GOBIERNO AUTORITARIO Y DEL GOBIERNO DEMOCRATICO

Four major theories of organisational change are presented in Table 3 below for comparison (including AI) ‘because of their emergence within the field of education, possible adaptability to school systems, and potential to support organizational change’ (Evans et al, 2012, p.156). The comparison reveals that all models of effective organisational change in schools are likely to need the active involvement of staff as collaborative learners and a distributed style of leadership that facilitates and enables staff teams to take actions based on their own inquiries. Hay McBer (2000, cited in Rudman, 2013) discovered that authoritative styles of leadership can be helpful only in the short-term and that long-term success requires more active staff involvement, decision-making and experimentation.

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Table 3: Four major theories of organisational change (adapted from Evans et al, 2012)

Theories of organisational change Theory/model Strengths/Limitations Continuous Improvement model by Deming (2000)  Plan-do-study-act cycle  Based on effective use of data

 14 strategies, several directly relevant to education

 Promotes distributed leadership and collaborative self-directed inquiry, decries inspection and seeks to eliminate fear

 Involves all teachers as stakeholders with a shared vision and job-embedded professional development (for leaders too) based on self-identified problems

 Leaders need to be skilled at enabling teacher teams to take ownership of learning from data and provide resources/encouragement

 Likely to affect school ethos and culture

 Not readily feasible to involve pupils in data scrutiny or teacher development processes within the model

Organisational Learning by Argyris and Schön (1996)

 Organisational and individual learning linked  Single-loop learning: errors detected in system

and addressed; no change to core beliefs of organisation

 Double-loop learning: core

beliefs/values/policies of organisation

questioned and tested leading to new learning and shift of values

 Deutero-learning: leaders create structures for staff learning

 System-wide approach to growth and learning promoted  Needs good lines of communication and procedures for

engaging in inquiry

 Leaders need to be committed to learning process of staff and create structures for learning

 Likely to affect school ethos and culture

 No direct pupil involvement/actions explicitly identified within the model that could inform individual teacher learning, but potentially could create these

66 Learning Organisations by

Senge (2006)

 Personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning all interdependent and surrounded by systems thinking so that members are attuned to each of the components and can respond to an ever changing environment

 Needs vision as well as accurate view of current reality. Vision is co-created by staff teams, enhancing commitment

 Leaders support personal development of staff

 Leaders need to encourage challenges to status quo and continually enable comparison of vision with reality  Leaders need to model personal learning

 Need data and space for dialogue in collaborative inquiry and reflection about complex issues in holistic context  Needs ‘safe’ environment to explore and challenge

individual beliefs

 Likely to affect school ethos and culture

 Systems thinking enables better awareness of factors affecting pupil’s lives

 No direct pupil involvement or actions specified, although potentially could create new mechanisms within the model in order to include pupils

Appreciative Inquiry by Cooperider et al (2005)

 Inquiry into strengths of organisation using 4 D model of Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny

 Solution-focused rather than problem-solving. Tackles problems from position of strength  Involves all stakeholders

 Builds shared vision for future based on past successes

 Can be used iteratively over time

 Can be a shift in thinking for some staff  Commitment to action is high

 Needs facilitator to understand philosophy as well as process and leader may need training to do so

 Leader needs to allow stakeholders to decide on actions and contribute to school development plan

 Space for reflection not as explicit as space for action  Pupils can (or should) be directly involved as equal

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AI has been criticised for the lack of continuous reflection alongside actions (Dewar, 2011), which could act as a limitation unless it is built into the process (as in Conkright’s 2011 study). However, it is the only model in Table 3 that is explicitly strengths-based. It does not look for interventions to solve problems within the organisation; instead it uses a focus on existing positives and strengths to ‘look to innovations to create a better future design’ (Fiorentino, 2012). AI is also the only model that directly facilitates the involvement of children as key stakeholders in the change process.

A crucial aspect of AI is that it tries to get as much of the system working together as possible; aiming to be both ‘top-down and bottom-up’…In AI the ‘right people’ are a group that can critically reflect on practice together, consider new solutions, and initiate change (Fieldhouse and Onyett, 2012, p.364).

AI therefore needs particularly careful facilitation in order to manage the equal contribution of all participants working in authentic collaboration (Fieldhouse and Onyett, 2012, p.368), simultaneously conveying confidence in a collaborative process whilst holding back from controlling the outcome (Bellinger and Elliott, 2011, p.719).

Its unique significance has been in bringing social constructionist theory into widespread consideration in managerial practice, identifying the power of possibility centric versus problem centric change strategies, forcing an examination of the impact of positive emotions on change processes, and offering generativity, instead of problem-solving, as a way to address social and organizational issues (Bushe, 2013, p.5).

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