The SLO model for School: The Integrated Model of School as Learning
Introduction
A learning school or a school that learns will be more important for today or tomorrow. A successful and sustainable school is one that learns and adapts to its evolving environment. Since the world constantly changes, school needs to produce human capitals who are future ready for the uncertain and complex society. To do that, schools must continually learn to improve themselves. Moreover, the significant role of technology aggravates the complexity and uncertainty through its powerful interconnectedness. To prepare for the unknown changes to come, schools must have the ability to learn to become a learning school. Unlike other business organizations, school is a place for long-term learning services. In addition, schools produce human resources where knowledge, skills and attitudes are the intangible products from schools. How do schools learn? There are several models of learning organizations in business organizations where one-off service and goods are dealt with. The Fifth Discipline (Peter, 1990) was a popular model of learning organization to theorize five disciplines (Personal Mastery, Mental Model, Shared Vision, Team Learning and Systemic Thinking) to transform a traditional organization into a learning organization. Building on the gaps of the Fifth Discipline, the Dimension of Learning Organization Questionnaires (DLOQ) model was developed by Watkins & Marsick (1997) to provide a structured framework for both self-evaluating to be a learning organization and measuring the performances. Since the model came with question sets under each seven dimensions, it was plausibly researched in many context, including school contexts (Watkins & O’Neil, 2013; Sheng, Watkins, Yoon & Kim, 2021; King Smith, Watkins & Han, 2020; Akram, Watkins & Sajid, 2013). However, the DLOQ model did not elaborate on how the school learns, merely how to measure to become a learning organization. Kools & Stoll (2016) theorized the Integrated Model of School as Learning Organization (Integrated Model of SLO) on the foundation of DLOQ model (Watkins & Marsick, 1997). The model was argued to extend the DLOQ model that lacked how to implement each seven dimensions in school contexts (Kools & Stoll, 2016). In addition, Kools, Stoll, George, Steijn, Bekkers & Gouëdard (2020) developed a measuring tool for the Integrated Model of SLO which could be tested in schools. Although the latest model was developed for school and it was adopted by the UNICEF and OECD for school reforms, it may not draw much attention from many academics or scholars to study and test this model either in Europe (Lavrinoviča, Linde, Siliņa-Jasjukeviča & Lūsēna-Ezera, 2023) or in other countries. Having conducted major searches of this model on several research databases namely Google Scholar, Eric, EBSCO, European Journal of Education, OECD ILIBRARY, we hardly find the model being tested or studied. Since there is limited research of the model, understanding it and its effects and impediments when applying in schools is crucial for further research to generalize the models in a wider school context.
What is the Integrated Model of SLO?
The concept of school as a learning organization has drawn attention to many academic researchers and practitioners following the popular learning organization book by Peter Senge “The Fifth Discipline” (Peter, 1990). It was not until later the Fifth Discipline (FD) was proposed in school through a book “Schools That Learn” (Senge, Cambron-McCabe, Lucas, Smith & Dutton, 2012). Due to its debatable structures and generalization into different cultures (Babak Alavi& McCormick, 2004; Caldwell, 2012), the FD was not overwhelmingly tested in schools. Several researchers have tried their own propositions to conceptualize school as a Professional Learning Community (Moore, 2009; Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2006), a Professional Development School (Harris, & van Tassell, 2005), School Success Profile-Learning Organization (Bowen, Ware, Rose & Powers, 2007), Dimension of Learning Organization Questionnaire (Watkins & Marsick, 1997) and Integrative Model of School as Learning Organization ( Kools & Stoll, 2016). The conceptual models of school as learning organization (SLO) vary by perspectives of prominent researchers who see the school in different angles. Notably, the Dimension of Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) theorized on the foundation of the Fifth Discipline and other organizational learning models which could address the challenge of clarity in practice. Although the DLOQ mode was well-researched in school contexts (Sheng, Watkins, Yoon & Kim, 2021; King Smith, Watkins & Han, 2020; Akram, Watkins & Sajid, 2013). However, the DLOQ model was argued to lack content of each dimension which caused confusion in implementing the seven dimensions (Kools, Stoll, George, Steijn, Bekkers & Gouëdard, 2020). Theorizing on the DLOQ model (Watkins & Marsick, 1997), Kools & Stoll (2016) proposed the Integrative Model of School as Learning Organization (Integrative Model of SLO) to provide clarity of content in each dimension and to contextualize the concept of learning organization in school setting.
The Integrated Model of SLO
The crucial part of this model is the seven dimensions of actions to transform the school into a learning organization.
Dimension - Developing a shared vision centered on the learning of all students
This dimension argues to build a vision where students, staff, parents, teachers and school leaders participate in the process and converge their mental model, attitude and behavior to the one vision of student’s learning. It is quite obvious that learning vision is paramount for the school as a direction where everyone is to follow and achieve it. Shared vision about student’s learning should be a distant but measurable dream where multiple stakeholders in schools need to agree on the common learning outcome of the students. Shared vision is hardly formulated due to the diversity of multiple stakeholders involved. Parents and students may have limited ability to visualize but argue to be a short-term vision. School leaders and teachers are professionals in the field and they are better at conceptualizing the learning vision. Therefore, having a shared vision is good but it is practically hard to formulate and consent. As stated in the model, Stoll & Kools (2016) argued the vision for learning to address quality and equity of student’s learning. Quality learning outcomes are raised by the PISA test where students will take reading, math and science subjects. However, it is also more considerate to add international standard tests like Cambridge international assessment in multiple subjects.
Dimension - Promoting and supporting continuous professional learning of all staff
This dimension has two important parts, promoting and supporting the continuous professional learning of all staff. As seen in the element of this dimension, an induction program needs to set up and proper time, resources must be allocated to enable professional learning to happen. Time constraint is one of the biggest challenges for teachers to learn. Without proper time allocation for teachers, there will result in frustration and pressure for learning and development. From the Self Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985), autonomous motivation will arouse intrinsic interest at work. If teachers are pressured to race against the time to learn, they are extrinsically motivated to learn and they will quit when no pressure or enforcement from the superior. The model raised a professional life cycle with three components from induction to mentoring and to continuous professional development. The supporting part of professional learning is the most salient in maintaining the quality of professional learning. Therefore, Kools & Stoll (2016) argued to change a term of professional development to professional learning. Although the switching term impacts on the professional learning concept and practice, not many schools may be ready for the new term of professional learning. Professional learning implies the learning not only for when development is needed but a constant self-learning for improvement to team and organizational learning. The key tenet of learning school is a professional learning where all staff converge their thinking to learning. Otherwise, school cannot transform from professional development to professional learning. In this model, the professional learning can start from induction & mentoring to feedback for reflection and to embedment of the professional learning at work.
Dimension - Promoting team learning and collaboration among all staff
Team learning is another dimension for the learning school to transform the culture from just working together to thinking and working together. Collaboration and collective thinking are essential parts for team learning as team activity is argued to be insufficient for teams to learn from each other. To foster a learning community, team learning is to achieve team member’s mutual learning. To succeed in mutual learning, it is recommended for trust and respect to facilitate effective team learning. When team members’ relationships turn sour, team learning will achieve only the surface of intertwined behavior. In short, team learning requires a deep and inner positive attitude of each member to value collaborative work and its important role to impact on student’s learning. Another barrier for building trust is revealing one's own weakness and the champion motive of teams. Teachers are reluctant to admit their weakness and pave a way for other teachers to explore through peer observation. If the school has a rewarding system for best performance teachers, this will exacerbate the trust building and team learning. Therefore, promoting team learning is about transforming a culture of roleplaying teamwork to deeply learn and act together as a team. To achieve that, school needs to address mutual trust and respect to pave an open way for teachers to learn, reflect and improve their team for students’ learning, as the ultimate goal of school.
Dimension - Establishing a culture of inquiry, exploration and innovation
The central element of learning school is the ability to sustain through innovation. Continuous improvement is argued to be an innovative process where new ideas, initiative and even disruptive thinking will be put together for innovation. Inquiry is a process to explore, to prove and to clarify which will enhance the process of innovation. In this dimension, enabling a culture of inquiry, exploration and innovation is achieved through an enabling environment for trial & error, motivation to take new initiatives and flat structure, which encourage more flexible and less bureaucratic process from ideation to actions. Openness, risk-taking and learning from failure are stated to arouse teachers to innovate, explore and experiment with new approaches. When teachers can think out of the box and dare to risk doing something new to improve their teaching and way of work, they tend to keep learning and doing new things which will contribute to the school's learning. Learning from failure is another key success for a learning school. However, it is easier to say than doing. People normally treat failure as their weakness and they do not want to start over from the failure. When failure causes huge impacts on the results and staff is accountable for the failure, they may try to avoid the failure rather than to learn from it. Risk and failure aversion and avoidance will discourage teachers from taking bold initiatives, inquiring and exploring. In conclusion, establishing a culture of inquiry, exploration and innovation requires school to enable the supporting environment for openness, risk-free, trial and error and learning from failure.
Dimension - Embedding systems for collecting and exchanging knowledge and learning
Learning without actions may not complete the process of knowledge acquisition and modifying through actions. As Schunk (2012) argued, learning must involve changes. Having teachers transform their cultures of learning is insufficient when schools do not embed a system to capture their learning and changes resulting from the learning. Therefore, the dimension pinpoints a system to retain, to be accessed and to feedback the learning of individual staff, team and school as the whole organization. The system must be able to provide timely data for teachers to reflect and for schools to evaluate the performance. Baseline data of students’ performance, teachers’ training and other indicators can be stored on cloud-based drive where all staff can access for learning and reflection. Kools & Stoll (2016) argued for the important ICT role in facilitating the knowledge base system. This dimension also raised the value of monitoring and evaluation systems through regularly evaluating the theories of actions and changes. ICT-based systems to capture the learning and action data will be more effective and efficient to tackle the monitoring and evaluation process.
Dimension - Learning with and from the external environment and larger system
In this dimension, a learning school is argued to embrace an open system for multiple inputs to improve school practice. The open system is argued to help schools learn from external environments where threat and opportunities are important factors for schools to regularly scan and review their impacts on school operation. The open system also provides access to schools to collaborate with other stakeholders to fill the gaps and to improve the student’s learning. Education for the uncertainty and complex world requires schools to have interconnected partnerships to learn and to share mutual interests. In addition, the model also stressed the important roles of parents, students and authorities and other non-governmental organizations for school networking and collaboration. Needlessly, the ministry of education or relevant education authorities also influence the school practice with whom it is to collaborate. Interconnected partnership with other schools is also promoted in the model. However, schools may have limited collaborative work when schools are competing with one another to gain credibility and trust from parents, students and other public. Private schools even exacerbate mutual relationships when both sides are hiding the confidential practice for competitive advantages over others. In spite of few drawbacks from the collaborative aspects, school is encouraged to learn from the external environment through making itself an open system for multiple inputs to inform planning and decision making for sustainability.
Dimension - Modeling and growing learning leadership
Learning leadership is the last dimension argued to be the moderator for learning school transformation. Although it is the last dimension, learning leadership systematically catalyzes all dimensions to happen. Without leadership to inspire learning, the whole school learning will be inconsistent and short-term processing. Learning leader is an enabler for all the actions to happen. In this dimension, leaders need to model learning and embed a culture of learning to inspire the mental model of learning among teachers and other staff members. School principal is argued to demonstrate the effective learning example and distribute the learning leadership beyond the staff members to students, parents and wider communities. School leaders need to raise positive attitudes of learning and value learning opportunities for all staff members. In all, learning leadership is to catch the concept of change agent resulting from learning. When leaders can transform staff members to embrace change agencies, they are enthusiastic to hold up self-directed learning which is essential for team learning and school wide learning.
Discussion
The integrated model of SLO theorized by Kools & Stoll (2016) originated from the Dimension of Learning Organization Questionnaires(Watkins & Marsick,1997). The DLOQ model has been tested in various contexts to generalize the applicability of this model (Watkins & O’Neil, 2013). The DLOQ model was well-researched in school context to test its applicability in education. Sheng, Watkins, Yoon & Kim (2021) tested the DLOQ in K-12 schools to validate the DLOQ and to link the relationship of school as a learning organization, applying DLOQ model with improved organizational performance. Another research by King Smith, Watkins & Han (2020) using the DLOQ model to prove the improvement in school principal capacity to learn and how the DLOQ helps schools improve their learning gaps. Can the DLOQ generalize into different cultures and contexts? It is important for the model that transforms the learning culture to be applicable in different cultural settings and contexts. According to Akram, Watkins & Sajid (2013), the DLOQ has been researched in many cultural settings and contexts to prove the reliability and validity of the seven dimensions. Although the DLOQ was originally designed for business, it can be concluded that the DLOQ model for school as a learning organization can be a valid construct for measuring school as a learning organization. It is therefore ideal for the Integrated model of SLO (Kools & Stoll,2016) to assume its applicability in several education contexts similarly to the DLOQ model.
There arises another question about the existence of the integrated model of SLO by Kools & Stoll (2016) in the junction with the DLOQ model by Watkins and Marsick (1997). As a rationale by Kools & Stoll (2016) for conceptualizing one SLO model for education context, there underlies a specific need of school as a learning organization. School is a uniquely different organization where learning provision takes place and learning outcomes are the products of school. To become a learning school, school per se must embrace both providing learning and acquiring learning. It is a dual process of learning. Is there a need for another version of the DLOQ model for school? Having another version of the DLOQ model for school is paramount for educational researchers and school practitioners to foster validating the constructs and applicability in different socio-cultural contexts. Moreover, many educational researchers may be reluctant to uphold the model grounded from a business context where they believe in the unique school context. It became more compelling when UNICEF adopted the integrated model of SLO (Kools & Stoll, 2017) for the global learning school transformation. OECD countries made a promise and some have taken more aggressive steps to reform their nationwide school using the Integrated Model of SLO. Therefore, we believe that many educational researchers, policy makers and practitioners across the globe will welcome this new paradigm of school improvement and innovation for sustainability in the complex, uncertain and constantly changing world.
Having reviewed the research of applying integrated model of SLO (Kools & Stoll, 2016) in Wales, Greece, Romania, Latvia and China, we found that contextual differences among the schools are important and critically affects the applicability of the model. There are profound positive impacts of the model in many European schools but China’s context seems to dissuade the applicability. The difference obviously reveals the hierarchical system and highly socio-cultural norms like China may draw another attention for a modified model of SLO. Since there are limited researches to validate the integrated model of SLO, conceptualized by Kools & Stoll (2016) in other high cultural setting countries like Middle-East- where Muslim culture and region dominated (Metcalfe & Mimouni, 2011), some countries in Africa- where socio-political aspects and other norms influenced on the leadership and management (Walumbwa, Avolio & Aryee, 2011) and East Asia (Kovačević, & Hallinger, 2019; Hallinger & Bryant, 2013; Hallinger, 1998 ), it is still debatable to confirm the findings in China by Tan(2020), where it was a desk review not a research in real school setting, whether the model can be applied in high socio-cultural setting. Therefore, we would like to recommend more aggressive research to test the applicabilities of the integrated model of SLO in other countries, particularly those in the highly cultural school contexts like in East Asia, Africa, Middle-EAST.
Conclusion
Schools of the future should foster creativity, innovation and adaptive competencies to prepare students for uncertain, complex and constantly changing society. Learning organization (LO) model rooted from the seminal work of Peter (1990) through his book “The Art and Practice of Learning Organization”, where arises the Fifth Discipline model for testing in many fields, including education. The Fifth Discipline (Peter, 1990) was under several critiques due to its unstructured, lacking of measurement and generalization (Zhang, 2023; Pensieri, 2019; Caldwell, 2012; Babak Alavi& McCormick, 2004). Alternatively, the Dimension of Learning Organization Questionnaires (DLOQ) theorized by Watkins & Marsick(1997) to offer a structured tool for measuring LO and its impacts on organizational performance. The DLOQ was well-researched in the Business field and education to validate its constructs and to measure changes in organization performances. DLOQ may lack popularity among educational researchers who need a model of their own LO for school. The integrated model of school as learning organization was conceptualized from the DLOQ by Kools & Stoll (2016) to clarify the details where DLOQ may lack in their structures.
Having reviewed several researches in European school contexts like Wales, Greece, Romania and Latvia the integrated model of SLO (Kools & Stoll, 2016) has more positive impacts on school performance and staff satisfaction. Despite some impediments to hinder the implementation, researchers still confirmed the applicability of this model in European school context, particularly Wales. However, in the China context, the model was argued to modify to meet the high cultural and social norms of China. China’s schools were argued to be more hierarchical and have high social norms (Hallinger, 2003). The implication is contrasting practices between Western’s flat structure and China’s hierarchical structure. The SLO model is a new paradigm for flat school structure which narrows the gap between high level leader and low-level staff. How can a school promote team learning if there is no enabling environment for dialogue and discussion. Hierarchical structure will raise a barrier high for team learning. According to Peter (1990), a team needs to learn deep inside to shape a team mental model to achieve a shared vision. Given the lack of an enabling environment for the team to learn, a team cannot learn deep inside and the team leader cannot inspire a mental model for the school’s shared vision. Therefore, the integrated model of SLO (Kools & Stoll, 2016) may struggle to generalize in the hierarchical school context. However, it will be a crucial decision to change or to risk being obsolete. If the impact of school transformation is less compelling, the SLO model may not be adopted in many high cultural settings like China, Cambodia, Lao and Vietnam… Further research should be conducted to generalize the applicability of the SLO model in schools with high cultural settings, mostly in the East Asia region, where social norm, hierarchical structure and power distance are exerted in schools (Walker, Hallinger & Qian, 2007; Hallinger, 1998). Since there are always impediments when implementing the model, more research is needed to confirm the crucial impediments in advancing the SLO model. We also recommend further research to create a systemic framework that binds both system level and school level together to uphold the successful school transformation process to learning organization. More evidence of the integrated model of SLO (Kools & Stoll, 2016) to impact on school performance and effectiveness, namely knowledge performance of staff and students' learning outcomes are importantly needed to convince the policy makers and other educational practitioners to apply the new model in their schools.
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