There's a developing contrast in the thinking about change and applications of that thinking to education. There is a long history of change in education that relies on the organization to organize(!) change. While this approach recognizes that actual change will happen at the individual and small group levels, there is responsibility at the organizational level to ensure that the change is tapped into and coordinated to benefit overall outcomes. The Society for Organizational Learning offers lots of information and insight to this approach, especially in the work of its founder, Peter Senge. Other examples include the principles of Dr. W. Edwards Deming and the guidelines on systemic change produced by universities, educational think tanks and other institutions.
With the dawn of social and professional networking technologies and the ease of access to them, some thinking about change focuses entirely on the actual change itself, at the more granular or individual level and leaving the coordination and communication of that change to the naturally viral nature of information in our modern world. John Seely Brown, formerly the director of Xerox PARC and currently the Chief of Confusion at the Deloitte Center for the Edge at the University of Southern California writes about the power of tinkering as an approach to learning, knowledge production, and change. Dr. Brown poses interesting questions and challenges for large organizations seeking to foster and harness the invention and innovation that can result.
