Hall, Gene E. & Hord, Shirley M. (2001). Implementing Change: Patterns, Principles, and Potholes. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
269 pp.
$47(Paper) ISBN 0-205-16222-3
Reviewed by Wayne E. Wright
Arizona State University
June 7, 2002
Hall and Hord provide an excellent overview of the principles and tools that make up their Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) for school change. This book is essentially an updated version of the author's (1987) "CBAM" book, Change in Schools: Facilitating the Process. The advantage for this new book is that Hall and Hord now have over 25 years of experience with their CBAM model, in comparison to 15 years when they wrote the earlier book. However, the authors do not present the current work as a second or revised version of the earlier book.
While their model and its individual components have changed very little, there is a substantial amount of new and updated information. For example, in the 1987 book, only seven principles of change were listed. In this book, they have been expanded to 12. The added principles tend to reflect more of a team effort to change rather than a collective of individual change agents. Also, it appears that Hall and Hord have backed away from the notion of "change is getting the teachers to change," to focusing more on the school as a whole.
Hall and Hord have also created a more reader-friendly text. The paper is whiter and brighter, the font crisper, and many new charts and figures have been added to clarify and illustrate the author's points. Also new are a series of realistic vignettes that effectively illustrate CBAM principles. Focus questions have been added at the beginning and review questions at the end along with suggested activities, making this an ideal textbook for administrator training and professional development.
My approach to this book is on several levels. First as a former elementary school teacher in an inner-city low socioeconomic neighborhood, who has experienced first hand many change efforts. Second as a doctoral student studying educational policy, its implementation and its effects on schools, teachers, students, and the curriculum. And third, as a provider of professional development to teachers in a large school district attempting to bring about change. Thus this review will be partly descriptive, but will also provide a critical analysis through the above lenses.
In Chapter 1, Hall and Hord note that the book will provide two sets of useful information: (a) actual concepts and procedures (tools) that can be used to facilitate change, and (b) an understanding of the change process itself. They list 12 principles of change that are embodied in the concerns-based approach:
- Change is a process, not an event.
- There are significant differences in what is entailed in development and implementation of an innovation.
- An organization does not change until the individuals within it change.
- Innovations come in different sizes.
- Interventions are the actions and events that are key to the success of the change process.
- Although both top-down and bottom-up change can work, a horizontal perspective is best.
- Administrator leadership is essential to long-term change success.
- Mandates can work.
- The school is the primary unit for change.
- Facilitating change is a team effort.
- Appropriate interventions reduce the challenges of change.
- The context of the school influences the process of change.
In Chapter 2, Hall and Hord attempt to provide a historical perspective of innovation and initiatives in education. The result is a gross oversimplification of trends in education over the past 30 years. However, they make their point that contexts and demands on schools change over time. Their main assertion in this chapter is that knowing what to change is only small part of the equation. Knowing how to change is the real key. This is the focus of the subsequent chapters.
In Chapter 3, the authors describe a CBAM tool called "Innovation Configurations" (IC). This tool is in response to the issue that often times teachers and others are not clear on what they are being asked to do, and what the change is supposed to look like in their classrooms. Also, schools make the mistake in thinking that once they purchase materials and train teachers, the innovation will be implemented exactly as planned. The IC is simply a series of descriptions of what the innovation looks like, on a continuum with non-implementation at one end, to perfect implementation on the other. Thus, teachers have a clearer idea of what they are supposed to do, and administrators can use it to evaluate the extent to which the innovation is being implemented in the classrooms.
The IC concept makes sense. In the school district I am currently assisting, it would be very powerful to have an IC chart to train teachers and for classroom observations. However, there is potential for abuse. Hall and Hord address this in what they call the "high fidelity" enigma, which raises the issue of whether it is appropriate to demand full implementation with little variation. Hall and Hord suggest that if the innovation is proven to raise student gains, then why not insist upon it? The problem here is the false notion of one size fits all (Ohanian, 1999). As not all students, classrooms, and schools are identical, insisting on high fidelity can be problematic. For example, in my former school district, the math curriculum office developed a scope and sequence chart that all schools were to follow with complete (high) fidelity. The chart was designed for traditional calendar schools, and thus proved difficult for teachers at year-round schools to follow. Moreover, the inner-city teachers found that the time allotted for certain skills was not adequate for students from low socio-economic status (SES) areas. For example, only two days were allocated for teaching money concepts. This may be appropriate for middle class areas where children typically receive an allowance and may even have their own bank accounts, however, low SES children typically have fewer opportunities to handle money. Thus the IC needs to take these types of differences into account before "high fidelity" is demanded.
In Chapter 4, Hall and Hord describe another tool in the CBAM model—Stages of Concern (SoC). This is a tool to find out what teachers think and feel about a change. This is important because how teachers feel about and perceive a change will in large part determine whether or not change actually occurs in the classroom. There are seven stages that range from Stage 0-Awareness, where a teacher is merely becoming aware of an innovation without any particular concern, to Stage 6-Refocusing, where much time and effort have been put into a change, and now there is deep reflection about more universal benefits of it.
Hall and Hord then address three methods principals can utilize to assess the SoCs of teachers. The first method is called "One-Legged Conferencing," which entails taking advantage of the short two-minute hallway, lounge, and playground conversations principals have with teachers. The second method is the "Open-Ended Statement of Concern." This is simply giving teachers a piece of paper with the following written at the top: "When you think about (insert name of innovation) what are you concerned about?" Hall and Hord provide a systematic way of scoring each paper to determine the SoC. The third method is called "Stages of Concern Questionnaire." This is a pre-developed questionnaire of 35 questions which teachers rate on a Likert scale of 7.
The power of the SoC lies in the research-based ability to predict which stage teachers may be in, given that concerns change over time. If predictions can be made, then effective planning can take place in terms of what kind of professional development to provide. Also if a change is inappropriate, the SoC assessments can help reveal this and action can be taken accordingly.
Hall and Hord declare that these tools are deceptively simple. Some are so simple, it is somewhat amusing. The authors appear to be applying sophisticated labels such as "One-Legged Conference" and "Open-Ended Statement of Concern." to common sense procedures. However, there may be principals who would never think to approach a teacher in the hallway during recess and ask, "How's it going with the new spelling series?" Overall though, the essence of these tools—listening to, and taking seriously, what teachers have to say—is what makes them so powerful.
My main criticism of this chapter stems from the notion of top-down reforms over which principals have little control. For example, at my former school, I recall a colleague, a kindergarten teacher, who was greatly upset over the adoption of the Open Court phonics program. She had dedicated several years to personal study and experimentation to create a classroom based on research and effective practices, and had been seeing real results. Open Court is a one-size-fits-all program, and provides a script that teachers are expected to follow. Soon after the adoption of Open Court, she carted a stack of books from the professional literature on early-childhood education and literacy instruction into the principal's office. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she asked the principal if she was expected to toss aside this substantial personal investment of time, energy and money in developing herself as a professional and follow the Open Court script instead. The principal was understanding, but candid with her. He told her that Open Court was now the district's program and teachers were expected to fully implement it. He told her that he understood her convictions, and she was in one sense free to defy the system and do what she felt was right. But he then cautioned her that such a move might not be wise given the fact that she was a fairly young and relatively new teacher. Here was a very emotional "One-Legged Conference" where a sympathetic principal and a highly distraught teacher were powerless in the wider political process of school reform efforts.
Hall and Hord describe the third tool in their CBAM model in Chapter 5. Levels of Use (LoU) is a method for determining how much and how well a change is actually being implemented in the classroom. Specifically, there are eight levels identified by the authors that are classifications of how people act or behave with a change. The stages range from "non-use" to "renewal," where an experienced user re-evaluates the quality of use of the innovation and seeks to modify it or seek alternatives to better meet the needs of their students. To determine the LoU, the authors have developed the LoU Branching Interview, and the LoU Focused Interview. The branching interview may be conducted informally through One-Legged Conferencing. The Focused Interview is much more formal and controlled, used mainly for research and formal evaluation purposes. Moving through the LoU is not necessarily a fluid movement. One can move forward, backward, or get stuck at any one level. There are many other factors at influence here.
LoU also makes sense. The authors recognize the difference between teachers' feelings and attitudes about a change (concerns), and their actual implementation of the change. Very often, judgments are made about the relative success or failure of a program, even though there is no effort to document whether or the not it is in fact being used in the classrooms. In the district I am assisting, the focus is on training the teachers, however there are no mechanisms in place to evaluate whether or not teachers are actually implementing the training in their own classrooms. Having an LoU to evaluate implementation would be an effective follow-up to the training.
The author's suggestion that the One-Legged Conference can be used to assess the LoU is surprising. It would be much more effective to observe classrooms to see if and how an innovation is being implemented, than simply asking teachers out on the playground if they are implementing it. Of course, just as easily as teachers could overstate their usage in a One-Legged Conference, teachers could put on the "horse and pony show" for an observation that is not representative of their daily instruction. However, with a classroom observation, the principal could look around the room for evidence that the innovation is being implemented (e.g., student products on the wall, the kit is open and materials are on the desks or tables, the teacher's guide is open and on the teacher's desk, and is full of sticky notes, etc…). Informal observations, (i.e., dropping by unannounced at various times) is much more effective than formal observations that are set up in advance. My former principal was creative in finding excuses to walk around, but not appear as if there to evaluate. For example, if flyers or memos needed to be sent home, rather than having a student worker run the copies to each classroom, he would do it himself. In the process, he developed a greater sense of what was happening in each classroom.
At the end of each of the CBAM tool chapters, Hall and Hord warn that these tools should not be used until the reader has participated in official CBAM training. This raises the question about the purpose of this book. Is it to help educators facilitate change, or is it a 228-page infomercial?
In chapter 6, Hall & Hord describe the need for change facilitators in the change process, and identify actions facilitators can take to make change happen. They define an intervention as "any action or event that influences the individuals involved or expected to be involved in the process" (p. 105). An "action" is planned (e.g., a training workshop), while an "event" is unplanned (e.g., the materials are lost somewhere in the district warehouse). Thus, interventions can either be positive or negative, but not all actions are positive and not all events are negative.
While the principal is usually viewed as the change facilitator, the authors note that anyone can be the change facilitator so long as "they assume the role and responsibilities" (p. 107). The authors then identify "six functions of interventions" which operate in terms of creating a context supportive of change: (a) developing, articulating, and communicating a shared vision of the intended change; (b) planning and providing resources; (c) investing in professional learning; (d) checking on progress; (e) providing continuous assistance, and (f) creating a context supportive of change.
They also list five strategies for creating a supportive change context: (a) shaping the physical features of the context, (b) modeling the expected behaviors and norms, (c) teaching and coaching, (d) addressing conflict, and (e) selecting, rewarding, and censuring staff. Additional interventions include developing a shared vision of the change (the IC can be used to facilitate this) and creating a context for change.
Hall and Hord next discuss their conceptualization of "sizes of intervention." These move from system-wide policies to brief incidents. They break incidents down in to several types: isolated, simple, chain, repeated, and complex. The "sum of all these intervention sizes or levels is a comprehensive set of actions undertaken to provide nonusers and users with what they need to successfully implement any given change" (p. 118). For researchers and evaluators, the authors have developed the "Anatomy of Interventions" than can be used to analyze a change effort.
Hall and Hord dissect the generic concept of "interventions" into specific types. They have shown how complex interventions can be, but also how important they are. Many seem like common sense, such as "create a shared vision," and "providing resources." However, I see these two simple elements lacking in the school district I am assisting, and thus have great concerns about how effective their change efforts will be.
Hall and Hord appropriately address "creating a context for change." This was identified as a major source of change failure by Oakes, Quartz, Ryan and Lipton (2000) and Fullan (2001). However, I feel that Hall and Hord have not addressed this adequately. How to create the context for change could easily be a book all in itself, and it appears to be crucial for the success or failure of any change.
In Chapter 7, Hall and Hord note again the crucial role of the principal as the change facilitator, and identify three leadership styles: Responder, Manager, and Initiator. As the name suggests, the Responder works and thinks on a day-by-day basis solving problems as they come up. They delay making decisions, stay out of teacher's way and try to keep everyone happy. The Manager runs the schools like a well-oiled machine, takes time to study out problems before making a decision, implements changes slowly and smoothly, and rarely delegates. The Initiator has a clear vision, makes decisions quickly, has a strong focus on curriculum, instruction and assessment, and pushes hard (sometimes too hard). The Responder lets change happen, the Manager helps change happen, and the Initiator makes change happen.
Hall and Hord favor the Initiator, but also have respect for the Manager. They suggest that it is difficult for a change facilitator to change their style. In a vignette, the authors describe the difficulty of a school going from a Responder principal to an Initiator principle called in to turn the school around. They acknowledge that this can be a rough transition and some principals like this will not last. In this vignette the principal stuck it out and "turned the school around." From my teacher's perspective, I prefer Responder principals who hire good teachers and then stay out of their way. At my former school, we had, for the most part, a Responder principal. The district usually hired a Manager vice-principal to keep him in balance. The principal protected teachers from many of the demands coming from above. Rather than dutifully complete formal observations on all teachers, he determined who was struggling (through the informal classroom observations described above) and focused his attention there. In addition, he "let" some good programs happen, and actually was instrumental in getting them going. But once running, he just let them go and did not micromanage them. Of course, there were times when it would have been better if he had been a little more involved and had a clearer vision of these programs, especially when "here-and-now" types of problems threatened longitudinal goals.
Hall and Hord neglect to acknowledge several issues in terms of their "styles." Part of the problem is systemic. A principal at an overcrowded inner-city year-round school with over 1,000 students, and who only has three weeks of vacation time a year, has a much more challenging job than the principal at the school of 350 on a traditional school-year calendar. The recent literature on the principal has shown how the demands on the principals have grown over time, burn-out and turn-over are at an all-time high, and there is consideration about splitting the principal's job into two or three separate jobs, thus freeing the principal to be more Manager or Initiator like (Hertline, 2001; Kimball & Sirotnik, 2000; Yerkes & Guaglianone, 1998). There are many principals who would like to be more than just Responders, but due to the systematic structure of their schools and districts, and more importantly, their size and demands, their time is consumed with the myriad problems that arise each day.
Hall and Hord's discussion on what happens when an Initiator is brought in to replace a Responder is insightful. This is what happened at my former school. The district assigned its top "Initiator" to "turn the school around." Teacher morale has been at an all-time low for the past two years. While the authors are biased towards Initiators, from my graduate student perspective on the effects of educational policies, "turning a school around" may not always be a good thing. A key issue is how this is defined. If defined as increased test scores on high-stakes standardized tests, Kohn (2000) argues this should be a matter of concern as these types of tests measure what matters least, and result in poor teaching for poor students. My own research (Wright, 2002, in press) and that of others (McNeil, 2000; Sacks, 1999) has led to similar conclusions. Initiator principals may lack vision of the larger picture of what poor and language-minority students really need. Hall and Hord do make the caveat at the beginning of the book that the assumptions here are that the changes are good. But according to this chapter, Initiator principals make decisions quickly without taking the time to study them out. Also, systemically, principals are under increasing amounts of pressure to raise test scores, and have little control over this reality.
In Chapter 8, Hall and Hord expand the idea of a single change facilitator to a "Change Facilitator Team." This likely includes the vice-principal and one or two lead teachers. Of all of their ideas, this one appears to be the least developed. However, it seems reasonable to have a team rather than a single person attempting to bring about change. The fact that they limit the team to just two to four people is surprising. At my former school, some of the more meaningful changes were brought about by larger working groups of teachers and administrators.
The major theme of Chapter 9 is, "it is not what you do that counts, but how other people perceive and interpret what you do" (p. 171). Hall and Hord use the word "mushrooms" to refer to change process interventions which do not come from the change facilitator and over which the facilitator has little control. These could be negative mushrooms, such as complaints and rumors that get in the way of change, or positive mushrooms, such as genuine enthusiasm about the success of a change. They use the term mushroom as a metaphor, in that mushrooms can be nutritious or poisonous, and grow in the dark or in the shadows. The authors contend that CBAM concepts such as SoC, LoU, and the change facilitator styles can be useful in understanding, predicting, and dealing with mushrooms. The authors argue that change facilitators must become skilled at detecting and dealing with mushrooms in order to ensure the change process is a success.
It is reassuring to see Hall and Hord deal with the reality of change efforts. They put a positive spin on what is generally called the "rumor mill." An important issue, however, is what if the change is a bad one, and teachers know it? Could planting and growing poisonous mushrooms be a form of civil disobedience in the name of a higher good?
Chapter 10 is unusual and does not appear to fit in with, and in some ways appears to contradict, the other ideas in the book. Here Hall and Hord acknowledge that the school's organization is embedded in its context; thus to bring about change, there must be a climate conducive to change. They raise the question of how to create this climate if it does not exist in the culture of the school. The authors describe research (including studies by Hord conducted independently of Hall) on the necessity of the entire staff working together and collaborating to bring about shared visions and change. This requires the principal to move from being the "sage on the stage" to the "guide on the side," and to give up substantial decision-making power to site-based decision-making teams.
In presenting these seemingly contradicting ideas, Hall and Hord state that "the CBAM precepts and operating principles still apply, but in a more broadly shared way" (p. 201). They do not elaborate, however, on how exactly CBAM fits in. This is quite a jump from the preferred iron-fisted Initiator change facilitator to site-based decision making where the principal has to give up and share power. It appears the authors are starting to budge a little from their 25-year old model and beginning to consider that change is more than a strong principal well-versed in the CBAM model.
However, there appears to be a sense of hesitancy on the part of Hall and Hord to move forward with this new concept. They acknowledge its potential, but stand by the traditional CBAM model. They are wise in doing so. Very little is known about "shared decision making" and "changing the culture of the school." In fact, the latter was a major theme in both Oakes et al. (2000) and Fullan (2001), who found that this is so difficult to do, most change efforts fail or do not last. Thus, Hall and Hord's traditional CBAM model may be the best working model with proven success.
From my former teacher perspective, I prefer the change process as described by the CBAM model. I hold the traditional belief that the teacher's job is to teach and the principal's job is to run the school. Given the current situation of education, teachers are already overwhelmed. The shared decision making concepts in this chapter would result in extra work for teachers that may not end up making a difference. I spent a year on my school's Site-Based Decision team, and became very frustrated when at one meeting we spent an hour discussing where the trash cans should be located on the playground. Research on the effective use of shared decision making and site based management is still inconclusive. Principals are hired because they can administrate, and teachers are hired because they can teach. If they fail to do what they are hired to do, there are formal and informal systems in place to remove them. A strong principal well versed in the CBAM model and tools to ascertain teacher concerns and act upon them, would be preferable over a group of overwhelmed teachers trying to act upon concerns in a haphazard way.
In the final chapter, Hall and Hord pull the preceding concepts together with a reminder that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." They discuss the best configurations for using the tools together, identify a few potholes, discuss briefly the process for institutionalizing change, and also discuss the ethics of change. They warn again that CBAM tools and principles can be misused and abused. They plea for change facilitators to be ethical and warn that real change will not happen unless everyone feels "safe." They end the chapter and the book by reminding the reader of one of the first principles in the change process—change is a process, not an event. Their closing quote is an appropriate one—"The road to success is always under construction" (p. 227).
Overall, this is an excellent book. Hall and Hord's CBAM model has proven to work well in schools as they are presently structured. There likely is much potential in shared decision/site based management models, but currently we are trying to apply a model that is not conducive to the current reality of schools. Dewey (cited in Kliebard, 1995), Fullan (2001), Oakes et al. (2000) and others have argued that the very structure of schools prevent substantial long-lasting change in educational systems. However, Hall and Hord have a model that works on a small scale within individual schools. Perhaps this has implications for the wider systematic top-down school reforms efforts.
References
Fullan, M. (2001). The new meaning of educational change (3rd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.
Hall, G. E., & Hord, S. M. (1987). Change in schools: Facilitating the process. New York: State University of New York Press.
Hertline, E. (2001). Retaining Principals. Portland, OR: ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management. Retrieved June 7, 2002 from the World Wide Web, http://eric.uoregon.edu/publications/digests/digest147.html.
Kimball, K., & Sirotnik, K. A. (2000, August). The urban principalship: Take this job and . . . ! Thrust For Educational Leadership, 32(4), 535-543.
Kliebard, H. M. (1995). The struggle for the American curriculum: 1893-1958 (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Kohn, A. (2000). The case against standardized testing: Raising the scores, ruining the schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
McNeil, L. M. (2000). Contradictions of school reform: Educational costs of standardized testing. New York: Routledge.
Oakes, J., Quartz, K. H., Ryan, S., & Lipton, M. (2000). Becoming good American schools: The struggle for civic virtue in educational reform. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Ohanian, S. (1999). One size fits few: The folly of educational standards. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Sacks, P. (1999). Standardized minds: The high price of America's testing culture and what we can do change it. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.
Wright, W. E. (2002). The effects of high stakes testing on an Inner-city elementary school: The curriculum, the teachers, and the English language learners. Current Issues in Education [On-line], 5(5). Available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume5/number5/index.html.
Wright, W. E. (in press). The return of sink or swim: Proposition 227, testing, phonics and the end of a successful bilingual program for Cambodian American students. Current Issues in Asian and Pacific American Education.
Yerkes, D. M. & Guaglianone, C. (1998, November-December). Where have all the high school administrators gone? Thrust For Educational Leadership, 28(2), 10-14.
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