“Unfreezing” Lewin: The Case for Alternative Change Strategies in Health Education

Abstract

Lewin's conceptualization of change as a three part process of unfreezing, changing and refreezing remains a key theoretical underpinning of health education practice. While the concept of refreezing change remains an important one in many health education situations, its application in other situations, e.g., those characterized by uncertainty and complexity, has often been problematic.

It is in these instances that what Biller has termed “contingent change strategies” appear a valuable alternative to the non-contingent approaches of which refreezing is a classic example. Lewin's “spiral of steps” approach to action research, Kahn's “agnostic” use of information and theory, and Mathiesen's concept of “the unfinished” represent three such alternative change approaches. The last in particular, with its stress on the process of change rather than its completion, holds relevance for those situations in which health educators are concerned with broad system change rather than solely with short term reforms within the existing system.