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Most research on school reform over the past several decades is characterized by three perspectives-the technological, political, and cultural (; ). Studies based on these three perspectives account for a vast amount of the scholarly literature. An adequate understanding of school reform necessarily involves all three perspectives, though many reformers emphasize only one, a partial knowledge which often results in reform failure because of neglect of the other powerful factors. According to our analysis, successful school reform must be based on all three aspects. In this chapter, we outline the three perspectives and suggest how successful reforms embody an appreciation of all three.

I was extremely fortunate to begin my career in the late 1960s at a time when the field of ‘implementation’ was literally being born. Professionally speaking, I grew up together with implementation over the past three decades. This chapter is a professional autobiography of ideas and concepts covering this dynamic and fertile period of growth in the study of change processes. It is not a review of research. Rather it is an attempt to capture the evolution of the study of change from the perspective of someone who has devoted his work to chronicling, synthesizing and sometimes creating the core concepts that define the study and doing of change.

Historical studies of school subjects show that the secondary school curriculum, far from being a stable and dispassionately constructed unity, is in fact a highly contested, fragmented and endlessly shifting terrain. The school subject is socially and politically constructed and the actors involved deploy a range of ideological and material resources as they pursue their individual and collective missions.

We have apparently passed from modern times to what are characterized, in an appropriate spirit of narcissicism, as postmodern times. Experts seem to agree that times are changing and that our own undistinguished era is something special. Change and improvement, generally used interchangeably with unconscious irony, are more than ever the currency of educational commentary.

Modern times! This phrase has been used for satire, irony, metaphor, and, often, has been spoken in frustration. Many people who admire and follow film might quickly associate it with Charlie Chaplin’s movie . Here is how () described the film.