William Allan Kritsonis, PhD

1. What’s Worth Fighting
For in Your School
Michael Fullan
(with Andy Hargreaves)
A Presentation & Study of Michael Fullan
By Frances C. Worthey
EDUL-7043-001 (PhD Course) by
William Allan Kritsonis, PhD
November 19, 2005

2. What’s Worth Fighting For?
1. What’s Worth Fighting For In
Your School?
2. What’s Worth Fighting For “Out
There”?
3. What’s Worth Fighting For in
Leadership for Change?

3. What’s Worth Fighting For?
• New outcomes as opposed to traditionalism
• Movements toward self-managing schools
• Teacher professionalism with increased
standards of practice, more collaboration and
continuous professional learning
• Information technology accompanied by
greater global access to ideas and people
• Multicultural and gender politics which bring
new styles of leadership and more visibility to
issues of equity
• Rapid, Complex, multilinear changes in the
workforce
Forces For Change

4. 1. The Problem of Overload
2. The Problem of Isolation
3. The Problem of “Groupthink”
4. The Problem of Untapped Competence
(and Neglected Incompetence)
5. The Problem of Narrowness in the
Teachers’ Role (and the Problem of
Leadership)
6. The Problem of Poor Solutions and Filed
Reform
What’s Worth Fighting For?
The Problem

5. A common theme of What’s
Worth Fighting For? is the
overwhelming need for greater
involvement of teachers in
educational reform outside as
well as inside their own
classrooms, in curriculum
development and in the
improvement of their schools.

6. Involvement itself is not enough.
It is the kind of involvement, the
particular way that teachers
work together as a community
that really matters, if meaningful
improvement in our schools is to
take place.

7. • The teacher’s purpose
• The teacher as a person
• The context of teaching
What’s Worth Fighting For?
Total Teachers
Total teachers are not perfect
teachers.

8. What’s Worth Fighting For?
Total teachers are most likely to
emerge, develop and prosper in
total schools, in schools which
value, develop and support the
judgment and expertise of all their
teachers in the common quest for
improvement.

9. • The culture of individualism
• The power of collaboration
• The problem of collaboration
What’s Worth Fighting For?
Total Schools
What is worth fighting for is not to
allow our organizations to be
negative by default, but to make
them positive by design

10. • Locate, listen to and articulate your inner voice.
• Practice reflection in action, on action and about action.
• Develop a risk-taking mentality.
• Trust processes as well as people
• Appreciate the total person in working with others.
• Commit to working with colleagues.
• Seek variety and avoid balkanization.
• Redefine your role to extend beyond the classroom.
• Balance work and life.
• Push and support principals and other administrators to
develop interactive professionalism.
• Commit to continuous improvement and perpetual
learning.
• Monitor and strengthen the connection between your
development and students’ development.
What’s Worth Fighting For?
Guidelines for Action
There can be no improvement without the teacher.
These guidelines for teacher improvement will not be effective in
isolation from each other – they must be practiced together, in
combinations…

11. What’s Worth Fighting For?
It is individuals and small groups
of teachers and principals who
must create the school and
professional culture they want.

12. Michael Fullan is the Dean of the Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education of the
University of Toronto. He is recognized as an
international authority on educational reform.
His ideas for managing change are used in
countries around the world and his books
have been published in many languages. His
What’s Worth Fighting For trilogy (with Andy
Hargreaves) and Changes Forces trilogy are
widely acclaimed.

13. References
Fullan, Michael, Hargreaves Andy.
(1996).What’s Worth Fighting For in Your
School. 1996. Teachers College Press,
Columbia University, New York, NY 10027.
Fullan, Michael. (2001). The New Meaning of
Educational Change (Third Edition). 2001.
Teachers College, Columbia University. New
York and London.