Abstract
The major reform of Czech schools has not achieved its goals according to several recent studies. This paper describes mechanisms of troubled enactment of the reform in one school.
First, the method of congruence analysis is presented as a tool to link the case observations and theoretical models. Then, two rival theories of educational change are sketched.
The empirical part of the paper describes the school's improvement over more than five years and the roles of different actors. The interaction between the processes of inner school development and the top-down mandated educational reform is discussed.
A longitudinal qualitative case study of one comprehensive primary and lower secondary school is based mainly on interviews with school leadership, teachers and pupils, lesson observations and documentary analysis. The school with a record of successful improvement (turnover) has very skeptical attitude to the reform and implements it only formally.
There is a striking difference between the school's vision and the national reform's discourse. The findings suggest that the theories stressing the plurality of actors involved in change and the necessary contribution of different system levels provide more plausible explanation of the reform's results.