School re-engineering in the new century: An organizational perspective

Numerous educational changes and school reforms have been conducted to pursue educational effectiveness and educational quality in different parts of the world. Unfortunately, most of the past educational reforms with focus on fragmentary improvement and remedial treatment are not sufficient to bring holistic school development and long term effectiveness, and inevitably many of them have experienced serious frustration if not failure. Integrating from my recent research and thinking, this paper aims to propose from an organizational perspective a direction including ten important tendencies for ongoing and future school re-engineering in Hong Kong and international contexts. The tendencies are: (1) towards multiple school functions from simplistic purposes; (2) towards school autonomy and -,elf-initiative through school-based management; (3) towards school healthy functioning through a knowledge-based profile; (4) towards school continuous learning and development through strategic management; (5) towards human initiative through multi-level self management in school; (6) towards school multiple effectiveness through a dynamic process; (7) towards holistic education in school through layer management; (8) towards synergy and effectiveness through congruence in school; (9) towards total home-school collaboration and community support for resources, ideas, and legitimacy and (10) towards school driving force through transformational leadership. Hopefully, school re-engineering in this direction can support schools to facilitate continuous development of students and staff, increase support of parents and community, improve technology in education and management, and pursue multiple functions more effectively at different levels of our society. All those concerned particularly our students and teachers can benefit from the coming school reforms. Copyright © 1997 Hong Kong Educational Research Association.