Organizational Development (OD)
Norwegian researcher, Per Dalin (1936-2010), worked in the organizational development tradition.
These are his key ideas that were represented in the selected literature on managing planned educational change prior to 2001.
- Organizational development occurs through the interaction of five school organizational elements: values, goals, planning, practice and evaluation
- Future orientation is critical: Schools have survived as conserving institutions, but unless they became orientated to the future their students would be poorly equipped to take their place in the world. Need to think about 10 years in the future, but are not relevant unless they see 20-30 years ahead. A school that does not prepare students for the global paradigm shift is obsolete.
- The OD tradition needs to be adapted to school change because “…schools are much more complex organizations than most industrial enterprises…”
- A consistent approach to school reform directed to changing the culture is needed not an “… ad hoc and piecemeal efforts at change … What is needed is systemic change that involves a fundamental cultural change”.
- Schools need to "... become learning organizations in which all participants will have real roles to play in the improvement process”.
- External factors are necessary to "start and maintain the development process".
- Argue the importance of cooperation among schools, homes and local communities for the provision of “…adequate learning opportunities”.
- Include students in the change process because they are for whom “it is all being done for” and who “are the ones taking the real chance”.
- The change process starts with people, the way they “think and act, alone and together”.
References:
Dalin, P. (1993) Changing the School Culture, London: Cassell
Dalin, P., Ayono, T., Biazen, A., Dibaba, D., Jahan, M. Miles, M.B., & Rojas, C. (1994) How Schools Improve: An international report, London: Cassell
Dalin, P. & Rust, V.D. (1995) Towards Schooling for the Twenty-first Century, London: Cassell
Dalin, P. (1996) 'Can Schools Learn?' World Principal, Spring 1996 6-7 (Excerpted from the original article in the NASSP Bulletin, January 1996
Dalin, P. (1998) 'Developing the Twenty-First Century School: A Challenge for Reformers' in Hargreaves, A., Lieberman, A., Fullan, M. & Hopokins, D. (eds) International Handbook of Educational Change, Boston: Khuwer Academic Publishers, pp. 1059-1073