A documented volume about what is going on in the classroom - where traditional education is treated as an enemy.

While governments around the world struggle to maintain service levels amid fiscal crises, social innovators are improving citizen outcomes by changing the system from within. The authors offer compelling stories, lively illustrations, and insightful interpretations on how innovators, social entrepreneurs, and change agents are dealing effectively with powerful opponents, bureaucratic hurdles, and the challenges of securing resources and support.

Explains the global changes confronting business leaders. This book includes strategies for managing major change, creating an organizational culture conducive to change, and leading change effectively. It contains tools that managers need to get a handle on the change management strategies and ensure the success of their business improvement.

"A good balance between theory and practice . . . it definitely fills a void in the [lack of] texts in the area and the change literature in general . . . a good fit for my graduate class on 'Managing Organizational Change.'" —Anthony F. Buono, McCallum Graduate School of Business, Bentley College "Like Gareth Morgan's Images of Organization, this book is a superb blend of theory and practicality. It demystifies chaos and paradox, and it encourages the understanding of organizational dynamics from multiple perspectives. It is refreshing to read a book that presents diverse theories and interventions so even-handedly." —Andrea Markowitz, Ph.D., President, OB&D, Inc. Learning to Change: A Guide for Organizational Change Agents provides a comprehensive overview of organizational change theories and practices developed by both U.S. and European change theorists. The authors compare and contrast five fundamentally different ways of thinking about change: yellow print thinking, blue print thinking, red print thinking, green print thinking and white print thinking. They also discuss in detail the steps change agents take, such as diagnosis, change strategy, the intervention plan, and interventions. In addition, they explore the attributes of a successful change agent and provide advice for career and professional development. The book includes case studies that describe multiple approaches to organizational change issues. This book will appeal to both the practitioner and academic audiences. It can be used as a text in graduate courses in change management and will also be a useful reference for consultants and managers. Features: Discusses the abilities, attitudes, and styles of successful change agents Describes five fundamentally different ways of thinking about change Presents a state-of-the-art overview of change management insights, methods, and instruments Summarizes an extensive amount of organizational change literature Supplies readers with useful insights and courses of action that will allow them to design and implement change professionally Learning to Change became a bestseller upon its initial publication in the Netherlands. The color-model on change is very popular among thousands of managers and change consultants and presents a new approach to change processes and a new language for change.

This book examines both the promise and complexity of diversifying today's teaching profession. Drawing from a 5-year study of 21 new teachers of colour working in urban, hard-to-staff schools, this book uncovers a systemic paradox that the teachers confront. They are committed to improving educational opportunities for students of colour by acting as role models, culturally/linguistically responsive teachers, and change agents. The teaching profession encouraged such commitments and some teachers acted with support from individual, organizational, and community-based sponsors. However, many of these new teachers work in schools that are culturally subtractive and have restrictive accountability policies that challenge their ability to perform cultural/professional roles to which they are committed. Many teachers internalize the contradiction, resulting in their becoming changed agents within the educational system they sought to change. This book is essential reading for educators, leaders, and policymakers.

An incisive argument for the relevance of political philosophy and its possibility of effecting change. The appeal of political philosophy is that it will answer questions about justice for the sake of political action. But contemporary political philosophy struggles to live up to this promise. Since the death of John Rawls, political philosophers have become absorbed in methodological debates, leading to an impasse between two unattractive tendencies: utopians argue that philosophy should focus uncompromisingly on abstract questions of justice, while pragmatists argue that we should concern ourselves only with local efforts to ameliorate injustice. Agents of Change shows a way forward. Ben Laurence argues that we can combine utopian justice and the pragmatic response to injustice in a political philosophy that unifies theory and practice in pursuit of change. Political philosophy, on this view, is not a purely normative theory disconnected from practice. Rather, political philosophy is itself a practiceÑan exercise of practical reason issuing in action. Laurence contends that this exercise begins in ordinary life with the confrontation with injustice. Philosophy draws ideas about justice from this encounter to be pursued through political action. Laurence shows that the task of political philosophy is not complete until it asks the question ÒWhat is to be done?Ó and deliberates actionable answers.