1.3 - Improving whole school (organisational) learning


One of the three key goals of SSE is whole school learning, in other words, a process through which drives the whole school forward and builds capacity through seeing everyone as a learner.

There are four major ways in which schools in Hong Kong have approached this.

 

Group activity: What is a learning organisation?

The following are four definitions that emerge from the literature. You might like to choose the one that you prefer or, as a group:

  • Discuss the meaning and applications each of these four definitions
  • Choose the one that you see as most relevant to your school
  1. A "learning organisation" is an organisation that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future. For such an organisation, it is not enough merely to survive. "Survival learning" [adaptive learning] is necessary. But for a learning organization, "adaptive learning" must be joined by "generative learning", learning that enhances our capacity to create (Senge, 1990).
  2. A "learning organisation" is one in which people at all levels, individually and collectively, are continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about (Karash, 1994-2002).
  3. A "learning organisation" involves 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 (Leithwood and Aitken (1995:63)
  4. "Learning organisations" are organisations that employ processes of environmental scanning; develop shared goals; establish collaborative teaching and learning environments; encourage initiatives and risk taking, regularly review all aspects related to and influencing the work of the school; recognise and reinforce good work; and provide opportunities for continuing professional development' (Sillins, Zarlins, & Mulford, 2002:24)

Group activity: Developing an SSE culture

What are the conditions or "culture" in a school which favour – or inhibit – the development of SSE?

As a group you might like to brainstorm these factors noting them on flipchart with two columns

Favourable conditions for SSEInhibiting conditions
 

 

 

 

 

 

Feedback

You might like to look at what teachers in England wrote and compare your responses

Then consider the left hand column and how "in school factors" might be addressed in your own school

Favourable conditions for SSE Inhibiting conditions for SSE
External Factors
  • When self-evaluation results are exclusively used for development purposes.
  • Opportunities for staff to engage in professional dialogue with inspectors.
  • Open-minded inspection.
  • Encouraging schools to take risk.
  • Positive feedback.
  • Respecting the professionalism of teachers.
  • Friendly non-confrontational or threatening approach to inspection.
  • Inspector's excessive focus on accountability.
  • Pressure from national exams.
  • Imposition of self-evaluation criteria on schools.
  • Disrespect from inspectors.
  • Negative media publicity
  • Using results for performance related pay
  • Inaccurate inspection reports.
  • Paperwork.
  • OFSTED over-scrutiny
  • Lack of genuine consultation with teachers on inspection policies.
  • Perceived threat from outside audiences.
  • Restriction to strict external criteria.
  • When conducted against a background of school league tables/standards.
  • Pressure from SATS
In-school factors
  • Awareness of SSE purpose
  • The school's commitment to self-evaluation.
  • Mutual trust & willingness to share knowledge and skills with colleagues.
  • Teachers' access to SSE data
  • Availability of self-critical teachers.
  • Confidence.
  • When fitted directly into school improvement plan.
  • Sharing good practice
  • Whole school ownership
  • Training/INSET on self-evaluation.
  • Time constraints & workload
  • Fear and ambiguity about the purpose of self-evaluation.
  • Lack of non-contact hours for primary teachers to share ideas with colleagues.
  • The fear of colleagues seeing weakness as failure.
  • A blame culture
  • When SSE findings aren't acted upon.
  • Lack of support by school leadership.
  • Staff reluctance to change

International views

Improving Schools Traffic Lights metaphorImproving Schools Traffic Lights metaphor (QuickTime)

John MacBeath, University of Cambridge, UK
"The traffic light metaphor is an important one. Troubled schools - red light schools - should embark very cautiously on self-evaluation and only undertake that venture with a lot of external support because feedback is not always helpful, and sometimes actually quite destructive..."