Change management in education plays a crucial role determining the main objectives and strategies. Michael Fullan underlines that change in schools and educational establishments should be based on careful analysis of the current situation and future goals of the organization. The author identifies the main issues which influence educational process and business training: moral duty, knowledge building and coherence making. I agree with Michael Fullan that schools teach that work and effort are good; that learning as well as imagination and creativity are valuable. Students and trainees are urged to be polite, respectful, and obedient to adults in general and school personnel in particular. Schools teach that time is valuable— tardiness, absences, and missed deadlines are considered offenses that require forgiveness. Students and trainees are required to do things they may not wish to do and are taught that this is a good thing.
Personally, I suppose that educational leadership should be based on humanistic and supportive relations between teachers and students which help both sides to maintain healthy atmosphere and supportive climate. “Leadership is difficult in a culture of change because disequilibrium is common” (Fullan 2001, p. 6). Thus, the role and duty of an educator to find appropriate solutions and strategies in order to maintain supportive relations which allow students to achieve the best possible results. The profession for the most part has renounced its responsibility to provide moral leadership, taking on instead a posture of being detached technical experts. There are important and vital voices of educational dissent and alternatives but they are divided, particularly in their views of the relative significance of psychological and cultural forces and their degree of optimism.
Similar to Michael Fullan I believe that moral and human values should be the core of education and leadership. “Energetic-enthusiastic-hopeful leaders “cause” greater moral purpose in themselves, bury themselves in change, naturally build relationships and knowledge, and seek coherence to consolidate moral purpose” (Fullan 2001, p. 6). This responsibility includes not only developing critical and sensitive insights but also the task of making these insights vital and accessible to the general public. This task must seek a balance between the ethical requirements to convey the complexities, paradoxes, contradictions, and sensitivities of the crises with the moral competence to offer genuine and viable possibilities for transformation.
The main limitation of this study is that Fullan does not show realistic ways to develop and introduce moral standards and humanistic approach into education and modern schools. As a holistic educator, I suppose that quality of education should be main priority of modern education. I agree with Fullan that “Leaders who are sensitive to the implementation dip combine styles: they still have an urgent sense of moral purpose , they still measure success in terms of results” (p. 41), What is spectacularly exciting is that the conceptual framework of the current holistic-education movement provides for the possibility of a truly holistic education, one that seeks to integrate the inner self with the outer self and thereby connect the personal with our social, cultural, moral, political, and economic contexts. To be an educator without a social vision is like being an artist without an aesthetic, and to be a holistic educator without a social vision is to be like an artist without a soul. It’s not that easy to be a visionary educator, however, since what we want is not any old social vision but one that enables us to transcend to a consciousness of beauty, love, and compassion.
References
Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a Culture of Change. Jossey-Bass; 1st edition.