In education today, there is a growing sense of urgency to build the capacity of
educators, parents, and community members to work together to solve the complex issues
facing schools. The central purpose of this study was to explore how one elementary school
site council learned and adopted a set of tools to improve its patterns of communication and
ability to work as a team. The communication and inquiry tools introduced to this site
council were drawn from learning organization theory and organizations which are seeking
to become learning organizations.
A qualitative case study method was used in this research. The analysis focused on
(a) how the communication and inquiry tools were used, (b) what results the
communication and inquiry tools produced, and (c) the characteristics of the
communication and inquiry tools.
Findings indicate that the tools increased the site council members' individual and
collective capacity to listen, engage, trust, and work effectively with each other. These
aptitudes were developed through the use of the tools in six areas: (a) becoming aware of
one's own thinking, (b) making one's thinking visible and transparent to others, (c)
understanding the thinking of others, (d) seeing one's interactions from a systems
perspective, (e) engaging in collaborative decision-making, and (1) capturing and
documenting learning. These aptitudes and activities increased the members' awareness in
three capacity building dimensions: awareness of self, awareness of others, and awareness
of the system.
The communication and inquiry tools exhibited the following operational
characteristics: (a) they invite mindfulness and focus; (b) their potential comes from their
application and the emerging skills of the users; (c) initial competence in their use can be
gained from instruction, experimentation, ongoing practice, and reflection; (d) and they can
be used to harness collective intelligence.
The findings may have implications for schools and universities that seek to build
the capacity for educators, parents, and community members to engage in systemic school
reform initiatives. / Graduation date: 1999
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/33545 |
| Date | 04 December 1998 |
| Creators | Fierstein, Micah |
| Contributors | Engel, Joanne B. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0016 seconds