Social Change

Positive Social Change
Education Colloquia
Walden University C4 – San Diego

A bend in the road is not the end of the road … unless you fail to make the turn

Walden’s Mission
Walden University provides adult learners broad access to the highest quality postsecondary through a distance learning Text environment. Walden 's learner - centered programs prepares its graduates to achieve professional excellence and to effect positive social change.

Social Change Task Force
Positive social change is a deliberate process of creating and applying ideas, strategies, and actions to promote the worth, dignity, and development of individuals, communities, organizations, institutions, cultures, and societies. Positive social change results in the improvement of human and social conditions.

Social Change Task Force
In addition, Walden University supports positive social change through the development of principled, knowledgeable, and ethical scholarpractitioners, who are and will become civic and professional role models by advancing the betterment of society.

Patterns of Social Change
Rate of change occurs differently across societies and its institutions Both positive and negative effects arise from social change, and are often disproportionately distributed. Some changes have only passing significance, others have more profound effects. SC can occur inside bureaucracies, outside, or in alliances that straddle each of these Laws can both facilitate and restrict social change (eg, civil rights, arresting environmental activists, marriage laws)

Social Justice
Equality and social justice is the goal of much social change Social justice - while people differ profoundly as individuals, all are equally entitled to consideration and respect (Sargent et al. 1998)

Social change is brought about by:
Conflict/Competition
• For Marx, class struggle • Globalization - Sputnik

New social movements (NSMs) Technological Innovations Natural & Human made disasters Awareness
• eg, environment impacts, AIDS research

Demographics
• immigration patterns

Educational Change - Fullan
However noble, sophisticated, or enlightened proposals for change and improvement might be, they come to nothing if teachers don’t adopt them in their own classrooms and if they don’t translate them into effective classroom practice (p.13).

What’s worth fighting for in your school?
(Fullan and Hargreaves, 1996).

Fullan – Hargreaves
The following are reasons changes don’t work:
Problems themselves are complex, and not easily amenable to solutions given the resources at hand. Time lines are unrealistic because policy-makers want immediate results. There are tendencies toward faddism. Most strategies alienate teachers. Structural solutions (like curriculum) do not come with appropriate professional development.

Which of these ring true for your district or institution? Why?

Systemic Change http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke Educational change is about interrupting sustainable processes and structures with deep embedding in a much larger social-economic-ecological system and Fostering the emergence of alternative processes and structures require understanding of timescales. All educational changes take place inside diverse, complex, multi-scale systems and seek to correct inequities.

Complex Systems and Educational Change
Jay Lemke, CCNT Reform efforts are more likely to be sustained when there is prior assessment of the school system and community readiness for change and when incremental changes alternate with periods of reflection, consolidation, and buy-in by all partners, including parents and the wider community [stepwise strategy]

Time Scale of Educational Changes
Phenomenon
Teacher-student ratio Instructional unit of 3-12 months Teacher-student relayionship Use of textbooks Frontal, proscenium architecture; single dominant visual focus Lecture, question exchange structure Age segregation across age range 5 – 18 years Sequential curriculum; uniform content and pacing for all students at a given age Curriculum content in many fields

Time
(320) years “ “ 160 years “ “ 100 years “ 50-100 years

Time Scale of Educational Changes
Intervention driver process
Curriculum reform mandates Curriculum reform implementation Teaching method change mandate New assessment mandates Assessment cycles Teacher education reform mandates Teacher preparation change Funding reform mandate Expenditure changes New technology development Widespread technology adoption

Typical time
3-5 yrs 15 yrs 6-15 yrs 3 yrs .5 – 1.0 year 3 yrs 5- 15 years 10 years 3-15 years 7-10 yrs 10-15 yrs

Enacting Positive Social Change
Suppose, you wish to make history and not simply understand it. Suppose you want to effect change rather than simply gain insight into it. Suppose you are confronted with the problem of, or desire to, change the Educational System. • What change would you make? • What challenges do you face? • How do you proceed?

Challenges
Social inequality -Power Resistance to change politics environment social justice $$$$ Bureaucracy

Inequities in Education
SOCIAL in origin -- not due to the biological or psychological characteristics of individuals Racial Gap in test scores Gender – Math and Science Gap between rich and poor increases Unequal access to education, technology and health care Geographical isolation (Rural, regional, remote)limited access to resources

Reformism
Work from within institutions and communities to enact social change Use official bureaucratic procedures to achieve change - eg, teacher organizations, legal aid advisers, social service agencies, health institutions, businesses, able to access media, policy makers, and sympathetic members of dominant group Work with social and global movement groups

Social Movement Groups
Consist of people who seek, by their recurrent and collective activities, to influence social change in some particular direction (Sargent et al, 1998, p. 426) Embrace concerns related to culture, values and human rights

Social Movement Groups
Work outside traditional political institutions, but may have networks with various policy decision makers NPP (National Priorities Project) is a nonpartisan education and advocacy organization that reports on financial statistics for government spending. According to NPP (nationalpriorities.org), we could have provided 29.5 million college scholarships with the funds we 've spent on the war in Iraq so far, and 3,300 scholarships with the funds taxpayers spent on security at the inauguration.

Global Justice Movements
Broad Alliance of people concerned with a range of issues have formed the basis of social justice movements as the links between issues are made clearer Mobilizing people with a common agenda which serves as a basis for an alternative to status quo. Empowering

Global Justice Movements
Grassroots activists bring issues to the attention of politicians and scientists ACHIEVEMENTS
• Raise public awareness • Challenge ideas that there are no alternatives • Global protests

Summary
Many of these strategies have been successful in highlighting the issues of disenfanchised groups, and have succeeded in contributing towards creating a more socially just society Sociology provides us with the knowledge, and responsibility, to contribute towards social change and to facilitate social justice

Noteable Quoteables
Abraham Lincoln: The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. Alice Walker: No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow. Anne Frank: How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

References
Appelbaum, Richard P., (1970), Theories of Social Change, Markham Publishing: Chicago Etzioni, Amitai, Eva Etzioni-Halevy, (1973), Social change: Sources, patterns and consequences, ed., 2nd ed., Basic Books: New York De Leon, David, (1988), Everything is changing: Contemporary US movements in historical perspective, Praeger: New York Hornell Hart, "Social Theory and Social Change," in Symposium on Sociological Theory, ed. Llewellyn Gross ( Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson & Co., 1959), p. 201. Oberschall, Anthony, (1992), Social movements: Ideologies, interests and identities, Transaction Publishers: New Brunswick, New Jersey Merkl, Peter H., Leonard Weinberg, (1997), The revival of right-wing extremism in the nineties, eds., Frank Cass: Portland, Oregon Harper, Charles L., (1998), Exploring social change: American and the world, 3rd ed., Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ

References: Appelbaum, Richard P., (1970), Theories of Social Change, Markham Publishing: Chicago   Etzioni, Amitai, Eva Etzioni-Halevy, (1973), Social change: Sources, patterns and consequences, ed., 2nd ed., Basic Books: New York De Leon, David, (1988), Everything is changing: Contemporary US movements in historical perspective, Praeger: New York   Hornell Hart, "Social Theory and Social Change," in Symposium on Sociological Theory, ed. Llewellyn Gross ( Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson & Co., 1959), p. 201. Oberschall, Anthony, (1992), Social movements:  Ideologies, interests and identities, Transaction Publishers: New Brunswick, New Jersey   Merkl, Peter H., Leonard Weinberg, (1997), The revival of right-wing extremism in the nineties, eds., Frank Cass: Portland, Oregon   Harper, Charles L., (1998), Exploring social change:  American and the world, 3rd ed., Prentice Hall:  Upper Saddle River, NJ