for governments and education systems implementing change initiatives.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of communication between the Operations branch, the Student Services Section and High School Learning Centres within the Services Division of the ACT Department of Education. Data was collected from administrators and educators alike. The survey instrument was designed specifically to examine the perception of the effectiveness of organisational communication between the bureaucratic administrative group within the ACT Department Education Department and the personnel within the ACT High Schools Learning Centres responsible for service delivery to students in Learning Centres. The survey instrument addressed five factors. These factors included Horizontal and Vertical Communication, Personal Feedback, Media Quality and Barriers to Communication. The findings from the survey were organised into six major findings and four subsidiary findings and discussion on each finding followed. The findings of the study indicated that, effective co-ordination in a large organisation requires some centralized direction. The relationship that exists between the three organisational domains of the Act Department of Education responsible for the delivery of effective service to Learning Centre clients in ACT High Schools had been shown to be an impersonal mechanism of control designed by the Policy and Management domains in part, and a culturally diffuse but personal mechanism of control used by the Service domain personnel within the Learning Centres themselves. What has emerged from the study is evidence that would suggest that there is lack of an effective link between the more bureaucratic Policy and Management domains and the more open and less formal Service domain sector. The findings have implications for the bureaucrats involved in the change process which has been part of regionalisation. The findings of the study indicate that regionalisation does not appear to provide a panacea for the major difficulties associated with communication as revealed in this study.