Reflection Week 9

Trends and Issues in P-12 Educational Change:

Having not too much experience in the Elementary/Secondary Ed sectors, I found it a tad bit hard to try to relate this chapter to my current experience. Finally after a few pages into the chapter, I began to image WMU (or any large university for that matter) as being somewhat of a school-district, with each of the colleges being an individual school. It was then that I could really begin to see how trying to set forth systemic change in Education can be a huge and dauntless task. In trying to imagine this, I could definitely see how when attempting to make a ecological systemic change, that the “three key areas of a school system—(1) the core and supporting network, (2) the internal ‘social architecture ‘; and (3) the district’s relationship with its external environment” can be adapted while thinking of these changes in a “university” type setting. The “core and supporting networks” being the President, Provost, and the Deans of each of the colleges, and programs. The “internal social architecture” being the faculty, faculty chairs, faculty senate and providing for shared governance, etc.; and finally the community, community leaders, industry, and industry leaders. I can certainly understand the complexities of such a change

One aspect that I really enjoyed about the chapter, were the case studies that helped to understand how to actually execute such a change, and then see how the districts go through with their transformation process, the different phases of the transformation, the follow-up, and continuous improvement phases.