ERIC Digest 121 - April 1998
Creating a Learning Organization
By Larry Lashway
School leaders in a whimsical mood sometimes play a parlor game
called "Spot That Jargon," in which the goal is to name as many past
educational fads as possible. The list is usually impressive: dozens
of would-be reforms that were introduced with great fanfare and then
quickly faded away.
The game is played with tongue in cheek, but it often stirs some
sad reflections. Why are schools so susceptible to enthusiastic but
short- lived fads? What makes it so difficult to turn a promising
idea into a lasting contribution?
Such questions have recently sparked interest in yet another new
idea: "the learning organization." According to some theorists,
schools that dedicate themselves to systematic, collaborative
problem-solving can continually develop and implement new ideas,
thereby not just improving but transforming themselves. Does research
support this optimistic view? Or will the learning organization, five
years from now, be just another entry on the jargon list?
Can Schools Be Learning Organizations?
Kenneth Leithwood and colleagues (1995) define a learning
organization as:
a group of people pursuing common purposes (individual
purposes as well) with a collective commitment to regularly weighing
the value of those purposes, modifying them when that makes sense,
and continuously developing more effective and efficient ways of
accomplishing those purposes.
Although this is an inspiring vision, schools may be far from
achieving it. Teacher isolation, lack of time, and the complexity of
teaching present significant barriers to sustained organizational
learning (Larry Lashway 1997).
Not surprisingly, researchers have often found that substantive
changes in teaching practices are elusive. Richard Elmore and
colleagues (1996) discovered that even when teachers were willing to
learn new methods, they often applied them in a superficial or
inconsistent way, offering the appearance but not the substance of
real change.
Moreover, while rhetoric on learning organizations is plentiful,
thoughtful research is harder to find. Summing up their study of the
literature, Leithwood and colleagues noted that "we have almost no
systematic evidence describing the conditions which foster and
inhibit such learning."
Despite this vein of pessimism, other researchers have begun to
identify schools in which entire faculties have become proficient in
new forms of instruction, resulting in immediate impact on student
learning and behavior. The remainder of this Digest highlights
several key findings from this work.
How Can Staff Learning Be Focused?
Educational reforms are often undertaken in a rushed atmosphere,
with a dozen different initiatives going on simultaneously. Training
may consist of a one-day workshop, with little provision for practice
and feedback.
Beverly Showers, Carlene Murphy, and Bruce Joyce (1996) studied
three schools that undertook a systematic, sustained reform that
focused on several models of teaching with a strong research base,
including cooperative learning, concept-attainment, and synectics.
These models were designed to supplement teachers' existing
strategies, not replace them.
The models were taught in three steps to all teachers. The first
phase was designed to give teachers a theoretical understanding of
the new concepts. This was followed by multiple demonstrations
(mainly videotapes of classroom instruction) and opportunities to
practice the new skills in the workshop setting.
Showers and colleagues note that this intensive workshop model is
sufficient for teachers to introduce new strategies in their
classrooms, but without additional support fewer than 10 percent will
persist long enough to integrate the new skills into their
repertoire. They maintain that proficiency requires twenty to thirty
trials under classroom conditions. Thus they encouraged teachers to
use the new methods immediately and frequently, and to organize
themselves into study teams for sharing, observation, and peer
coaching.
The results were notable. At the end of the first year, 88 percent
of the teachers were using the new strategies regularly and
effectively. In one middle school, promotion rates soared, while the
average achievement test score jumped from the twenty-fifth to the
forty-second percentile. In addition, disciplinary referrals dropped
to about one-fifth the previous level.
How Is Learning Driven by Data?
Bruce Joyce and Emily Calhoun (1996) note that schools are "both
information-rich and information- impoverished." School personnel
collect a prodigious amount of information, from test scores to
attendance figures, yet rarely link this wealth of data to
school-improvement efforts.
Joyce and Calhoun cite the case of a middle school in which only
30 percent of the students earned promotion at the end of each year.
Although these figures were known for years to everyone in the
school, the faculty had never met to reflect on the failure rate or
study the causes. When a staff development program finally focused
attention on the figures, the situation began to change. Within two
years, 95 percent of the students were being promoted.
Focusing on data confronts staff with hard evidence that may
challenge existing perceptions of success; discrepancies raise sharp
questions about what is happening and why. In addition, monitoring
data provides a good way of tracking the effects of change efforts.
Joyce and Calhoun point out that this is especially important in
convincing faculty that students can achieve more than they thought
possible. Finally, study of data often leads to a desire for more
information. As reform efforts proceed, the school generates
increasingly sophisticated data and uses it in a meaningful way.
What Changes in the Workplace Support Organizational Learning?
Some studies point to changes in the workplace as a key to
successful organizational learning.
First, schedules and assignments should allow time for collective
inquiry. Joyce and Calhoun argue that significant reform is "nearly
impossible" in a typical school workplace; at best, people will move
forward as individual "points of light," but they will be unable to
form a learning community.
Thus, schools must provide time for teachers to work and reflect
together. Some schools, using early dismissal one afternoon a week,
have been able to clear out significant blocks of time. In addition,
Sharon Kruse and Karen Louis (1993) point out the importance of
well-developed communication structures such as email and regular
faculty meetings, as well as a common space for working.
Collective inquiry may be strengthened by more democratic forms of
governance. Joyce and Calhoun advocate the formation of "Responsible
Parties" to lead the school community in improvement efforts. These
groups, composed of administrators, teachers, parents, and community
members, would not be traditional parliamentary decision-making
groups, but would act as champions for extended inquiry.
Guiding such diverse groups (whose members may have differing
agendas and little experience working together) is especially
challenging for leaders. Laura Lipton and Robert Melamede (1997)
suggest that the key to successful group dynamics is dialogue rather
than debate, with the emphasis on listening, suspending judgment, and
seeking common understanding. In successful dialogue, participants
learn not to march directly toward the nearest solution but to
examine assumptions and share multiple perspectives that open the way
to new types of collective learning.
Finally, new strategies appear to be best learned in small groups
that provide motivation, support, sympathetic sounding boards, and
technical assistance (Joyce and Calhoun).
What Is the Leader's Role?
Creating a learning organization requires a deep rethinking of the
leader's role. Principals and superintendents must see themselves as
"learning leaders" responsible for helping schools develop the
capacity to carry out their mission. A crucial part of this role is
cultivating and maintaining a shared vision (Lashway, Leithwood and
colleagues, Lipton and Melamede). The vision provides focus,
generating questions that apply to everyone in the organization.
Learning becomes a collaborative, goal-oriented task rather than a
generalized desire to "stay current."
At a more mundane level, leaders must tend to the organizational
structures that support continuous learning, squeezing time out of a
busy schedule, collecting and disseminating information that
accurately tracks the school's performance, and creating forms of
governance that support collective inquiry.
Perhaps most important, leaders must view their organizations as
learning communities, for faculty as well as students. This requires
casting school improvement in terms of hypotheses to be tested rather
than solutions to be handed out, attacking the barriers to
collaboration, and making decisions democratically rather than
bureaucratically (Joyce and Calhoun). When the spirit of inquiry
permeates the daily routine, schools are on their way to becoming
true learning organizations.
Resources
Elmore, Richard F.; Penelope L. Peterson; and Sarah J. McCarthey.
Restructuring in the Classroom: Teaching, Learning, and School
Organization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996.
Joyce, Bruce, and Emily Calhoun. "School Renewal: An Inquiry, Not
a Prescription." In Learning Experiences in School Renewal: An
Exploration of Five Successful Programs, edited by Bruce Joyce
and Emily Calhoun. 175-90. Eugene, Oregon: ERIC Clearinghouse on
Educational Management, 1996. 219 pages. ED401 600.
Kruse, Sharon D., and Karen Seashore Louis. "An Emerging Framework
for Analyzing School-Based Professional Community." Paper presented
at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research
Association, Atlanta Georgia, April 1993. 31 pages. ED358 537.
Lashway, Larry. Leading With Vision. Eugene, Oregon: ERIC
Clearinghouse on Educational Management, 1997. 148 pages.
Leithwood, Kenneth; Doris Jantzi; and Rosanne Steinbach. "An
Organizational Learning Perspective on School Responses to Central
Policy Initiatives." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, 1995. 38
pages. ED385 932.
Lipton, Laura, and Robert Melamede. "Organizational Learning: The
Essential Journey." In The Process-Centered School: Sustaining a
Renaissance Community, edited by Arthur L. Costa and Rosemarie M.
Liebmann. 30-53. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, 1997. 260
pages. ED407 721.
Showers, Beverly; Carlene Murphy, and Bruce Joyce. "The River City
Program: Staff Development Becomes School Improvement." In Learning
Experiences in School Renewal: An Exploration of Five Successful
Programs, edited by Bruce Joyce and Emily Calhoun. 13-51. Eugene,
Oregon: ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management, 1996. 219
pages. ED401 600.
This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract No. OERI RR93002006. The ideas and opinions expressed in this Digest do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of IES, ED, or the Clearinghouse. This Digest is in the public domain and may be freely reproduced.
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