Whole school development,change and leadership - Teaching with Technologies: The Essential Guide - page 111

Engaging staff in change
When it comes to change, it is known that the most effective place to start is with
teachers. Advice to leaders about creating a general vision for the direction of a school
is that it is best practice to involve all staff (DES 1989; Hargreaves and Hopkins 1991).
However, in the case of embedding digital technologies in the functioning of an
organization or department where expertise in new practices may not be held within
the whole staff body, an incremental approach appears more effective (Younie 2007;
Kington et al. 2001).
This means that effective practice needs first to be demonstrated as working by
leading practitioners. Others can then follow and adapt these models to meet their
circumstances. OECD ICT for school improvement research (Kington et al. 2001)
showed that Roger's Theory of the Diffusion of Innovations (2003) operates effec-
tively in schools which are integrating digital technologies into practice. Roger's the-
ory operates on the basis that, with respect to capacity and willingness to innovate,
staff can be divided into five types - innovators, early adopters, early majority, late
majority and laggards.
'Innovators' are staff who see the potential of an innovation and will test out
ideas without being discouraged by barriers - they develop and demonstrate through
their practice the proof of concept of the innovation. They are, however, too far
ahead of other staff in their thinking and practice for the majority of staff to be able
to follow their lead.
When 'early adopters' who are senior and respected staff adopt the ideas of
the innovators into their practice, then the bulk of staff (the early majority) will
start to follow this lead. Staff in the 'late majority' category are likely to require
some incentives to change practice, and staff performance reviews can play a valu-
able role in setting requirements for such staff to adopt certain practices. The staff
group making up the 'laggards' require special attention and support to change prac-
tice. In the UK-based OECD research, the 'laggards' left innovating schools to find
schools where such new practices were not demanded. Leask, who was the UK lead
for the OECD research, has subsequently applied this theory successfully to a
national change-management initiative - the introduction of Facebook -type online
communities environment for local government (Leask 2011): innovators developed
a proof of concept, demonstrating how working online could be more effective than
not working online, and managers soon adopted the approach and required all staff
in what was a central government agency to adopt this way of working with their
national networks. Chapter 9 provides information about the theories concerning
the motivating of staff to adopt new practices.
School leadership and technology
Lawson and Comber (1999, 2004) made a strong case for recognizing the relationship
between integrating technology and effective leadership.
Schools that had effectively integrated technology were identified as having a com-
mon feature, notably leaders who had promoted an ethos that embraced technological
change. Whole-school support was signalled by leaders via school technology policy,