Over the past year I have been keeping a daily journal in which I am
recording the change process at our school. I record events under Senge's
five disciplines and what is obvious when I look back over the year is
that the key to organic, sustainable and real change in the notion of
systems thinking. It seems to me, that the geatest barrier in the change
process is that presented by the predominance of the role culture in
secondary schools. That is where people adopt the "I am my position'
mentality and look at everything from that point of view. There would
appear to be two ways that such a culture could be challenged. 1)
restructure- change the bureaucratic means of operating. Although this
sounds an obvious strategy I am not so sure it really changes people. It
is also dependant on change at a national level and such change, athough
possible in the next few years is not under the direct control of those of
us in schools. 2) reculture- which is the approach we are adopting at our
school. This is a slow and absorbing process but armed with an ethos of
'think big, act small' we are beginning to have some success.
I had a chat with a colleague from a neighbouring school on Thursday and
he was talking about the frustration he and other managers experience by
the sheer unpredicatbility of his day to day work. As he said " I can go
in to school in the morning with a plan and because of events never
actually get down to getting anything of that plan done". I have found
that by adopting systems thinking in my day to day work that I don't
experience the same level of frustration. By trying to see the
connections between everything I do in the day and every person I see
(student, teacher, parent) I find that I can make much more sense of my
daily practice, particularly when I try to link to teaching and learning.
Senge's five disciplines, athough not perfect, provide a useful conceptual
framework within which to see connections and to move things forward.
I like the idea of moving forwards on a wide front (where interconnections
are repeatedly reinforced) and change takes place slowly. This is in
direct contrast to the accepted practice of focusing on a specific area
and completing that before moving on the next area. I don't think that
this approach really takes account of reality and just falls into the
mechanistic, rationalist hegemony which predominates in most secondary
schools.
I would be interested to hear from anyone who is struggling with applying
Senge's disciplines--it is certainly not as easy as you might think--but
it is exciting and very enjoyable. I look forward to Monday mornings!!!
I will write in again with a note of how we are tackling personal mastery.
All the best
Don Ledingham
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>