Diagnostic Tools for the Systemic Reform of Schools.

This paper presents three interrelated diagnostic tools that can be used by school staff as they begin to plan a systemic reform effort. These tools are designed to help educators reflect on their experiences in creating changes in their school and to examine the current barriers to and supports for the change process. The tools help school design teams discuss restructuring and systemic reform by helping them understand how schools function as systems, how to begin the reform process within a school community, and how to ensure that the process supports and encourages improvements throughout the entire organization. The three tools include: (1) Mapping, a process for creating a visual profile of the school's organizational history and the impact of change; (2) the Making Change Game, a school-improvement simulation of organizational change in educational settings; and (3) the Four-Frame Model, a diagnostic framework based on Bolman and Deal's (1984) four approaches to organizational change--structural, human resource, political, and symbolic--to examine what is working and not working in the school. The description of each tool is divided into four sections--the purpose, the tool-at-a-glance, participant learnings, and consultant learnings. Appendices contain sample school-journey maps and instructions and handouts for conducting the second two games. (LMI)