The number of schools failing to prepare students for post-secondary life continues to increase; thus, school reform continues to be a pressing concern. Millions of dollars have been spent on school reform initiatives, particularly comprehensive reform such as complete school turnaround. Turnaround efforts include full closure, restarts, and transformation of schools that are currently failing. School turnaround requires the immediate disruption of past practices to establish new practices. These changes require the development of new habits of mind, a refocus on expectations and a re-examination of adult-adult, adult-student, and student-student relationships. For stakeholders, school turnaround is viewed as what happens to them rather than what happens for their benefit. The stakeholders who are the students and teachers within the school are affected in numerous ways by the disruption. This study reviewed literature on turnaround endeavors and pinpointed the important organizational design, traits of leadership, culture and climate, and adult actions that can be leveraged to create comprehensive school turnaround that is sustainable. The findings of this study resulted in the development of a handbook that provides school turnaround leaders with the tools to design a comprehensive turnaround program. This Turnaround Handbook is built on the premise of stabilizing culture and climate within the school to drive change practices that lead to school success. This handbook takes into account the needs of students to have a voice, adults to be supported and developed, and practices to be sustained beyond a finite period of classification as a turnaround school. The significance of this research is that school turnaround leaders can design programs that are sustainable and can significantly improve the lives and educational experiences of those affected by the reform process.

Mexico introduced in 2013 a historic reform amending the entry, performance assessment, promotion, incentive programs, and retention of teachers, with the aim of advancing teachers’ careers and eliminating discretional practices by the teachers union. This study analyzed Mexico’s teacher selection process following this reform and focused on the state of Puebla. It offers evidence on whether standards-based teacher evaluations, specifically the written teacher entry examinations, were a valid method for selecting competent teachers. The core component was a predictive validity study of the teacher selection method, assessing whether the teacher entry examination results predicted teacher performance evaluation results after 2 years. This was supplemented with semistructured interviews of 31 teachers and analysis of administrative documents, contextualizing the quantitative findings and offering evidence on the content of the teacher entry examination. From the current perspective on validity, this study provides evidence on the relationship between the teacher entry examination scores and external measures collected at a later point in teachers’ careers, used as criterion validity for interpretation of the soundness of the teacher entry examination. The evidence showed that the entry examination was able to predict teacher performance, with correlation coefficients ranging from .23 to .28 between the subject-matter test and the global performance evaluation score (the other two tests were not correlated or inadequately correlated). However, this finding must be explained carefully, since the convergent evidence between the subject-matter test and the exam instrument of evaluation are possibly due to the similarity in content and method of the two measures. In this regard, the lesson plan instrument offered better evidence of an adequate correlation (.22 to .29) with the teacher entry examination (the portfolio instrument of evaluation showed no significant correlation). Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions showed that the teacher entry examination was one of the factors that best explained the variability in the global performance evaluation score, with 1% increase associated with a 3.8% increase in the global performance evaluation score (equivalent to 30 points). Grades were also found to be an explanatory factor, but half the size of the teacher entry examination effect. Previous teaching experience in public schools was associated with a negative effect of the same size as the entry examination effect, as well as staying in the same school during the first two years with an increase of 27 points. An adverse socioeconomic context was not necessarily unfavorable, as shown by the positive effect of the marginalization index on the performance evaluation, but teaching in lowly dense communities it was, with -42 to -92 points less. Finally, an innovative strategy estimated the teacher selection error rates, using as validity criteria success and failure measures of predicted teacher performance. The error and severe error rates may not be exact, but the best prediction models showed an underselection error rate of 7% for the global performance evaluation score, 8% for the lesson plan score, and 14% for the portfolio score, reflecting the probability of leaving out of the teaching career promising teachers. They also showed that the overselection error rate was 12% for the global performance evaluation score, 13% for the lesson plan score, and 14% for the portfolio score, describing the probability of selecting underperforming teachers, which was the worst of outcomes. In light of this evidence, the sample studied shows that results in Mexico’s teacher entry examination were associated with the subsequent performance evaluation. However, conceptually, a test can hardly predict teaching quality, since a test captures individuals’ knowledge, while teaching quality is a much richer concept, approximated by the concept of effective teaching and teacher effectiveness, and including observable and unobservable characteristics, and contributions to education outcomes other than learning outcomes. This means that the performance evaluation in Mexico was not necessarily a measure of effective teaching nor of effective teachers, but showed teachers’ pedagogical and subject-matter knowledge, abilities to build a lesson plan, and skills to assess and select student work from different achievement levels. The most obvious information missing was teachers’ practices, as captured through classroom observations. Despite the difficulty of a test to measure teaching quality, and the difficulties in implementing a nation-wide education reform, the study conducted produced rigorous, scientific, and objective evidence that demonstrates that Mexico’s teacher entry examination is a robust method to select teachers, providing useful information on teacher performance when making a hiring decision. The most important implication is that it may guarantee the selection of quality teachers, if some corrections are made, in order to avoid selecting underperforming teachers and leaving promising candidates out of the teaching career.

Focusing on teacher learning, this study follows fifteen teachers in the crux of comprehensive school reform. These "regular" classroom teachers are the ubiquitous players of this theatre of school reform. "Regular" teacher is defined as a typical classroom teacher who is not actively involved in the district's school reform project or one who hasn't taken an active leadership role. The teachers in this study work in the challenging environment of a poor, diverse urban school district that was in its third year of a comprehensive school reform program, the Accelerated Schools Project. Fifteen teachers volunteered to take part in a teaching laboratory where they met, planned, taught, assessed and reflected on their practice. The study tells, analyzes and speculates about their journey. The Accelerated Schools Project (ASP) is a national comprehensive school improvement model that provides professional development to schools. The study described the experiences of regular classroom teachers who engaged in a yearlong professional development program that is part of the ASP service to schools. This study employs qualitative research methods in a multiple case study analysis. By examining the teaching practices of regular classroom teachers who are often depicted as "closing the door" to the outside influences of school, district, state or federal policy, the study seeks to fully understand the planning, teaching, assessing and reflecting of classroom teachers who are caught in the center of school reform. The key findings of this study suggest teacher practice for all teacher cohorts (novice, mid-career and veteran) was influenced by participation in the Powerful Learning Laboratory. Each aspect of teaching (planning, teaching, assessing and reflection) was influenced, with differing emphasis by each cohort. The findings suggest the Powerful Learning Lab is a positive professional development experience for teachers, and that teacher learning labs should remain an integral part of the Accelerated Schools Project.

This study examined the phenomenon of multiple and continuous change and the adjustments teachers made in response to the phenomenon. The research questions posed by this study are: 1. Is there a phenomenon of multiple and continuous change and if so how is it characterized by the participants? 2. Is there an effect of multiple and continuous change on the participants, if so, how do the participants adjust to the phenomenon and how can these adjustments be described? Methodologically, the strategy for this study was designed to allow for the generation of theory since multiple and continuous change has not been examined as a phenomenon. In-depth interviews were conducted with an "n" of five to allow for in-depth exploratory questioning and comparison and analysis of complex divergent data. The study utilized teachers' descriptions of their lived experience to provide working definitions of multiple and continuous change. Change is experienced as planned change, and change is experienced as unplanned change. Teachers also described paradoxes that characterize their work milieu. The paradoxes create unanswerable conundrums such as classroom versus school focus, depth versus breadth, commitment versus letting go and fidelity versus rigor. The phenomenon of multiple and continuous change provokes adjustments that are behavioral and attitudinal. These adjustments impact the instructional domain, professional domain and personal domain. The adjustments teachers made did not resemble targeted outcomes. Rather, the adjustments teachers made served as metaprescriptions to assist in the navigation of multiple and continuous change. The composite suggests that multiple and continuous change is complex, interactive and exponential. The behaviors and attitudes that the participants learn mitigate institutionalization of innovations and favor simple adjustments that make teaching more manageable under the circumstances but not necessarily more effective. The significance of this study is that change has been misunderstood because the perspective of the teacher has been overlooked. The misunderstanding of what comprises change disrupts and alters strategic planning. Change in schools is experienced as a phenomenon that is continuous. Administrators, change agents, and policy makers must readjust their thinking about change and develop a paradigm for school improvement that reflects the real world of schools.

Thesis (MPA) --University of Limpopo, 2007 / The aim of this study was to check on the impact of transformation in a higher education institution with particular reference to the University of Limpopo (Turfloop Campus), hence the work entitled “Evaluation of the impact of transformation at the University of Limpopo (Turfloop Campus): A review of the progress during the period 2000 – 2007”. The 1990s marked the period during which all government departments went through a rough time in that they were required to transform or sink. The higher education realm was not immune to this tedious process with challenging factors, which were, among others, economic forces, the emergence of technology, competition in terms of educational products, new funding programmes with public accountability, mergers and globalisation trends. In order for the universities to keep pace with the aforementioned challenges, a need for not merely administering, but managing the process of change as it presented itself to the universities, the need for visionary and transformational leadership became apparent. To ensure that the process of transformation in the higher education realm took place, the government enacted a number of items of legislation, and among others, the White Paper on Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education (Government Gazette, no. 4, 18207, 15 August 1997) was passed. It was abundantly clear from the literature reviewed that the Transformation of Higher Education in South Africa was long overdue. This was marked by the 1975 uprisings and other related activities such as the demand for academic autonomy by institutions of higher learning. It was evident from the results of the study that transformation at the University of Limpopo (Turfloop Campus) was anathema to many. It is advisable for the University to take note of the results of this study, and that there is need for a turn-around strategy that would include Total Quality Management to be drawn up, implemented and monitored forthwith.

This is the report of a study into educational change. The purpose of the investigation was to observe and analyse an example of a system-wide policy change through an intensive and disciplined case study, in order to develop a theory about the implementation of a particular change process and use that theory to account for the way the observed change process proceeded. Although change and how it was achieved in a large, complex bureaucratic organisation was the primary focus for theory development and understanding, the role of the management personnel in the change process was also of interest. The introduction of performance management (in particular, promotion-by-merit within the Western Australian Ministry of Education) was the change example under consideration. In contrast to the traditional way-of-studying-educational change, the present study adopted a participant observation case study using a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), because of its use in a previous study (Heaven, 1987) and in addition, the literature review indicated a lack of grounded theory studies in this area. Grounded theory is not the only methodology which can generate theory grounded in the data. However,it does ensure that a well-connected and comprehensive theory will emerge and that the theory which does emerge will be clearly and demonstrably grounded in the data from which it derives. Seven major factors or categories were identified from this grounded theory study. These factors included values, antagonists, ethos, infrastructure, equivocation, communication and culture. Five models of change were developed. / The first model was developed by analysing the literature using grounded theory methodology as a metaphor and the literature was mapped in a way which had not been done before. The result was the identification of eight 'categories' of findings in the literature,which, taken together, constitute an emergent sense of a 'theory' of educational change. The second and third models focused on the implementation of the specific policy change examined. The fourth and fifth models were developed as generic models of change implementation which, it is suggested, may be applicable in varying degrees to other comparable change implementation situations. The five models developed in this study provide managers with relatively simple ways of conceptualising a complex process- and provide a set of reference points or stages for action. Recommendations for further research include the application of grounded theory methodology to the totality of the literature on educational change, further investigation of the role and importance of an organisation's culture and its values in the implementation of change, and further study of the role played by illusions in the change implementation process.

This thesis describes a longitudinal case study conducted in a secondary high school in the North West of Western Australia that was implementing an across the curriculum literacy strategy called Effective Reading in the Content Areas (ERICA). The study was conducted from an educational change management perspective where the adoption and implementation of ERICA was viewed against an educational change management framework. The impact of the adoption and implementation of ERICA on the teaching staff and student writing competence was investigated. The study has demonstrated that an educational change management framework is a useful tool for making the decision to adopt an innovation and for guiding the subsequent implementation. In addition, the study has highlighted the need to plan appropriately using tried and effective planning cycles and to recognize that the outcomes of any implementation of an innovation are unpredictable because of the complex interaction of change principles. Furthermore, the study has highlighted the complexity of the task of trying to improve student writing competence. Much effort was expended with little resultant improvement in student writing competence. This outcome can be rationalized, but considerable change is required in the way in which a traditional school operates before significant improvements in student writing competence will be seen.

This case study of four multi-campus colleges in New South Wales combines both qualitative and quantitative research instruments in a multiple-case study methodology to investigate the reasons why the DET restructured 34 of its comprehensive high schools into 11 multi-campus colleges and to study the interplay of the structural and cultural dynamics in those colleges. The study is situated in the literature on organisational behaviour whose perspective recognises the close interconnectedness between structure and culture but emphasises reculturing as the essence of effective organisational dynamism. In particular, special attention is given to Pace’s (2002) dynamics model which was redesigned into the Dynamics Paradigm that underpins the data analysis in this thesis. Using 16 structural-cultural dynamics criteria, themes and patterns were identified in the data and through iterative, inductive analysis, they were categorised into the different elements of the Dynamics Paradigm for analysis. Contextual contingency, curriculum, opportunity, economic rationalisation, politics and policies of the DET, plus demonstration effects from other Australian States and Territories were the reasons for the restructuring of the comprehensive high schools. The study identifies 12 areas for further research, recommends 32 policy options which could lead to improved outcomes for students and teachers in multi-campus colleges, and proposes 11 potential applications of this thesis. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis reports an evaluation of the Jordanian Education Reform Program (JERP) initiated in 1987. The thesis includes a review of the international literature on education reform culminating in a conclusion that the most widely accepted approach currently is a mixed-model one that is partly top-down and partly bottom-up. Both quantitative and qualitative types of data were gathered and analysed. The findings of the study were that some seven teacher roles, particularly those of technologist and social change agent, were being performed at comparatively low levels, while others, particularly those of developer of student’s cognitive growth and health educator, were being performed at comparatively high levels. Many problems in the implementation of the education reforms were revealed in the interviews, especially the failure to involve teachers in the process of planning the reforms. Implications for policy, practice and further research were suggested. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The focus of this study is the attempt of one school, Loreto Normanhurst, to draw from its values base and traditions to develop and implement a new holistic paradigm of schooling, more relevant to the needs of its 21st century students. Loreto Normanhurst is a Catholic secondary day and boarding school for girls in the northern suburbs of Sydney, Australia. It is a school over 100 years old, associated with the 400 year old, Mary Ward, international tradition of educating women. The aims of the study were threefold: to document and analyse the process of reinvention from a ‘living systems’ perspective (Senge et al., 2000; Sergiovanni, 2000), while it was happening, thereby enhancing the reinvention process itself through a reflexive approach; to document and acknowledge the efforts of the members of the school community in seeking to meet the needs of its students in a 21st century context; and, through its blend of theory and practice, to contribute both to the literature on educational leadership and school reform, and to practice in schools. The study was limited to Loreto Normanhurst, the school in which the researcher is principal. A mixed methodology was adopted, although the study was chiefly qualitative. As an ethnographic case study, it incorporated phenomenological data from the school community, as well as some quantitative data. The particular situation of the researcher, however, as an insider researcher in a position of power within the community studied, necessitated some innovative methodological strategies in order to protect both the participants and the integrity of the research. The situation of the researcher led also to the incorporation of the research traditions of autoethnography and transpersonal research methodologies. The researcher drew from the literature on change, culture and leadership to analyse and interpret data gathered, predominantly, over a five-year period. The study traces the process of reinvention within the school from 2001 to 2005. Most of the data were gathered between 2001 and 2004, although antecedent data, particularly from 1994 to 2000, were included, as well as some data from 2005, by which stage the new paradigm had been implemented for two years within the school. The study presents findings in three main areas: change processes in schools; educational leadership; and insider research methodology. Findings related to change processes are addressed in two parts. The first of these relates to the development, implementation and evaluation of the new educational paradigm, while the second relates to the school’s attempt to ‘continually reinvent’ itself, thus institutionalising change (Schein, 1992). The school’s values played an important role in both of these aspects of change. Findings related to educational leadership are derived from the study of the school’s reinvention processes. These findings include insights into how a range of leadership theories supported, or failed to adequately support, leadership of the reinvention process as well as the identification of twelve dilemmas associated with leadership for change in a Mary Ward school. Findings related to methodologies for insider researchers in positions of power address the need for techniques, methods and research traditions which will protect participants and the research, as well as assisting the researcher in managing the multiple roles entailed in research of this kind. The study concludes with important contributions to the fields of school reform, educational leadership, and insider research methodology. First, it offers a framework for the reinvention of a school and the development of a culture of continual reinvention. This is the eight-step ‘Framework for Reinventing a School’. Second, it proposes a model of leadership for such a reinvention, identified as ‘Contemplative-reflexive leadership for reinvention’. Third, it presents a more fully developed method for conducting insider research, which can be used by school principals and others in positions of authority. This is known as ‘PIRM – Powerful Insider Research Method’: a research method for use by insider researchers in positions of power in their own organisation.