Teachers' perceptions of learning organizations

Abstract

As a result of an organizational learning attitude which elevates learning from a personal level to an organizational activity, examining the learning organization perception of school managements' components is very important to reveal the state of schools in terms of becoming learning organizations. In order to better assess educational organizations' openness to the process of change and schools' states in terms of becoming learning organizations, it is worth examining schools' perceptions of learning organizations. It is thought that examining primary schools' openness to learning as an organization and revealing their competence in terms of learning organization disciplines will provide an idea about primary schools' possibility of becoming "schools of the future". The purpose of this study is to examine primary school teachers' perceptions of their schools in terms of the learning organization approach. The study group of the research consists of 392 teachers working in the European side of Istanbul. A "Learning School Scale", in order to reveal teachers' perception of learning schools was used in this study. A "Screening Model" was used in this study to determine teachers' perceptions of learning organizations. Descriptive statistical methods and a statistical package program were used to analyze the data. Teachers' perceptions of learning organizations related to their own schools was examined based on gender, field, school type, seniority, and educational status variables. The findings obtained as a result of this study suggest that team learning activities should be the center of focus in order to familiarize teachers with the idea of a shared vision in the vision creation process and enhance their belief in the possibility of realizing this vision.