The Systems Thinking School: Redesigning Schools from the Inside-Out

by Peter A Barnard

Overview

This book examines the school as an operational organization through the lens of systems thinking. In this way it serves as an invitation to look again at schools and how they operate as learning systems. It begins by showing exactly why our inherited, industrial school model, can never be made to work effectively no matter how hard school leaders try or how well schools are judged.

This book uses systems thinking to explain and describe the management unlearning and new learning needed to create deep and fundamental changes to the way schools operate as complete learning entities. It explains why the reinstatement of the personal tutor in a vertical system is essential to the creation of a learning organization within a complete home/school operational learning process; one capable of building a values driven and more purposeful school culture within a more relevant and coherent society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475805796
Publisher:	R&L Education
Publication date:	09/19/2013
Series:	Leading Systemic School Improvement
Pages:	196
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Peter A Barnard has been involved in education for over 40 years as a successful high school principal, trainer and writer. He is a passionate advocate of vertical tutoring as the managerial means of both understanding and meeting the many challenges that schools face internationally.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
PrologueThe Systems Thinking School
Chapter 1Systems Maintenance
Chapter2A Systems Thinking Approach
Chapter3The Systems Thinking Process
Chapter 4Wicked Problems, Schools, and Systemic Change
Chapter5Wicked Problems and Loopy Solutions
Chapter6Applying Single-loop Strategies to Double-loop Problems
Chapter7 Reform and Variation as Wicked Problems
Chapter8Child Development, Customer Care, and Adaptive Systems Thinking
Chapter9The School as an Interconnected Learning Process
Chapter10Mixed-Age Mentoring
Chapter11What Schools Say: Lessons for Managers
Chapter12Building the Systems Thinking School
Chapter13Assessment for Learning
Chapter14Concluding Remarks
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

This book represents a comprehensive demolition of many of the orthodoxies and assumptions that have dogged educational leadership for years; not least the factory system of education where we blindly (and inhumanely) batch and process children according to their date of manufacture. What makes this book so singularly impressive is that it is written from an academic, indeed an idealistic, point of view by someone who is intensely pragmatic: someone who’s been there and got the ‘T’ shirt. The book fizzes with ideas and has helped me to redefine and refocus on what is important in the school that I lead.

Andrew Warren

At the heart of Peter Barnard’s groundbreaking but striking analysis of the industrial school model, is a plea to stop tinkering with peripheral parts, reforms and add-ons, and to see each school as a complete organisational system in its own right. In his book, Barnard unlocks the secrets of the Industrial model’s longevity and shows schools how to self-organize and be interconnected. Only by understanding and then abandoning the industrial model and its effects can there be renewed purpose and relevance in the C21st. This book shows schools and administrators precisely what is wrong and how to put it right at no cost!

Dr. Tony Breslin

Peter Barnard takes us on a journey that analyses how the linearity of the ubiquitous industrial school mode acts to place limits on teaching and learning. Using these insights we are presented with a litany of practical design ideas needed to create a learning organisation. He calls this vertical tutoring, a cultural change that inspires positive learning relationships, and which is at the heart of his vision for education in the 21st Century. We read his book and listened to what he had to say and as a result many aspects of our school have been transformed.

Martyn Henson

Peter Barnard draws upon his extensive leadership experience to lay out a provocative and stimulating approach to school improvement. Calling for no less than a revolution in the way we think about schools, Barnard demands rigor and intellect from those charged with leading the education of the next generation. But this is theory grounded in practice and will be an invaluable tool to anyone interested in making our schools better.

Sir David Bell KCB