Differentiated responses to a central renewal policy: school management of implementation

Abstract The Netherlands’ new basic school was implemented in the mid‐1980s to increase individualized instruction and curriculum differentiation for children in the earliest grades. To do so, kindergarten and primary schools were brought together. This article reports on a study that sought to map and conceptualize the implementation of this comprehensive change by principals and teachers. Our assumption is that a demand for complex reform represents an intervention into the school's life. The central reform policy can be seen as a stimulus that arouses the ‘implementing school’ to develop a response pattern to that policy. We would not expect a precise correspondence between the centrally defined reform concept and the response of the local school. Three response patterns (local scenarios) to a central policy intervention are identified. Following up on this analysis, a complementary view is presented in which a central policy is seen to provide the school with opportunities for self‐reflection and, consequently, for redefining its identity.