Transforming education: Evidential support for a complex systems approach

This paper documents the findings of research into a rare example of successful school-based education reform. The reform commenced within the South Australian Department of Education and Children's Services in 1999 and is ongoing. It drew explicitly on systems thinking in establishing change principles. Subsequent research into "what worked" reinforced the value of following practices consistent with loosely coupled and complex systems theory. This paper compares the approach adopted in South Australia with the more commonly adopted managerialist or so-called new public management approaches and elaborates on the relevance of complexity as a base for planning and implementing reform. The paper demonstrates that complex systems ideas have profound implications for the policy underpinning institutional change and provides evidence of their relevance and value in practice. Introduction Over the past two decades the principal ideas influencing approaches to the reform of public administration are managerialism (or the "new public management") and public choice theory (Aucoin, 1990; Self, 2000). The former is an application of managerial method to public institutions and the latter is an extension of the logic of economic markets to administrative and political exchange (Stretton & Orchard, 1994; Udehn, 1996). These two sets of ideas provide the primary basis also for the reform of education in OECD countries and beyond, being described by Jones and Kettle (2003) as an international phenomenon. Australia and New Zealand have been among the more avid adopters of change informed by this thinking. Most politically initiated educational reform in the State of South Australia had been consistent with these underpinnings. However, beginning in 1999 the South Australian Department of Education and Children's Services (DECS) introduced an innovation from within its central policy directorate that, while modest in scale, had a bold ambition: the transformation of schooling in South Australia. This reform was strikingly different, being informed by systems thinking and learning theory. A detailed account of the project design and outcomes is beyond the scope of this paper and has been documented elsewhere (see Department of Education and Children's Services, 2004; Goldspink, 2002, 2003). This paper discusses the theory and principles that guided this reform and research findings into the outcomes. These are compared with the principles and practices of educational reform inspired by the more common "managerial" ideas. The two are demonstrated to be in stark contrast, leading to conflicting principles for practice. The paper concludes by outlining a theory base consistent with the findings into what worked in South Australia. This draws on the concept of loosely coupled systems and complex systems theory. Contrasting two approaches to educational reform Assumptions underpinning "Learning to Learn" The South Australian school reform initiative is known as "Learning to Learn. " The initiative grew out of dissatisfaction with past approaches to reform that did not assist with "The generation of new thinking and understandings about the learning process. [and] the translation of this knowledge and learning outwards to the system as a whole" (Foster, et aZ., 2000:5) This project drew on the family of theories of learning that are grouped under the title of "constructivism"1 and systems theory. Constructivism implied embracing a diversity of perspectives and valuing alternative knowledge bases. This compelled a co-developmental rather than top-down approach to change. It implied that no one knowledge base or position would or could grasp the complexity of the task of education within the diverse communities in which it was enacted. The emphasis was, therefore, on providing an environment in which all parties (administrators, teachers, parents, and children) could "learn their way forward" (Foster, 200 1). …