What’s in a vision? Introducing an organisational learning strategy in a local authority’s education service

Abstract

It is frequently asserted that schools and local authorities should become ‘learning organisations’ as a pre‐condition for school improvement, but there is very little evidence about the specific processes and activities involved in such a transformation. This paper analyses the initial stages of the implementation by a Scottish local authority Education Department of an organisational learning strategy, whose ultimate purpose was to improve pupils’ attainment and achievement by developing the Authority’s collective capacity to learn new ways of meeting their needs. The analysis focuses on some of the processes that, despite a huge literature on the subject of organisational learning and change, have hitherto remained somewhat mysterious. Adopting an analytical framework derived from activity and actor network theory, we explore empirical evidence of the key stages in ‘vision building’, showing how sense‐making was structured and highlighting the processes and activities which constituted the initial stages in learning to learn as an organisation.