Book Review: Implementing Change Through Learning: Concerns-based Concepts, Tools, and Strategies For Guiding Change

As a teacher and teacher-educator with a focus on qualitative change in schools and training colleges, I am fortunate enough to get hold of a book by Shirley Hord and James Roussin on school leadership or, to be more precise, change leadership based on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM). As many of us know, CBAM is a conceptual framework that describes, explains, and predicts probable teacher concerns and behaviours throughout the school change process. It has three principal diagnostic dimensions: Stages of Concern—Seven different stages of feelings and perceptions that educators experience when they implement a new programme or practice (SoC); Levels of Use—Eight behavioural profiles that describe a different set of actions and behaviours that educators engage in as they become more familiar with and more skilled in using an innovation or adopting a change (LoU); and Innovation Configurations—In different ways an innovation may be implemented, shown along a continuum from ideal implementation or practice to least desirable practice (IC). CBAM is a perspective for understanding change that was first proposed as a framework by Hall, Wallace, and Dossett in 1973. Instead of beginning with viewing change at the level of system, CBAM starts with understanding of how change is experienced by individual implementers, i.e. Headmasters/Headmistresses (school leaders), Assistant teachers, etc. Their perceptions, feelings and emotions (Stages of Concern), their gradual development of expertise (Levels of Use), and the extent to which they use innovation with strong belief (Innovation Configurations) are the three primary constructs for assessing implementation. From this foundation, the CBAM perspectives set off to address the importance of leadership and system.