Change Forces With A Vengeance

Educators have already taken on board the idea that educational change and school reform are not as easy to accomplish as first expected. In this book, Michael Fullan, arguably one of the world's leading authors on the issue of educational change, explores why this continues to be the case, and builds on the lessons that he set out so clearly in the first two volumes of his trilogy on the subject. This book is concise, accessible, and the message contained is clearly written with a broad audience mind both for academics in education and general reader.

Change Forces With a Vengeance is the third in the chaos theory trilogy (now called complexity theory). The first two books focused on understanding the real complexity of educational reform in action. This book pushes even deeper by providing new insights and lessons of change concerning moral purpose, and what is called tri-level reform - the school and community, the local district and the state. It draws on reform initiatives across many levels and countries so that the ideas are grounded in the reality of actual projects and findings.Change Forces With a Vengeance is different from the previous two books in one major respect. Instead of being content with understanding complex system dynamics, it takes up the more daunting question of how systems can be changed for the better. How can we achieve large-scale reform and do it in a way that the conditions for sustainability are enhanced? What policy levers are needed, and what is the smallest number of sets of policies that will maximise impact? What is the role of new leadership in accomplishing sustainable, comprehensive reform? These questions and more are addressed in ways that are both deeply theoretical, and powerfully practical.

1. Moral Purpose in the New Millennium 2. Complexity and the Change Process 3. Capacity and the School Level 4. Capacity at the System Level 5. Sustaining Reform