Page 6 - 和富慈善基金李宗德小學 知德集

Principal's Writing Corner

Is Change Necessary for a

School Like Us?

Perceiving that our school has been running quite smoothly and everything
is seemingly under control and in good order, I have once asked myself, “It
appears that we are quite welcomed by our stakeholders in the catchment
areas and most of our students can perform outstandingly as expected. Are we
satisfied with our school’s current status quo, right at this point and at this very
moment? Do we have any areas that need immediate attention? Are changes
or improvement measures necessary for us?”

It has always been a unique and valuable experience for me to have
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worked in a 'sinking' school before and ultimately changed it to a 'moving' one
(Stoll & Fink, 1996) with a profound cultural change in a hard time of around
5 years. The practical experience alerts me of the fact that a failing school
like the one I worked at before requires a high level of intensive interventions
and a radical change premised on building the capacities of all stakeholders
concerned is essential in putting forward an authentic school improvement in
effect. Contemporarily, creating the conditions for school improvement at all
levels supporting the change process is critical to its success (Hopkins, 2002).

However, change is rapid and innovation is multidimensional. The theories
that were true ten years ago will no longer be adequate today. According to
Fullan (2001), there are three aspects of change: (1) the possible use of new or
revised materials, (2) the possible use of new teaching approaches, and (3) the
possible alternation of beliefs. Together they represent the means of achieving
a particular goal or sets of goals. But, to my personal experience, changes
in teaching materials, and changes in teaching approaches seem to be more
related to technical issues, easier to be tackled but need time to prepare and
quality staff development might be necessary. However, changes in beliefs and
understanding are extremely hard to occur because they are the foundation of
achieving 'deep' reform.

Therefore, it is necessary to let all people involved make sense from the
change and establish a sense of ownership before achieving a long lasting effect of
school improvement. To implement the change, a great deal of school improvement
strategies should be employed but they should be reviewed punctually throughout
the whole course. Examples include: creating a shared vision within the school,
progressive restructuring of the management system, change at leadership level,
introduction of external support, whole school review, short-term and long-term plan,
setting up a school improvement group, etc.

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