ED354587 EA024578
Title: The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform: Can We Change
Course before It's Too Late? The Jossey-Bass Education Series and
the Jossey-Bass Social and Behavioral Science Series.
Author(s): Sarason, Seymour B.
Pages: 187
Publication Date: 1990
ISBN: 1-55542-269-1
Available from: Document Not Available from EDRS.
Availability: Jossey-Bass, Inc., Publishers, P.O. Box 44305, San Francisco,
CA 94144-4305 ($25.95).
Language: English
Document Type: Book (010); Information Analysis (070)
Geographic Source: U.S.; Connecticut
Journal Announcement: RIEJUL1993
Schools have
been intractable to change and the attainment of goals set by reformers.
A major failure has been the inability of reformers to confront
this intractability. As a result, each new wave of reform learns
nothing from earlier efforts and comes up with recommendations that
have failed in the past. Nine chapters explore why reform efforts
are not working. Chapter 1, "Confronting Intractability,"
discusses the inability of reformers to confront the intractability
of schools to past efforts at change and why that omission dooms
present efforts. Chapter 2, "Conceptualizing the Educational
System," takes up the different obstacles that those within
the school culture encounter. Chapter 3, "Internal and External
Perspectives on the System," concerns the nature of power relationships
in schools. Chapter 4, "Altering Power Relationships,"
takes up the issues surrounding the question of who should be involved
in educational decision making. Chapter 5, "Case in Point:
Power Relationships in the Classroom," asserts that unless
changes in power relationships among different levels of educational
personnel are concomitant with altering power relationships in the
classroom, the goals of reform will not be realized. Chapter 6,
"Obstacles to Change," presents five examples to illustrate
why efforts at educational change are rarely successful. Chapter
7, "Reform Efforts: Implementation, Imitation and Replication,"
takes up the differences between the imitation and replication of
presumably successful change efforts and describes why true replication
is so rare. Chapter 8, "For Whom Do Schools Exist?" argues
that the unreflective acceptance of the belief that schools exist
only or primarily for children is one of the root causes of intractability.
Chapter 9, "An Overarching Goal for Students," asks and
discusses questions about students and what happens in the schools.
(Contains 27 references.) (RR)
Descriptors: Cooperative Learning; *Educational Change; *Educational
Environment; Elementary Secondary Education; *Power Structure; *School
Restructuring
