Public defence: Vibeke Melby

This thesis is based upon a practitioner action research project where the teachers and I, as headteacher, worked together to develop our school as a learning organisation. 

The main objective was to develop and document new practice-based professional knowledge on how a school leader in cooperation with the teachers can develop the school as a learning organisation, through action research.

As a headteacher, I experienced growing frustration over the frequent school development projects initiated from outside our practice, often from the national school level, which I had to implement at my school. This top-down approach to development work tends to overlook the importance of inviting teachers and school leaders to use and develop their experience- based knowledge when improving school practices. 

In Norway, school leaders are supposed to develop their schools into learning organisations. However, I missed theoretically- grounded examples and strategies for how to do this in practice. To meet the challenges presented above, I aimed to develop and document knowledge through the study on how a school leader together with the teachers could stimulate development and change work based on the teachers’ experience-based knowledge.

The issue I discuss in the thesis is: How can school leaders together with the teachers develop the school as a learning organisation through action research? The development objective has been to further develop our school as a learning organisation through action research. 

The research objective has been to develop and document practice-based professional knowledge on school leadership with the aim of developing a learning organisation through action research. 

I chose to combine three strategies in an attempt to achieve the objective: 1) to use a dialogue conference as a tool for collective learning and development in the school organisation, 2) to motivate the teachers to conduct action research projects on their practice and to use the results in collective learning processes, and 3) to further develop and use existing meetings as places for learning. These strategies became development activities in the study.

In the project, I combine practitioner action research and the dialogue approach of action research to stimulate organisational learning and development from a bottom-up perspective. Practitioner action research in the study is teacher research. The purpose of this research is to develop and document knowledge on teaching and education based on the teachers’ experiences. The dialogue approach to action research focuses on organisational development and has developed a systematic approach on how to organise meetings as learning places for collective experiential learning.

The action research approach frames this study. The issue discussed is therefore examined through a critical pragmatic approach to knowledge, learning and research. A pragmatic approach to learning emphasises experience as the basis for learning and knowledge development. 

Critical theory is about reflecting critically on the present to develop it into something better. The action research approach also guides the choice of theoretical perspectives on school leadership, organisational learning and learning organisations. 

The theoretical perspectives on school leadership focus on how to stimulate collective experiential learning processes. Theoretical perspectives on organisational learning combine practice- based learning and action research, and show how organisations can learn in a systematic way through collective experiential learning.

Action research combines development and research. I initiated the development activities as school leader and researcher. Most of the empirical material was collected by documenting the learning processes generated by the development activities. The material consists of logs written by myself and the teachers, references and plans for meetings etc. I also used qualitative research interviews to gather information.

The project ran for one year. During this period, I first initiated a dialogue conference where we discussed the project. The results show that a dialogue conference stimulates participation and experience-based learning processes, through dialogue and work methods that encourage people to be actively involved in the processes. These experiences affected how we went on to develop our existing meeting places, as places for learning. 

Through the year, we held weekly meetings for individual and collective experiential learning. These meetings were structured as spirals for learning, allowing us to stop and evaluate the process together. The teachers implemented, documented and shared several action research projects, for instance on student evaluation and student participation. 

The results show that the teachers perceived the systematic use of meetings as learning places, and the use of action research projects as useful and meaningful. The teachers felt that they had been heard in the development processes. Some results show how these bottom-up learning processes created energy, enthusiasm and a willingness to change. 

However, other results show that differences of opinion on values and views of knowledge created dilemmas, and that this led to challenges that had to be addressed as school leader.

The main finding in the study is that combining practitioner action research and the dialogue approach enables a strategy on school leadership to be developed. This strategy concerns how a learning organisation can be developed, in which organisational learning and development is based on the teachers’ experiences. The new knowledge on action-based school leadership is presented as examples and principles, and shows theoretical justifications and perspectives. 

To sum up, the focus is on how a school leader can motivate teachers to carry out practitioner action research projects, and how meeting places can be developed into spaces for collective experiential learning processes.