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admiration to Dean Yue Ping Chung and Professor John Lee for their collaboration and commitment to the project.. 2 Major changes in schools or school reform have not been highly successful anyplace in the world. Although there are occasional reports of success, the more typical case is one where substantial change is not present. This paper comprises three parts. First, I discuss the concept of school culture to explain the challenge to school reform. I attempt to show why existing school culture is necessary for a smoothly functioning and stable school, but an obstacle to educational change. Attempts to transform school culture through external means have almost always failed. As an alternative I introduce the concept of internal transformation of culture, the empowerment of school participants to change their practices, expectations, and attitudes through introducing a change process that sets new goals and a set of tools that can be used to reach them. The second part introduces the Accelerated Schools Project, a project that was established i