Rethinking Schools as Learning Organisations.

For 2 decades, schools in the United Kingdom and in western economies in general have experienced rapid change. Many schools, however, look less like learning organizations today than they did before the introduction of the Education Reform Act in 1988. This paper reports on an ongoing series of case studies of school improvement that developed high-involvement strategies of middle management. The paper explores why key ideas of the learning organization and high-involvement management are so powerful in the contemporary context of rapid change. The paper identifies various types of learning organizations, proposes an analytical technique for relating styles of organizational learning to the environmental context, and concludes with preliminary findings from three research projects in the area of school improvement and middle-management development. Findings of the case studies indicate that headteachers and middle managers in schools are beginning to be aware of issues about the process of school improvement and the relationships between various factors in organizational learning. The findings suggest a move from the "entrepreneurial" toward the "unlearning" form of organizational learning--a point that represents a position in the "growth" stage of the organizational life cycle. Further research will explore the general utility of the model as a tool for senior and middle managers to determine the style of organizational learning most appropriate to the current context of the school. Seven figures are included. (Contains 34 references.) (LMI)