Theories Supporting Site Based Management

Video Transcription

In this tutorial, after a brief overview of the origins of site-based management, I'll walk you through the basics of several theories that support site-based management. Let's get started.

Let's begin with the origins of site-based management. Site-based management is an offshoot of an approach that was developed in the 1950s to improve business team operations. This approach, called "total quality management," included eight different elements that also should be present in modern-day, site-based management.

Site-based management can also be considered to be an offshoot of another approach called "high involvement management," which puts employees at the center of the decision-making process in the business world. This high involvement management approach is used by corporations as they work to improve and reform their businesses.

Site-based management in the education world began in the 1980s after the publication of the report "A Nation at Risk" in 1983. The purpose of site-based management was to decentralize the management and the decision-making processes in urban school districts in an effort to reform schools that were identified as "failing" in this "A Nation at Risk" publication. The idea was that maybe we could apply some of these approaches from business models to the world of education.

So through this decentralizing that occurs in site-based management, really, each school is able to take ownership of the accountability at the school level that is closest to each individual student. Another motivating factor here was the hope that site-based management would be able to address some of the issues that are specific to school structures, issues that can get in the way of learning-- things like outdated bell schedules, for example-- situations that are unique to each school building that, again, are outdated, that no longer makes sense in the grand scheme of things, or that limit flexibility that is necessary for student-centered decision-making.

There are several different theories that support site-based management. Let's look first at Bandura's social learning theory and his idea of self-efficacy. The foundation of social learning theory is the belief that learners evolve through their interactions with each other. The communities of practice that are formed within the context of site-based management work collaboratively. And consequently, they build collective knowledge and understanding.

Furthermore, Bandura tells us that self-efficacy is one's belief in the ability to accomplish a goal. Educator self-efficacy is crucial for the success of our site-based management initiatives. It's important to provide support and training for educators that will build their self-efficacy.

And this, in turn, will help our site-based management to be more effective. And this will not only implement change, but it will build capacity and impact our efforts to make improvements in the school and in the district. And ultimately, we want to be able to sustain our continuous improvement efforts through this approach of site-based management.

Though self-efficacy is an internal belief in the ability to accomplish a goal, self-efficacy is influenced by external factors. So it's important that site-based management provides the members of the community with a structure that includes opportunities to celebrate successes and to make those successes viewable to all of the members of the community.

Next, let's explore systems theory. This theory states that the whole is the sum of its parts. So in terms of an organization, systems theory tells us that the way in which the members of the organization work together shapes the success of the organization.

In systems theory, there are five disciplines that together make up a school. The idea is that these disciplines work together in order to create the structures and the systems of schools.

Systems theory tells us that a strong school is going to be one where collaboration and communication are happening in the context of a shared mission and shared vision, and where people are working together to support each other in the quest to achieve goals. And so we can see how the structure and the purpose of site-based management definitely are supported by this organizational systems theory and the five disciplines of systems theory.

Action research is defined as a cyclical problem-solving process. It's a growing field in today's world of education. And it supports continuous improvement efforts, both at the classroom level and at the building level. And so we are finding that action research is a tool that can be employed by site-based management teams as they are working on framing their thinking in terms of systems and in terms of improvement efforts.

Next, the adult learning theory called "andragogy" is defined as the art and science of helping adults learn. Malcolm Knowles, who developed this theory of andragogy, outlined six assumptions of adult learners. First, as we move towards adulthood, our self-concept moves from that of a more dependent personality towards that of a more independent or self-directed human being.

Second, adult learners accumulate ever-growing reservoirs of experience, which would be used as rich resources for adult learning. Next, an adult perceives his or her own readiness to learn in close relation to the developmental tasks that are seen everyday in his or her social role.

Next, as people move to adulthood, our time perspective changes. Instead of focusing on future application of knowledge, we begin to focus on immediacy of application. And this is referred to as the problem-centered orientation of adult learners, versus the subject-centered orientation that is often seen in younger learners.

Next is the idea that internal motivation is generally more important to adult learners than external motivators. And finally, adult learners have a need to know why they are learning something new.

Since site-based management incorporates adult learning as an integral part of the process, it's important that we understand how adults learn. And so andragogy definitely supports site-based management.

Let's look at one more theory that supports site-based management. Critical thinking theory tells us that there are four processes involved in critical thinking. The first process is contextual awareness and deciding what to observe and consider. This process involves being aware of what is occurring around you, understanding the context of the situation, and knowing what it is important to take notice of in that situation.

The next process is exploring and imagining alternatives. This involves being able to develop varying solutions to the problem that you are experiencing.

The next process is assumption recognition and analysis. In this process, you need to be aware of your own possible personal biases and preferences that might be influencing your actions and your thoughts.

And the final process is reflective skepticism, or deciding what to do. In this process, you use self-reflection in order to help you determine why you identified the particular problem that you wanted to address and to determine how your values and your beliefs might have influenced both your focus and the actions that you decided upon.

Critical thinking theory really is important both in site-based management and in the context of our PLCs because we need to understand how our own personal values and beliefs and potential biases might influence our decision-making. We need to be able to critically reflect on our decisions and on our beliefs anytime that we're acting as part of a group in order to ensure that the role that we are playing in that group and the decisions that we are influencing are going to support the collective mission of the group, including the vision and the goals that the group has in place. You don't want any one member of the group to be unduly influenced by anyone else's biases.

Now it's your turn to stop and reflect. Take some time to consider how each of these different theories supports site-based management.

For more information on how to apply what you learned in this video, please view the additional resources section that accompanies this video presentation. The additional resources section includes hyperlinks useful for applications of the course material, including a brief description of each resource. Thanks for joining me today. Have a great day.