Schools as Learning Organizations

To serve as “fulcrum point for educational and societal change”, schools should become learning organizations which foster relationship, collaboration, and learning process whereby teachers, students, parents, principles as well as community members interact and construct meaningful knowledge.

I agree that schools as learning organizations have to reflect the way people live and learn. It seems obvious that learning is a natural human disposition. Children as well as adults are programmed for learning genetically. Furthermore, there are many research results showing that people learn purposefully and integrating new knowledge into their prior experience. Therefore, it seems that learning in schools will be successful while following the pattern of natural learning.

It seems that systems thinking may help us to perceive our schools as organizations where we are interacting with other players of the system while contributing to build a better human society. This way of thinking may be very rewarding, but surely it will demand a host of skills which have not been so far necessarily regarded as part of our action. We have not only to focus our educational work on the process of learning but also on the human development of our students, as well as we have to develop good communication skills in a complex system. In order to achieve such goals, we have to pay more attention to develop interactively our role as teachers, and also we have to learn to allocate differently our resources, especially our time. Systems thinking and the other tools suggested by P. Senge may give us some support.

In a school dedicated to build community and serve in the local community, as Catholic school is supposed to be, the idea of P. Senge may represent a supportive conceptual framework for us. His framework may also help us to articulate our vision and mission as Catholic educators in the 21st century. Indeed, focus on whole person development and collaboration should be at the heart of our educational creed. Parents, for instance, have to be involved in school, as they are the primer educators of their children. Senge’s ideas about schools as learning organizations, however, may help us to criticize our mental models in order to see more properly the complexity of our role as Catholic educators in the 21st century school organization.

Choosing a Set of Outcomes - Teacher's role

Reading the chapter on "Choosing a Set of Outcomes” (Ozar, 1994), it has become clear to me that the process of integrating both the characteristic values of a school community and the discipline-specific plane creates a dynamic system of outcomes, assessments, and instruction. Actually, every actor contributing in developing such a system has a significant role to play. Parents and students, the local community, and of course in a Catholic school the Church have to participate in the process in an active and meaningful way.As teachers have a particularly significant role in choosing outcomes, I would like to take time and reflect on it. Let’s have a look at some of the characteristics of this role.

Firstly, in addition to the rigorous subject knowledge and the mastery of the subject area standards, teachers have to understand the characteristics of their school community as well as the local community they serve. In other words, they have to study and understand the local culture. Furthermore, in an outcomes-centered decision-making paradigm, educators need to integrate the philosophy, the mission, and the value- system of their school. In fact, this will be fundamental when defining graduation outcomes, assessments and educational strategies.

Secondly, participating in the process of defining outcomes, teachers need to learn and work collaboratively. They have to develop their own skills of cooperation with colleagues, as well as they should be trained how to reflect creatively on the authenticity of assessments and the effectiveness of their instructional strategies. As a result, teachers will contribute to the achievement of graduation outcomes. In this logic, the specialist’s isolation has to be substituted by cooperative mindset.

Following the outcomes-centered decision-making process, teachers may contemporaneously be professional specialists and educators. Not only will they provide learning achievement, but also they may “customize” their teaching in order to care for the personal growth of their students. So, teachers have to be reflective in their whole process of designing, assessing and deciding on teaching strategies.

Then, the involvement of teachers in the process of choosing outcome as described by Ozar may however be a challenging activity. Given the diversity of teachers in many Catholic schools, or even more generally speaking in Christian schools, to have everybody working with similar understanding of school’s mission might be a great deal. Beyond the possible differences of worldview, there are also the well-worn paths of teaching in every school, which may make difficult to develop a good rational for change.

Consequently, school leaders should create opportunities for collaboration and dialogue so that every teacher may responsibly participate in the development of a shared educational program. The creation of such organization is crucial because the achievement of outcomes will depend substantially on the way teachers contribute in the process of choosing them. Furthermore, the leadership has to make sure that everybody feels welcomed and respected in the process so that teaching design may no longer be an activity of isolated specialists. Surely, the Christian purpose of educating the whole person supposes the contribution of a whole community.