San Jose State University
Connie L. Lurie College of Education
JMHANNA, M.S. Doctoral Student
Ed.D. Educational Leadership (Cohort 13)
Community College & Higher Education Focus
EDD-520 Organizational Change Class 2 Rise Design L2 of 8
Jessica M. Hanna, M.S.
Administrative Professional and U.S. Army Veteran
jmhanna.ca@gmail.com | 559-400-5049
Veterans Resources Newsletter | LinkedIn Veterans Resources Newsletter
EDD 520 · Organizational Behavior and Change in Education
Diagnosing an Educational Organization
Fall 2026 · Section 81 · 3 units
San José State University, Connie L. Lurie College of Education
Lesson 2 of 8 · Burke Chapters 3 and 4 · Gahagan Chapter 3
Organizations are open systems
Burke (2023) holds that any human organization is best understood as an open system, and that it is open because of its dependence on and continual interaction with the environment in which it resides. Openness is not a quality a well run institution acquires. It is the condition that makes an institution observable at all, because dependence produces transactions and transactions cross a boundary.
Burke (2023) states the change objective in four words: the objective for change is systemic. Because changing one part of a system affects other parts, a total system approach is required. He is also explicit about the limits of the frame, holding that open-system theory is necessary to understanding organization change but not sufficient.
Attributed by Burke to Katz and Kahn (as cited in Burke, 2023). This is the technical vocabulary for describing an educational pipeline without relying on the pipeline metaphor.
Step 1 of 4
Input
The organization takes in energy from its environment. Energy is broadly defined and includes money, raw materials, and the work of people (Burke, 2023).
Step 2 of 4
Throughput
The organization transforms the input into a usable product or service (Burke, 2023).
Step 3 of 4
Output
The transformed product or service is returned to the environment, which may be the same segment that supplied the input or a different one (Burke, 2023).
Step 4 of 4
Feedback and coding
Feedback returns from the environment, but the organization does not use all of it. Some kind of coding occurs, meaning environmental information is received selectively (Burke, 2023).
Boundaries are found by following transactions, not charts
Burke (2023) identifies organizational boundaries by following the energic and informational transactions of the system rather than by accepting the names on an organizational chart. Where the transactions cannot be traced, the boundary has not been located, and the analysis has no system to describe.
This is why scale is not the test. A single school site and a state university system are both open systems. What separates them for an analyst is whether a specific dependency can be followed across the boundary and back out again. Gahagan (2025) supplies the matching constraint from the higher education side. Change outcomes are manifestations of particularity, and one-size-fits-all initiatives do not exist, so a unit whose particulars cannot be observed can be described but not analyzed.
Change outcomes are manifestations of particularity, and universal scripts do not exist (Gahagan, 2025). A unit whose particulars you cannot observe cannot be analyzed, only described.
L2-08.mp3 · Why boundary work comes first
Script L2-08 · 1:04 · 155 words
Transformational components carried: intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration
Before you can analyze an organization you have to be able to see one. That is what this section is for. The idea to hold is that openness is not a feature of a well run institution. It is the condition that makes any institution observable at all, because dependence produces transactions, and transactions cross a boundary you can name.
The common misreading is that boundary drawing is about size. It is not. A district office and a state system are both open systems. What separates them for your purposes is whether you can follow one specific dependency from outside to inside and back out again.
Your own position matters here. If you sit inside the unit you are reading, some transactions are visible to you that an outside researcher would never find. That access is data. Use it, and say in your analysis that you had it.
Carries script L2-08 verbatim as printed above. The text is not repeated here.
A student selects an entire state university system as the unit of analysis. Applying Burke (2023), what is the first indication that the unit is drawn too wide?
Feedback
Size alone is not the test. Burke (2023) identifies boundaries by following energic and informational transactions. Where the transactions cannot be traced, the boundary has not actually been located.
Sort each candidate unit as traceable or not yet traceable, using the transaction test (Burke, 2023).
Traceable
Not yet traceable
Feedback
The traceable units are not the small ones. They are the ones where a specific transaction crosses a boundary you can name. Narrowing is the correction when tracing fails (Burke, 2023).
What Move 1 gives you
You can now name a unit, name one input, one throughput, and one output crossing its boundary, and say what sits outside it and therefore counts as external environment. Every later claim has to be locatable inside that boundary or it is a claim about something else.
Fit is assessed before the change is announced
Gahagan (2025) states that every change must be assessed for context and culture fit, and devotes Chapter 3 to the practice. The obligation is prior, not concurrent. Leaders scrutinize before announcing, because an initiative that appears out of place in the institutional environment can be invalidated by the people expected to carry it out, after which reversing the narrative is close to impossible.
Gahagan (2025) also warns that fit assessment only appears to be a technical exercise. Which criteria an idea must pass, whose input is sought, whose is not, and who is authorized to set the portfolio are all human choices, which makes the assessment a human-centered exercise rather than an objective screen.
- 1Align the initiative with the institution’s mission, vision, and values (Gahagan, 2025).
- 2Orient the initiative within the organization’s portfolio of strategic priorities (Gahagan, 2025).
- 3Consider the context and culture factors that affect the initiative (Gahagan, 2025).
Attributed by Gahagan to Kezar (as cited in Gahagan, 2025)
| Category | What it covers | Example Gahagan supplies |
|---|---|---|
| Social, political, and economic trends | Outside stimuli that inspire or hinder change at the institution | Federal financial aid reform as an inspiring force, state prohibitions on DEI work as a hindering one |
| Sector interdependence | The web of accreditors, associations, foundations, and agencies the institution must answer to | Quality assurance frameworks and funding relationships that must be sustained |
| Quirks of the academy | Structures built to protect the sector against external influence | Higher education as a loosely coupled professional bureaucracy with shared governance and distributed authority |
| Institution-specific culture | The covert elements: assumptions, norms, institutional history, shared language | What people spend time on, how information travels, and the metaphors used to describe the institution |
L2-16.mp3 · The asymmetry inside the four categories
Script L2-16 · 1:02 · 150 words
Transformational components carried: inspirational motivation
Fit assessment is the step most leaders skip, and skipping it is why announcements get invalidated by the people expected to carry them out. The standard you are held to in this course has two layers. First, command of the material sufficient to select and defend a position in your own setting. Second, the ability to state that position in a way that moves the people whose cooperation you need. Analysis nobody acts on is not leadership.
Watch what the four categories do. Three of them are external and reportable. The fourth, institution specific culture, is covert, and Gahagan holds it is the most decisive. That asymmetry is the whole problem. The factors easiest to document matter least, and the factor that matters most has to be inferred from what people spend time on and the language they use.
Carries script L2-16 verbatim as printed above. The text is not repeated here.
Match each observation at an institution to its factor category (Kezar, as cited in Gahagan, 2025).
Feedback
The fourth is the one most often missed. Gahagan (2025) holds that the invisible components of culture, including shared language and the metaphors people use, are the most critical factors helping or hindering change.
Change resisters are advocating for something, and by speaking up they demonstrate fidelity to a relationship they value (Gahagan, 2025). Resistant behavior is therefore data about the approach rather than an obstacle to defeat.
Select every question Gahagan (2025) directs a leader to ask before committing to an initiative.
Feedback
Competitor adoption is not one of the questions, and the omission is deliberate. Gahagan (2025) holds that one-size-fits-all initiatives do not exist, which makes another institution’s adoption evidence about that institution rather than about yours.
What Move 2 gives you
You can now assess an initiative against mission, vision, and values, against the portfolio of strategic priorities, and against all four factor categories, and you can treat resistance you encounter as evidence about the approach rather than as opposition to overcome. This is the context requirement, and Gahagan (2025) holds it is the required first analytic step rather than optional framing.
Six characteristics every open system exhibits
Burke (2023) names the properties that follow from openness. They are not a checklist of virtues. They are the conditions under which any organization operates, which is what makes them diagnostic rather than evaluative. Two of them carry most of the analytic weight in this lesson, coding and steady state, because they explain inaction without attributing it to anyone.
| Characteristic | What Burke (2023) claims |
|---|---|
| Environmental dependence | Openness consists in dependence on and continual interaction with the environment |
| Coding | Organizations code environmental information selectively rather than using all available feedback |
| Steady state | The basic character of an organization tends to remain the same even as activity continues |
| Differentiation | Specialization and division of labor evolve as the organization grows |
| Integration | Excess differentiation with inadequate integration and coordination produces silos |
| Equifinality | The same goal is reachable from different starting points and by varied paths |
Equifinality is attributed by Burke to von Bertalanffy (as cited in Burke, 2023).
Where organizational energy is lost
Burke (2023) names three distinct failures. Excessive bureaucracy thwarts effort. Overly centralized control and authority bottle energy up. Power and authority so diffused that people work at cross-purposes dissipate effort entirely.
The three are not interchangeable. Centralization and diffusion are opposite conditions producing the same loss, and a given function will exhibit one or the other, not both. Burke (2023) turns the diagnosis into a leadership action: attention to the use of human energy allows leaders to change norms, rewards, and authority structures.
L2-25.mp3 · Why non-response is not unwillingness
Script L2-25 · 1:00 · 145 words
Transformational components carried: intellectual stimulation
You are probably carrying an assumption that an organization which does not act on evidence is either uninformed or unwilling. Burke removes both explanations. Coding is selective by design. Information arrives, gets received, and is not converted into information the system acts on, and nobody in the building has to decide to ignore it for that to happen.
So ask a harder question. Not what does the unit fail to know, but what does it already hold and route nowhere. Reports that circulate and produce no schedule change are the cleanest evidence you will find.
The energy failures work the same way. Centralization and diffusion look like opposites and produce the same loss. When you name one, name the function it appears in, because one institution can bottle energy in one office and dissipate it in another.
Carries script L2-25 verbatim as printed above. The text is not repeated here.
Match each observed condition to the open-system characteristic that names it (Burke, 2023).
Feedback
Each condition is a diagnosis, not a complaint. Naming the characteristic converts an observation into an analytic claim you can support with the source.
Select every condition Burke (2023) names as a way organizational energy is lost.
Feedback
Staffing level is not on the list. Burke (2023) locates the loss in structure and authority rather than in headcount, which is what makes the claim structural rather than a resource argument.
Situation
A regional public institution receives a state report showing a persistent completion gap in one student population. The report is circulated to the cabinet. Eighteen months later no program, policy, or schedule has changed, and the gap is unchanged.
Burke (2023) offers a more defensible account. Organizations respond selectively to environmental disturbances and in fact may not respond at all. Non-response is a system property before it is a personal one
Incorrect on the facts. The report was circulated. What did not occur is coding, the selective conversion of received information into information the organization acts on (Burke, 2023)
Burke (2023) notes that failure to respond is often perilous, and that a response can occur and still be inadequate for long-term survival
Text-equivalent path
A text-only decision point. No image, chart, or diagram carries any part of this scenario. All information required to choose is in the paragraph above, and all three options and all three consequences are stated in full in the visible text.
Burke (2023) writes that the target for change is the system, not the individual. Which reading of that claim is consistent with the rest of his argument?
Feedback
The claim is about the target. Burke (2023) also identifies culture and group norms as the systemic target, and holds that culture is not changed by addressing culture directly. The common misreading treats the sentence as a prohibition on individual-level work rather than as a statement about where change must arrive to count.
What Move 3 gives you
Six characteristics convert into six questions, and the answers are the structure and decision-making analysis. What does the unit depend on that it does not control. What data does it hold but not act on. What has not changed in five years. Which functions are specialized and separately housed. Which specialized functions do not coordinate. What outcome is treated as reachable by one path only. Add one energy failure, named with the function it appears in, and the diagnosis is complete.
Pattern and structure are different things
Burke (2023) draws on Capra’s three criteria (as cited in Burke, 2023) to separate pattern from structure. Pattern is the configuration of relationships that determines a system’s essential characteristics. Structure is the physical embodiment of that pattern. A living system is open structurally and closed organizationally, meaning it exchanges components with its environment while its overall pattern remains the same.
This resolves a contradiction that will otherwise sit unexplained in the middle of an analysis. An institution can adopt new technology, launch new programs, reorganize divisions, and replace leadership, and a member of an affected population can still report that nothing has changed. Both accounts are accurate. Structure moved. Pattern did not.
Structure
Open to change. Components are exchanged continuously. New programs, new systems, new personnel, new reporting lines. Highly visible and frequently announced. Burke (2023) holds that change and stability exist simultaneously in dissipative structures.
Pattern
The configuration of relationships determining essential characteristics. Burke (2023) holds that what rarely, if ever, changes is the pattern, even where strategy and structure do. Rarely visible, rarely announced, and rarely the target of an improvement initiative.
What rarely, if ever, changes is its pattern.
Burke, 2023Chapter 4, Implications for Organizations and Organization Change. Page number required before submission.
Cultural lock-in names the mechanism
Burke (2023) uses the term cultural lock-in in Chapter 4 as a back-reference rather than a definition. The definition sits in Chapter 2, where Burke quotes Foster and Kaplan (2001, as cited in Burke, 2023, p. 16). They define cultural lock-in as the inability to change a corporate culture even in the face of clear market threats, produced by the gradual stiffening of the organization’s invisible architecture and the ossification of its decision-making, control systems, and mental models.
Lock-in is therefore not a synonym for resistance. Resistance is behavioral and locatable in people. Lock-in is architectural and locatable in the decision systems themselves. Gahagan (2025) describes the same architecture from the higher education side, naming tenure, shared governance, and alumni and donor relations as the structures that keep autonomous decision-making and siloed work in place.
Caution before you use this term
Cultural lock-in is a corporate construct. Foster and Kaplan (2001, as cited in Burke, 2023) derived it from corporations failing to respond to capital markets. Gahagan (2025) argues directly that traditional change models do not serve higher education institutions well, because those models were designed for industries that neither favor nor expect shared governance in decision-making. Importing lock-in without addressing that objection leaves the analysis open to it.
Burke (2023) supplies the defense in the same chapter that supplies the term. He argues that institutions of higher education are tuition dependent, that distance learning competitors have called long-term institutional survival into question, and that traditions may not last unless colleges and universities adapt. That argument establishes market responsiveness as a live condition in higher education, which is what licenses the transfer. Make the argument explicitly or choose a different term.
L2-37.mp3 · A position on pattern, and what would revise it
Script L2-37 · 1:02 · 150 words
Transformational components carried: idealized influence
I will take a position here. I think the pattern and structure distinction is the most useful thing in these two chapters, and I use it in my own dissertation work to argue that an institution can move every visible part of a degree program and leave the experience of student parents unchanged.
That position costs me something. It makes the argument harder to prove, because pattern is not directly observable and I have to infer it from what did not change across a period when much else did. A reader can always say I have mistaken slow change for no change.
What would revise my view is a case where structure moved and the affected population reported that the pattern moved with it. I have not found one. If your unit is that case, your analysis is more interesting than mine, and you should say so plainly.
Carries script L2-37 verbatim as printed above. The text is not repeated here.
A living system is open structurally and closed , which is why components can be exchanged while the overall configuration holds (Burke, 2023).
Feedback
Structural openness is what makes the institution look responsive. Organizational closure is what makes the experience of the affected population unchanged. The pair is the mechanism, not a paradox.
You read the definition of cultural lock-in inside Burke’s Chapter 2, where he quotes Foster and Kaplan. You have not read Foster and Kaplan directly. What is the correct handling?
Feedback
The reference list records what you read, not what you encountered. Option A claims a reading you did not do. Option B removes attribution from the person who actually made the claim.
What Move 4 gives you
You can now document what has changed at the unit and what has not, sort each into structure or pattern, and name lock-in as the architectural mechanism rather than calling it resistance. This is the culture requirement, and it is the point where the analysis becomes an argument rather than a description.
Two authors asking different questions
Supporting an analysis with scholarly literature means weighing the sources, not stacking them. Both assigned authors write about the same problem, deep organizational change that mostly fails, and they answer different questions. Gahagan (2025) asks what higher education specifically requires. Burke (2023) asks what change theory in general can be trusted to explain. They converge on diagnosis and split on remedy, and where they split you have to choose and say why.
| Dimension | Gahagan (2025) | Burke (2023) |
|---|---|---|
| Genre and purpose | Practitioner handbook from the Society for College and University Planning, prescriptive guidance for campus change leaders | Graduate textbook, sixth edition, building theoretical depth and linking theory to practice |
| Scope | United States postsecondary institutions exclusively | All sectors, including corporations, government, health care, and higher education |
| Fit of existing models | Traditional change models do not serve higher education well, because they were designed for industries that neither favor nor expect shared governance in decision-making | Higher education is tuition dependent and faces distance learning competitors, so market responsiveness is a live condition there too |
| Lever for culture | Surface the values beneath entrenched beliefs, then mirror those values to mobilize peers | Culture is not changed by addressing culture directly. The systemic target is culture and group norms, reached by other means |
| Locus of leadership | Lasting change does not result from executive edicts, plans, and events | Where change is large in scale and transformational, leadership must come from the top of the organization |
| Treatment of resistance | Resisters are advocating for something and demonstrate fidelity to a relationship they value. Resistance is data | Energy loss is located in structure and authority rather than in people, which makes the account structural |
[AUTHOR INPUT NEEDED] Verify the genre, scope, and evidence-base rows against Class 1 chapters before submission, since those claims were established in the Class 1 comparison rather than in Burke Chapters 3 and 4 or Gahagan Chapter 3.
- 1Neither treats resistance as the primary obstacle. Gahagan (2025) reframes it as advocacy and Burke (2023) relocates the loss into authority structures. Both refuse the frontal assault on beliefs.
- 2Both hold that surface change is routinely substituted for deep change. Gahagan’s first-order and second-order distinction and Burke’s transactional and transformational distinction name the same error, shallow methods applied to a deep problem.
- 3Both locate the decisive variable outside the org chart. For Gahagan it is institution-specific culture, the covert layer. For Burke it is pattern, which is rarely visible and rarely announced.
- 4Both concede the limits of their own frame. Burke (2023) holds open-system theory is necessary but not sufficient. Gahagan (2025) excludes crisis response from her scope. Each concession is a model for the limitations section you owe.
Narrated presentation over the side-by-side comparison. Captions supplied by L2-46.vtt.
Script L2-46 · 1:02 · 150 words
Transformational components carried: inspirational motivation, handoff to Lesson 3
This section is where the analysis stops describing and starts arguing, because an argument requires you to weigh your sources rather than stack them. Both authors are credible and they do not agree. Burke asks what change theory can be trusted to explain. Gahagan asks what higher education specifically requires. Where they converge, cite either. Where they split, choose and say why.
Notice the trap waiting in the lineage that follows. Every tradition on that timeline failed the same way, by advancing one best method as universally correct. Your own recommendation inherits that failure the moment you write it as though it transfers everywhere.
The disagreement you cannot settle this week is about who leads. Burke puts transformational change at the top. Gahagan says edicts do not produce it. Lesson 3 takes that up. Decide now which one your institution would prove right.
Carries script L2-46 verbatim as printed above and matches L2-46.vtt. The text is not repeated here.
Burke (2023) holds that organization change is as old as organizations themselves, and that the field studies planned change specifically even though unplanned change is the more common case. Retrieval and critique load for these traditions belongs to the lesson serving Assignment 2 (San José State University, 2026). Two entries carry forward regardless, marked below.
Scientific management
The organization treated as a machine to be studied in scientific terms. Burke (2023) notes Taylor held that changing managers was far more difficult than changing workers.
The Hawthorne studies
The expected causal link between illumination and productivity failed. Burke (2023) reports the studies demonstrated the influence of psychological and human factors on productivity and morale. Carries forward: a caution against any claim that removing a barrier produces an outcome. Burke also reports Roethlisberger’s conclusion (as cited in Burke, 2023) that the meaning of a change can matter as much as the change itself.
Industrial psychology
Burke (2023) reports departmental climates affected the trainee as much as the training itself, and that individual training produces organizational change only where its objective runs in the same direction as the desired overall change.
Survey feedback
Burke (2023) holds that survey feedback is based on data and focuses change on the larger system rather than on individuals.
Sociotechnical systems
Burke (2023) holds that work organizations consist of two interdependent systems, technical and social, and that in this tradition regulation is performed by the work group itself.
Organization development
Burke (2023) holds that organization development is reliant on the action research approach, and summarizes the tradition’s contribution as an emphasis on the total system with clear steps and phases.
[AUTHOR INPUT NEEDED] Date labels for all six events. Rise supplies a date field per timeline event and the spec carries none.
Burke (2023) identifies a specific weakness in Grid organization development. What is it?
Feedback
The one best way premise is the recurring failure across this lineage and it is the standard you will be held to in your own recommendation. Any proposal advanced as universally correct inherits the same weakness.
What Burke would ask of Gahagan
Her chapter is practitioner literature, association published and written in first person from sector experience. Burke (2023) examines that genre skeptically, and would ask where the independent verification is that her framework produces better outcomes across varied circumstances. A framework can carry strong face validity precisely because it sounds plausible.
What Gahagan would ask of Burke
His frame is built from hierarchical, market-disciplined organizations with unified authority. Gahagan (2025) argues directly that models built for industries which neither favor nor expect shared governance do not transfer to institutions governed by tenure, faculty senates, and donor relations. His insistence on top-down transformational leadership is, on her account, the practice that produces change fatigue on campuses.
[AUTHOR INPUT NEEDED] Verify both critiques against Burke Chapter 1 and Gahagan Chapter 1 before submission. The genre argument originates there rather than in this week’s chapters.
What Move 5 gives you
You can now support the analysis with literature rather than decorate it. Name the dimension on which the two authors agree and cite either. Name the dimension on which they split, state which one you adopted at your unit, and say why the other is wrong there specifically. Then write the limitations section on Burke’s own model, conceding that your frame is necessary and not sufficient, and adding the Hawthorne caution against claiming that removing a barrier produces an outcome.
Question 1 of 5 · Move 1
Why does Burke (2023) locate a boundary by following transactions rather than by reading the organizational chart?
Question 2 of 5 · Move 2
Which of the four context and culture factor categories does Gahagan (2025) hold is most decisive in helping or hindering change?
Question 3 of 5 · Move 3
An institution collects disaggregated completion data and reports only the aggregate. Which characteristic names that condition?
Question 4 of 5 · Move 4
A division reorganizes, adopts a new student information system, and replaces its dean. Affected students report no change in their experience. Applying Burke (2023), what is the defensible reading?
Question 5 of 5 · Move 5
Your analysis closes by recommending a practice you argue every comparable institution should adopt. Which weakness from the planned change lineage has the recommendation inherited?
[AUTHOR INPUT NEEDED] Pass threshold, attempt limit, and whether results post to the gradebook.
EDD 520 cumulative retrieval bank
Draw 6 of 24. Concepts covered: open-system diagnosis, pattern persistence, context and culture fit, planned versus unplanned change, evolutionary versus revolutionary change, levels of change, first-order versus second-order change, organizational change capacity.
Spacing note
This is the only block permitted to recur in adjacent lessons, and recurrence is its function. The bank grows by roughly three items per lesson and draws across all prior lessons, which is the mechanism by which the per-concept retrieval floor is met across the semester rather than inside any single lesson (Hanna, 2026). Items from Class 1 are in the bank for this draw.
Destinations: Assignment 1 brief, which carries the due dates, the five production moves, and the submission checklist. Lesson 3, Leadership Theory and Organizational Change.
AI operation and disclosure
| Item | Statement |
|---|---|
| AI may | Locate assigned passages, verify quoted strings against the source file, check citation form against APA 7, and check the analysis for internal contradiction |
| AI may not | Select the organization, produce the diagnosis, supply the evidence, draft the analysis, or generate a citation whose source has not been read |
| Must be disclosed | Any verification pass run against a source file, and any structural or citation check applied to a draft |
| Fade position | Prompt patterns adapted. Patterns are supplied for verification and citation audit. All analytic prompts are learner-authored |
| Closing retrieval | The quiz in block 51 and the cumulative bank in block 52 run without AI assistance of any kind |
Fade values: prompts supplied verbatim, prompt patterns adapted, role prompts directed, all prompts learner-authored (Hanna, 2026).
Accessibility
| Item | Provision |
|---|---|
| Caption path | Engaged. Four Audio blocks at 08, 16, 25, and 37 each carry a transcript block immediately beneath. The Video block at 46 carries L2-46.vtt and transcript block 46-a, satisfying WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 |
| Audio-only content | None. On-screen text is the content of record and every script is complementary. Nothing assessed in block 51 or block 52 exists in audio only |
| Collapsed containers | One Accordion at block 45, carrying the divergence analysis. Its content is restated in the comparison table at block 43 and in the Move 5 close at block 50, so no load-bearing content sits behind a click |
| Known platform gaps | Collapsed containers do not print in a published Rise course, which is why the divergence content is duplicated outside the Accordion. Rise tables support column headers only, so every row label sits in the first cell as plain text |
| Text-equivalent paths | Block 28, the Scenario, is load-bearing and carries a full text-equivalent path. No image, chart, or diagram carries content anywhere in the lesson, so no alt text is required beyond the video poster frame |
Equity considerations
This lesson supplies structured retrieval rather than directing learners to study on their own. That choice has a distributional consequence worth stating plainly, because the alternative is not neutral.
Where a course supplies no structured retrieval, the retrieval does not disappear. It is outsourced to the learner’s unstructured time, which converts a time surplus into a performance advantage.
The same mechanism now repeats on AI. A course that directs learners to use AI without supplying the prompts converts prompt fluency into a performance advantage. Both are design choices that charge the institution’s omitted work to whichever learners can least afford it. Block 54 supplies the prompt patterns for exactly this reason.
The readings themselves supply a related finding. Gahagan (2025) holds that organizational change inevitably produces heterogeneous change journeys among faculty, staff, and administrators, meaning a single change is experienced unevenly across roles inside one institution. The same logic extends to learners inside one course.
Stated limits
The learning science underpinning this design is drawn largely from undergraduate STEM classrooms and laboratory retrieval studies. No meta-analysis addresses asynchronous graduate learners studying in fragmented, interruption-heavy time. Effect size magnitudes in education meta-analysis are contested. No claim here asserts effect-size magnitude. Direction and mechanism only.
Three limits specific to this build. First, the syllabus chapter titles for Burke Chapters 3 and 4 do not match the printed chapter titles in the sixth edition, so this lesson is built to the assigned chapter numbers. Second, page numbers are absent from all quoted material because the source extractions carry no pagination, with the single exception of the Foster and Kaplan definition, which Burke prints with its page number. Third, the comparison in blocks 43 and 49 draws on claims established in the Class 1 chapters, and the flagged rows require verification before submission.
Application to dissertation research
Three of this week’s source concepts map to the dissertation with strong fit, one maps as a contested claim the design must answer rather than adopt, and one supplies a definition currently unsourced in the scaffold.
| Source concept | Dissertation element | Strength of fit | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Differentiation without integration produces silos; diffused authority dissipates effort (Burke, 2023) | 1.2 Statement of the Problem; 5.5 Implications for Practice | Strong | Every link is structural. The argument does not depend on persuading anyone, which makes it independent of the testimonial strand |
| Pattern persists while structure changes (Burke, 2023) | 1.2 Statement of the Problem; 4.3 Structural Functionalism and Leader Inaction | Strong | Two sentences from one chapter support the claim, so it does not rest on a single line |
| Structural and political position enables or restricts access to information and actors (Gahagan, 2025) | 5.5 Implications for Practice; 5.6 Implications for Leadership | Strong | The pivot where a system condition becomes an individual constraint |
| The target for change is the system, not the individual (Burke, 2023) | 1.9 Delimitations, Limitations, and Assumptions | Contested | States the objection the design must answer. Quote it as a limitation rather than adopting it, then answer it with the structural proposal |
| Change must be appropriated by a critical mass and incorporated into patterns of interaction (Gahagan, 2025) | 1.7 Definitions of Key Terms | Moderate | Supplies a sourced definition for a term the scaffold currently leaves undefined |
Gap the sources expose
Neither text treats caregiving status as a category of organizational disenfranchisement. Burke (2023) lists the groups whose disenfranchisement has produced confrontational change strategies, naming unions, minorities, and the disabled. Student-parents are absent from that list. Gahagan (2025) reports eliminating equity gaps for age and gender and halving them for race and ethnicity at her own institution, and those four categories are the ones her account measures. Caregiving status is not among them.
The gap is therefore not that these authors disagree with the dissertation’s premise. It is that the category the dissertation is built on does not yet exist in either the change literature’s recognized taxonomy of disenfranchisement or in the equity metrics that higher education change practice reports against. That absence is a finding available to the literature review and it is stronger than a confirmation would be.
References
Burke, W. W. (2023). Organization change: Theory and practice (6th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Gahagan, N. (2025). Essential practices for organizational change in higher education. Society for College and University Planning.
Hanna, J. M. (2026). Course design standard. Complete this entry before submission.
Hanna, J. M. (2026). Dissertation precis. Complete this entry from the precis before submission.
San José State University. (2026). EDD 520: Organizational behavior and change in education [Course syllabus]. Connie L. Lurie College of Education.
Note on secondary sources
Sources encountered inside the assigned readings are cited in as-cited-in form and are deliberately absent from the reference list above, because they were not read in the original. Those appearing in this lesson are Foster and Kaplan (2001), Katz and Kahn, von Bertalanffy, Capra, and Roethlisberger, all as cited in Burke (2023); and Kezar, as cited in Gahagan (2025).
Where a secondary source becomes load-bearing for the dissertation rather than for the coursework, it is retrieved and read in the original, at which point it moves into the reference list and the as-cited-in attribution is removed.
JMHANNA, M.S.