ABSTRACT
Americans and Canadians alike have been busy trying to reform their schools for the better part of the last decade. This is not the first of these reform episodes nor is it likely to be the last. That schools are remarkably impervious to reform efforts comes as no surprise to anyone today; the painful experience of failed reforms dating from the 1960s has brought home recognition of this reality. That decade’s unbridled faith in the potential of science and technology to transform schooling has proven unfounded. Reform failures have tempered reformers’ optimistic belief that professionals are capable of using the tools of technical rationality to overcome the problems of North American life, and confidence in the power of scientific approaches to administration and governance to guide and direct reforms in education has gradually eroded during the past twenty-five years.
