A Research on Schools as Learning Organizations: A Theoretical Approach

Due to the growing pressures on the educational area to provide young people with the knowledge and skills needed to live and work in a constantly changing society and the technologies and trades that today do not exist, the model of learning organization has been extended to schools, as an attempt to re-conceptualize them from organizations that are traditionally linked to the learning and knowledge process to organizations that are capable of responding with efficiency to uncertain and dynamic environments. The purpose of this paper is to identify the state of affairs in the Romanian educational system (pre-university level) in order to provide a starting point for the implementation of the ‘school as a learning organization’ concept and model. The approach is theoretical, using desk research of regulations and data regarding the public expenditure in education, per capita funding, number of pupils enrolled, PISA results and correlations between the action-oriented dimensions (including their key characteristics/elements) of the model proposed by Kools & Stoll (2017) and the performance indicators (including descriptors) that are used at the Romanian national level. Results show that, between 2009 and 2018, school organizations were under increasing pressure and the implementation of this concept and model at system level could be an opportunity to focus on students from the organizational side, having the determined correlations as a foundation.