This study explored change in six Victorian secondary colleges some four years into the major school-system change program known as ?????Schools of the Future?????. The purpose of the study was to identify successful models and practices for positive school change by exploring school change from the school level perspective. A focus of the investigation was an organizational development program designed by a North American professor of organization and management in which Victorian school principals were trained as their schools entered the ?????Schools of the Future????? program. The project was guided initially by four major research questions to which six additional research questions were added as the research progressed. The research methodology was qualitative. The data for this investigation were collected in 1997. The main means of gathering them was the in-depth interview of the principals of the six schools in the study and of the four members of staff they nominated as knowledgeable about their school?????s change processes. A follow-up questionnaire to the interview, a telephone questionnaire that asked principals for background information about their schools, and a study of school documents were also sources of data. The analysis and interpretation of the data related to charge in the schools was presented in the forms of six case studies and a multisite study. Eleven variables and eighteen insights identified the aspects associated with successful change across the sites. The study?????s three major findings identified the critical importance in the success of change of the school?????s organizational culture and individual participants in change processes, its relationship to elements in its external environment and the nature of its planning for change. A theoretical framework for positive school change environments was developed. It combined the elements associated with successful change in the study. This framework may prove useful as a basis for further research on systemic change in schools and as a point of reference for those actually engaged in leading the change process in schools and school systems.

Treatise (Ed. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2006. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-06, page: 2526. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: James Ryan.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Marilyn Laiken.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Dennis Thiessen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Paul Begley.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-192).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Tulsa, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-165).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 1999. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-129). Also available via the World Wide Web.