Images of Schools and Patterns of Change

Many researchers, change agents, and practitioners have assumed that schools are rational bureaucracies. Yet, schools can vary in the clarity and consistency of their goals, in the ways in which staff work together, and in their abilities to deal with the outside world. The bureaucratic imagery does not take such variation into account. This paper contrasts the bureaucratic image of schools with four other possible images--the sect, the legislature, the hospital, and the anarchy--in order to develop a greater variety of ways to think about how schools can be organized. It then describes how schools corresponding to different images might deal with problems associated with four stages of the change process: adoption, initiation, implementation, and incorporation.