Abstracts - Earli

learning and change. Research that attempts to elucidate the influence of social-psychologicalantecedents to teacher learning nevertheless however has shown that individual cognitive,affective and behavioral factors directly affect teachers’ change. Systematic research in whichorganizational and psychological antecedents to teacher learning and change are examined incombination is scarce. To increase our understanding of change mechanisms, more research isneeded that focuses on the interface between psychological factors and organizational conditions.This study makes a contribution to this line of research by testing the effect of psychological,organizational and leadership factors on professional learning simultaneously in order to estimatetheir relative effect on teachers’ professional learning. Survey data from 328 teachers of 18 Dutchprimary schools were used. As expected, the results showed that teacher motivation has strongeffects on teachers’ professional learning. Furthermore, differential effects of leadershipdimensions and organizational elements on teacher motivation and learning were found. Theauthors stress the need to conduct research by means of models that contain both theorganizational and the teacher level to better understand change mechanisms in schools.The school as a knowledge creating entity: Creating the spaces for instructional innovationAlma Harris, University of Warwick, United KingdomThe need for organizations to change continuously has long been the central concern oforganizational theorists. However organizations also need to be able to deal with new or changedcircumstances effectively and this need is growing in an era of rapidtechnological advancement.Senge (1990) proposed that the learning organization has the capacity for both generative andadaptive learning as a sustainable source of competitive advantage. This paper draws upon ageneric model of organizational knowledge creation (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) to explore theways in which schools can create the spaces to become knowledge creating entities. The focus ofthe paper is on the structural and cultural changes needed in schools to allow them to becomeknowledge creating and the ways in which schools are adapting their practices to shareinstructional knowledge and practice.– 428 –