Environmental,Technical,and Representational Uncertainty: A Framework for Making Sense of the Hidden Complexity of Educational Change

Abstract

School systems are increasingly working to foster more ambitious learning environments and disrupt institutionalized educational inequities. But such efforts are complicated by a number of uncertainties—about the aims of schooling and how they might be achieved or measured—that suffuse educational organizations. Although there is general agreement that uncertainty is both pervasive and consequential in educational settings, as a field we lack a more unified analytic framework for making sense of this uncertainty. In this article, I seek to advance such a project by drawing on educational and organizational scholarship to identify three forms of uncertainty that pervade school systems. While two of these forms of uncertainty—environmental and technical—are well established in organizational theory, I develop the concept of representational uncertainty as a third form of uncertainty that is particularly impactful in schools. I show how these three forms of uncertainty manifest across different contexts, aims, and levels of school systems; how they interrelate; and how they must be strategically mitigated or fostered in the service of educational improvement.