Confronting the social context of school change

Discusses several aspects of a case study of change in a high school setting. Suggests a distinction between prescriptive, participative, and collaborative approaches to change and argues that the collaborative approach used in this case has certain advantages over the other two approaches. Other issues considered include: the role of conflicting agendas in the change process, the importance of gaining support from district-level as well as school-level leadership, the need to consider ways of insuring maintenance of change, and the interrelationship between individual, small group, and cultural level change in educational reform.