Managing educational change: a case of two leadership approaches

Readiness of teachers for change in schools

“…Based on these findings, it can be concluded that RFC cannot be limited to times of change; rather, it is closely related to total experiences of a teacher in a particular setting. As Hallinger and Bryant (2013) and Chow (2013) implied treating change as an event and advancing mechanistic interventions aiming at building RFC during times of change are likely to be insufficient in building positive attitudes towards change. Rather, leadership practices aiming at increasing satisfaction of teachers, limiting workload of the teachers, building an atmosphere of trust and demonstrating participative management and facilitating knowledge sharing contributes to building RFC on the part of teachers.…”

“…Similarly, Cockburn (2005) stated the importance of embracing change by the constituencies in schools in bringing up successful educational change. Rather than holding a top-down and mechanistic view of change, success of educational change relies on creating contextual conditions facilitating teachers' ownership of change (Chow, 2013).…”

Lessons learnt from a large-scale curriculum reform: The strategies to enhance development work and reduce reform-related stress

“…Firstly, the results showed that in the top-down-bottom-up reform strategy leadership for change management (e.g. clear division of work and active informing of all educational stakeholders about ongoing curriculum work) enhanced stakeholders' opportunities to engage in knowledge sharing practices (Chow 2013;Gu and Johansson 2013;Stoll et al 2006) (H1). This indicates that such leadership practices are central to promoting local educational stakeholders' participation in a reform and, thus, ownership of it (Pyhältö et al 2015;Horton and Martin 2013;Ketelaar et al 2012).…”

“…Top-down strategies, such as centralised reforms planned and led by policymakers or administrators, have been shown to have certain benefits mainly concerning the alignment between administrative-level actions, resource allocation, and the timing and dissemination of the intended development work at the district level (see Pietarinen et al 2017;Petko et al 2015). However, top-down reforms tend to have a weak impact on the everyday life of schools because they often fail to enhance ownership over the reform and build aligned understanding of the reform across different levels of the educational system (Chow 2013;Ng 2009). The bottom-up strategy, in which schools become decision-makers rather than implementers of administrativelevel initiatives (Honig 2004), has been suggested to promote local actors' motivation and ownership of the reform (see Boone 2014; López-Yáñez and Sánchez-Moreno 2013).…”

“…This kind of leadership has been shown to enhance the reform's impact on the educational reality (Alkahtani 2017;Boone 2014;Guhn 2009;Hargreaves and Fink 2006;Jones et al 2013;López-Yáñez and Sánchez-Moreno 2013;Toh 2016). Involving lots of stakeholders with different ideas of the intended change in the process (van den Akker 2003) as well as facilitating participation of those affected by the reforms requires leadership that promotes collective responsibility, mutual trust and inclusive membership as well as the creation of spaces in which to work together towards common goals (Adams 2013;Adams and Miskell 2016;Chow 2013;Horton and Martin 2013;Kondakci et al 2017;Stoll et al 2006). Such participatory leadership in change management creates opportunities for learning and reflective professional inquiry among the educational practitioners who ultimately implement the aims of the reform in the school (Leana 2011;López-Yáñez and Sánchez-Moreno 2013;Ramberg 2014;Thoonen et al 2012).…”