Abstract
The avant-garde of educational change theory is the idea that schools be treated and developed as learning organizations which do not pursue fixed plans in pursuit of set goals, but structure and develop themselves so that they and their members can continually learn from experience, from each other and from the world around them, so that they can solve problems and improve on a continuous basis.
In this chapter, Mulford takes this field of organizational learning, describes its key principles, discusses some of the research evidence that is beginning to emerge in relation to it; and engages critically with some of the field’s claims and their limitations. Mulford’s chapter is neither blindly euphoric nor sweepingly dismissive of organizational learning theory. Instead of uncritically applying the general theory to education as many other writers and advocates of educational change have done, he presents one of the few critical appraisals of the field and its relevance that have yet been written.
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Mulford, B. (2005). Organizational Learning and Educational Change. In: Hargreaves, A. (eds) Extending Educational Change. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4453-4_17
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