ABSTRACT
In response to the demands for restructuring, the 1980s saw a shift from the old paternalistic and authoritarian styles of management in primary schools towards collaborative approaches to whole-school change. This chapter illustrates the anti-educational consequences of enforced collaboration, and provides insight into the processes that, in spite of these anti-educational results, constrain schools towards that end. An important feature of the collaborative culture is the informal discussions and conversations that take place in 'back regions', outside the arena of formal lessons and institutional and curriculum processes. The intended structure of the new organization, to enforce team, collaborative and flexible work, and the unpredictability, uncertainty of the environment it was produced in, resemble the type of organization which 'fares well in the volatile conditions of postmodernity'. The new organization, although introduced for responsiveness, actually lacked the flexibility of the existing informal collaborative culture in the school.
