> Essentially, the heart of the (Koalaty) initiative requires school-business
> partnership s. A team consisting of the school principal, four teachers and
> two business representatives undergo training in TQM and apply their new
> skills in their school. The NEPA technology council proposes moving the
> effort so that schools embrace learning organization concepts. We are just
> in the early stages of the TQM effort at present.
My question: Who needs to contribute and to learn and when within a
"learning organization" to meet a representation requirement assumed by
the term "organization?"
John's example suggests a reasonable stage approach to TQM implementation
as a method for helping schools to become learning organizations. Here's
a complementary inquiry-based approach I have studied and facilitated on
different occasions.
The key organization learning feature built into this approach is the
inculcation of an inquiry-based system design process in an organization
team composed of representatives of the key system components and
cultures. The built-in unevenness in knowledge and skills among team
members - about different components of the organization system, technical
knowledge (and jargon), etc. - requires the need for knowledge acquisition
about the different components and cultures and their contribution to the
inquiry as well as about particular technical knowledge to advance the
inquiry. The motivation for buying into the approach is the recognition of
a system problem and that something needs to be done (even if for some it
is merely to signal that something is indeed being done).
For example, I studied the methods used to facilitate a year-long design
inquiry process for a high school system "transformation." The user-design
team included school system component stakeholders of diverse expertise,
design experience, opinions, and expectations. The team included
community representatives as well. The user-designers preferred the term
"transformation" to "reform" , "restructuring" or "re-engineering" terms
because members recognized the complexity of their HS system and
understood that changes to one part affected the working of the whole.
The facilitator, provided by the County, was able to accomplish much with
this 22 member group by breaking it into homogenous subgroups (teachers,
classified staff, students, parents, administrators, community, etc) or
into heterogenous subgroups (one from each of homogenous groups) as
required by the particular learning or decision issue at hand. [As one
example of accomplishment, the President of the local teachers' union
successfully lobbied to become a member of the design team some months
after it was closed to new additions based on the President's assessment
that a system transformation was likely.] Some subgroup tasks worked
better than others, however, in terms of length of learning process and
quality of outcomes as reported or observed when in whole group.
A main "handicap" to the design inquiry was the uneveness in the knowledge
base across individuals and even across heterogenous subgroups. This
unevenness made for slower design progress but was a motivation for
knowledge acquisition. Most members' lack of prior knowledge and
experience with either education reform research literature, systems
thinking or design work, work on "whole school" projects and associated
policy issues, or with measurement and evaluation requirements impeded a
rapid "whole team" understanding of key concepts and issues.
Yet, the unevenness coupled with the inquiry-based problem-solving process
evoked recognition of the need for diverse expertise and a shared
acquisition and transmission of knowledge among the school microculture
experts - the team members. As part of the learning process each
user-designer (many were elected reps) was charged with the task of
sharing design team developments with peers and reporting feedback to the
design team at set intervals. This user-design team learning could
represent organization learning because of its one-to-many representation
of each of the main components of the social system in question and the
learning outcomes that could be characterized as the organization's
"learning about itself".
Hilary
-- Your message was: (from "John Kachurick")
On Thu, 26 Jan 1995, Sydney Boydell wrote:
> Can a school be a learning organisation? I am not being facetious! Is
> anyone out there working on this?
>
> I am interested in K-12 schools as institutiions rather than the
> 'mini-institution' of a classroom. My experience has been that schools
> are complex institutions that on the whole don't recognise their own
> complexity. Hence individual classrooms operate as if they are
> autonomous.
>
> In fact they are part of a system. However, speaking systems language to
> many people in schools results in blank stares and incredulity. Are there
> schools out there who have deliberately moved towards building shared
> vision, team learning, personal mastery, etc.?
ASQC sponsors an Koalaty Kid intiative that seeks to implement the theory,
process and tools of TQM in elementary schools. The Technology Council of
Northeastern Pennsylvania expands the initiative to include K-12.
Essentially, the heart of the initiative requires school-business
partnership s. A team consisting of the school principal, four teachers and
two business representatives undergo training in TQM and apply their new
skills in their school. The NEPA technology council proposes moving the
effort so that schools embrace learning organization concepts. We are just
in the early stages of the TQM effort at present.
K-12 schools face the same difficulties that colleges and universities
face in attempting to implment quality initiatives: teachers (professors)
see themselves as "islands of excellence" and view their classrooms as
their "empires" among other things.
Information on the Koalaty Kid project is available from ASQC. The Koalaty
Kid National Conference is scheduled for April at the University of
Oklahoma at Norman.
Best regards,
__ ___
| | / / Dr. John Kachurick
| | / / Associate Professor
| |/ / College Misericordia
__ | |\ \ Dallas, PA 18612
| |___| | \ \ kachuric@alpha.acast.nova.edu
|_________| \__\ (717) 674-6301 or 675-1769
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