Situational Analysis

SITUATIONAL analysis
school as a learning community
According to the given task to choose a course of Semester I and writing an analytical paper, I would prefer to choose the course, ‘School as a Learning Community’, as it is a new emerging trend and notion and the existing state of practice in Pakistan seems on its initial stages.
My understanding through the class presentations, facilitators’ explanations, peers interaction and literature review, learning community is a group of people who share common values and beliefs and actively engaged in learning together from each other. The people who facilitate learning communities may contribute from several distinct fields of study. My understanding guides me that to create a learning community we have to focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively and hold ourselves accountable for results and better outcomes.
Literature identifies the guidelines for creating a learning community as Lovely, S. & Buffum, A.G. (2007) state that, “A major goal in the design of a learning community is facilitating a culture of collaboration within a setting that is complicated by the cross age diversity of most teams” (p.28). The major requirements to create learning communities are according to Retallick, J. Cocklin, B. & Coombe, K. (Eds.). (1999) are respect, caring, inclusiveness, trust, empowerment and commitment. These are the guide lines through which we can create learning community in schools.
For an effective learning community in educational institutions there are many indicators to identify the existence of learning community, but I will discuss only about distributed leadership and its existing state of practice, implications in our context and finally some suggestions.
Distributed Leadership

DL is a strong component of Learning Community; it means interdependency and coordinated work. This theme is presented as an alternative to focused leadership. According to Gronn (2003) it is the new trend increased after 1980. Distributed leadership is certainly a step up from one person leadership. This is also articulated by Arrowsimith (2007) that “Distributed leadership (DL) is an emerging form of power distribution in school which extends authority and influence to groups or individuals in a way which is at least partly contrary to hierarchical arrangements” (p.22).
Distributed leadership starts from willingness to share authority, the capacity to facilitate the work of staff, and the ability to participate without dominating. Stewart, D. & Prebble, T. (1993) state that, “If principals wish to change what teachers do, they must first change the way teachers think about what they do” (p.189).
It seems clear that transforming a school into a learning community can be done only with the sanction of the leaders and the active cultivation of the entire staff's development as a community. Stewart, D. & Prebble, T. (1993) describes this notion of leadership as, “Leaders make a difference, but their work should be seen as an integral part of the activities of the whole group” (p.199). Through this practice, all grow professionally and learn to view themselves to use an athletic metaphor as "all playing on the same team and working toward the same goal: a better school". Sergiovanni (1996) has very accurately articulated as;
Communities are collections of individuals who are bonded together by natural will and who are together bond to a set of shared ideas and ideals. This bonding and binding is tight enough to transform them from a collection of “I’s” into a collective “we” (p.48).
IMPLICATIONS
In the context of Pakistan, we can partially relate this leadership theme to private educational institutions or self managed organizations, as there are two systems like government and private sector education. In my opinion, all these ideological and purely theoretical perceptions imported from west are very much new to our society. I am involved with private sector education for last 10 years. I was much lucky to visit different schools and some very famous private sector schools in Karachi through IED, where I remained searching, and searching for those indicators of a learning community mentioned earlier. Of-course there were the communities, within communities, but the characteristics ideally distinct to the learning community according to the theory, I couldn’t find operational in the actual field. Yes, unquestionably, a paradigm shift (which has already been started in private educational setups) is needed both by the public and by the schools administration and teachers themselves.
I believe that the most successful learning organizations of future will be the organizations where people continuously expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire (Fullan).
SUGGESTIONS
I suggest that to practically create learning communities, leaders, policy makers, parents and teachers have to think and create awareness to implement the actual essence of learning community in school. They must be aware of a clear and shared vision, supportive and shared practices, distributed leadership, professional development, relations among school and parents and finally on-going assessment. To achieve all these characteristics, a gradual pace towards creating learning community is required.
REFERENCES
Arrowsmith, T. (2007). Distributed leadership in secondary schools in England: the impact on the role of the head teacher and other issue. Management in Education. 21(2), 21-27.
Gronn, P (2003). The New Work of Educational Leaders: Changing Leadership Practice in an Era of School Reform. London. Sage Publications.
Lovely, S. & Buffum, A.G. (2007). Generations at School: Building an Age-Friendly Learning Community. California: Crown Press.
Retallick, J. Cocklin, B. & Coombe, K. (Eds.). (1999). Learning Communities in Education: Issues, strategies and contexts. London: Routledge.
Sergiovanni, T.J. (1996). Leadership for the Schoolhouse: How Is It Different? Why Is It Important? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Stewart, D. & Prebble, T. (1993). The Reflective Principal: School Development Within a Learning Community. New Zealand: ERDC Press Massey University.