Schools as 'Learning Organisations'
Schools as 'learning organisations' is a key concept behind the revised IB Standards and Practices (2020).
How nimble are you to meet change and adapt to new circumstances? How do you learn as a school? How deeply ingrained is 'learning' in the very fabric of your school - not only within classrooms, but also the staff room and the board room?
The concept of a learning organization was first developed by Peter M. Senge in 1990, a senior lecturer of leadership and sustainability at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The term is not restricted to educational organizations - it is used widely in the business world. His book ‘The Fifth Discipline’ (1990) discusses learning organizations.
A ‘learning organization’ is one that encourages and facilitates continual learning so that it can adapt and transform itself not only to survive but to excel in rapidly changing environments. In the words of Senge: “The rate at which organizations learn may become the only sustainable source of competitive advantage”. Learning organization can also be defined as an “Organization with an ingrained philosophy for anticipating, reacting and responding to change, complexity and uncertainty.” (Malhotra, Yogesh, 1996)
Peter Senge has defined the learning organization as the organization “in which you cannot not learn because learning is so insinuated into the fabric of life.” According to him the learning organizations are “ …organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together”.
The role of a school leader in the learning organization is that of a designer, teacher, and custodian who can build shared vision and challenge prevailing mental models through bringing to it new ideas, innovative methods and appropriate challenge. They are responsible for the learning of the whole organization and of all within the organization.
Reflect
- How do members of your school see themselves - do they see themselves as actors who are able to make things happen or part of the cogs of a larger wheel?
- How do you as a school learn from experience?
- What processes and systems do you have in place to deeply reflect about what you are doing, assess what is going well and act on what needs to change?
- How is new learning incorporated into the very structure and culture of the school – or, on the other hand, does it feel like just another innovation or intervention?
- Do you actively create, capture and mobilize (new) knowledge to allow you to adapt to changing environments?
- How do you as school leaders make decisions and bring about change and new behaviors in your staff as a result of these decisions?
“Like a biological ecosystem, organizations are either growing or they’re dying. And organizations grow when their employees are learning. So if you want a high-growth organization, you need to create a learning ecosystem to support high-growth individuals — to expose them to new and challenging opportunities before their roles become stale….A lively ecosystem — where different parts interact with one another — helps people grow, generates capacity, and keeps the ecosystem flourishing. An early 20th-century scholar, Thomas Troward, wrote, “Life ultimately consists in circulation, whether within the physical body of the individual or on the scale of the entire solar system; and circulation means a continual flowing around, and the spirit of opulence is no different….If we choke the outlet the current must slacken, and a full and free flow can be obtained only by keeping it open. If individuals aren’t learning, neither is the organization. It becomes like stagnant water with the outlet choked off: unmoving, increasingly algae ridden and surfaced with scum. It’s the opposite of a flowing river or the power of the ocean tides. When we facilitate learning, even require it of individuals, we create new carrying capacity for growth throughout our organizational ecosystem. If we don’t…well, we live or die by the growth of our people.” (Your organization needs a learning ecosystem, Whitney Johnson, HBR July 2019)
Peter Senge suggests that learning organizations exhibit specific characteristics that enable it to meet new challenges. They are focused on how not what they learn as an organization. We shall look at each of these characteristics and ask to what extent we as a school exhibit them.
A learning organization is one that has mastered the following basic disciplines or ‘component technologies’: Systems thinking | Personal mastery | Mental models | Building shared vision and Team learning. A ‘discipline’ is viewed by Peter Senge as a series of principles (our guiding ideas) and practices (what we do) that we study, master and integrate into our lives.
Senge underlines that people have agency – they are able to act upon the structures and systems of which they are a part. All the disciplines are, in this way, ‘concerned with a shift of mind from seeing parts to seeing wholes, from seeing people as helpless reactors to seeing them as active participants in shaping their reality, from reacting to the present to creating the future’ (Senge 1990: 69).
Systems thinking - seeing the whole together. The school is viewed as a whole system. It is about understanding the complexity of the whole system of the school and how the various parts are related and affect each other.
All people within the school are integrated into this system in a coherent way. Systems thinking is the ability to comprehend and address the whole and to examine the interrelationship between the parts.
Reflect
"There is something in all of us that loves to put together a puzzle, that loves to see the image of the whole emerge...Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes." (Peter Senge, Fifth Discipline p.68)
- To what extent do you take the long-term view and use backward design principles to accomplish your vision?
- How do you involve all people in the organization into understanding the whole system and the part they play in it?
- How could organizational 'maps' help you see the whole system - how things are related to each other?
- Reflect on the following quotation about systems thinking: "failure to understand system dynamics can lead us into ‘cycles of blaming and self-defence: the enemy is always out there, and problems are always caused by someone else’ "Bolam and Deal 1997: 27; see, also, Senge 1990)
Personal mastery is the discipline of personal growth and learning. It is about keeping a focus on your personal vision and the purpose of doing your work - those things that are important to you - and committing to ongoing learning to gain mastery over your work. It is a lifelong discipline to always want to learn. "It means approaching one's life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint." (Senge p. 131).
Schools need to commit to the total development and growth of all people - including staff. This is essential to achieving excellence throughout the whole school. It is important to develop a deep culture of learning within the school where each person is committed to personal mastery in their daily life through continual learning.
"Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But without it no organizational learning occurs’ People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas. And they are deeply self-confident. Paradoxical? Only for those who do not see the ‘journey is the reward’.(Senge 1990)
Reflect
- How would you describe 'the culture of (adult) learning in your school? Which key words would you use?
- To what extent are you committed to the professional growth of people in your school? How do you exhibit this?
- How do we as school leaders model that we are continual learners?
- How do you encourage and support each member of the organization as lifelong learners?
- How do you audit and then use the learning of all in your school? How can people contribute ideas and change the way things are done?
- How do we encourage colleagues to keep their personal vision alive - what really matters to them (and not get bogged down in administrative technicalities)?
Mental models are "what we think" (Senge p.190). They are ‘deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures and images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action’. They inform the culture of the school.
In a learning organization these models are continually challenged through the development of reflection skills and inquiry skills. Reflection and professional inquiry need to be built on an atmosphere of trust.
Learning organizations therefore need to be aware of their theories of action, of how they do things and bring about change. A starting point is the ability to look into the mirror as an organization and to see and understand your internal pictures of the world and hold them to scrutiny.
“Entrenched mental models… thwart changes that could come from systems thinking … Moving the organization in the right direction entails working to transcend the sorts of internal politics and game playing that dominate traditional organizations. In other words, it means fostering openness (Senge 1990)
Reflect
- How do you develop your teachers as professional inquirers and reflective practitioners?
- What story do you tell yourself about your school? Do you encourage openness and continually seek out the views of others on how to improve? What happens when people challenge the status quo?
- How would you describe your school? How would your stakeholders (students, teachers, parents, school board, the community) describe the school?
- How do you know - what processes do you use to ascertain stakeholder views? What do you do with the feedback you receive - what impact does it have on changes you do or do not make?
- Google image search to find images that describe the culture of your school? You could use a protocol such as Photo Montage.
Nick Alchin, provides a good example of how mental models work when he suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has provided opportunities for schools to reflect on their mendal models:
“What's been most interesting, though, is to look at the base of the iceberg to see what fundamental mental models emerge when we ask people to reflect on remote learning. These models express the deeply felt, even often unconsciously held beliefs about what education should be. These beliefs often come from our own schooling, even though most of us want for our own kids a very different - that is, better - experience than what we had all those decades ago!
One mental model that has emerged is that for some, examinations are at the centre of what we do, and how we even know how students are progressing. Another is about how, for some, the tighter the control over students, the better - that any independence leads to the danger that students will waste time. Also emerging are differing deep-seated ideas of what wasting time even is! Furthermore, underlying all these, perhaps, are the different metaphors we use to think about school; are they Factories to turn out a product? Homes to nurture and care for students? Or Prisons to keep them locked up during the day? These fundamentally and radically different paradigms clearly inform judgements about remote learning from our community.
In any large and diverse organisation it's not surprising that there are divergent views; that's diversity for you! The challenge is to openly name these divergences, to respect where they come from, and critically to embrace them as opportunities to better understand each other. They offer the rare possibility for deep and meaningful engagement. There's no quick solution here, but it's the work that will, over years, make most difference.”
Building shared vision.
One of the key roles of leadership is to build a vision which is shared by all members of the school. This shared vision needs to have the power to inspire all members of the organization and encourage them to experiment and innovate. IBM had "service"; Polaroid had instant photography; Ford had public transportation for the masses.
It is important that the vision is a shared one and not just handed down from on high. These shared ‘pictures of the future’ foster genuine commitment and enrolment rather than compliance.
Building a shared vision is about “the capacity to hold a share picture of the future we seek to create’ (1990). Such a vision has the power to be uplifting – and to encourage experimentation and innovation. Crucially, it is argued, it can also foster a sense of the long-term."
Reflect
- How was the vision for your school designed?
- Who owns the school vision?
- How do you translate a personal | governor | senior leadership vision into a shared vision that galvanizes the whole school organization and all of its stakeholders?
- To what extent does the IB vision of creating "a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect" guide your vision? If so, how do you know whether you are being successful?
Resources
8 ways to establish shared vision is a helpful article.
Perspective on leadership: building a shared vision for your school: this School Leadership OER (Open Educational Resource) is one of a set of 20 units from TESS- India designed to help school leaders develop their understanding and skills so that they can lead improvements in teaching and learning in their school.
Team learning: "The IQ of the team can, potentially, be much greater than the IQ of the individuals." (Senge p.222). However, team learning is a team skill - learning teams learn how to learn together.
The accumulation of individual learning constitutes team learning. A school that is a learning organization has clear structures in places to facilitate collaborative team learning which encourages people to engage in dialogue and discussion.
Team members need to develop open communication, shared meaning, shared understanding and a culture of ‘thinking together’. A learning organization typically has excellent knowledge management structures, allowing creation, acquisition, dissemination, and implementation of this knowledge in the organization.
When teams learn together, Peter Senge suggests, not only can there be good results for the organization, members will grow more rapidly than could have occurred otherwise. Learning starts with dialogue - the capacity of individuals to suspend assumptions and think together, to discover new insights not attained individually.
Reflect
- What opportunities are provided for people to (a) collaborate together, and (b) think together?
- What processes and systems do you have to encourage dialogue that will create new ideas and sways of doing things?
- Protocols can be useful tools to help structure group dialogue. Do you have your own toolkit of protocols to facilitate 'thinking together'? Which do you use most often? If not you may like to visit the Student at the Centre website which provides links to many such tool kits.
Dig deeper:
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic & Josh Bersin, 4 Ways to create a learning culture on your team, Harvard Business Review, July 12, 2018. In this article the authors provide the following advice: (1) reward continuous learning; (2) give meaningful and constructive feedback; (3) lead by example; (4) hire curious people. Click HERE for the article.
Which of the following images best describes the 'system' of your school?
A bridge - simple but strong connections between two different aspects
Electricity pylons - important features connecting core business, which is sometimes hard to observe but is actually the power source
Social network - actors creating continuous connections between hubs
Connect 4 - building blocks that have lateral and diagonal connections
Root system - deep and necessary development to support later more obvious growth
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