Contexts of change

I now continue with some brief pre-analytic reflections on context, which constitutes one of the key words of my title. Within the innovation literature in TESOL, the idea that context is a multi-layered phenomenon is particularly widespread. For example, C. Kennedy (1988) has proposed a model of context in which he asserts that (in descending order of importance) cultural, political, administrative, educational and institutional factors all affect the possibility of classroom innovation. More specifically, Kennedy argues that cultural factors are the most important drivers of change, and thus strongly influence the hierarchically lower levels of political and administrative factors. In turn, these factors shape educational and institutional factors, which finally determine what may or may not licitly happen in individual classrooms.