This article examines how schools can avoid barriers to systems thinking in relation to improving student achievement. It then illustrates common errors associated with non-systems thinking and recommends solutions. Educators who understand that schools are complex interdependent social systems can move their organizations forward. Unfortunately,…

Organizational learning, along with a framework for diversity, is an effective approach for campuses seeking sustained institutional change with regard to diversity. (Contains 2 figures.)

An English teacher describes his use of advocacy project for writing instruction and its ironies in the classroom. He asserts that such projects meet the instructor's educational aims while helping students recognize their place in a democratic society with the ability to influence institutional change.

In exploring intricate relationships among environmental factors, internal school conditions and contextual variables that facilitate organisational learning, 90% of staff in six Western Australian secondary schools provided data for this exploratory study. Findings from the study not only shed light on the decade-old debate about the basic…

In 1996 Hubert Saint-Onge and Smith published an article ("The evolutionary organization: avoiding a Titanic fate", in The Learning Organization, Vol. 3 No. 4), based on their experience at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). It was established at CIBC that change could be successfully facilitated through blended application…

A decision to don the chaos lens, adopt dialogue as its primary mode of communication, and to recognize the power of the organizational mind has fundamentally and irreversibly changed the way a Dutch capital-equipment manufacturer operates in its rapidly complexifying global marketplace. Beginning in September 1999, the focus of an ever widening…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to examine the impact on organizational performance of the application of management and human resource practices, and to attempt to outline key elements and assess development of the learning organization (LO) concept in Jordan. Design/methodology/approach: The tool described in this article assesses…

In this article, the author describes how Change magazine finds new editorial home after the demise of the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE). The demise of the AAHE is an incalculable loss to higher education. But the Change transition team approached the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching about the possibility of…

This inductive, qualitative study investigates how learning took place among nine experienced engineers in an industrial setting after a major reorganization. A thematic analysis of the transcripts revealed that the learning was informal and that it fell into three distinct categories: learning new workflows, learning about the chemical process,…

Purpose: The focus of this work is on the theories that explicate the possibilities of collaboration from the perspective of the participants. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on the literature and the author's own experiences and knowledge. Findings: Finds that successful change is characterized by changes in people: in the way…

This article reports early findings from research commissioned by Staffordshire Local Authority that examines workforce remodelling in schools. As Collarbone (2004) states, workforce remodelling is at the heart of the government's change agenda in maintained schools. It is presented as a tool that will enable schools to think both creatively and…

Over the last quarter century, the American high school, like the larger educational industry in which it is embedded, has been subjected to a good deal of critical analysis. Using a longer lens provided by historical research on the development and growth of the American high school as well as an especially robust theory of organizational change…

Conflict is a necessary part of any higher education environment. In fact, conflict and differences of opinion are what fuel debate and scholarship and often lead to innovative ideas and process improvements within higher education. However, conflicts that go unresolved can harm campus culture and lead to a dysfunctional team and an undesirable…

We gain insight into the emerging character of the entrepreneurial university by pursuing empirical answers to two questions: How are such universities initially formed? And how do they sustain themselves? My 1998 book, "Creating Entrepreneurial Universities," used European cases to conceptualize five "pathways of transformation." My 2004 book,…

In "The Transformation of Great American School Districts", William Lowe Boyd, Charles Taylor Kerchner, and Mark Blyth argue that urban education reform can best be understood as a long process of institutional change, rather than as a series of failed projects. They examine the core assumptions that underlay the Progressive Era model of…