Agency Change And Learning

"Neuroteach will aid teachers and school leaders in bringing the growing body of educational neuroscience research into the design of their schools, classrooms, and work with each individual student."--Back cover.

Despite the plethora of books on change, there appears a notable gap in the field; rarely is the authentic and candid voice of change agents heard. How often do academics or practitioners candidly state what they actually do when they are faced with managing change in their own organisations or when they are called on in a consultancy capacity? In this new book, the editors bring together a diverse group of contributors who have worked as Internal Change Agents in organizations to divulge what they really do and think about change. The authors draw on their own research work involving change agents and their change interventions and include current reflections on the post-Covid world of work, and the change required for achieving change interventions successfully. Each contribution offers perspectives from real change programmes, in both the public and private sector, offering a unique opportunity to move beyond theory and understand change in practice. The book offers valuable insights for academics and students of organisational change and behaviour, leadership and organisational development.

This excellent book remaps the limits and possibilities of change, clearly shifting the focus from outmoded debates on agency and structure to new practice-based discourses on agency and change. Offering readers a selective and critical review of key literature and empirical research, it will help students contextualize this complex subject area and independently evaluate future prospects for effective change agent roles in organizations Presenting an interdisciplinary exploration of competing discourses, the book uses two overarching conceptual continua: centred agency-decentred agency and systems-processes, thereby allowing a more intensive focus on agency and change. Well-written with challenging content, this book is essential reading for those interested in the origins, development and future prospects for change agency in an organizational world characterized by increasing complexity, risk and uncertainty.

El espacio, ya sea físico o virtual, puede tener un impacto significativo en el aprendizaje. Learning Spaces se centra en la forma en que las expectativas de los alumnos influyen en dichos espacios, en los principios y actividades que facilitan el aprendizaje y en el papel de la tecnología desde la perspectiva de quienes crean los entornos de aprendizaje: profesores, tecnólogos del aprendizaje, bibliotecarios y administradores. La tecnología de la información ha aportado capacidades únicas a los espacios de aprendizaje, ya sea estimulando una mayor interacción mediante el uso de herramientas de colaboración, videoconferencias con expertos internacionales o abriendo mundos virtuales para la exploración. Este libro representa una exploración continua a medida que unimos el espacio, la tecnología y la pedagogía para asegurar el éxito de los estudiantes.

Agency through Teacher Education: Reflection, Community, and Learning addresses the ways that agency functions for those involved in twenty-first-century teacher education. This book, commissioned by the Association of Teacher Educators, relies on the voices of teacher education candidates, in-service teachers, school leaders, and university-based educators to illustrate what agency looks like, sounds like, and feels like for people trying to act as agents of change.

Recent worldwide education policy has reinvented teachers as agents of change and professional developers of the school curriculum. Academic literature has analyzed changes in how teacher professionalism is conceived in policy and in practice but Teacher Agency provides a fresh perspective on this issue, drawing upon an ecological theory of agency. Using this model for understanding agency, Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Sarah Robinson explore empirical findings from the 'Teacher Agency and Curriculum Change' project, funded by the UK-based Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Drawing together this research with the authors' international experiences and perspectives, Teacher Agency addresses theoretical and practical issues of international significance. The authors illustrate how teacher agency should be understood not only in terms of individual capacity of teachers, but also in respect of the cultures and structures of schooling.

The Change Laboratory is a method for formative intervention in work communities that supports this kind of organizational learning. It is a path breaker in the area of work place learning due to its strong theoretical and research basis and the way that it integrates the change of organizational practices and individuals’ learning. It provides a way to develop practitioners’ transformative agency and capacity for creating and implementing new conceptual and practical tools for mastering their joint activity.

Abstract: This book is a resource for individuals who are "change agents" in all areas of education. The format follows the outline of the Michigan Conference on Change Agent Training upon which the book is based. Part I of the book describes how to develop training programs in the areas of helping skills and resource utilization. Chapters in this section address the process of change, goals of training, principles of training design, and the framework for training design. Part II discusses alternative models of similar training programs for different groups. This section addresses four types of training programs: development of self-renewal capacity in schools, facilitation of political and structural changes within schools, linkage of schools to other resources, and improvement of the effectiveness of other educational agencies.

This book considers the process of impact assessment and shows how and why it needs to be integrated into all stages of development programmes. In-depth case studies are included and show a variety of approaches.

From her own experience in various agencies and organizations, Dr. Rusaw knows that to inspire change in any organization and particularly in the public sector, change agents must understand that change is primarily collective, nonrational, and nonlinear. People who seek to create change cannot stand apart from the problems, issues, and concerns raised by their constituents, but must merge themselves into the data-making, analysis, and diagnosis phases of consulting. The agent must, in other words, participate actively in creating change—and how the agent must do this, why, and the effects the agent can expect are the subjects of Dr. Rusaw's book. Few books discuss public sector change in the way Dr. Rusaw does here, and none incorporate the phenomenological perspective that she uses. Her book will appeal to practicing public administrators who seek real-life examples presented in conversational language. It will also be important for teachers and students in public administration, specifically in courses in organizational behavior, leadership, organization theory, human relations, and public personnel management. Not only can change agents help public employees serve the purposes set out for them more effectively and efficiently, but by service and other efforts they can also help reverse the downward trend that has characterized the public sector in recent years. Dr. Rusaw maintains that such change is made possible by personal transformation, certainly, but also by interpersonal transformations. By focusing on individual and group needs as keys to organizational change, change agents can facilitate what is most needed: not just localized alterations but widespread, holistic transformations. Her book looks at the role of healing—particularly, the inherent skills of listening, empathizing, and encouraging—and at the ways in which people can confront and solve problems in negotiated environments. She also sees that central to re-education and re-socialization is the quality of the change agent's inner person: how well the agent is able to understand the role of self in the change process. Her book provides ways in which agents can inspire others to change too. In other words, Dr. Rusaw sees organizational change as a process moving from the inside to the outside, and it is on this foundation that her unusual, thoughtful, and ultimately practical book is based.