ABSTRACT
In education the concept of actually engineering or planning change is a fairly recent phenomenon. G. Watson (157), in considering a conceptual architecture of a self-renewing school system, has demonstrated that the majority of educational innovations are introduced in a sporadic rather than in a continuous manner. There are many reasons for this, one of the chief being that few of us can, in any event, sustain continuous change. We are taken up with sudden rational or irrational enthusiasms, but the ‘innovatory’ aspect wears off and we again reach a steady plateau. Watson goes on to suggest that changes are effected by pressures from outside the system rather than generated from within, and that they occur for reasons of expediency rather than as a result of deliberate planning or as an expression of personal conviction Further, changes are effected in a haphazard way – one here, one there – rather than in any organised, cumulative manner or by means of a rational and integrated design. Because of this they tend to be introduced much later than is desirable, lagging rather than leading; and they are also inclined to be superficial rather than of a basic or fundamental nature. Perhaps the most cynical, although not necessarily the least accurate, suggestion by Watson is that innovations are devised to win praise or promotion for certain individuals rather than to improve the standards of education generally We live in an era of ‘band-wagons’ of the ‘main chance’ of novelties projects packages and programmes of ‘new’ or ‘modern’ this, that or the other; and there are always individuals, groups, foundations or research departments working on some new possibility.
