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Presence of the core concepts does not guarantee success, but their absence ensures failure
The history of educational reform and innovation is replete with good ideas or policies that fail to get implemented or that are successful in one situation but not in another. A missing ingredient in most failed cases is appreciation and use of what we call change knowledge: understanding and insight about the process of change and the key drivers that make for successful change in practice. The presence of change knowledge does not guarantee success, but its absence ensures failure.
It is not easy to rectify this deficit. Policy makers do not want to be slowed down by knowledge of change. It takes time to address this knowledge - even though, ironically, they are eventually slowed down even more by failed implementation.
In the past 20 years, we have learned a great deal about innovative processes that work and those that don't. We are using this knowledge to bring about system change across the three levels of school and community, district and state (Barber & Fullan, 2005). In particular, eight drivers are keys to create effective and lasting change.
1. Engaging people's moral purposes.
The first overriding principle is knowledge about the why of change, namely moral purpose. Moral purpose in educational change is about improving society through improving educational systems and thus the learning of all citizens.
In education, moral purpose involves committing to raise the bar and close the gap in student achievement - for example, increasing literacy for all, with special attention to those most disadvantaged. There is a wide gap, particularly in some countries, between groups at the bottom and those at the top. Schools need to "raise the floor" by figuring out how to speed up the learning of those who are at the bottom, those for whom the school system has been less effective.
Improving overall literacy achievement is directly associated with a country's economic productivity. In countries where the gap between high and low student performance is reduced, citizens' health and wellbeing are measurably better.
In change knowledge, moral purpose is not just a goal but a process of engaging educators, community leaders, and society as a whole in the moral purpose...