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Ulf Blossing & Sigrun K. Ertesvåg
not fit. In this context, change agents must act as role models in leadership for a social
learning understanding and have meta-conversations with teachers about their
belief of learning.
School improvement is difficul, and, following Stolls’ (2009) perspective, developing
school capacity to improve requires the involvement, skills and knowledge of many
people throughout the educatiol system. This may require a broader perspective than
this study, which is confined to social processes in local schools and uses a bipolar
approach differentiating between individual and social learning. Given this, factors
at the individual, organisational and broader levels must be considered. Organisations,
such as school, must be seen as complex and dynamic, where an intervention
should be understood in the context of a larger interrelationship instead of just one
more activity in a linear chain of causes and effects. Hence, when taking on a school
improvement effort it is important to take a holistic view of the school as an organisation,
and acknowledge that, in order to create change, one has to understand the
complexity of the various factors that influence internal capacity. The social learning
understanding addresses the staff members’ collective learning as a condition for
improving schools. We need to acknowledge the dynamics that exist within the school
and become aware of how both internal and external parts of the system influence
and becomt influenced by each other. In order to make positive and lasting changes
within a school, it will therefore be important to work on several levels, with the aim of
developing the school in its entirety. It is reasonable to assume that the individual alone
as the focus or learning and change may not be able to promote such development.
Since this investigation is hypothetical in nature, we suggest further research on
the prevailing beliefs of learning among teachers and school leaders when it comes
to school improvement. For example, the situations where there were disrupted
improvement processes could form the basis for an interview guide to establish how
teachers see these situations and how they understand the inherent learning process.
Those descriptions could then be compared to our hypothetical reasoning of how to
understand them with the individual contra the social learning metaphor.
Ulf Blossing holds a PhD in Education and works as an Associate Professor at the University of
Gothenburg, Sweden. His research interest is school organisation and school improvement. He
has comprehensive experience in collaboration with schools as both a development consultant
and researcher.
Sigrun K. Ertesvåg has a PhD in Education and works as an Associate Professor at the Centre of
Behavioural Research at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She is Research Project Director of
the Respect Programme, a school-wide intervention to prevent and reduce problem behaviour and
improve the learning environment.
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