ABSTRACT
Some people espouse innovations eagerly, quickly and with enthusiasm, while others are more cautious, reluctant and hesitant and may, under some circumstances, totally reject them. Discussions of these two categories of persons, usually described as innovators or resisters, feature prominently in the literature on innovation. Miles, summing up the limited research in the field of education, points to the importance of power as a feature of innovators. Participation in decision-making is regarded by many writers as a means of coping with resistance to innovation. Strauss makes a similar point in explaining the differences between the results of an American study of worker participation and a similar experiment carried out in Norway. An important factor that needs to be considered is the nature of participation. It has been shown previously that the most common situation is for an innovation to be proposed by the headteacher.
