The Need to Implement Change in Educational Leadership

This article is inspired by the practical approach to education reforms, within education for all. These reforms have greatly fueled political dialogue and exchange of experience. Given the number of countries and regions of the world concerned, these reforms take place in a wide variety of contexts that underlie the specificity of each. Consequently, any possibility of classification and typology may encounter theoretical and practical obstacles that are difficult to overcome. Although we do not ignore them, observing certain dominant common features of these reforms allows us to try it through a double input: the expectations and the conduct of change, especially those determined by the globalization of reforms through the frameworks of successive education assessments and international assessments (PISA, TIMSS, PASEC, SAQMEC). The challenge is threefold. It is primarily a matter of categorizing expectations and strategic choices that make it possible to distinguish policies in the field of educational reform. This opens up a deeper understanding of the nature and impact of each of these different types of reform to better inform the analysis of the options that have guided the unfolding of change. The second challenge is to identify the major challenges faced by change management. Such challenges, by their scale and complexity, often explain the discrepancies between expectations for change and the results of reforms. One of the implications is also that addressing these challenges creates the critical conditions for successful reforms. The reflection on the lessons learned then opens the way to new perspectives for the development of reforms to which current and future trends in the evolution of education systems are articulated.