ABSTRACT
MOST OBSERVERS BELIEVE THAT THE EDUCATIONAL innovations undertaken as part of the curriculum reform movement of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as the innovations that comprised the initiatives of the “Education Decade,” generally have failed to meet their objectives.1 One explanation for these disappointments focuses on the type of innovations undertaken and points out that until recently few educators have elected to initiate innovations that require change in the traditional roles, behavior, and structures that exist within the school organization or the classroom. Instead, most innovative efforts have focused primarily on technological change, not organizational change. Many argue that without changes in the structure of the institutional setting, or the culture of the school, new practices are simply “more of the same” and are unlikely to lead to much significant change in what happens to students.
