Organisational Theory

I do view my school as an organisation but a special organisation. It contains structure - in Cath. Ed. there is the Bishop, Director, school board and Principal that form the top structure of a school. The school's mission statement and motto lend it to its purpose and underpins the educational philosophy. There are clients that are there to 'get' something from us - the students intrinsically and the community (including families), workplace extrinsically. They all have an interest in the school organisation. Each person's job is defined and outlined for requirements and there are checks in place to ensure this is happening. There are measurable outputs - e.g. syllabus/work program documents, unit plans, school policies and so forth, this is done through various connections within the organisation some whole school some are selective participants meaning collaboration and power and cultural aspects are at work. There are reviews in place and an action plan to implement what is lacking/changing/refining. Financial issues are there from year to year and managed from the top. I found myself agreeing with Bennett's view of school effectiveness and improvment through structure, power and culture (2001).

As stated in the first line, schools are a special sort of organisation and even stated in Bennett (2001) and Beare (1990) adaptations to the organisational theory needs or does occur for the principles to work effectively in a school. One aspect of this is that we are working with a hostile participant in the student, they are made to be there and if you are made to do anything quite often this starts a negative feeling. I liked the idea that was mentioned in the forums of everyone thinks they know a school and how it works or should work because they have all been there. But there is little awareness of how the school changes in response to new concepts/educational theories/syllabus materials. I think the idea of people making the policies being out of date applies to the Government especially, looking to our Ministers of Education there are few and far between that have education degrees in any area and yet they are making decisions for all our schools effectively. This needs to be reviewed - do people in organisations have to keep up to date with qualifications or courses?

Change is always occuring and often not at the school level - we are finding little consultation with the 'coal-face' of teaching as to the teaching and learning processes and the changes expected at various times. I also liked how we aren't about teaching anymore we have so many other facets to include that the teaching often gets left behind, lets teach about bullying, about weight and self-esteem, about values. Where is the teaching for academic and they wonder why students' literacy and numeracy is dropping - look at how much time is actually spent teaching these days and see. So I think it should be the case that schools are seen as a different organisation we are dealing with a multi-faceted area that is juggling a bombardment of extras.

I do understand that some organisations are like this in that they have their shareholders, their clients who don't always want help or the help the organisation can provide but schools are different.

Page's Paper

I found Page's (1999) paper very enlightening,  I love the way they broke down the way to adopt a collaborative approach at a school. I could actually see myself implementing some of these applications at my schools, again the reinforcement of administrators being critical to the success of it was highlighted but I also liked how they indicated that teachers were critical to implement it. I found this a key aspect about teachers - in my schools if the teacher is not interested in collaborating then it doesn't happen. I even have it where a teacher is interested but as I am only there one day a week it makes it hard to set aside time - even our own. But back to Page (1999), the first Phase of "Establishing Systems and Structures" (p. 208) where it is important to identify the strengths and weakenesses of your own area then the other aspects of school and it identify the 'key' people. Then to look at what you have versus what you want it to be and define your role to the staff in a number of ways. The concept of the plan and using topic sheets was something that I could utilise in my schools, I had started it in a very informal way through email and mentioning it to staff at meetings but to actually have a sheet that identifies the topics for the term in the different key learning areas that all teachers fill in and then indicate if they want planning time for cooperative learning I thought was a great way to start. It also added to records to keep for referring to.

I also thought the communication aspect was vital in my position of only being very part time in my schools, it is something I am trying to improve upon and it was great seeing how important it is in establishing this collaborative plan. But the best thing I liked was the concept of starting small - it was something that most other papers didn't recognise (whether they thought it was implied or not needed due to a whole school approach) as in my position I can only work with one teacher in this detail and for the time required to begin with so to actually have a paper point this out and say it is where to start and not try to change everything at once was great.

This paper is something I can see my future plans revolving around, I am looking forward to outlining a plan using the different phases and components of the phases for my schools. Also to be discussing this with my principals - it gives me somewhere to start specifically. I feel more positive about implementing a collaborative approach now than I have with previous papers.