Unlocking the culture for quality schools: reengineering

Abstract

Successful school reform requires a paradigm shift which begins with unlocking the school’s existing culture before attempts are made to integrate reform variables. Reengineering, and rethinking and radical redesign of internal processes calls for discarding current practices and reinventing better ways to supply products and services. Holistic thinking, cross‐sectional configurations, proactive behaviour patterns, reward for innovation and creativity, and the demise of traditional infrastructures are essential for facilitating fluid social, economic and political trends into the 21st century. Educators must think differently about the purpose of schools and their delivery and redesign infrastructures which are built on shared values and beliefs, multiple interacting linkages and teamwork. School leaders are the catalysts for change and, working with the school’s power agents and modeling expected behaviours, motivate teachers to replace the old culture with new processes of schooling. Shared ownership of case values, realistic and achievable goals and collaboration places the responsibility for creating a reengineered delivery system on teachers themselves.