The “Roundtable” for school learning and planning groups: planting a seed for systemic renewal

Abstract

Current public education, overwhelmed by piece‐meal reform efforts, is in need of systemic renewal. An investigation of key literature – systems methods, instructional design, and group process models – yields the conditions necessary for systemic change and a suitable base model. Namely, a successful systemic educational change effort is ideal‐based, holistic, continuing, participatory, user‐friendly, easy to adjust/improve, and emancipatory. A suitable base model is discovered in the learning systems of Alcoholics Anonymous and then built on for a new model: the Roundtable (RT) for secular learning. Briefly, the RT session is designed so that leadership and learning opportunities are distributed among all participants, who have equal time to present their ideas. Pilot studies in professional scientific organizations allowed refinement of the model. This study investigated sought the seven conditions in four RT applications in 4th‐grade classrooms in California. Participants at each site were the teacher and their 30±1 students. Each teacher held ten RT sessions, with students leading two to three of the last four sessions. Evidence was sought in the RT texts, session recordings, and users’ views. The criteria were met in the following ways. The RT applications were: ideal‐based in the RT texts; user‐friendly as they were user‐ready and engaging; easy to adjust/improve in the simple revision session tasks, and emancipatory as users learned in important, positive and unanticipated ways. The RT applications were holistic: found suitable for all classroom levels at both schools, and for all school groups at one school. They were continuing after the study in 2 or 3 of the four classrooms. They were very participatory in the roles of listener, reader, and speaker; somewhat participatory in the leader and co‐planner roles. Contributions to organizational /educational change theory and future projects are promising.