Educational change and discourse communities: representing change in postmodern times

As a consequence of the shift that educational change is experiencing it has begun to focus its energy in the creation of more sophisticated categories.Facing a situation of having to redefine categories, it is necessary to find ways of representing change that grasp the complex and sometimes contradictory expressions of innovations.Concepts such as 'discourse communities' are now being used to capture a sense of the plurality and ambiguity of possible positions.A discourse community refers to an association of identity and discourse that creates its particularity between those persons who think of themselves as members and participants in their discourse.I focus on three main discourse communities in educational change: 'excellence', 'restructuring' and 'cultural politics'.Discourse communities are mapping epistemological positions considering interaction and conflictive areas and are also showing the changeable and unstable nature of their own representations. A Turn in the Conceptualisation of Educational ChangeEducational change as a field of study has had a trajectory unaccustomed to success.A cursory examination of its short history shows that frustration is the single most common characteristic.Since its beginning, the technical approaches that dominated the field failed to come close to their expectations to control the direction of educational change in relation to the style of economic progress that permeated western societies.The frustration has been tempered, in part, by the relative