Scaling Up Education Reform: Addressing the Politics of Disparity

📋 Overview

While the Te Kotahitanga ETP article (Bishop & Berryman, 2009) describes what effective teaching looks like, Scaling Up Education Reform asks the harder question: how do you get an entire system to change? This book documents the journey of Te Kotahitanga from a small research project to a nationally implemented programme covering over 50 schools and thousands of teachers.

But this is not a cheerful success story — it is a rigorous, honest account of what happens when you try to change teachers' practice at scale. The book grapples with institutional resistance, political tension, the limits of top-down implementation, and the irreducibly local nature of genuine change. Co-author Dominic O'Sullivan adds a critical political analysis of how educational disparity is maintained by political structures, not just classroom practice.

For ITE students, this text is sobering and important. It shows that even the best evidence-based programme faces structural and political resistance — and that understanding the politics of education is as important as understanding its pedagogy.

🎯 Key Arguments

• Systemic change requires more than changing individual teachers. The book shows that sustainable improvement in Māori student outcomes requires changes at classroom, school, and system level — and that these must be aligned and mutually reinforcing.
• The politics of disparity are structural. O'Sullivan's chapters argue that Māori underachievement is sustained by political structures that distribute resources inequitably, not just by poor individual teaching. Addressing disparity requires political will at all levels.
• Professional development must be ongoing and supported. One-off PD workshops don't change practice. Te Kotahitanga worked because it provided sustained, school-based facilitation over multiple years — expensive and labour-intensive, but effective.
• Change threatens identity. Many teachers resisted the ETP because it challenged their explanations for Māori underachievement (deficit thinking) and required genuine changes to their professional identity, not just their methods.
• Accountability structures matter. The programme only achieved durable change where school leadership actively supported it and held teachers accountable to the ETP dimensions. Voluntary adoption without accountability produced surface compliance.

💬 Key Quotes

🔍 Critical Analysis

💭 Discussion Questions

1. The book shows that teachers resisted change even when the evidence for it was strong. Why might this be? What conditions would help you remain open to evidence that challenges your practice?
2. O'Sullivan argues that educational disparity is structural. As a classroom teacher, how much can you actually change structural inequity? What's the appropriate scope of teacher responsibility?
3. The programme required sustained, funded professional development over years. Given current PLD funding constraints in NZ schools, how realistic is this model? What are the implications?
4. What does it mean for a large-scale programme to maintain "fidelity" while also adapting to local contexts? Is this even possible?

🔗 Connected Resources

Related Readings:

ITE Modules: