1. Background Information about my previous workplace
I worked as an English teacher in the largest language training school in Beijing, which is named New Oriental Technology & Education Group (NOG). Though my workplace is always believed to be an active reformer in education realm of mainland China by its competitors and many Chinese educators and, it still can not be counted as a good learning organization considering mainland’s whole picture of backward education.
The following contents will be based on Senge’s five principles of a learning organizations(2000) and Argyris and Schön’s theory of three levels of learning in organizations(1978). The evidence supported the above assertion mainly comes from my personal experience.
2. The analysis based on Senge’s five principles
2.1 Personal Mastery
The common crisis of “no enrolled students, no money” met by most western private schools is hardly an issue for public schools in mainland China. Therefore, all faculties in schools have no incentives to change, let alone teachers’ teaching approach and teaching content. In such a situation one can imagine a great number of unsatisfied students in every school.
Thus, some
students who seek learning and grade improvement (Most of them see the two
things as the same thing) have to try something else out of schools. Currently,
NOG is a popular choice among students because to some extent their demands are
satisfied.
However, students’
satisfied demands can not be insured as effective learning. Most of them suffer
a lot from boring courses in their schools, so they come to NOG with the
expectation that courses here may be interesting. They have no idea what
student-centered pedagogy is, and they had barely experienced other forms of
learning.
Unfortunately, most
teachers in NOG had little knowledge about pedagogy or epistemology, and the
solution they can come up with to such a problem is to mix a lot of jokes in
one-to-many traditional instruction.
The management staffs
see NOG as a business seeking for profits rather than a school that guarantee effective
learning. They are happy that most of their teachers can satisfy students’
need, and they recruit similar types of “teachers” to make students happy.
By now, it seems
that children, teachers, and management staffs’ visions are aligned, but such
alignment has little to do with effective learning, let alone the change in
learning/teaching approaches that can involve usage of ICT.
2.2 Mental Models
An embarrassing problem
plaguing NOG is that people’s mental models limit the further development of
curriculum based on new pedagogy and the implementation of ICT tools.
Teachers are
traditionally thought as the authority that can not make mistakes and examples
students should follow. The communistic party’s government (or regime) strictly
limits teachers’ speech freedom, and regard teachers as tools of propaganda.
Therefore, they further strengthen teachers’ image of infallible through other
communication approaches.
Therefore, the
process of learning is believed as listening to and memorizing the infallible
teachers’ words by most children, teachers, and management staffs. The
interactivity and stopping teachers’ instruction to ask questions are usually
discouraged, because such deeds are seen as challenge to authority. What’s
worse, people can not realize the limits of their thinking pattern and have a
feeling that “things have to be done in that way”.
Without a deep
reflection on the current pedagogy, NOG’s teachers still teach in the old way.
The implementation of ICT in NOG is merely the presentation of information but
nothing, just like “old wine in new bottle”.
2.3 Shared Vision
The management
system in NOG is built upon concentrated authority rather than distributed
leadership. The decision making barely takes common staffs’ opinions into
consideration, but the responsibility for the result is usually taken by all
staffs.
Since 2006 when
NOG went public in New York Stock Exchange, the incentives of common staffs and
management staffs were no longer aligned that well as before. Managers’ bonus was
set directly proportionate to the profits of the departments they are in charge
of, but the common staffs’ bonus was canceled for no reasons. Since then, many managers
tried to minimize the cost by firing senior employees or teachers who have a
high salary, then recruiting some green hands that know little about teaching
but are happy with low salary.
Though the treatment
of most teachers was little influenced, it is hard to say whether they share the
same vision because there are little occasions they can meet each other and
have discussion over some important issues.
2.4 Team Learning
Periodical
discussions are organized in every department in NOG, but their purpose is just
to gather all the teachers and working staff to inform them what had happened
in the past several weeks.
Even the gathering
is not an appropriate occasion for teachers to communicate with each other, but
a meeting to be informed by the manager.
Besides that,
team-building exercises are held twice every year. Exercises are for fun, but
not for communication over important issues. Thus they can do little to help
form a collective thinking.
It is not hard to
imagine whether team learning is well organized in NOG.
2.5 Systems thinking
The decision
makers are department managers and school leaders.
By now the most
serious problem confronted by NOG is that its reputation is not as good as
before. The ostensible reason is some teachers can no more satisfy enrolled
students’ needs, but the real cause is unqualified employees were recruited to
shave schools’ cost.
To solve the
problem, a series of trainings are carried out to help teachers better organize
the class and teach. However, the loophole in recruitment process is not fixed
because to recruit more qualified staff means more cost and less profits of
each department, which goes against managers’ personal incentive.
Systems thinking is
totally no reflected on the solution to such a problem, and by now it still
remains one of the biggest challenge to NOG.
Reference:
Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday/Currency.
Argyris C.and Schön D. A.(1996). Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method, and Practice. Addison-Wesley
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