The adviser as organizational narrator: Discursive productions in the promotion of change

Abstract

Probably, change has been one of the most discussed questions in educational field during last years. Administrations have tried to modify in different ways –and without much success, generally speaking- almost every dimension of educational system. Simultaneously, scholars have studied processes of change searching interpretations about them. Those efforts are probably sustained by the conception of change like something inherently positive for educational institutions. Consequently, the role of an educational assessor has been defined as a promoter of change in organizations. The way of doing that, according prescriptive models of change has been the ‘application’ of formalized strategies, almost like recipes. The dissonance between the results of this kind of intervention and the searched products has questioned organizational capacity of change, while the inherent value of organizational change and the opportunity of the strategies adopted to promote it have stayed unquestioned. This article is based on research findings derived from a study which employed a combination of quantitative and narrative approaches. Along the paper, we justify the convenience of adopting an interpretative point of view in the educational assessment and we suggest that promoting real changes in organizations requires a previous understanding of them. We also recommend the construction of organizational texts as a way of exposing a positive image of change that allows its development.