Abstract
This chapter examines an approach to the challenge of rethinking and retooling American organizations that is widely used within educational organizations, including those serving the Jewish community: the creation of learning organizations. It reviews the development of the concept of the learning organization and discusses how it has been used in the Jewish educational world by looking at specific examples of its application. It also explores the relationship of evaluation research to creating organizations that learn. In this way the chapter addresses several questions: (1) Why has the concept of learning organizations been adapted for Jewish educational settings? (2) What has it contributed to Jewish educational practice? (3) What issues does it raise for Jewish educational practice and research?
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Notes
- 1.
See Beckhard, R. What Is Organization Development? In Organization Development, ed. Joan Gallos, 3–12, Sage Publications and Burke, W. Where Did OD Come From? in the same volume, 13–37, for a short history of this field.
- 2.
Aronson, D. Intro to Systems Thinking provides an accessible exploration of the concept; Aronson host The Thinking Page (http://www.thinking.net).
- 3.
The 1983 government report, A Nation at Risk, was a clarion call that charged that the population of the United States was too poorly educated to compete in the global economy. This ushered in a period of intense efforts to reform American education on all levels: national efforts (the best example is the No Child Left Behind reform bill) complemented state, local, and school-based efforts.
- 4.
For other examples see David Schoem’s 1989ethnography, Ethnic Survival in America, that vividly portrays deep problems with afternoon schools; Alvin Schiff’s controversial 1998 study, Jewish Supplementary Schooling: An Educational System in Need of Change. New York: Bureau of Jewish Education.
- 5.
One of the earliest, Boston’s Combined Jewish Philanthropies, experimented with a five-pronged model (Shevitz, 1992) and followed with a long-term commitment to Jewish education (see http://www.cjp.org/page.aspx?id=68824).
- 6.
Examples are the Mandel Foundation, with a long history of supporting Jewish education, the Covenant Foundation that was devoted to “supporting initiatives and ideas and the practitioners who have developed and harnessed them to change the face of Jewish education across the span of a generation” (http://www.covenantfn.org/splash/), the Whizin Foundation which, with its interest in Jewish family life, jumpstarted the field of Jewish family education, and Avi Chai Foundation whose commitment to Jewish education is clear from its mission (http://www.avi-chai.org/bin/en.jsp?enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=zone&enZone=AboutUs&enInfolet=Mission.jsp) Others have since become involved.
- 7.
As experimentation continued, pragmatic solutions to the challenge of organizational learning developed. Some congregations decided to hold “Tot Shabbat” services separately or to designate specific services as Tot Shabbat events.
- 8.
Personal email correspondence between Isa Aron and the rabbi (sent to author on 2/1/09).
- 9.
In this region the ECE process was called RE-IMAGINE and the pilot project was RE-IMAGINING Professional Learning. The pilot, which was showing promising results, was not continued due to funders’ changing priorities (I was co-principal of the evaluation of this project. These comments are based on empirical data, discussion with ECE leaders, and representatives of the funder).
- 10.
Examples include the Mandel Teacher Educator Initiative, study groups at individual day and congregational schools, peer-supervision methods being developed at some schools, teacher teams at the Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative, and projects sponsored by central agencies of Jewish education – in Philadelphia, Boston and New York, to name a few.
- 11.
By program evaluation I mean the systematic gathering of valid data that determine the extent to which a program is meeting its stated goals and suggest ways to improve the program. By impact evaluation, I mean following the participants in a program to see whether the longer-term intended impacts are occurring (for example, does going to Jewish summer camp lead to a positive Jewish identity as measured by specific traits?) in later life.
- 12.
See Aron and Moskowitz (2009) for a fuller portrait of this congregation.
- 13.
The data are drawn from the evaluations of the ECE and Synagogue 2,000 conducted by the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies.
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Shevitz, S.L. (2011). Learning Organisations: Learning to Learn – The Learning Organisation in Theory and Practice. In: Miller, H., Grant, L., Pomson, A. (eds) International Handbook of Jewish Education. International Handbooks of Religion and Education, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0354-4_47
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