Changing School From Inside Out: A Qualitative Case Study of a Self-Initiated Change Over Time in South Korea

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

Abstract

Objectives:
This paper examines the dynamic growth and evolution of a self-initiated school change in South Korea from 2001 through 2010. This study explores how incremental, self-initiated change is sustainable and can become consequential at a system level. While self-initiated change is commonly portrayed as ephemeral, unsustainable, and unspreadable, the remarkable success and growth of self-initiated change in a ten-year union-driven change in South Korea, challenges these assumptions.
Theoretical Framework:
This study’s theoretical framework integrates approaches to social movement and institutional theorySocial movement theory accounts for how institutional activists occupying formal but outsider status within existing institutions can deploy small-win change strategies. Institutional change theory focuses on endogenous, or gradual, change. The combined framework available in incremental change theory and the literature on social movements within institutions provides a useful guide for self-initiated change and fills important gaps in both literatures.
Data and Methods
This study is a single qualitative case study. It comprises interviews with two cohorts of teachers in an innovatively directed ansd union-established public schoolOne group consisted of teachers who worked from the beginning of the school change since 2001; the other group consisted of teachers who came later. The study identified changes in internal and external conditions and shifts in interests, logics, and the direction of the change that affected the school over time Interview data were supplemented with observation and archival data. Validity and reliability were secured by ongoing and reiterative member checking from early stages of data collection. This enabled the teachers and the researcher to learn from each other’s perspectives and gain a more holistic understanding of change.

Results:
Findings suggest that instead of challenging the existing system head-on in establishing a new school on the foundation of one that was threatened with closure by the system, the change agents infiltrated the system from within and engaged in creative recombination and reinterpretation. The incremental change process enabled the change agents to manage risks of attempting disruptive change by balancing change and continuity and solidifying early gains. Findings also show that self-initiated change can proceed in uneven ways due to limited capacity, resources, and power. While, in isolation, the change processes of self-initiated change can be insufficient, incomplete, and sometimes painful, self-initiated change can also lead to consequential change when it occurs according to a proper sequence and pace. Moreover, evidence from the study shows how the changes initiated in one school spread through an evolving network to over 20 schools and became officially endorsed by the wider system

Scientific Significance of the Study:
Recently, self-initiated change has not been a central explanation in the educational change literature. This paper shows that self-initiated change that is small, incremental, but nevertheless consequential, can provide a helpful and convincing alternative to the dominant discourse about large-scale reform, overcoming sharp distinctions between large-scale reform and self-initiated change. Furthermore, this paper suggests that self-initiated change can serve as a redemption for test-driven “educational fever” (Seth, 2002) and “examination hell” (Lee & Larson, 2000) in the South Korean context.

Author

• Ba-Ul Paul Chung, Korean Educational Development Institute