| dc.description.abstract | Public, state-funded schools are by definition large bureaucracies. The consequence is
that individual schools in the system tend to be rather uniform – in curriculum, pedagogy,
evaluation, administration and so on. A structural and organizational framework exists,
individual schools must fit into that framework. The result is that educational experiments
and innovations are most often found outside the public school sector – in private schools.
But, do public school system necessarily have to be conservative institutions? Is it possible
to encourage and support a wide variety of innovative schools, different philosophies of
education, qualitatively different pedagogies, and so on, within one public, state-funded,
government-directed, school system? In other words, is it possible for the bureaucracy
and structure of a public school system to be sufficiently open and dynamic that it can
encourage and support creative and sometimes radically different education alternatives?
The answer is ‘yes’. The administrative and legal structure of schooling in Alberta,
Canada, provides a real-life example of the thesis that, at least to some degree, large
education bureaucracies can encourage creative opportunities. | en_EN |
