Why teachers resist planned educational changes

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]  

In earlier blogs I talked about the risks that threaten planned educational changes and how they might be anticipated and mitigated. In this blog I want to talk about teachers and educational change.  

Teachers seem to oscillate between a barnacle-like attachment to some educational changes and an impenetrable, clam-like resistance. I think there are many reasons for this tendency to fluctuate.  

The first reason is that teaching is difficult work. There are many things to consider, including curricular expectations, the range of student abilities, the allocation of scarce instructional time, etc. The complexity of teaching makes most teachers risk averse. Once they have developed confidence in their ability to manage and have experienced success, they are reluctant to change. They are disinclined to adopt new pedagogy or curriculum if they think doing so would have an adverse impact on students or because they are worried that they may not be able to execute them well.  

There is a smaller group of teachers who are risk takers. This group appears to have developed sufficient mastery and acquired sufficient self-confidence that they are eager to adopt new practices. Eager to explore new practices, these teachers are easy to recruit to pilot-tests. They are what, today, are called influencers. If they think the new practice or resource is worthwhile, they will advocate on its behalf.  

The enthusiasm of teachers involved in or inspired by change is infectious. Once imbued with the spirit of change, they can inspire even mildly resistant teachers to adopt the practice. A teacher once described such an influencer to me in terms that have always stayed with me. “You know,” she said, “every teacher wants to touch her garment. If she likes something, it gives everyone else confidence.” The influencers are often the teachers who, if a pilot is successful, become the evangelists and coaches for the broader implementation.  

There is some danger in relying on influencers whose garments others want to touch. They don’t inspire confidence in everyone. There are resistant teachers who will say, “Maybe she can do it, but I’m not her.”  

Unsuccessful implementation of planned changes produces cynicism that undermines future change efforts. Teachers have a long memory for implementation failures that bolster their resistance to future changes. Teachers whose experience has made them cynical will wait out subsequent changes because their confidence in the system has been diminished by failures. Introducing system-wide changes takes a long time. Adopting new practices or curricula is hard. Some teachers will “opt out” of the change, confident that they will be retired before they will be “required” to change.  

Change fatigue is a factor contributing to resistance to change. New governments often come to office with plans to fix some educational problem. They are often branded, or as one teacher put it, “things with names.” When too many “things with names” are introduced in too short a period, often without sufficient support for their adoption, teachers become clam-like, shutting their doors to whatever the change may be. “This, too, will pass,” they say.  

Changes imposed from above are typically resisted. Even when perceived to have value for students, the adoption of the changes can take a very long time even when provision is made for building capacity and support – which they often are not. Making educational change is like repairing a car while you are driving. You cannot shut down the education system to ‘retool’ as you can with a factory.  

Changes that teachers perceive as negatively affecting their relationships with students will also be resisted. Relationships with student are almost synonymous with success in teaching. Few teachers are willing to make a change they perceive as threatening established relationships.  

Teacher resistance to change can be overcome with careful planning. Although it is tempting to rely on influencers to encourage change. I think it preferable to engage what a well-known BC teacher used to call “OCTs” – ordinary classroom teachers. Reluctant or resistant classroom teachers are more likely to entertain a change if it is one that OCT’s can implement.   

Politicians who avoid fostering change just for the sake of being seen to be doing something help to reduce the cynicism engendered by “things with names.”  

Well planned pilots, carried out by OCTs, with strong documentation of the factors contributing to success will go a long way to overcoming resistance to change. Involving teachers centrally in the change planning process will likely improve implementation and contribute to the adoption of successful changes.  

Another factor that will help overcome resistance to change is declaring that teachers have the “freedom to fail.” Teacher willingness to try something new is likely to increase if they know that there is a possibility that things won’t work as planned and that they will be supported for having tried something new. The “freedom to fail” coupled with monitoring and feedback will increase teacher receptivity to change and help them to make the adjustments that are necessary during any educational change.

Why most planned educational changes fail – part 2

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]  

In an earlier blog, I said that planned educational changes are not doomed to failure if risks are anticipated and mitigated. Among the risks I addressed in that blog were: failure to recognize and plan to overcome resistance to change, asking people to make changes that are a leap too far, managing changes when political regimes change, allowing seemingly urgent issues divert attention from the change agenda, lack of signal continuity, and poor implementation.  

I will try to address here the risks I did not address in the earlier blog: pilot-testing slight of hand, failing to calculate the challenges of implementing changes on a system-wide basis, lack of fidelity of implementation, and failure to monitor progress and evaluate.  

Let me explain what I mean when I say pilot-testing slight of hand. There is great value in small-scale implementation of changes for the purpose of seeing if they work. Showing the ‘proof of concept’ and learning from the small-scale pilot-tests can prevent the implementation of something that does not work as intended. I am not talking about such pilot-tests.  

When I say ‘slight of hand’ I mean conducting pilot-tests to be able to say that one is doing something when there is no real intention of implementing the changes even if they are successful. Though this occurs infrequently, there are instances in which pilot-testing is merely authorized to “look like we are doing something.”  

An example of pilot-testing sleight of hand occurs when politicians are unable or unwilling to stand up to a powerful advocacy group. “Let’s give them a pilot test” is the resort of a weak politician to a powerful advocacy group’s request. A variation on that cynical theme is “Let’s give them money for a pilot.” It occurs infrequently, but it does occur.  

Genuine pilot tests can be very useful, especially if attention is paid to what it will cost to implement the piloted change on a system-wide basis. You’d be surprised how often this is overlooked. It is obvious to me that the problem can be avoided if someone asks, “what will it cost to implement this change on a system-wide basis, if the pilot is successful?” If it is not fiscally manageable, there is no point in undertaking the pilot.  

In addition to costs, real pilot tests can provide very useful information about the challenges of implementing a planned change. Knowing the challenges is only useful if one plans how the challenges can be avoided when the pilot is brought to scale. Failure to recognize the challenges, and failure to mitigate them, typically leads to the failure of planned change because of implementation.  

Educational change is like baking. Change requires specific ingredients that are combined in a specific order. If you leave out an ingredient, the outcome will not be what you intended. Combine the ingredients in the wrong order and you might as well not put it in the oven. It won’t turn out as you expected. Most change is like that. You must use the correct ingredients and proper procedure. When that doesn’t happen, we refer to that as lack of implementation fidelity.  

If you aren’t a baker, think of it as planning a route to a destination. If you don’t take the right route, you won’t get where you want to go.  

Sticking with the travel metaphor, one of the failures of planned change is not monitoring your progress along the route planned. Recognizing when you are headed in the wrong direction is essential. Knowing the progress markers is important too. “We should be passing point X about now.” Using GPS for route planning helps to avoid drastic mistakes, but dependence on the GPS sometimes leads to dead-ends.  

A relative of failure to monitor progress is the failure to evaluate results. Even faithfully implemented planned changes that have been carefully pilot-tested must be carefully evaluated. And not just once!  

Avoiding the risks associated with educational changes can be achieved by anticipating them and making plans to manage them. It is unfortunate that doesn’t happen more often. If it did, planned educational changes might be more successful. 

I'm taking a Spring Break. I will resume this blog the week of March 27th with the third part in this series about the failure of planned educational changes. 

Why most planned educational changes fail – part 1

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]  

In previous blogs I have written how artificial intelligence, an external event, will (has already changed) education. That prompted me to reflect upon the failure of planned educational changes during my more than 50 years in education. There are many reasons why planned educational changes fail that I will address in this blog and the two that follow.  

In a blog titled “You can't change what you don't understand” I argued that a distressingly common and costly tendency in education is to jump to a solution without knowing exactly where the problem lies. But even in those rare instances where problems have been carefully analyzed and planned changes implemented, there is often little change.  

Systems try to maintain a steady state for their own survival. For true change to occur, that condition must be overcome (disrupted), a new state established and maintained. Most planned changes in education are not maintained for enough time to establish a new set of conditions.  

System-level planned changes seem doomed to fail because of risks that can be anticipated and mitigated but rarely are. One of the risks is the failure to recognized that education systems are among the most resistant to change. Education systems are the stabilizing force in a society subjected to increasingly powerful centrifugal forces. As agencies of cultural transmission education systems help to anchor societies to their core values, beliefs, traditions, norms, and practices.  

One of the many factors that can interfere with the maintenance of the planned changes is the election cycle. Provincial and school board elections that result in new education ministers and school boards (system governors) can disrupt planned changes. Skilled administrators can mitigate the potential damage that regime changes might bring by linking the planned changes to the agenda of the incoming governors, showing how the changes underway can help the governors meet their commitments.  

System governors and administrators allow seemingly urgent issues to distract from important, planned changes. A return to steady state is almost certain when system leaders fail to maintain ‘signal continuity’ - a clear, consistent, and constant message about what the changes are intended to accomplish. A return to steady state is almost inevitable when new policies, programs, and practices are introduced without regard to their connection to the changes underway.  

Another of the risks that portend failure if not mitigated is poor implementation. In human systems, new capacities must be developed and nurtured if the planned change is to occur. Planned changes in education typically require changes in practice, behavioural changes. For these to occur, people must learn the new practice, have time to apply it, and be coached. Most planned changes falter because insufficient provision has been made for learning the new behaviour and receiving feedback and support until the changes become internalized.  

In education there are several obstacles to learning new behaviours. Many planned educational changes ask teachers to make too great a change in their behaviour. Rather than conceive and plan for incremental modification in behaviour, many planned educational changes ask teachers to make a leap too far, engendering a fear of failure that keeps them rooted in whatever current practice they believe is satisfactory.  

Even when the behaviour changes are small, incremental adjustments, teachers rarely teach in the company of their peers who can provide support and advice. But successful learning depends upon clear and supportive feedback as all teachers know.  

The risks outlined above do not exhaust the risks to planned educational changes that typically lead to their failure. In a blog or blogs to come, I will address the risks of lack of fidelity of implementation, failure to monitor progress and evaluate, pilot-testing, and the costs of bringing changes to scale.  

Planned educational changes are not doomed to failure. The risks to change are formidable, but I believe they are manageable if anticipated and mitigated.