EDLDR802:

Lesson 05 Overview

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In the last lesson, we explored school systems as complex and formal organizations, identified critical components and the nested nature of classrooms, schools/districts, and communities. We identified how federal, state and district policies affect the ability of school staff to make and sustain reforms – e.g. institute innovative programs. The case can be made that past reform efforts have been unsuccessful and that a significant transformation in our system of basic public education is required. This would mean a significant transformation of the organization of school itself. Parents, professional educators, legislators, and society all agree that student achievement must improve if students are to meet the challenges of the 21st century, but there is significant disagreement about what kinds of skills or values should be prioritized. The debate at every level (local, state, national, and international) is often constrained by a focus on how the current system of public education should change in order to bring about enhanced learning for students in pursuit of adopted achievement standards and identified achievement gaps. Rarely do policy makers or reformers ask, “Can we envision a radically different organizational form of schooling?”

There are other models of schooling – Montessori, Waldorf and Quaker – that have evolved as sub-systems within public education. Some would argue that charter schools are a way to re-shape the organization of schooling. This lesson focuses on one particular vision: as learning organizations. This specific theory of learning organizations derives from the work of Peter Senge. We will examine in depth how Senge and others differentiate between the traditional bureaucratic structure of schools and school systems and a true “learning organization.” We will examine how the emergence, during the past two decades, of the concept of a “learning organization” has contributed to our understanding of the leadership roles that teachers have in school. We will discuss the rules, roles, relationships, and structures that define a bureaucratic system in operation and how those are carried out in school districts. We will also delve into the characteristics of a learning organization and understand how these differ from the bureaucratic approach. Finally, as in every lesson, you will be asked to apply your understanding and insights to your own professional experiences.

Learning Outcomes

After completing this lesson, you should be able to do the following:

• Analyze the characteristics of an organizations that operate in bureaucratic system mode;
• Analyze the Industrial Age assumptions about teaching and learning encoded in current school organizational functions;
• Describe the characteristics of a learning organization;
• Evaluate the different roles of power, authority, and influence in the two approaches;
• Apply the characteristics of a bureaucratic system to your own experiences; and
• Apply the principles of a learning organization to your own experiences.

Lesson Readings & Activities

By the end of this lesson, make sure you have completed the readings and activities found in the Course Schedule.

Are Schools Learning Organizations?

Our previous lesson focused on two ideas: (1) the need for systemic transformation to produce the kind of learning students need to meet the challenges of the future, and (2) on beginning to understand the components of the current traditional organization as they emerged in the twentieth century. This lesson will focus on two models of organization:

1. The traditional bureaucratic model
2. The emerging conceptualization of the learning organization

As you consider the development of the bureaucratic model and its implications for practice, it is important to understand that the arguments being made for transformation acknowledge the need to change structure, policies, procedures. In other words, to achieve a reform that is sustained, there needs to be change in the entire organization. One of the critical changes is how the organization responds to new knowledge, and how rapidly it integrates this into current practice. As you will see, the significant difference is in how those systems operate within a learning organization and in a bureaucracy.

In 1988 Barbara Levitt and James March wrote an article called “Organizational Learning” that appeared in the Annual Review of Sociology. This article offered a then, ground-breaking perspective that learning is not just something that individuals do, but organizations themselves can learn. They argued: “Organizational learning is viewed as routine-based, history-dependent, and target-oriented. Organizations are seen as learning by encoding inferences from history into routines that guide behavior.” This was a revolutionary perspective, and subsequent research has shown that organizations display differences in how fast and how much they process information (both from inside and outside the organization itself. Work by Elizabeth Cohen showed that there was even considerable differences between small, short-lived organizations like classrooms. In other words, some classroom seemed to do a better job of adopting and incorporating information into classroom routines; they were better at adapting behavior as a group.

This is what Senge argues is a critical different between traditional “bureaucratic” schools and schools as learning organizations. Bureaucracies change slowly—they are stable and persistant—and this causes problems in times of rapid social change. Schools in this mode have “learned” how to organize teaching and learning by integrating knowledge into routines and processes, but these routines and processes may be over a century old! Think about blackboards. Before 1800 students carried their own slates to schools in the colonies. Putting up a communal slate on the wall was an example of an organization learning – the modern mass school system required a different form of instruction, and the blackboard facilitated that. This “new” technology spread rapidly in Europe and the U.S., and chances are you teach in a classroom where that “revolution” in teaching – the blackboard or its offspring like “green” boards or “white” boards”—still hangs on the wall! This is just one example of how long bureaucratic organizations can carry forward routines or processes learned in their history.

Industrial Age Thinking

The blackboard revolutionized the public school classroom in the early days of the industrial revolution. How many other routines and processes did schools acquire from that time, that are still in place today? The blackboard is a nice concrete example, but if we think more abstractly about “routines and processes” we can identify more pervasive (and powerful) remnants of the Industrial Age that still shape how we go about teaching and learning in schools.

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, philosophers and scholars advanced here were theories and advocated for processes that supported the Industrial Age economic engines of the U.S. and the growth of factories to produce goods efficiently. These included:

• centralization
• standardization
• hierarchical management
• a rigid sense of time
• accountability based on adherence to the system (DuFour & Eaker, 1998, p. 20)

The application of those principles to schooling resulted the system we still see in most of our communities. In fact, with the advent of No Child Left Behind, we saw an increase in centralization and standardization at the national level. States have constitutional authority to govern public education, with a heavy delegation of governance to local school districts. In most communities, the centralization and standardization occur at the school district level. Schools and districts function within a management hierarchy with principals and superintendents, respectively, charged with the responsibility and delegated the authority to ensure that the system of education is operating satisfactorily. Accountability is determined largely by the policies and procedures adopted by the local school board, as well as applicable federal and state laws and regulations.

Perhaps the most visible and most difficult element to change is the rigid allocation of time. Time is money, as the business saying goes, and that is what resulted in the innovative practice of its time, the factory assembly line. Not only was production standardized but also the time required to produce the product. It is not difficult to see how educators adopted this concept; it resulted in rigid daily schedules, number of annual school days, standardized curricula, and pace of instruction. Students were seen as the product, produced by the work of a succession of workers/teachers, each responsible for one part of the K-12 system. Students who could not learn at the pace of the “line” routinely failed and often dropped out.

As noted author, Peter Senge (2000) pointed out, there is ample indication that this model is no longer functional:

• Unprecedented signs of breakdown in the assembly line school concept and process
• Many of the historic conditions upon which the industrial age school was built no longer exist
• Elimination of the school’s monopoly on the provision of information
• The working world no longer needs Industrial Age workers (pp. 60–61).

The advent of the 21st century has brought a dramatic change in expectations for public education to have all children master rigorous studies, to prepare all children for a productive future, to foster resiliency through learning to learn, and to enable them to compete in the global economy. “21st Century learning skills” are the buzzwords of our age, but how are we to develop such skills within an organization that encodes processes and routines from the 1800s? As a result, many researchers and educators now advocate a different approach to our system of education. That model is not the school/district as factory, but the school/district as a learning organization.

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References

DuFour, R., & Eaker, R. (1998). Professional learning communities at work: Best practices for enhancing student achievement. Indiana: Solution Tree Press.

Senge, P. (2000). Schools that learn: A fifth discipline fieldbook for educators, parents, and everyone who cares about education. New York: Doubleday.

The Learning Organization

As the culture of work evolved toward the end of the 20th century, well-known organizational experts, such as Peter Drucker and Peter Senge, began to describe the change from a bureaucratic structure with workers functioning as interchangeable cogs in a production machine to Drucker’s description of “the knowledge worker” and “the knowledge work organization” and Senge’s extension to the functions and characteristics of “a learning organization” (as quoted by Schlechty, 2009, p. 40). Writers such as Daniel Pink (2006) are now describing the next evolution as a change from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, requiring a change from a knowledge worker with highly developed skills of logic and analysis to a conceptual worker who is creative, intuitive, and empathic. Pink describes the future of work as a marriage between high tech and high concept/high touch. How are public schools to prepare their students for the Conceptual Age?

Figure 5.1 From the Agricultural Age to the Conceptual Age

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References

Pink, D. (2006). A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. New York: Penguin.

Schlechty, P. C. (2009). Leading for learning: How to transform schools into learning organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Characteristics of a Learning Organization

Although there will inevitably be some differences, the basic characteristics of schools and school systems that function as learning organizations are quite similar. They are

• student-centered learning
• active and focused student engagement as the basis for instruction
• acceptance of multiple intelligences and diversity in learning
• promotion of instruction that results in critical and creative thinking and problem-solving

Voices From the Profession: What Is Your Vision for Student Learning?

Leaders in learning organizations, both school district and classroom leaders, focus on questions that differ from those in bureaucratic systems. Discussions in learning organizations focus on the following questions:

• What is our core business? What are we committed to accomplishing and how will we do it?
• Does our daily practice reflect our core values, vision, and mission? How do we know?
• How can we best assist those we serve?
• Are power, authority, and influence shared in pursuit of our mission?
• Does our culture support and pursue continuous improvement and innovation?
• Is our system strongly connected to families, related organizations, and our community?

Learning organizations must have these conversations in order to answer these questions. Addressing these issues is essential, ongoing, and the responsibility of all involved in the task of educating students. Such a model requires a dramatic shift in the teachers’ role from that of a line worker, to a professional “learning environment engineer.” It requires that teachers take a leadership role in assessing the effectiveness of the school as an ongoing process, and advocating for change as needed. To effectively change traditional bureaucratic schools into learning organizations requires a fundamental change in a teacher’s role, and that change includes taking on shared responsibility for the processes and functions of the school.

Creating the structures for schools to function as learning organizations is a complex and difficult task. The Schlechty Center has created a comprehensive set of “System Capacity Standards” which illustrate how to develop a structure which will support the work involved in such a transformation. They capture both the conceptual base and the practical applications necessary to move a school system forward on the path to becoming a learning organization.

Summary

Consider the school or school district with which you are most familiar. Compare the organizational foundations and practices of that school with the practices in the System Capacity Standards identified by the Schlechty Center. Identify the similarities and differences and the implications for both student learning and student experience in your schools. Can your school be classified as a bureaucratic model school or a learning organization? More likely, is there a mixture of processes and routines? Use these insights in your Discussions and Weekly Reflection Blog.

Lesson 05 Activities

Lesson 05 Discussion Questions

Respond to one of the questions below:

1. Consider the following statement: Most schools/districts today would not be seen as learning organizations. Using the readings, charts, and your professional experience, provide three reasons supporting this statement. Include a supporting rationale for each reason. If you disagree with the statement, provide three reasons supporting your perspective and their rationales.
2. What are three of the most important differences between how influence functions in a bureaucracy and how it is viewed in a learning organization? Provide an example from your own experience to illustrate each of the differences in practice.
3. Using Appendix A’s description of Knowledge Development and Transmission Systems, one of the six critical social systems of organizations from Lesson 01 (pp. 292–296), describe three patterns of conduct that you have observed that represent bureaucratic approaches and three that are characteristic of learning organizations. Use a word or phrase to describe each pattern.

Respond to two postings within your focus group.

Note: If two posts have been made to one member, choose another member’s response for your posting. During this module you must respond at least once to all other members of your work group. Responses and postings will be evaluated using the following grading rubric.

Discussion Rubric

Criteria	Full Credit	Partial Credit	No Credit	Possible
Shows evidence of reading/viewing course materials	2 pts Incorporates references to course materials in comments and responses; may add own references beyond assigned materials	1 pts Incorporates references to course materials in comments and responses	0 pts Little use of references from course reading/viewing in comments and responses	2 pts
Offers insights, applications, critical analyses, and extensions of thinking	2 pts Offers unique insights, poses thoughtful questions, makes original applications and connections to readings/viewings and discussions that extend thinking	1 pts Offers general thoughts, insights, applications, analyses, and connections that are more summative in nature	0 pts Offers limited thoughts, insights, applications, analyses, and connections that are repetitive	2 pts
Self reflects and relates concepts to own professional experience	2 pts Links entries clearly and effectively to own beliefs, ideas, perspectives, and professional experiences	1 pts Links entries in general way to own professional experiences and perspectives	0 pts Little or no connection to own professional experiences and perspectives	2 pts
Demonstrates attention to grammar, spelling, syntax, and organization in expression	2 pts Full Writing is free of any grammar or spelling errors	1 pts Few grammar or spelling errors are made	0 pts Grammar and spelling errors are often evident	2 pts
Meets posting requirements and participates as expected	2 pts Meets all posting requirements every week	1 pts Meets all posting requirements with few exceptions in consultation with instructor	0 pts Misses posting requirements repeatedly with little or no consultation with instructor	2 pts

Lesson 05 Blog Reflection

Review and reflect on the following questions; write up your thoughts in a blog post:

Consider your own current position (actual or hoped for) as a teacher leader and your own experience. Reflect upon the status of your organization (school district) as a learning organization. Using your own experiences and perceptions, use the following three questions (Senge, pp. 552–553) as a guide for your writing:

1. Does the organization have a clear and honest understanding of its current reality?
2. Is the understanding of current reality shared throughout the organization, and from there do you create new knowledge that is also shared?
3. Is knowledge translated into effective action toward a commonly desired future?

Please read each others’ blogs, and identify one concept or question in a peer’s blog that you positively connect with. Please respond with a positive comment.

Note: Your blog post should be no more than 300–500 words.

Needs Assessment: Data Collection

Overview

For the data collection process, you should collect three different types of data (we suggest questionnaires, brief interviews and documents) that will allow you to identify existing resources, perceived needs, and the additional resources needed to achieve those needs.

Directions

By the end of Lesson 10 (e.g. in about 5 weeks), you should have:

• drafted and distributed a brief questionnaire or other instrument of data collection;
• conducted brief interviews; and
• reviewed pertinent documents related to your Needs Assessment.

Please keep your mentor teacher and instructor informed about your progress. If you are running in to any roadblocks, contact them immediately to discuss how best to proceed.

For this assignment, please submit a one-page plan of the data activities you intend to engage in.

Grades

This is the third of six activities that comprise the Needs Assessment. The final report will be graded using this Rubric and will follow the following outline/format:

1. Introduction
   1. Culture and Community
   2. Collaboration and Planning the Needs Assessment
   3. Cultural Responsiveness
2. Information Search
   1. Policy
   2. Professional Organizations
3. Data Collection
   1. Local Community
   2. School Community
4. Findings
   1. Findings
   2. Analysis of Findings
   3. Recommendations for Improvement
5. Reflective Summary