The relationship between school culture and teachers' adoption of new practices: A learning organization perspective

In education today, there is a growing sense of urgency to explain why schools and educators seem so limited in their ability to change and adapt in response to the complex issues they face. In recent years school capacity for change is being examined from the perspective of organizational culture and the stability and comfort it provides in the face of external anxiety-producing events. Shared cultural assumptions lead to common patterns of perception and behaviour and the tendency to apply old solutions to new problems. Organizational change theorists argue that workplace cultures must be developed that encourage people to learn together as a community in ways that support risk taking and behavioural change and some have suggested that learning organization theory provides a model of such a culture. Schools can be characterized as learning organizations to the extent that they practice the five disciplines of personal mastery, mental models, team learning, shared vision and systems thinking.; The focus of this exploratory research is the investigation of the relationship between schools' development as learning organizations and teachers' adoption of a new practice. A quantitative methodology was used to survey 980 educators from 39 schools. Teacher perceptions of their schools as learning organizations was assessed with the Learning Organization Inventory (LOI), an instrument with established validity and reliability. The change in practice to be studied was the adoption of criterion-referenced assessment and a self-reporting survey instrument (The C-R Survey) was developed to assess teachers' knowledge about and implementation of this strategy.; The study found that schools differed significantly in their development as learning organizations as measured by the LOI. Middle and full secondary schools were viewed more like learning organizations than junior or senior secondary schools and school districts varied significantly with regard to the LOI ratings of their schools. A significant positive relationship was found to exist between teachers' perceptions of their schools as learning organizations and teachers' adoption of criterion-referenced assessment. A small but significant positive relationship was also found between the strength or consistency of a school's culture and teachers' adoption of the new assessment strategy. The study concludes that learning organization theory may have important implications for schools and school systems seeking to build capacity for reform initiatives. Recommendations for future qualitative research, for systemic changes in practice and for Ministry of Education policy are offered.