Abstract
Planning is typically seen as an ordered rational process for guiding change toward desired ends. However, Jewish education does not lend itself well to this type of rational planning. The nature of the educational system (which has been described as an “organized anarchy”), the prominence of non-rational human, political, and symbolic forces at work, and the types of adaptive challenges that Jewish education presents to planners all argue for the need for a different planning paradigm. Complex adaptive systems theory provides the conceptual framework for such an alternative. This theory sees unpredictable development and emergent organization as the norm for complex systems and regards learning as the key to successful adaptation in human systems. The model of planning that grows out of this conceptual framework is what we call “praxis planning”—planning that is embedded in action and is both improvisational and highly reflective. The work of researchers like Fullan and Westley, Zimmerman, and Patton, as well as the experience of those involved in the work of congregational-educational change over the past decade and a half, help us to understand the major features of this type of planning that emphasizes subtle “steering” rather than imposing change and why it is more effective than conventional rational planning in leading us to the ends we seek.
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Notes
- 1.
In his book, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Henry Mintzberg cites a number of different definitions of planning: “Planning is action laid out in advance” (G. C. Sawyer); “Planning is the design of a desired future and of effective ways of bringing it about” (R. L. Ackoff); Planning is “those activities which are concerned specifically with determining in advance what actions and/or human and physical resources are required to reach a goal” (N. Snyder and W.F. Glueck). All of these definitions emphasize the idea of planning as projective, as attempting to set and control the direction of change (Mintzberg, 1994, pp. 5–13).
- 2.
For an example of this kind of orderly and sequenced planning process applied to the domain of Jewish education/identity, see JESNA’s Handbook on Planning for Jewish Continuity (Shluker & Isaacs, 1995). The Handbook outlines eleven steps in the planning process: initiating the process, organizing the planning effort, understanding community needs, visioning, choosing a planning strategy, identifying goals and objectives, designing/adopting programs to meet goals and objectives, planning for program evaluation, implementing programs, evaluating programs, continuing continuity planning.
- 3.
Mintzberg devotes a lengthy chapter in his book to the considerable evidence that conventional rational planning simply does not produce the results that its proponents expect from it (Mintzberg, 1994, pp. 91–158). Douglas Reeves, writing about educational change, offers an equally blunt critique: “Perhaps the most pervasive myth in change leadership is that planning – particularly complex, large-scale, and supposedly ‘strategic’ planning – leads to effective change …. [T]he evidence for that proposition is absent not only in education but in the business world as well” (Reeves, 2009, p. 42).
- 4.
The discussion that follows deals only with Jewish education in North America. Readers who are knowledgeable about Jewish education in other communities are invited to consider the extent to which the description and analysis offered here apply to those communities as well.
- 5.
Many studies have documented the effects of Jewish education on adult Jewish identity, including the most recent large-scale study of the American-Jewish population, the National Jewish Population Survey 2000–2001. The summary statement in the NJPS report on The Impact of Childhood Jewish Education on Adults’ Jewish Identity reflects the findings generally: “Many, but not all, forms of Jewish education exert measurable, positive impacts upon almost every form of Jewish identity examined here” (Cohen & Kotler-Berkowitz, 2004, p. 17).
- 6.
This is similar on an organizational level to what Schon urges as the appropriate model for professional practice on an individual level. Schon’s concept of the “reflective practitioner” calls for the same type of continuous thoughtful but open monitoring of the situation at hand in order to achieve one’s purposes (e.g., teaching or healing). Reflection-in-action becomes the primary driving force for forward movement, and it allows for surprise and improvisation. But, it is also a discipline that must be learned and refined (Schon, 1983).
- 7.
- 8.
My own sense, based on a fairly extensive, but non-systematic, monitoring of these planning processes and as the chief staff person for one national commission (the Commission on Jewish Identity and Continuity, convened by the Council of Jewish Federations in the mid-1990s), is that these commissions produced a number of new initiatives in the short-term, and perhaps contributed to, even as they reflected, an overall cultural shift in the Jewish community over the longer term, but rarely were successful in catalyzing and guiding substantial change. That is, few if any came close to meeting their ambitious goals.
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Woocher, J.S. (2011). Planning for Jewish Education in the Twenty-First Century: Toward a New Praxis. In: Miller, H., Grant, L., Pomson, A. (eds) International Handbook of Jewish Education. International Handbooks of Religion and Education, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0354-4_15
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