Change implementation in teaching

Abstract

The aim of this research was to 1) Narrate my experiences with change, noting my barriers to successful change implementation and to see what could be done about these outlined by Michael Fullan in his book “The new meaning of educational change” (2016),

2) Interview other educators about their experiences with change, to share alternative narratives regarding change from other contexts. The idea being that at the end of it, I would help other educators deal with the complex nature of change and fear it less. It was crucial to my thinking that teacher voice be added to the body of research on change, so we could add our voices on our perceptions of change. Teachers, as a rule, prefer to take on change that their peers have led (Fullan, 2016), so providing a narrative that other teachers can relate to as I am in their position of managing a difficult teacher workload and carrying out change in practice.

In this thesis, the process of change is documented, by relating my change experience and other educator’s experiences with change in classroom practice to Fullan’s (2016) work on change implementation. As I go through the three stages of implementation -initiation, implementation and continuation, I highlight some of the challenges and experiences I and other educators faced with changing practice. I teach Science and Chemistry at a year 1 to year 13, single-sexed private school in Auckland. In my school students often hide their failures rather than embrace them, making it hard for teachers to help students progress their understanding. So, I decided that something needed to change. I started with implementing personalised learner profiles with each student in one class, to see if I could help my students overcome their fears of failure and be successful in my subject. As a result,I found that there are many challenges to educators changing their pedagogy starting with themselves as they have to confront their own beliefs and equally the students’ beliefs about what makes a “good teacher”. I compared my journey with that of three other educators who have altered their teaching practice and found that there are many parallels and that the hardest part is to continue with a change, given our lack of time in this modern age.

Thesis Organisation This thesis has been organised into five chapters: ●Chapter One -the introduction and defining the inquiry ●Chapter Two –the study ●Chapter Three-a literature review of change ●Chapter Four-the methodology carried out ●Chapter Five-an analysis of the results ●Chapter Six-discussions and recommendations from this thesis.