The expert orchestrates the process

Another issue I would like to address in this business-as-usual approach is the issue of the expert. It reminds me of my parents‘ stories about the doctor, the priest or the civil-law notary of the village where they lived in the 1940s. They still see them as experts, who know it all. They have studied, so they are right. My parents are now in their 80s and have changed their views because of many occasions on which reality did not seem to be what they thought it would be. The know-alls do not have a monopoly on the truth after all. When we look at change processes we should be critical as to who is orchestrating the process. Looking at things from the mechanistic tradition, the expert knows which direction to go. He knows how to plan, selects the ingredients and cooks the soup. It is a little like the Carnival song they sang in Aruba ―Follow the leader, follow the leader‖, but in this case it is ‖Follow the expert‖. I often notice this assumption in my school advisory work. When confusion or uncertainty rises to a certain level, the whole staff waits for the expert to come up with one and only correct answer. People are not always aware of doing so, but they do. In the meantime, I have enough experience to be aware of this phenomenon.

Who is in charge?

When we ask, ―Who is in charge of the change process?‖, we often see in past educational reform, which often failed, and sometimes in present reform that one or more persons are in charge of traditionally planned change processes. We have seen before, in the mechanistic way of viewing and dealing with change

processes, that Taylorism has played a significant role in the absence of power of workers in change processes. One of Taylor‘s principles was to move all responsibility from the workers to the manager, and to use specialists. As a result, a small group designs and plans the change process, separated from those who will undergo the change process and have to put the changes into practice. The power is taken away, and through it, the responsibility for change. The first reaction to this could be that these days this is not the case anymore. What I experience more and more in the Dutch educational system, however, is that teachers are asked for their opinion, but that their opinions are not always taken seriously. I experienced this in a staff meeting where we talked about the children‘s social behavior problems. The teachers immediately started to discuss possible solutions, without involving the students themselves. School leaders discuss school problems with their senior staff, decide on an intervention to be used by the teachers, present their well-intentioned solution to their teachers and meet resistance.

I do not want to give the impression that experts are not needed anymore. But the point is how we use experts in the change process and how we give voice to those who participate or are affected by these changes. It is about how we see experts, how we socially construct our meaning about this. Who determines who is the expert? In the social constructionist view, every participant within the change process can be the expert. The input of each is valued as important. The soup is hard to eat when it is not your favorite taste.

The soup will be more palatable when we have prepared it together, assuming our cooking skills are good enough. As long as we define the experts as being separated from our realities and give them a certain power in the change process by putting them in higher positions, we construct them as entities. In doing so, we make them static. But most of all we put those who need to produce the change, such as students and teachers, on the side line. From a social constructionist orientation one could ask, ―What do we do that makes people experts?‖

The human factor which was underestimated, in the mechanistic, biological approach, seems to determine to a large extent the success or failure of change processes. You could say there are briefly four groups that are involved in the educational change process: the policymakers, the school boards, the schools and their teachers, and the students and their parents. What we still observe is that these groups operate separately from one another in the change process. On many occasions, as will see in the next section, there is hardly any open or connecting communication. Those who make the decisions, or plans, are not those who benefit, such as the students. Those who have to implement changes, i.e. the teachers, are often not the ones who benefit from the changes or who may have determined these changes. Policymakers or school boards such as those in the Netherlands, often hardly know the real story of teachers‘ lives in schools. Homan (2005) speaks of the formal stories and the informal stories. Fullan (1991) speaks of the smaller and bigger pictures. Change initiators have to make more efforts to hear the real stories to be successful in reform.

Fullan (1991, 2005, 2008) emphasizes the importance of giving meaning to change, which is often neglected. By hearing all the stories we understand all these different meanings better. As a result, we may be a little bit more successful in the change process. Hargreaves (2009, p. 107) puts an interesting view by stepping out of the system. He names it the Fourth Way, ―is a democratic and professional path to improvement that builds from the bottom, steers from the top, and provides support and pressure from the sides.‖

The hierarchical structures

The hierarchical structures that still exist, in schools and school boards which I visit, seem to restrict or slow down the process in schools. This also is the power issue. When I talk to teachers I often observe their feelings of decreasing passion and involvement in the desired changes. When I visit school board offices, I

see rooms decorated with beautifully designed posters and flyers about the mission statements of education they have. The formal stories I hear are perfect. But when I visit schools and hear the real stories of teachers‘ daily lives, I discover a wide gap between the two. Teachers often say they are not seen by their superiors. Planned change implies smart goals. This is another common view in planned change. By setting goals, one thinks it helps to achieve the desired outcomes of the plan better. In a way this is logical. When you know what you want, it is easier to work on it. The only problem is that these goals are often set by experts or policymakers, and not by those who have to reach these goals, i.e. the teachers and the students, or that the set goals are such that they are not in keeping with the reality of change, which characterizes the dynamics of education. The problem with goals is that everyone can place his own interpretation on these goals. Everybody can say, ―this is my goal‖, ―this is my opinion‖. The problem is that we often think that what is written on paper means the same to everyone. Goals are often vague, ambiguous, separated from daily practice and reality. Nevertheless, lots of efforts are spent on setting these goals. The historical overview will show that, in many educational reform projects, products or methods were developed by experts such as scientists outside schools to be used by teachers. In those days, the somewhat naïve view was that education could be changed by rational planning and scientific research into new products or approaches, which were then distributed to the teachers.

De Caluwé et al (2006, 2007) observe an interesting mechanism operating in teachers when they do not like the soup. He calls this phenomenon the pocket veto. Even though the senior staff have reached agreements about the planned change, the teachers, or the implementers, say yes but do the opposite. On the outside it looks as if the formal change is working, but inside teachers think, do and feel other things.

They do not eat the soup when they do not like it. In this way they are still in charge. Their veto is hidden in their pockets. The innovation may look all right, but in the long run it does not work. Is this not something we have all experienced?

Are teachers and students given power?

The pyramid structure in school systems is still a reality. The leader is at the top and the power is legally given to the leader and that is not a subject of discussion. The workers, or teachers, listen; rationality and reasoning are dominant principles, planning and manageability are the basis for steering, the teachers, or workers, can be replaced. Mitchell and Sackney (2000) state that the usual construction of education has put the people in the school on the fringe of what is happening. This leads to inner withdrawal from the change process. Change or improvement fails, as long as the teachers and students are positioned in the debate as objects to be manipulated and controlled rather than as professional creators of a learning culture. Also Hargreaves (2009) emphazises the productive roles teachers and students should have. In Profound Improvement (2000, p. 2) Mitchell & Sackney cite Starrat who argues that schools and learning are too much managed, manipulated, controlled, organized, and constrained by adults who are, at best, out of touch with the realities with which teachers and students live. A simple question in the change process can be, ―Who is in it and who is not?‖ Or, ―Who is seen as the expert and who is not?‖ From the social constructionist point of view, we are all experts. The answer will show what kind of change process is going on. It will throw light on who has the power and who has not. It is not only important that individuals are asked to strengthen and give meaning to the change process, but it is perhaps even more important that they can participate actively in the process, as they did in the Surinamese process. Being heard, being seen and being understood.

Mitchell and Sackney (2000, p. 127) criticize most previous attempts at educational attempts: ―Change is rather something that has been done to teachers than something that has been done by teachers.‖ Fullan has tried almost his whole life to understand the phenomenon of educational change. In The New Meaning of Educational Change (2007, 4^th ed.) he recognizes the importance of seeing teachers as active and

worthwhile partners in the educational change process. His wise and simple insight is that there will be no change without the teachers and their students. ―We have to know what change looks like from the point of view of the teacher, student, parents, administrator, if we are to understand the actions and reactions of individuals; and if we are to comprehend the big picture, we must combine the aggregate knowledge of these individual situations with an understanding of organizational and institutional factors that influence the process of change.‖ (Fullan, 1991, p. xi) He concludes, ―If we know one thing about innovation and reform, it is that it cannot be done successfully to others.‖ (p. xvi). Alienation takes place when those who are involved in the change cannot play an active role and feel that they are manipulated, steered by others. (Mitchell &

Sackney, 2000) Just visit one school and talk with any teacher and they will tell you many stories of their experiences when others told them what and how to change.

On the basis of these insights, I think that people construct their understanding, or as the social constructionists say meanings, based on their social interactions and social arrangements. Of course, this has always been the case, but in the clockwork view it has not always been evident, has not been seen and, above all, has not been talked about. Throughout the years it has become more and more obvious. One should not silence those who are involved and implement or undergo the change. We need to listen to all these sounds in the clockwork and above all to what music is played. Mitchell and Sackney (2000) emphasize this traditional view. This is a construction of assumptions and belief systems of a mechanistic world view and a bureaucratic mode. This social construction has sought to render the people and processes predictable and therefore controllable. In this view there is a place for every player.