Michael Fullan has focused his work on educational change.

His model focused on "the human participants taking

part in the change process" (Ellsworth, 2001). Ellsworth (2001) commented that Fullan and Stiegelbauer's (1991)
The New Meaning of Educational Change presents guidelines for resisting, coping, or leading change efforts from
perspective ranging from the student to the national government. Different from Rogers, whose work focused more
on the characteristics of the innovation and the adopters, Fullan (1982, 1991) focuses on the roles and strategies of
various types of change agents.

Ellsworth (2001) pointed out that the issues that Fullan's model helps the change agent to deal with include:

What are the implications of change for people or organizations promoting or opposing it at particular levels?
What can different stakeholders to do promote change that addresses their needs and priorities?

According to Rogers (1996), a change agent is an individual who influences clients' innovation-decisions in a
direction desirable by a change agency. Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation seems to have a clear cut between the
change agent and its client system. On the contrary, Fullan views every stakeholder in the educational change as a
change agent. Fullan and Stiegerlbauer (1991) have given a promise for the change agent that "there is enormous
potential for true, meaningful change simply in building coalition with other change agents, both within one's own
group and across all group." (Ellsworth, 2001)

Fullan (1982, 1991) proposed that there are four broad phases in the change process: initiation, implementation,
continuation, and outcome.

Image from Sarah Fitzpatrick's site

Initiation
The factors that affecting the initiation phases include:

1. Existence and quality of innovations

2. Access to innovations
3. Advocacy from central administration
4. Teacher advocacy
5. External change agents

Implementation
Fullan and Stigelbauer (1991) identified three areas of the major factors affecting implementation: characteristics of
change, local characteristics and external factors (government and other agencies). They identified different
stakeholders in local, and federal and governmental levels. They also identified characterizations of change to each
stakeholder and the issues that each stakeholder should consider before committing a change effort or rejecting it.

Characteristics of Change Local Factors External Factors

Characteristics of Change Local Factors External Factors

Need of change The school Government and
Clarity about goals and district other agencies
needs Board of
Complexity: the extent of community
 change required to those Principal
responsible for Teacher
implementation
Quality and practicality
of the program

Continuation
Continuation is a decision about institutionalization of an innovation based on the reaction to the change, which may
be negative or positive. Continuation depends on whether or not:

1. The change gets embedded/built into the structure (through policy/budget/timetable)

2. The change has generated a critical mass of administrators or teachers who are skilled and committed to
3. The change has established procedures for continuing assistance

Outcome
Attention to the following perspectives on the change process may support the achievement of a positive or
successful change outcome:

1. Active initiation & participation: change does not end in recognizing or initial context with the innovation, but
starts with the contact and evolves along with the continuous interaction with it and the environmental
changes that it brings forth
2. Pressure, support and negotiation
3. Changes in skills, thinking, and committed actions
4. Overriding problem of ownership

What can we learn from the complexity of change process?

Fullan (1993) provide eight basic lessons about thinking about change:

1. You can't mandate what matters: complexity of change in skills, thinking and committed actions in
educational enterprise. Fullan commented that "effective change agents neither embrace nor ignore mandates.
They use them as catalysts to reexamine what they are doing." (p.24)
2. Change is a journey not a blueprint: changes entails uncertainty with positive and negative forces of change.
3. Problems are our friends: problems are the route to deeper change and deeper satisfaction; conflict is
essential to any successful change effort.
4. Vision and strategic planning come later: vision comes later because the process of merging personal and
shared visions take time. This different from Rogers'conception of innovation, as an idea, practice or object,
that drives the change process. Rogers' model is similar to what Fullan's critics on Beckhard and Pritchard's
(1992) vision-driven, which emphasizing the creating and setting of the vision, communicating the vision,
building commitment to the vision, and organizing people and what they do so that they are aligned to the
vision. People learn about the innovation through their interactions with the innovation and others in the
context of innovation. Deep ownership comes through the learning that arise form full engagement in solving
problems.
5. Individualism and collectivism must have equal power: Stacy's concept of "dynamic system" helps clarify
Fullan's ideas of innovation collaboration:

"The dynamic systems perspective leads to a view of culture as emergent. What a group comes to share in
the way of culture and philosophy emerges from individual personal beliefs through a learning process that
builds up over years." (Stacy, 1992, p. 145)
 6. Neither centralization nor decentralization works: the center and local units need each other. Successful
changes require a dynamic two-way relationship of pressure, support and continuous negotiation.

7. Connection with the wider environment is critical for success: change should recognize a broader context, to
which change asserts its constant action.

8. Every person is a change agent: " It is only by individuals taking action to alter their own environments that
there is any change for deep change."

Fullan (1993) provided suggestions of elements that successful change requires:

The ability to work with polar opposites: imposition of change vs. self-learning; planning vs. uncertainty;
problems vs. creative resolution; vision vs. fixed direction; individual vs. groups; centralizing vs.
decentralizing; personal change vs. system change
Dynamic interdependency of state accountability and local autonomy
Combination of individuals and societal agencies
Internal connection within oneself and within one's organization and external connections to others and to the
environment

Fullan (1999) pointed out the importance of the recognition that the educational change process is complex. To
deal with such complexity is not to control the change, but to guide it. Fullan provides eight new lessons about
guiding change.

1. Moral purpose is complex and problematic

2. Theories of education and theories of change need each other
3. Conflict and diversity are our friends
4. Understanding the meaning of operating on the edge of chaos
5. Emotional intelligence is anxiety provoking and anxiety containing
6. Collaborative cultures are anxiety provoking and anxiety containing
7. Attack incoherence connectedness and knowledge creation are critical
8. There is no single solution. Craft your own theories and actions by being a critical consumer.

References:
Ellsworth, J. B. (2000). Surviving changes: A survey of Educational change models. Syracuse, NY: ERIC
Clearinghouse.

Fullan, M. (1982). The meaning of educational change. New York: Teachaers College Press.

Fullan, M. G. (1993). The complexity of the change process. In Change forces: Probing the depth of educational
reform, pp. 19-41. Falme Press.

Fullan, M. G. (1999). Change Forces: The sequel. Philadelphia, PA: Falmer Press.

Fullan, M., & Stiegelbauer, S. (1991). The new meaning of educational change. 2nd ed. New York: Teachers
College Press.

Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation

Fullan's Educational Change

Ely's Conditions of Changes