Abstract
In the business literature, a line of reasoning about harnessing knowledge for organizational improvement goes something like this: Knowledge is a highly valuable asset to the firm because it contributes to solutions to pressing organizational problems. However, knowledge is difficult to tap into, either because it is diffused across members of the organization and, as such, is not visible to the organization as a whole or because it resides outside of the organization altogether. Therefore, the challenge to organizational leaders is to collect, make explicit, and disseminate the knowledge that tacitly resides within and outside of the organization to help the organization succeed. The extent to which leaders can tap the knowledge of organizational members and/or capture outside knowledge and distribute it across the organization will contribute to the firm’s ability to maximize its advantages, improve as an organization, and successfully operate in a competitive environment.
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There is a debate among educators whether education should be characterized as a loosely coupled system because of the tight control on working conditions and environments that typically exist (see e.g., Ingersoll, 1993; Rowan, 1990). But this debate has more to do with disagreements about autonomy within educational organizations than with the nature of the endeavor itself.
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For a more detailed discussion of the DCPS reform efforts, see Supovitz (2006).
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The following section is a summary of the project’s description as written by Patusky, Botwinik, and Shelley (2007).
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This is not to say that Duval did not collect and report back student performance data, nor that Philadelphia did not measure instructional processes, but that these particular systems did not provide insight into these areas.
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Supovitz, J. (2010). Knowledge-Based Organizational Learning for Instructional Improvement. In: Hargreaves, A., Lieberman, A., Fullan, M., Hopkins, D. (eds) Second International Handbook of Educational Change. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2660-6_40
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