The Paradox of Complexity and Cohesion: Marginal and subterranean changes and their implications for systemic reform

• In Event: Against the Tide: From the Margins to the Mainstream

Abstract

In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen (2007) describes how successful innovations are often first rejected by their host organizations. Cast to the margins, they then grow in reach until the host is overcome. In education settings, innovation is often initiated in lower status parts of the educational system, where it is not a threat to the “normal” population (Young 1971)
Contrary to a growing consensus among international organizations that effective educational reform must be mandated from the top through tightly aligned architectures of instructional and organizational improvement (OECD 2010, McKinsey & Co 2010), widespread educational change can be catapulted into prominence by those at the periphery.
The province of Ontario has been widely cited as a high performer on PISA , with an upward trajectory on its own standardized tests. This has been attributed to a tight focus on literacy and numeracy, just-in-time data-driven improvements for every child related to clear system targets, and extensive support and intervention to complement top-down pressure (Fullan 2010).
Not as well-known but equally influential are a number of less centralized initiatives – one of which has been the province’s approach to special education reform. In 2003, the Ministry of Education released a policy document, Education for All (EfA), which provided the impetus for districts to move towards inclusive education.
Over the next three years, the Ministry allocated more than $70 million to support a new province-wide initiative to instantiate the promise of EfA. Unusually, it asked the Council of Directors of Education of Ontario (CODE) to structure and manage the project, ultimately titled Essential for Some, Good for All (ESGA).
Each district was called upon to self-design a project that would enhance the academic achievement of their students with disabilities. District leadership established core teams that were responsible for proposal design and project implementation. They were supported by senior system leaders, and then networked with each other to promote learning and transparency.
In 2009, CODE hired a team from Boston College to conduct a review of ESGA. Teams of researchers conducted intensive three-day site visits to ten self-selected but representative districts. Subsequently, a web-based survey was conducted to collect data from a wider range of respondents.
The review findings show that with a general consensus on philosophy and guided only by broad frameworks, powerful and sustainable improvements can emerge by building relationships and collective responsibility from below, by using the traditional outlier of special education as an inspiration for undertaking transformation of a whole system, and by learning continuously and collectively from setbacks and successes.
Contrary to dominant policy narratives of top-down systemic change, the findings point to three paradoxes of change:
• a paradox of cohesion, where the cohesiveness achieved by a change is inversely related to the degree of top-down technical alignment.
• a paradox of control, where the more the system lets go of control, the more control it may attain.
• a paradox of centrality where changes beginning at the margins can move the majority at the center.

Authors

• Andrew Hargreaves, Boston College

• Henry I. Braun, Boston College