EMERGING PATTERNS FROM THE DATA
6.9 Conceptions of schools as learning organisations
Different principals' utterances regarding their understanding of the idea of schools as 'learning organisation' are broadly similar. For example one said: "I regard the school as the centre for learning and development" and another one explained: "schools should ideally be multi-purpose resource centers for the community. Not that schools should cater for all the needs of the community in practice, but that they should provide information about everything, including careers". The depth and extent of the implications of the concept 'learning organisation' differ from one principal to the next. For example two principals who shared similar management style (open-participatory) had personal visions of a school that were connected with its community. One of them sold his vision to his colleagues; he together with the staff developed a strategic plan that would ensure that the school was responsive to the needs of the community, and that the curriculum was diverse to cater for diverse needs of individual learners. His success in creating a sense of 'school ownership' by the community is an envy of his colleagues, and his achievement could be attributed to marrying personal and others' visions as Senge (1990: 352) puts it:
In a learning organisation, leaders may start by pursuing their own vision, but as they learn to listen carefully to others' vision they begin to see their own personal vision as part of something bigger
The concept of self-renewal (Brandt, 1998; Senge cited in O'Neal, 1995) is central to a learning organisation, and flourishes where the organisational set-up is flat, open, and characterised by boundary crossing, excellence, continuous learning; where information systems provide fast, public feedback on the performance of the organisation as a whole (Argyris and Schon, 1996). This state of affairs can be better facilitated where principals "see their jobs as creating an
environment where educators can continually learn" (Senge cited in O'Neal, 1995).
The other principal, who regarded a learning organisation as a 'multi-purpose resource centre for the community', has tried, with minimal success, to draw the community to the school; established a computer centre that will, when completed, help train youth in computer skills locally; and has made the school a 'Home to the homeless and HIV/AIDS affected children' within the school through various initiatives, to deal with issues of HIV/AIDS. Although he has not made any formal strategic plan for drawing the community towards the school, he has undoubtedly shifted the boundaries regarding the conception of and role of the school in these African communities. For example, schools traditionally, have been known to be places where formal lessons are delivered, children play during break time, and return home. Taking their welfare at heart, feeding those without parents, helping to search for parents where they have abandoned their children, etc, are emerging roles that the school has assumed.
Principals such as these two are trying hard to ensure that management styles they use are consistent with new realities and that their schools adapt and respond to challenges proffered by a changed environment. Learning should not, according to these principals, be restricted to classroom activities only, but should go beyond. The effect has been that the whole image and character of their schools have been transformed; what happens inside the schools is connected with and understood by the outside as well. When matric results go down, partly because of shift in focus from curriculum delivery, the school reflected on its performance and adjusted its plans and redirected focus. Such is an indication that this school is learning from its own practices and mistakes.
There are, however, other types of principals in the Sea Lake district whose leadership and management styles make opportunities for 'organisational learning' and change to be limited. Often these are principals who display
dictatorial tendencies, whereby views and inputs from the teaching staff are stifled, totally ignored or regarded as a threat to the position of a principal, and undermine the prospects of the school growing. Development for such principals is about the school becoming better at maintaining order at all times, educators and learners being punctual for lessons, and the school maintaining 100 percent pass rates in matric, with no time given to sports because sports waste teaching and learning time. Transparency (in terms of both outsiders and insiders being able to see the insides of the school) becomes crucial, and challenges principals to think deeply about learning atmosphere, and the extent to which school development can occur. There were instances whereby the principal maintained,
"development should be a process, and should unfold gradually", but in applying such a stance, the principal mostly preserves and secures his own position against change; no consultations with stakeholders within and outside the school are done.
Closed and authoritative principals, contrary to their open-participatory counterparts, acknowledge that learning is not the individual school's domain alone, but that it should involve the society. That position is central to social learning theory (Wenger, 1998). Outcries about the parents' lack of supportive efforts in this regard are testimony to these principals' beliefs in the role parents could be playing. One of the reasons for parents' failing to give support on curriculum issues is their lack of capacity and lack of understanding of the | implications of non-involvement in school affairs, especially curriculum issues.
The irony here is that little attempts have been made by the same principals to educate parents about this. Immediate results have been that their school development planning is dislocated from their communities, and the dislocation undermines the whole notion of school ownership by community, just as it undermines partnerships between schools and community on one hand and schools and government on the other. *.
Principals' leadership and management styles, their insights about the government's transformation agenda and the philosophies behind various pieces of legislation, and their conceptions of their roles in the scheme of things entwined, and reflected on the extent to which the environment around the school was interpreted as hostile, benign or fertile. For example, one principal who is conservative regarded devolution as removing powers principals enjoyed before 1994, because power is now shared among different stakeholders, whereas, another one viewed devolution as empowering principals, inviting them to be creative, innovative in implementing government policies, and exploit local conditions in policy application. To use Argyris and Schon (1978) and Senge's (1990 and 1995) conceptions of single loop-double loop learning and 'transactional/transformational learning' for instance, authoritative-participatory and closed-participatory principals in the Sea Lake district seemed to be at the first levels of development where their focus was on maintenance, single-loop learning and transactional learning - improving curriculum delivery more than fundamental transformation. There is no doubt that theories of school development, transformation and strategic management, together with changed structures, devolution and strategic planning (for instance) provide a practical guide that can help schools cope with multiple change, and "become better learning organisations" (Preedy, Glatterand Levacic, 1997: 219).