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This chapter examines the initiation of educational change in post-Soviet Russia, using the eight-factor change framework developed by Michael Fullan. Interviews were conducted with 24 key individuals, including members of the Ministry of Education, teacher educators, university researchers, and members of advocacy and school reform organizations. Important primary (government, policy, and school) documents related to the change process of educational transformation were also examined. The format for the interviews involved a common, open-ended unstructured questionnaire, upon which the researchers elaborated with additional probes as the interview unfolded. The interviews ranged from 1–2 hours in length; approximately 50–55 hours of material were recorded. Data analyses involved examination of the transcribed interviews, extensive notes, and documents acquired by the principal researcher. With a specific focus on decentralization reforms, the Russian experience was matched against the initiation stage of Fullan”s framework in order to understand Russia”s transformation as a “change” process. The data show that Fullan”s conceptual framework does clearly have utility for helping us understand events in Russia. However, we propose a revised framework, which is more consistent with the revolutionary rather than the evolutionary transformation and, therefore, better accounts for the dynamic character of dramatic and sudden change typical of Russia and other former Soviet countries.

Most comparative education research has included investigation of dimensions of educational reform but not all research in the field has focused concertedly on reform in relation to the realities in practice. In the latter half of the 20th century comparativists underscored the need to investigate implementation issues, not just reform policies, as had often been the case in earlier comparative research, since time had shown that political processes did not always equate with educational outcomes. Reforms can be thwarted altogether, significantly modified or mediated in practice, embraced with qualification, or differentially implemented across regions or levels within a given country. Reform implementation might produce intended and unintended change (for better or for worse); or no change at all might be the outcome; or change might occur ahead of reform. Some of the most fascinating findings in comparative research are dichotomous considerations of change such as policy versus practice, ideal versus real, de facto change versus de jure change, intended and unintended outcomes of reform, grass-roots (bottom–up) versus centralized (top–down) reforms, and de facto change legitimized-after-the-fact through reform or new policy.

Although recent decades have seen increasing calls for fundamental change in the teaching of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics (SEM), efforts to more broadly propagate proven innovations have met with only modest success despite (i) numerous national reports calling for changes, (ii) considerable funding that has been invested in SEM education improvements, and (iii) the growing body of literature on the superior efficacy of many curricular innovations. This chapter suggests that SEM innovators, while expert in their fields, may need to thoughtfully consider research and literature on change, both within higher education and including broader work on organizational change. From a review of the literature on change in higher education, two particular challenges are identified: goal ambiguity and narrow focus of change initiatives. To address these challenges, the authors offer a conceptual framework for decisions that SEM educational change agents make as they design and implement their change initiatives. Within this framework, they offer options and combinations of options that change agents might consider. Given the breadth and complexity of the literature and challenges of change, SEM educational change agents might consider forming collaborations to which they would contribute their disciplinary expertise in one of the three research communities. They might team with individuals who bring requisite expertise from other research communities or with respect to individual and organizational change. Such partnerships might develop approaches that would concurrently address multiple foci. Collaborations that included expertise in individual and organizational change would also be better prepared to navigate complexities of institutional change.

Today, education shows an urgent need for transformation to better respond to the complex and interdependent nature of current learning and social challenges we are facing. This chapter is based on the evidence of schools and district initiatives that claim for systemic change with a strong focus on wider interconnection and collaboration between learners, professionals and organizations.

Networks for Change is a programme launched in 2017 by the Barcelona Education Consortium that intends to create professional networks of schools in the city. The programme seeks a deep change in the whole system: to influence how teachers learn from one another to lead a collective transformation of schools, moving towards inclusive, significant and profound learning of all students. To achieve this, the programme articulates 25 territorial networks of schools, spread over the 10 districts in the city of Barcelona, grouping a total of 283 schools (ages 3–18), 1,700 leadership teams and 10,000 teachers. The network sessions are facilitated by one district leader, existing a team of 13 facilitators in the programme. Each school assigns an internal and volunteering leadership team that is responsible to assist to the network meetings, so as to empower internal change processes in schools.

The present study evaluates the impact of the programme on the development of territorial networks, as well as on the changes emerged in school communities. The instruments used combine a quantitative and qualitative approach including a questionnaire for teams of leaders involved in the programme, a questionnaire for teachers from schools and a focus group with programme facilitators of the 25 networks.

The main results show that the Networks for Change programme is already becoming a response to the widely contrasted need to weave sustainable relationships between teachers from different schools in the system at the same time that it is strengthening the collaborative capacities of educational actors in the city’s neighbourhoods and territories. Likewise, and to take a step further in the development of the programme, it is suggested emphasizing the increase of transversality in the networks as cross-sector collaboration, distributing the leadership of the programme through its actors and establishing direct ways for the impact to schools and their transformation. Right now, the network mainly fulfils a function of generating learning among its participants, although the desired horizon is to extend this learning to the entire ecosystem and at the same time generate systemic change in the neighbourhoods in order to enhance and document real impact on learners.

Entrepreneurial approaches to public mass education are not easily developed or managed by public sector institutions. Instead, private sector entities are often responsible for the development and implementation of innovative and entrepreneurial education. Part of the reason may be the resistance to change that isomorphism in mass education engenders, but the involvement of privately-funded, organized, and managed organizations plays a significant role as well. Private sector-driven educational change has become the dominant mode of entrepreneurship in 21st century national educational systems, but there are challenges and obstacles to privately managing public sector institutions such as education and the activities or curricula that comprise its core. To understand this phenomena the promises and challenges for innovation and entrepreneurship are discussed through an institutional framework.

This chapter reports on research work which was a component of an independent review of the primary school curriculum renewal exercise that was commissioned by the Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago and executed during 2012–2013. It examines how agencies functioned to engender educational change through education governance systems in the process of revising the curriculum. Turbulence Theory (Gross, 2014) was the tool used to explore the interactions among agencies. The research shows that turbulence occurred at various stages and that the outcome of interactions among the agencies that were in pursuit of educational change and equity was largely dependent on the extent of the turbulence and how it was managed. For example, the local Curriculum Planning Team (CPT) was able to learn from external consultants while firmly maintaining that they were the ones who had a deep understanding of the local context and should therefore have a major say in what was included in the curriculum. However, the CPT could do little to offset the severe turbulence caused when the political directorate mandated that there should be full-scale implementation of the revised curriculum without the benefit of a pilot. The role of socio-political contextual factors in the curriculum development process is highlighted.

The national core curriculum is renewed in Finland approximately every ten years, the most recent one being 2016. The core curriculum sets the general goals, providing the foundation for district- and school level curriculum development work (Finnish National Board of Education, 2016). The messages from transnational educational policy (e.g. OECD) are apparent in the core curriculum. However, districts, schools and teachers are highly autonomous in upholding, resourcing and deciding about the curriculum making at the local sites of activity. Accordingly, the curriculum making relies heavily on shared sense-making as a tool for cultivating transformative learning throughout the educational system. The chapter draws on the results of the national “School Matters” research project (2014-2018), to provide the meta-analysis of the sense-making in national curriculum making. Results suggested that the shared sense-making focused on engaging educational practitioners in learning at all layers of the system. However, the means for facilitating shared sense-making between the different layers of the system and curriculum was perceived to be less coherent by the stakeholders at the district and school level, than at the state level. This implies that the educational providers should not only be involved in co-creation of the aims, contents and values of the curriculum document, but also in designing novel and ecologically valid ways for orchestrating the complex and dynamic curriculum making.