Talk of educational reform and of the importance of ‘the management of change’ in education and elsewhere is still in vogue. However it often seems concerned to persuade us that if we engage fully with change rather than resisting it we will find our lives more meaningful, thus omitting the important matter of the goal of the change in question. Change here is in any case invariably a euphemism for the impoverishment of education and the annihilation of its ideals, together with the deprofessionalisation of teachers and other educators. Recent writers about educational change tend to be less concerned with an ever‐changing, labile world than with how to make the transition—and make others make the transition—from one stable condition of things to another. Different ways of thinking about change, drawing on different literature, might help us see beyond the ways in which we are currently being asked to respond to educational change and reform.