Abstract: To transform entire school systems change leaders need to be masters of awareness, masters of deliberate intention, and masters of methodology. Each set of competencies (awareness, deliberate intention, and methodology) has key knowledge, skills, and dispositions. This article provides an overview of the skill-set for mastering awareness for the purpose of transforming a school system. This skill-set includes the ability to assess the characteristics of a school system's external environment and then use those data to transform the system's relationship with its external environment. Readers are provided with an overview of the context for engaging in environmental assessment activities. The overview includes an introduction to the challenge of transforming school systems, a description of the general features of a school system's external environment, a sampling of specific assessment activities for assessing the external environment, and a brief explanation of how to analyze the results of the assessment activities. The article concludes with a discussion about matching organization design of a school system to the characteristics of that system's external environment.
AVAILABLE AT: http://cnx.org/content/m33891/latest/
Keywords: school reform, organizational change, educational leadership
 Full Text | [ ] | 789 kB |