Planning Models

Planning is a future-oriented and hierarchical discipline that encompasses various models, each prescribing approaches for actions that will bring about change. By definition, it can be thought of as an attempt to change the future by current and ongoing action. All planning is dedicated to changing some future—either in the very short term or over some longer period, perhaps decades. Its hierarchical structure is composed of several layers of alternative choices as to how to proceed in an attempt to create change. The first of these layers addresses broad questions relative to how one approaches the processes of planning and change. This is essentially a set of philosophies of planning. Within these philosophies there exists a second layer of the hierarchy, the distinct models of planning that have been proposed by various authors as a defined formula or set of activities and approaches—the “how to” of planning. Finally, there are planning tools, dedicated approaches or algorithms for dealing with specific problem types. These tools can cross models and even philosophies. Their popularity enters, fades, and reemerges over time. Planned Program Budgeting, the Program Evaluation and Review Technique, Cohort Analysis, and Delphi methodologies are typical examples.

Unfortunately, the literature has been confounded in the use of the term models and has been indiscriminate in describing both the philosophies and the specific approaches to planning as planning models. In addition, authors generally do not distinguish the specific approaches they advocate as being only one of a very large set of approaches to planning, for example, strategic planning is often viewed as the quintessential planning model rather than only one among alternatives.

Planning has been consistently recognized as a key administrative function since Henry Fayol first enumerated those functions in 1916; today it lies at the heart of the school improvement process. As conditions require that an organization change, most have several classic means by which to generate that change, their improvement repertoire (textbook and personnel selection). As Figure 1 illustrates, planning is not the only means by which improvement can occur.

However, planning is an essential process component for most of the large-scale organizational change/improvement that occurs in education, especially when no adequately defined process has been previously created in the organization for managing that change (see item d. of Figure 1).

Organizational improvement has been seen to be comprised of three stages, labeled by Kurt Lewin in 1951 as “unfreezing,” “moving,” and “refreezing” and by David Clark, Linda Lotto, and Terry Astuto later as “adoption,” “implementation,” and “institutionalization.” Planning must address all three phases; many of the criticisms of the effectiveness of educational planning can be traced to a failure to address one or both of the latter stages.

Although many variations exist, the planning philosophies noted above have been classified into four relatively distinct types: (a) the comprehensiverational philosophy, (b) the bounded (limited) rational philosophy, (c) the incremental philosophy, and (d) the developmental or adaptive philosophy. Figure 2 presents an illustration of these philosophies and mixed scanning, arranged according to the extent that they specify precise goals and the general comprehensiveness used in generating different potential solutions to the planning problem. While theoretical, this arrangement makes clear the relationship of the theories of planning.

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