Organisational learning approaches to school leadership and management: teachers' values and perceptions of practice

Abstract

In this article, we report results of a survey of 1,397 teachers in 26 primary and 17 secondary schools in England as part of the Learning How to Learn project. We consider how school self-evaluation can be understood within an organisational learning frame. Factor analysis of teachers' responses helped us identify 4 dimensions of organisational learning approaches to school leadership and management. Comparisons were made between teachers' perceptions of school leadership and management practices and the values they placed on those practices. We discuss the usefulness of analysing values-practice gaps for furthering understanding of organisational learning approaches to school leadership and management. Analysis of gaps between teachers' values and practices reveals significant inconsistencies between perceptions of current practices and values across a broad spectrum of school leadership and management practices. Perceptions of practice were significantly behind the values that teachers place on each of the 4 dimensions of practice.

Keywords:

• organisational learning
• school self-evaluation
• learning how to learn

Notes

1. The Project (ref: L139 25 1020) is directed by Mary James (University of Cambridge until December 2004, then University of London Institute of Education) and co-directed by Robert McCormick (Open University) and Bethan Marshall (King's College London). Other members of the research team are Patrick Carmichael, John MacBeath, David Pedder, Richard Procter, and Sue Swaffield (University of Cambridge), Paul Black and Joanna Swann (King's College London), Leslie Honour (University of Reading), and Alison Fox (Open University). Past members of the team are Geoff Southworth, University of Reading (until March 2002), Colin Conner and David Frost, University of Cambridge (until April 2003 and April 2004, respectively) and Dylan Wiliam, King's College London (until August 2003). Further details are available at http://www.learntolearn.ac.uk.