Dutch primary schools and the concept of the learning organization

Sjoerd Karsten: Sjoerd Karsten is Associate Professor at the SCO-Kohnstamm Institute, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Eva Voncken: Eva Voncken is at the SCO-Kohnstamm Institute, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Marjon Voorthuis: Marjon Voorthuis is at the SCO-Kohnstamm Institute, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Introduction

Since the 1990s the concept of the learning organization has become a household term in business journals and in management courses. Only recently schools have started to use the concept in order to analyze and improve their performance. The earliest reference to the term "learning organization" in the Dutch education literature is probably from Blom (1990) who then asked whether the concept of the learning organization is relevant for schools. The author was asking this question in the context of the education policy of deregulation and increased autonomy for schools, initiated in the mid-eighties in The Netherlands and many other countries in the world (Whitty et al., 1998; Karsten, 1999). The thread of her argument was that the new tasks facing autonomous schools would place demands on their learning capacity. As others (Leithwood et al., 1998, p. 243) put it later, "[t]he persistence of calls for school reforms, along with the ambitious yet uncertain nature of that reform, has prompted growing support for the importance of organizational learning in schools."

A second incentive to focus attention on the learning organization in education was provided by a number of innovation specialists, such as Fullan (1993), Louis (1994) and Vandenberghe (1993). For example, Fullan (1993) talks about the need for schools to change from bureaucratic organizations to blossoming "learning communities". School staff need to make greater efforts to cooperate and support each other in order finally to get free of the "Balkanized" culture of isolated teachers. Fullan's book is a good illustration of the change in ideas about innovation, from simple, optimistic views about the possibility of change to more realistic views. Carefully planned projects for change, imposed from above, have had disappointing results. People are increasingly coming round to the view that, instead of such projects, the schools themselves must bring about change, with each member of the team being an agent of change.

Finally, an important, rather more official, incentive emanated from the quality care movement. According to Senge (1990),...