The Devil Is in the Details: System Solutions for Equity, Excellence, and Student Well-Being

Develop equity, excellence, and well-being across the whole system! The world is troubled!

We need to combine a moral imperative and a system transformation to survive for the better. Education is crucial to our future but needs to play a more direct role in shaping our future. The Devil is in the Details shows how we can re-think the education system and its three levels of leadership―local, middle, and top―so that each level can contribute to dramatic turnaround for education and society. The focus is on examining details to ensure effective actions are taken, rather than assuming large pronouncements and policies will drive change. Readers will find: 

• Details and analysis about successful systems in California, Ontario, and Australia 
• Ideas for how leaders at all levels can take steps to begin 
• Vignettes, actions and strategies that illustrate how to address equity, excellence and well-being

With the goal of transforming the culture of learning to develop greater equity, excellence, and student wellbeing, this book will help you liberate the system and maintain focus. 

Michael Fullan, Order of Canada, is the former Dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and Professor Emeritus of the University of Toronto. He is co-leader of the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning global initiative. Michael served as Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Special Policy Adviser in Ontario from 2003-2013. He received the Order of Canada (OC) in December 2012 and holds five honorary doctorates from universities around the world. His ‘interim autobiography,’ Surreal Change, covers his pre-Covid-19 era to 2018. Michael and his colleagues are now working diligently on field-based comprehensive system change in several countries. Under the umbrella of what they call the ‘humanity paradigm’ ―equitable-equal deep change that integrates local (school and community), middle (district/regional), and centre (policy) entities. Michael’s latest books are: Spirit Work and the Science of Collaboration (with Mark Edwards, 2022), The Principal 2.0 (2023), The Drivers (with Joanne Quinn, 2023), and The New Meaning of Educational Change, 6^th Edition (2025).

For more information on books, articles, videos, podcasts please go to: www.michaelfullan.ca