Twelve Roles of Facilitators for School Change

by R. Bruce Williams

"The principles and ideas presented are not just for school improvement. Many of the materials can be used for an entire gamut of situations. There is something for everyone."
--Lyndon Oswald, Principal
Sandcreek Middle School, Idaho Falls, ID

"The book deals with a time-sensitive and time-intensive topic, and its worth will be known only when it is purchased and used by serious educational entities."
--Lori Grossman,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1412961130
• ISBN13: 9781412961134
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Corwin Publishers
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 8.5" x 10.9"

Customer Reviews

Essential skills and roles for leaders of change in schools

Bruce Williams's book (Twelve Roles of facilitators for School Change) is an outstanding addition to the literature on change. The advantage of this book is that it spells out the "how" of change, not so much the "what" and "why". School leaders are often promoted into new positions carrying a small repertoire of change strategies and over the years they get better at these strategies. Williams's conceptual framework of school leaders' roles in the change process and the invaluable supplement of four or five new and useful strategies to be applied in each role allows principals to increase their skills. We are looking at the possibility of giving twelve school leaders a role each and then asking them to take part in a professional learning exercise for aspirant leaders. This will increase the skill base of our collegial group and upskill the next generation of school leaders. I could not enter this update separately so I have added it below: Learning to become a school leader is similar to learning to play golf. Most of us start on public golf courses with a hired bag of clubs- usually a bare minimum of about 5 sticks. Later when we become more proficient, we are given extra sticks for our birthdays and Christmas. However, it is the basic set of sticks that we tend to use in most situations. Being a school leader of change is no different. We learn a basic set of change strategies (Plus, Minus, Interesting; SWOT; coloured dots etc). With the intensification of work, time challenged school leaders resort to the strategies they know best, and they have little time to expand their repertoire of change strategies. The advantage of Bruce Williams's book is that it is a tool box of change strategies that exceeds the number of clubs in Tiger Woods's golf bag! Yesterday we used the book as a professional learning activity for school based administrators and it struck a chord with each of them. The fact that many of the tools need to adjusted to local situations does not detract from the utility of the book. This book is really useful.