Week 1 - experience sharing about learning in workplace

Week 1


Report on your present or previous experiences in the workplace.  How best would you describe your organization learnt.


I think that my organization may not be doing so well about learning in workplace.  According to Senge’s five principles that are crucial for schools to become learning organizations, my organization could be described as below:

• Personal mastery – my organization seems not able to develop a personal vision and aspirations and an awareness of current realities.  For example, our programs have been restructured and general education courses become dominant and the majority of programs.  However, teaching members seem not yet prepare for change, such as teachers are capable of teaching general education courses.

• Mental models – as most teachers do not have teaching experience about general education, they are not motivated to change or develop general education curriculum.

• Shared vision – the change may threaten the job security so that sense of commitment to the future cannot be established among teachers.

• Team learning – I think this is also not enough because regular communication or sharing is seldom made.  Experience sharing is carried out through informal setting, like social gathering or peer groups.

• Systems thinking – I think my organization may look at the goals and problems as isolated. For example, the large class size and heavy teaching load are the problems but they definitely affect students’ quality of learning in the meantime. 

When I came across with systems thinking, I find some difficulty to understand.  If you too, the below video - "Peter Senge: 2010 Systems Thinking in Action Conference Preview" may give you some ideas.