The substance of the reforms includes attention to both the content of the curriculum and the instruction by which students acquire it. The means by which the reforms are put in place includes particular attention to systems thinking and the overall patterns of reform activities. The substance of reform. The following questions are among those addressed with respect to the curriculum reforms themselves. The means of reform.
Attention also is directed to how people got to where they are.
This investigation includes looking for patterns of support throughout the system and examining how people monitor their progress toward desired goals. Fully understanding a complex and dynamic situation requires examining it from a variety of perspectives. Looking at it from a variety of vantage points provides a fullness of understanding not possible when seen during a limited time span, through the eyes of only selected categories of participants, or from the standpoint of selected interactions within the total dynamic setting. Many perspectives are built into the conceptual framework to ensure that field observations and interviews acquire data needed for a wide range of analyses. Coherent portrayals of the situation in each school later will require a limited number of analyses, but at the beginning a fairly broad set of perspectives is demanded, as described below.