Educational changes (which have also been referred to as an educational “innovations”) may be defined as any attempt to bring about favourable change in educational settings (Waters, 2009: 421). The movement towards student-centred learning must therefore be considered an “educational change”, as it has been introduced, at least on paper, with the aim of bringing some kind of benefit to those involved. Of course, student-centred learning is not the only educational innovation which has been introduced worldwide, and by considering more general theories of educational change, we might be able to better understand some of the reasons why this particular one has been so unsuccessful.
Therefore, in this section, I focus on some of the more general theories of educational change. I begin by exploring some of the main reasons why educational changes in general have tended to be unsuccessful. Here, it emerges that educational policymakers have often failed to take into account how complex the processes of educational change can be, especially given that they are implemented by people, who are often extremely complex in their responses to change. I proceed to explore in more detail how important the subjective experiences of educational changes may be for the people who implement them. At this point, it is suggested that educational changes may be extremely challenging for teachers as they may represent a threat to their “key meanings” or beliefs about teaching. I then introduce the concept of a “complex” change, which Fullan (2007) defines as an educational change which not only implies changes to teachers’ practices, but also their beliefs. Finally, I return to the topic of student-centred learning, concluding that this particular change would have to be considered a “complex” change.
2.2.1. General reasons for the failures of educational changes
The educational change literature is full of examples of educational changes which have failed to live up to their hoped-for outcomes (Carnoy and Rhoten, 2002; Fullan, 2007; Schweisfurth, 2011). There are several explanations for this, and each change will have its own reasons for success or lack of success. However, there are certain overriding themes from the educational change literature which seem to be relevant to most, if not all, educational changes. One of the most common of these is that policymakers often do not take into account the inherent complexity of educational change processes (O’Sullivan, 2004; Fullan, 2007; Zembylas, 2010). Fullan, for example, argues that
Understanding why most attempts at educational reform fail goes far beyond the identification of specific technical problems such as lack of good materials, ineffective professional development, or minimal administrative support. In more fundamental terms, educational change fails partly because of the assumptions of planners, and partly because solving substantial problems is an inherently complex business.
(Fullan, 2007: 96)
One of the main “assumptions” that educational change planners are said to make is to view educational changes as straightforward processes, in which one only needs to carry out a set of relatively simple steps in order to guarantee immediate changes in teachers’ practices. This might explain why planners often spend a lot of time focusing on the expected content or outcomes of the changes themselves, but tend to dedicate less energy thinking about how these changes might be transferred to real classrooms (Fullan, 2007; Altinyelken, 2010; Schweisfurth, 2013).
Another common assumption is that changes may be implemented consistently and uniformly across a wide range of different contexts. Educational changes are often seen as rational, objective, dispassionate processes (Zembylas, 2010; Cross and Hong, 2011; Saunders, 2013) which can be introduced and implemented in a top-down fashion (Chin and Benne, 1976; Markee, 1997; Kumaravadivelu, 2012). Such inflexible, “one-size-fits- all” attitudes towards change have been regularly criticised in the literature, given that they do not take into account the inevitable differences found in individual contexts (Wedell, 2009; 2013; Díaz Maggioli, 2012; Schweisfurth, 2015). Wedell, for example, stresses that
Such rational planning approaches stereotypically view education systems as consisting of stable and unchanging institutions, populated by people (leaders, teachers and learners) whose behaviour is rational and predictable, and whose attitudes and behaviours when confronted by change remain unaffected by contextual realities or by the norms and behaviours of the world beyond the institutional environment.
(Wedell, 2013: 149)
The problem with such “rational planning approaches” is that social systems are often anything but the stable, rational and predictable environments which planners often assume them to be. On the contrary, they take place within the extremely diverse and complex social world in which educational changes are introduced. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, they involve a wide range of different people, who are inherently complex in themselves and in their responses to change. A lack of thought as to how these people might actually experience and make sense of educational changes is said to be one of the fundamental flaws of educational change planning (Fullan, 2007; Wedell, 2009; Zembylas, 2010; Cross and Hong, 2011). I explore this idea in more detail in the following sub-section.
2.2.2. The subjective meaning of educational change
As mentioned above, educational changes are often viewed from a merely rational, objective, dispassionate perspective, which seems to ignore the fact that they are implemented by people, whose responses to change can be the complete opposite (Markee, 1997; Fullan, 2007; Zembylas, 2010). Indeed, educational changes often represent a professional, and perhaps more importantly, personal challenge for those who experience them. Fullan, for example, highlights that
Real change, […] whether desired or not, represents a serious personal and collective experience characterized by ambivalence and uncertainty […] The anxieties of uncertainty and the joys of mastery are central to the subjective meaning of educational change, and to the success and failure thereof – facts that have not been recognized or appreciated in most attempts at reform.
Perhaps one of the main reasons why educational changes prove so challenging for teachers on this “subjective” level is that they may be seen to threaten their “key meanings” (Blackler and Shimmin, 1984; cited in Wedell 2009). Wedell interprets these “key meanings” as “my day-to-day perceptions of myself and of my relationships with others that provide me with important personal and professional stability and security” (Wedell, 2009: 19). There are several similar terms to “key meanings” in the literature; for example, personal and/or professional “identities” (Beijaard et al., 2004; Geijsel and Meijers, 2005; Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009), “professional self-understanding” (Kelchtermans, 2009), or simply “beliefs”, which is the concept I focus on in this study (Pajares, 1992; Haser and Star, 2009; Borg, 2011).
Teachers may resist educational changes, if they perceive these fundamental “key meanings” or beliefs to be threatened (Koosimile, 2005; Sripakash, 2010; Curdt- Christiansen and Silver, 2012). This may be especially likely when there is a sizable gap between these beliefs and those implied by the contents of the change (Pajares, 1992; Fullan, 2007; Ketelaar et al., 2012). These kinds of mismatches between people’s current beliefs and the aims of educational changes may occur on an individual level, but also on a more collective one. This is because people belong to social systems connected by shared beliefs, which we might call “cultures” or “subcultures”. Indeed, it has been suggested that the further away a belief system (culture) is from the beliefs implied by a particular change, the less likely it is to be successful (Pajares, 1992; Wedell, 2009).
It would appear, then, that at least some sort of belief change may need to occur in order to facilitate the implementation of educational changes in which there are mismatches between the aims of the change and teachers’ current beliefs (Geijsel and Meijers, 2005; Fullan, 2007; Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009; Cross and Hong, 2011). Fullan has called these types of changes “complex changes”, and has suggested that when such mismatches occur, teachers will need to go through a process of “reculturing”. According to Fullan, “reculturing” refers to the complex process in which not only practices but also beliefs change over time. He suggests that one of the main issues in educational change implementation is that the idea of “reculturing” tends not to be taken into account by educational policymakers. Furthermore, he argues that there is a distinct lack of research which focuses on teachers’ actual experiences of “reculturing” as they live through educational change processes.
2.2.3. Student-centred learning as a “complex” educational change
It is now relevant to return to the more specific educational change which forms the basis of this study: the movement from teacher-centred to more student-centred learning. In light of the views expressed by Fullan and others in the previous sub-section, it would seem that a change towards more student-centred approaches would have to be considered a “complex” educational change, given that, in many cases, it represents not only a change in practices for the teachers involved, but also a change in their beliefs. We only need to look back at the meta-analysis of Schweisfurth (2011) to see several examples in which student-centred approaches were not fully compatible with the beliefs of the people who were expected to implement them. In fact, these mismatches were arguably some of the most important reasons why student-centred approaches were not implemented successfully.
To further emphasise this point, consider the example of an EFL teacher who has been encouraged to teach in a more “student-centred” way, after having taught in a predominately teacher-centred way throughout his entire teaching career. Such a change would imply a change in role from a provider of a set body of knowledge (e.g., the grammatical structures), towards more of a facilitator of learning in which students are able to practice using the language in real situations. It would require a significant shift in priorities, from a sole focus on accuracy (e.g., students being able to correctly produce grammatical forms) towards fluency and the appropriateness of what the learners are able to communicate. This change would therefore have to be considered a “complex” change, given that this teacher’s beliefs and practices may well be a long way from those implied by the change.
If we are to accept, then, that the movement towards student-centred learning represents a “complex” educational change which implies not only a change in teachers’ practices but also their beliefs, then it would seem especially relevant to explore in more detail how teachers actually experience this process of belief and behaviour change over time. Bearing this in mind, the next stage of my exploration into the literature examines what has been written about teachers’ experiences of belief and behaviour change in the context of educational changes.