ABSTRACT

Traditional management frameworks and traditional approaches to school effectiveness and improvement have yielded disappointing results, partly because they are based upon an incomplete and inadequate theoretical and methodological framework. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Traditional School Effectiveness and Improvement (SEI) approaches have taken an essentially linear, mechanistic and 'intentionalist' approach in which the primary focuses is on inputs and outputs. Dynamical Systems Theory calls for less technical-rational approaches and more complexity, organic, relational, non-linear approaches. Traditional management has focused upon intended and even mandated outcomes. An important function of leadership in schools is to understand and be able to modulate the five key control parameters, which reflect and create the overall state of the system. Managing and modulating these control parameters is what G. Morgan calls 'The art of managing ''context''.