Blazing New Trails - Connexions

Superintendent Leadership as the Catalyst for Organizational Learning 73
Table 3 (continued). Instructional and Transformational Leadership
Practices of the Superintendent.
Being a visible presence in the school while modeling the desired values of the school’s culturevisibility
on school sites and in staff development; informed on standards and instruction, caring,
dedicated
First order changes-incorporation of new curriculum and research based strategies, collaboration
time provided to focus on development of instructional implementation
Second order change-integration of vision throughout all levels of the district, collaboration for
focus, commitment
Extent to which the superintendent emphasized a coordination and control strategy vs. and
empowerment for change in school-balanced decision making practices referred to as “loose or
tight”, monitoring of resources by superintendent vs. decision making on instructional materials by
staff based on district vision
SUMMARY
Organizational learning can be depicted as a multifaceted construct. The findings from
District A revealed the perceptions of teachers, principals, and a school board member about
the superintendent’s actions and behaviors aligned with those practices conducive to the
establishment of knowledge creation or learning at the organizational level. Organizational
learning, in this study, emerged as a social process, constructed through social interactions.
Data triangulation of participants’ responses also suggested that the superintendent had a
distinct influence on the depth to which organizational learning took place by exercising
instructional and transformational leadership practices. The integration of these two
leadership models contributed to a coordinated effort to organize and focus the school
instructionally while building a climate that promoted networking across the district to share
innovations and sustain change.
The superintendent was influential in creating structures for socialization and team
building to promote new knowledge through innovation. Restructuring school personnel by
the establishment of peer mentors and leadership teams among teachers secured an additional
mechanism that provided a means for new knowledge to permeate the district. While we
understand that information is a necessary medium for eliciting and constructing knowledge,
it is a passive process. Knowledge for a sustained change is created by accumulating multiple
sources of information and incorporating this in our belief system and skills (Nonaka &
Takeuchi, 1995).
Through socialization processes, staff members from this district were able to share
experiences that became new knowledge to other staff members through team meetings and
professional development opportunities provided by district staff. As staff listened to new
ideas and brought them back to their own classrooms, they were able to apply this new
knowledge. District A was able to combine various sources to capture, share, interpret and
retrieve learning to continue the spiral of knowledge creation through various mechanisms,
such as, meetings, casual conversations, assessment data analysis, principal summits and most
recently, technology. These sources provided multiple opportunities for new knowledge to
become widely disseminated, discussed, critiqued and modified before once again applying
this new knowledge. This wide distribution through a variety of mediums ensured that all