School Administrators as Change Agents; A Role Dilemma.

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7

Activism; Administrator Role; Administrators; Change Agents; Educational Innovation; Public Schools; Role Conflict; Teacher Militancy

The administrator's role in the change process is not all clear. Role conflict has been a barrier to administrators acting as change agents. Although the functions of executive, leader, maintainer, and policy implementer are common to most administrators, the total dimensions of administrative roles are seldom laid out in any job description. The school administrator can react to change in three different ways--ignore it, react to its operational effects, or stay ahead of it. Everett Rogers constructed a time continuum for the adoption of new ideas ranging between the extremes "laggards" and "innovators." Richard Carlson reveals three fundamental barriers to change in public schools--absence of a change agent, a weak knowledge base, and domestication of the public schools. He notes that the administrator receives the change agents role by default. Thus a vacuum is created in the management of change, for most administrators do not enjoy the luxury of detachment from their organization and cannot assume the risks involved in innovation adoption. Recently, teacher militancy and student activism have shifted the opportunity to initiate change from administrators to teachers and students, who can both detach themselves from the school organization and assume the risks of innovation adoption. (HW)

1969

ED027641