Spring Q 606

Ch. 4 - The Causes and Processes of Initiation
from Fullan, M. The New Meaning of Educational Change

Phases to the change process:

Initiation - process leading up to and including the decision
- decision can be by a single person or a group
- different sources, different reasons
- central components: staff, admin., curriculum, instruction, supplies, community support, monitoring, scheduling
- need an advocate -- most powerful is chief district administrator (superintendent?)
- principal is a critical source of initiation
- teacher advocacy
- community can support, oppose, apply pressure or be apathetic
-new policy and funds affect initiation

Ch. 5 - Causes/Processes of Implementation and Continuation

Implementation - putting ideas, programs, or structures into practice
- The more factors supporting implementation, the more change will be accomplished.
Key factors in Implementation:
- Characteristics: need, clarity, complexity, quality
- Local Characterisitics: school district, community, principal, teacher
- External Factors: government and other agencies
- The quality of working relationships among teachers is strongly related to implementation.

Continuation - continuing the ideas, programs, etc.
- lack of money, interest, support are reasons for noncontinuation
- principal is key, administators and teachers must be skilled and committed to change

Effective implementation depends on the combination of all the factors:
- makeup of the local district
- character of individual schools and teachers
- existence and form of external relationships.

To sustain programs successfully, you need:
- better implementation plans,
- to get better implementation plans,
- to know how to change planning and follow-through
- to know how to change planning process
- to know how to produce better planners and implementers

Educational change is the "science of muddling through" (Lindblom, 1959).

Review of Senge's "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of a Learning Organization"

Shields (1990)

Five Disciplines:

1. personal mastery
2. mental models
3. shared vision
4. team learning
5. systems thinking

• Systems Thinking, the Fifth Discipline, is a global approach to change
• Approach change by seeing the whole picture
• Creative tension creates change
• Shared vision anchored in set of governing ideas.
• "Team Learning": discusses difference between discussion and dialogue

• Three leadership images that might promote learning organizations:

1. Leader as designer
2. Leader as steward
3. Leader as teacher (fosters learning)

• Three Elements of Principles:

1. practices
2. principles
3. essences

"His book points the way to developing a framework that combines the practices, principles, and essences of each of his disciplines into a model that would synthesize theory, research, and practice and could also be applied in further research into all five disciplines." (Shields)

• "The leader as a designer of the restructuring process of educational change is crucial."

"Second-order change requires educators to embrace new ways of thinking as well as to find ways to integrate the individual’s strengths, ideas, and vision (personal mastery) with those of the organization as a whole."(Shields)

Judy

Morgan (1986/1996)

• Use of Metaphors to describe organizations
• An attempt to understand organizations
• Metaphors used conventionally only allow us to partially understand organizations.
• Metaphors used to help us understand an experience in terms of another.
• Metaphor may provide us with a "one-sided insight".
• May concentrate on one element while ignoring others’ importance.
• "Organizations are many things at once!..."
• Need to recognize the complexity of organizations.
• Different metaphors can be used to understand the same situation so that all sides can be understood.
• See world differently when look with two eyes than one.
• "We can know organizations only through our experiences of them."
• "…but we can never be sure that we are absolutely right.
• "…any given situation can be many different things at once."
• "Imaginization" links images to actions.
• Metaphors allow us to understand that how we can think of organizations in many different ways and relate this directly to how we act within them and how we create them.

Judy

McGregor (1996)

Theory X: Conventional Theory of Management

1. Management is responsible for all organizational elements
2. Management directs the employees’ efforts
3. Employees need to be persuaded through rewards, punishment and control in order for organizational needs to be met.
4. Employees are inherently lazy.
5. Employees resist change.
6. Employees don’t considered organization’s needs.
7. Those on the front line aren’t very bright so must be controlled and led for organization’s needs to be met

• Hard and Soft approach
• Conventional approach inadequate, author examines motivation as related to needs of employee.

Theory Y: New Theory of Management

1. Management is responsible for all organizational elements.
2. People become passive or resistant to organizational needs through experience in the organization.
3. Motivation is inherent in people, it is management’s responsibility to provide opportunities for their people to recognize this in themselves.
4. Management provides ways for people to set and achieve their own goals that will also meet the organization’s objectives.
5. Relies on self-direction and self-control

• Difference between 2 Theories is like difference between being treated as a child and treated as an adult.
• Some management claim to "buy" the Theory Y ideas but try to apply them within a Theory X framework

Have this article and others laid out on a table for easier comparison but can't use tables in a Blog so will bring to class next week. This form will have to do for now. Also have read Fullan article. Will post about it at a later date. I think we should put a link to this site on the class Blog so Willow and others can see our work. I can't see putting the work out three times: here, on our personal Blog and class Blog. What do you guys think?

Judy

Theory X - People/staff lack motivation and management needs to be the one to 'whip them into shape'!
Theory Y - Management should offer opportunities for staff which will result in personal and organizational success.

The Human Side of Enterprise
by Douglas Murray McGregor

aka: (Theory X and Theory Y)

Theory X

Three propositions:
Management:
- is reponsible for organization and productivity.
- directs, motivates, controls, modifies behaviour to fit needs of organization.
- without managment intervention, people are passive and need rewards and punishments.
Beliefs:
- People work as little as possible.
- People lack ambition, dislike responsibility and prefer to be led.
- People are self-centred and gullible.

Management can be "hard" or "strong" (coercion, close supervision)
- Leads to counter forces, antagonism, sabotage of management objective
"Soft" or "weak"management (satisfy demands, permissive)
- Leads to indifferent performance, people expect more but give less, no motivation.
Both approaches fail because the motivators are irrelevant to the situation.
If deprived of opportunities, behaviour reflects that: passive, resistant, unreasonable.

Conventional Approach to Management:

capstone: Self-fulfillment Needs - needs for realizing potential
Ego Needs - needs for independence, achievement
Social Needs - needs for belonging, acceptance
Safety Needs - needs for protection against danger
base: Physiological Needs - when one need is satisfied, another replaces it!!

Management and Motivation:
- deprivation of physiological needs has behavioral consequences (hostility, passivity)
- opportunities need to be provided at work to satisfy higher-level needs or behaviour will reflect deprivation (??? Masters provides Social, Ego and Self-fulfillment needs.)

The Carrot-and-Stick Theory of Motivation:
- The means for satisfying physiological and safety needs can be provided or withheld by management. (doesn't work once motivated by higher needs, not a good device for directing behaviour)

Theory Y - A New Management -

Management is responsible for elements of production (money, materials, equipment, people).
People are not passive or resistant by nature. They become so because of experiences.
Motivation, personal development, responsibility opportunities, are present in people. Management must make it possible to recognize and develop them.
Management's task: arrange organizational conditions and methods of operation so people can achieve goals

Theory Y - creates opportunities
- releases potential
- removes obstacles
- encourages growth
- provides guidance

Theory X
- places reliance on external control of human behaviour

Theory Y
- relies on self control and self direction

Examples of successful implementation of Theory Y:
- increase number of people reporting to a manager
- job enlargement: responsibility at bottom of organization
- participative/consultative management: encouragement, give voice
- performance appraisal/self-evaluation/goal-setting

For success of Theory Y, management must have confidence in their staff, be directed toward organizational objectives rather than personal power.

Critique:
This article was published in 1957, therefore its suggestions are already dated because they have already been implemented and are quite evident in today's society. (Pro-d, conferences, consulting firms, workshops)
Questions for discussion:
Since many of these ideas are already evident in today's society, what can be added to Theory Y to make it more current, relevant and effective?
Are aspects of Theory X evident today? If so, where?
Is Theory Y or Theory X more prevalent in your school? Explain.
What needs does the Masters program provide?

How should we go about posting info? Do we want a summary of an article posted here or should I create a link?
Angelina

Thanks Judy for creating the blog. I just saw the winter group did the same thing. Great minds think alike!
TTFN
Angelina

Hello group,

I guess if you're reading this post my emails have reached you, and you are now a contributor to this Blog. I have only allowed comments to be made by members. If you would like to change this, let me know. Have a good week