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Mr Bo Sundstrom The Future School Sweden
In his paper, Educational Leadership for Results or for Learning: Contrasting Directions in Times of Transition, David Oldroyd (2003) discusses two broad roads in educational management:
' New public management or leading for results - the drive led by politicians for higher, measurable, visible standards of effectiveness and efficiency and equity to meet the challenges of global competition in a rapidly changing world. '
On the other hand there is a:
' progressive humanistic leadership or leading for learning-leadership that seeks to empower professional staff and young people based on principles of humanism, democratic citizenship and holistic personal and organisational learning ' .
This paper tries to find a strategy for school leaders, by placing different leading factors in teachers ' work in a modern and postmodern perspective or mind-set, to build a school culture in an organisational learning system. The outcome will create an increased autonomy for teachers and school leaders balancing external pressure from centrally defined output criteria and New Public Management. By comparing changes in work life, steering system and the world around the student with a list of leading factors that teachers are using in their teaching or to promote learning, reflections will focus on the existing school culture.
Recent discussions will help me to continue a deeper research program using the leading factors as starting activities and building strategic chains in order to compare their goals from a modern and postmodern mind-set. The aims are to find a tool for school leaders and teachers to understand their school culture, make it more obvious and see the need for necessary change.
Oldroyd sees a trend towards accountability and tests. Leithwood et al (2002), referred to by Mulford in a paper in April 2003, commissioned by the Education and Training Policy Division, OECD, supports him by finding an approach dominated by ' the establishment of student standards, wide-spread student testing of their achievement and judgments about schools and teachers based on results can have disastrous unintended consequences. For students, such consequences may include minimising their individual differences, narrowing curriculum to which they are exposed, diverting enormous amounts from instruction to test preparation, and negatively influencing schools ' willingness to accept students with weak academic records […] (The) consequences for teachers, include the creation of incentives for cheating, feelings of shame, guilt and anger, and a sense of dissonance and alienation ' (OECD; 2001b p24-25). Leithwood finds a necessary balance between centrally-defined output criteria and local innovation.
Entering a post-industrial society based on the change of mind-set with post-modern lenses, the nature of work is changing and this affects the role of educational leaders. Across the OECD member countries, ' school systems and individual schools are experimenting with new approaches to management that seek to run schools in ways that are right for the 21st century ' . (Mulford, 2003).
Olsen (2002, p.20-21) finds administration in Europe having met the changes in the environment influenced by existing administrative arrangements. The perspective is reliability, consistency, predictability and accountability (OPA).
New Public Management has become a dominant force in many countries. Demster (2002a, p 17) describes the effects of NPM in public schooling:
Organisational Learning (OL) contains trust, collaboration, teamwork, networking, monitored mission, constant quality improvement, risk-taking and professional improvement.
The role of the school leader is important. Fullan (2002, p 15) concludes that ' effective school leaders are the key to large scale, sustainable education reform ' .
Lashway (1996) finds three strategies that school leaders can choose:
Leading by learning demands a large amount of autonomy and integrity towards external pressure. To improve schools with OPA and NPM frames combined with a negative school culture will be like David ' s fight against Goliath.
' The key relationships in the ways school leaders strengthen teacher recruitment, development and retention were shown to include factors such as teacher satisfaction, school effectiveness, improvement, capacity, teacher leadership, distributive leadership, organisational learning, and development. School leaders can be a major influence on these school-level factors, as well as help buffer against the excess of the mounting and sometimes contradictory external pressures. A skilled and well-supported leadership team in schools can help foster a sense of ownership and purpose in the way that teachers approach their job […] The real challenge facing most schools is no longer how to improve but, more importantly, how to sustain improvement. ' (Mulford 2003)
Mulford refers (p 3) to research showing:
Leading by learning sets the focus on interpreting the national task in the postmodern society. To understand the changes in perspective and the impact for teachers and school leaders, it is necessary to place today ' s education in a wider historic perspective.
On a planning Symposium (2003) run by the OECD and CERI1on ' Emotions and Learning ' , Jarl Bengtsson gave a short history of the role of education. The purposes of teaching were set up by Protagoras, a pupil to Socrates as to transmit certain values, culture and knowledge in a particular form. Other influences have come from Zen in the Oriental world, with visions to liberate the individual, with Confucius preaching moral and universal moral from all. The paradigm of the transmission of knowledge was strengthened during the Enlightenment period.
' The beginning of the 20th Century saw the birth of natural science and, in particular, agricultural science. This prompted the birth of the measurement industry in education, which became one of the most prominent forces in education in the last century in the creation of the testing systems in schools. Today the education system is partially driven, by two main forces, one being the measurement industry, and the other the drive towards social cohesion, an issue which has emerged in the last five years. The Knowledge Economy is, of course, big talk today.†(p 8).
During the period Bengtsson is looking at, the Modern project opposed to the medieval myths and tradition as well as the dominance of the church. The modernity started in the 17th century. In the decades of 1960s and 70s the mind-set started to change.
Jean-François Lyotard saw the postmodern era as a historical/cultural ' condition ' that was based on dissolution of master narratives or meta-narratives, a crisis in ideology when ideology no longer seems transparent (see The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge)
Castell (1999, p 355) who has analysed the Information Age in three books, concludes in his second volume, The Power of Identity, that ' we are witnessing the emergence of a world exclusively made of markets, networks, individuals, and strategic organisations, apparently governed by patterns of ' rational expectations ' (the new, influential economic theory) except when these 'rational individuals' suddenly shoot their neighbour, rape a little girl, or spread nerve gas in the subway. No need for identities in this world: basic instincts, power drives, self-centered strategic calculations ' .
The conclusion of this part of my paper shows that the overall changes in society and the development of different parts of the postmodern values and habits cannot be ignored when focusing on steering system, the role of the school leader and the mandate in using the autonomy versus the culture of control. The changes in society have had a great influence in education and have adjusted the interpretation of the role of teachers, school leaders, administration and politicians.
Leading by learning can be placed as a postmodern strategy that can be beneficial for improvement in education - if the school culture corresponds to the postmodern mind-set. Our students are living in, and using, the postmodern facilities and values. Almost one-third of the teachers have their teacher training nearly forty years ago, at the very start of the rejection of the modern thoughts of realism, and are transmitting facts that today can be questioned. Our students need help to see patterns in their lives, reflecting what is going on and putting different trends and information into a meaningful, understandable and handy wholeness. The teacher used to be a waiter, transmitting knowledge to the students. Today, she has to act as a swimming teacher in the information stream.
The Swedish curriculum from 1980 was influenced by Dewey and Progressivism and can be placed in the postmodern mind-set. The curriculum from 1994, however, shows much of a return to the Modern mind-set. The effects of New Public Management also show much of the Modern mind-set. The Organisational Learning, on the other hand, can be placed in the postmodern perspective.
Deal and Peterson (1998) define school culture as:
' everything that ' s goes on in the schools: how staff dress, what they talk about, their willingness to change, the practice of instruction and the emphasis given student and faculty learning…Culture is the underground stream of norms, values, beliefs, traditions and rituals that has built up over time as people work together, solve problems and confront challenges ' . (Deal & Peterson, 1998, p 28)
Is it possible to locate the school culture in a modern or postmodern mind-set? If the students act with a postmodern mind-set and the school culture are dominated by a modern mind-set, what will happen? Is it in general so that every student either has a modern mind-set or a postmodern? Can postmodern strategies be beneficial for every student or do different students need different mind-sets and learning strategies?
By using the model of analysis I have started a pre-research program that will continue during 2005. The aim is to describe the changes in teachers ' thinking over time by using a theoretic model, The Triple Network Model (Cardell, 2001). The expected outcome of the research will help school leaders to build a school culture in a postmodern mind-set.
The overall goal of this research project is to contribute to organisational learning and to strengthen the professionalisation of teachers and school leaders.
A network of needs can both describe the needs of the student and the needs in the curriculum. In the modern mind-set, the network of needs was performed by the teachers who knew what the students needed from a top-down perspective. On the other hand, if you always rely on students needs, it sometimes ends up in a complete student-based education.
On the other hand, a network of causes may describe why things happened and the root of the process, a leading factor. Why is it that one-fifth of the student don't get enough marks to be able to enter the upper secondary school system? What leading factors and strategies have created this result?
The network of strategies consists of one or several leading factors building a system of educational activities, an educational bowl. The dynamic of the bowl is supposed to end up in an attractor- it may be a thought, an action or a result attractor. A strategy is an imagined casual chain and the various links in this chain forms a strategic chain (Cardell, 2001).
Teachers create systems of educational activities. As the curriculum is stressed on stimulation and on promoting learning, the teacher need to find proper prerequisites for the student that will influence the student's learning to accomplish her expected outcomes.
If transmitting knowledge is a leading factor, how would the educational bowl look and what ideas would lead to what attractor or outcome? What is the comparison if the educational bowl starts from promoting learning?
Conversely, by using a network of causes, how would it help to examine why certain students come to school but don't attend classes?
By producing strategic chains from the leading factors in the modern mind-set and describing the expected outcomes and comparing them with the same process with the factors in the postmodern mind-set, it will be interesting to examine the different outcomes or attractors.
The differences will emerge reflections among the teachers and school leaders and have an impact on the school culture.
When teachers use this method to plan their work, the real benefit will be to the students ' work. They plan, act and think in a postmodern mind-set. With the method of The Triple Network Model used, the entrepreneurial thinking will be common and expand the learning both in the schools and on other learning arenas.
Furthermore, when teachers use this system of different chains in nets, it is possible for students to learn how to use the same technique in their learning much faster than their teachers.
If the process using the TNM as means to change school culture turns out to be continuous organisational learning, there will be tension between school leaders and teachers, on one hand, and the New Public Management on the other. As NPM in that situation can be interpreted as an obstacle (Goliath) to improvement, the focus will be put on facing the present outcomes of the students and the symptoms of malfunction in a network of causes.
Looking upon the symptoms and general measures in a school-based Turn Around, there is a great need of penetrating the task for the school in a historical, present, as well as a future perspective. To interpret the national task, describe the idea of activity and formulate the strategies and how to evaluate the fulfilling of the goals are a good start. I find the New Public Management tends to leading for results by means of measures from a modern mind-set.
By examining school culture in a modern and postmodern mind-set, I find ways that school leaders and teachers can face the symptoms in the New Public Management and use the general measures to develop Organisational Learning.
The economic outcomes in many municipalities show a decrease of money. A large proportion of teachers will retire in this decade and applications for teacher training seem to be lower than expected. What will happen if the municipalities cannot afford to replace retiring teachers with new teachers? But even if so, will schools be a competitive work place?
Can the New Public Management produce scenarios that will meet the challenges? Or is it more accurate to think that an Organisational Learning and school leaders who lead the innovative learning process, can find solutions for learning in a life long process in the postmodern Society.
In the postmodern school, why do we organise education according to a Tayloristic manner, with a leading organisation emanating from Fredrik the Great in Preussen, in a school year based on the agricultural society, with the school day split in lessons emerging from a decision from the pope in the thirteenth century and from a paradigm developed by Protagoras a pupil to Socrates?
Mr Bo Sundstrom works for The Future School, a consultancy firm in Sweden. Until 1999 he was a principal in Gavle, Sweden. He is currently undertaking research studies at the University of Gavle.
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