KnowledgeinAction

Change and Innovation in Educational Institutions:

DEVELOPING ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING CAPACITY Schools Ricardo Villanueva Valverde1 institutions are

Knowledge management for innovation in education

support educational institutions are able to stimulate and support student participation structures within the decision-making

process, introduce major innovation into the

curriculum design to respond to emerging the role of teachers to experience of other promote reflection, programmes, and

faced with strong obstacles to make learning contents, methodologies and management systems context. Children, adolescents and young responsive to

and educational

social and cultural issues, make changes in review study programmes, learn from the incorporate feedback to classroom work.

social-cultural

people create and re-create socialization and

make an impresive use of information and communication technology that yields new interpersonal skills. They have a leading role in transformation of everyday language and appear to have been overtaken by the speed of change in evolving contexts. cultural breakdown. Educational institutions

Then, the central question is at what point a school decides that a particular change is necessary? behind innovation in educational institution management? What are the driving forces

MANAGING COMPLEXITY IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS When people adquire new experiences,

Changes in socialization, cultural patterns and productive systems have compelling supposed to place knowledge and learning at demands to educational institutions that are its very core business. A number of factors explain the stagnation of schools vis--vis the mounting demands from the society. The inertia management of bureaucracy, paradigm obsolescence of in public of

especially those involving new insights that instinctively try to understand and control Furthermore, procedures and rules

either oppose or refute previous notions, what happens. It is a challenge to stability.

meant to maintain stability. However the individual as well as institutions are resilient ignite adaptation and to these challenges. They are necessary to improvement. Cognitive dissonance is one of comes from psychology. It is a key to permanent state of curiosity

are

administration,

professional development and deteriorated

inadequacy

teaching

continuous

human resource policies all come together to huge gap between educational institutions and countries. However, society trends in Latin American

the fundamental concepts in education. It understand why human beings are in a

undertake changes, some are modest some are bold. For instance, with minor external

institutions

can

and

actually

Indeed, we have lost sight that education organizations actually have basic learning needs, being the most fundamental the one to learn how to recognise the surrounding children and adolescents.

Excerpt of paper published in the Global Development Network Knowledge Base (November 2010).

reality and grasp the changing needs of

A STATIC SYSTEM, A STAGNANT SCHOOL Under normal conditions a system that is in contact with the environment will have a environment. adjustment This implies a continuous dynamic relationship with the actors of the of processes. Management

Schn (1983) pioneered the analysis of factors involved in professional effectiveness. He in collaboration with Argyris (1996) explored the dynamics and interpersonal skills organization. They show a preeminence of needed to develop a

learning

the linkage between strategy feedback and selfreflection as the fundamental basis for organizational learning, the core of change.

sciences are aware of this indispensable openess and have built a body of theory on change boldly management in organizations. of

Argyris has been one of the authors who has attitudes and personal predisposition as factors that play an important some role emphasized the importance

This linkage can be summarized in the figure below.

learning and adaptation of organizations. Although analysts can think that there are huge differences organizations and productive organizations, between even today sectoralized

in

Fig. 1. Model of Learning-feedback applied to education institutions

Learning attainments design Classroom & community-based strategies

educational

outcomes

in essence, the similarities are obvious: both specific and measurable objectives. The most

are social organizations oriented towards insightful analysts argue that the purpose of
Self-evaluation and commitment-building system

school is to organize dynamic, democratic

and student centered processes. This is essentially true. Nevertheless, anyone who actors in a typical classroom in Peru, Bolivia, and most Latin American countries find that change and creativity in consistently look into relationships between

Continuous reflection on every day practice is central in this model of institutional performance effectiveness. This self-

the basic barriers and obstacles that hinder organizations are also present in schools. In our present discussion we mean innovationoriented change as a deliberate effort of needs of participants of the learning productive

evaluating endeavour is strongly connected and techniques for inmediate future action. Therefore, reflection and evaluation is part of

to spaces for elaboration of strategies, tools

organizations to recognize the changing processes, their environment and to respond effectively. In

a participatory reflective action framing. organizational planning in conventional

Action framing implies much more that terms of goal setting and resource allocation, it involves the individual and group selfassessment on performance as well as the barriers towards organizational

included, self sustained learning processes are improvement capacity. Innovation is a result across institutional settings. essential to develop performance

result-oriented

organizations,

schools

collective mindset necessary to overcome the In simple terms, the key for innovation, not simply operational effectiveness, would be a comprehensive organizational feedback.

change.

of carefully-designed self-reflecting practice

Knowledge

management

systems

in

model in Australia and Chile.

education networks
Educational learning institutions are perform better that

exhibit good practices at classroom level tend to be supported by planning and management systems that are centred on the

Schools that

within networks where good practice and teachers, lecturers, researchers, managers all together share a community of practice. Networks where benchmarking tools exchanged, so

key question of how to support effective learning. In schools with good performance and open to innovation management

decisions are made with a primary focus on of this enabling management environment adaptation and continuous improvement. In the model of knowledge

facilitating learning processes. The existence seems to be the key to fostering strategic

and

adaptation of instructional strategies and be the leading model for new educational systems responsibility for their performances and are where institutions

management toolkits are fostered seem to take

supporting institutional learning we propose a number of core skills are part of the capacity development equation: -

system

sensitive to the needs and interests of students. Finnish education model embraces these principles: the learning environment

support the pupils growth and learning. It must be physically, psychologically, and socially safe. The objective is to increase students curiosity and motivation to learn, and direction, to promote and creativity their activeness, by offering self-

academic quality self assessment based on performance indicators both on instructional and interpersonal aspects.

Developing and monitoring teaching/

problems in instructional/ management using visualization diagrams.

To design good questions profiling

interesting challenges (OECD, 2009).

processes and to formulate hypothesis Intensive use of internet and TICs to

Learning environment must guide students their own actions as a key for better

in setting their own objectives and evaluating outcomes. For this to be done a institutional mechanisms for management

foster interaction between teachers to where questions & answers,

team up in communities of practice studies, projects and good practice are shared. case

climate oriented to collaborative work and instructional feedback need be available for every member of the educational community: knowledge design lesson study-oriented projects, classroom prototypes, classroom inventories gathering

and

To stablish high performance goals and motivate assess academic community to collaboratively objectives. progress towards these members of the school/

essays,

projects can be built at school as well as network levels to be disseminated and used individual self training sessions. Implementation support of solid

research

- To motivate and provide permanent

feedback to the process of institutional innovation raises. change to overcome uncertainty that

in quality improvement working groups or

continuous reflection is also part of the equation. Research on the effective schools

procedures

that

management

incorporate

EstrategiasparaelDesarrolloHumano
Tel:(511)4722859 Email:ricardo.villanueva1@live.com