I wanted to briefly comment on this sentence:
>Learning (and living) systems learn from their feedback and adapt
>to survive and remain healthy. What can schools learn from their various
>sources of feedback to do the same?
I think schools could do a lot IF they had mechanisms in place that
provided a means for what is learned to be fed back into the system. I
think Deal and Kennedy's concept of a process culture applies absolutely
to schools: they are no-feedback, no-risk cultures. My experience is in
higher ed, community colleges to be exact, and as I visit campuses either
as a member of an accreditation team or as I do research, I find that in
almost every case, colleges have a wealth of data and information but no
truly systematic way of analyzing it and incorporating the outcomes of
that analysis into their operations in such a way that they can track the
outcomes and continue to make improvements. They are highly complex
organizations, very stratified, seldom put sufficient resources into
research and planning, and experience a high rate of administrative
turn-over, all of which makes organizational learning very, very
difficult, though not impossible. There are a handful of institutions,
such as Alverno, that have a pretty decent handle on it, but for the
average public college or university, feedback is the weak link. Schools
put their resources into instruction of students first, i.e., faculty,
staff, equipment, and facilities. In itself, that is not a bad thing.
However, the kind of institutional research and planning that would
support meaningful and long-term change and continuous improvement is
seldom perceived to be as critical a component of the instructional
process as the other things I mentioned.
--Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>