Stefano De Marchi

This chapter opens with a review of the literature on the subject of scholastic self-organization. Among the topics dealt with: weak ties, distributed control, distributed leadership, communities of practice and collaborative management. The authors then conceptualize the capabilities and focus on the articulation of the capabilities of self-organization in order to build a framework for measuring them in the school environment. The proposed framework of self-organization is based on the activation of four macro capabilities (interconnection, redundancy, sharing and restructuring) expressed in 19 meso-capabilities and incorporates the concepts emerged in the literature on scholastic self-organization. A specific questionnaire for the assessment of the capabilities is also provided. Finally, attention is placed on who the actors of self-organization are (groups of students, parents’ associations, groups of teachers and technicians, networks of teachers and technicians, networks of school principals and networks of schools) and what the styles of leadership in self-organized schools are (laissez-faire schools, hierarchical authoritarian schools, enlightened hierarchical schools and self-organized schools).

This chapter presents the results of the research carried out in 14 educational institutions, 7 of which were high schools, 5 comprehensive schools, 1 junior high school, and 1 primary and nursery school. Two associations are also described – along with their related projects – which work to reintegrate the students who have left school and which represent particularly innovative learning environments in the sense indicated by the authors. The authors show the relationship between the results of the analysis of the innovation of learning environments and the analysis of the capabilities in the 14 schools considered. It is possible to notice that there is a good correlation between the innovation of the learning environments and the organizational capabilities typical of self-organization: that is, the greater the school’s self-organization, the greater the possible innovation of its learning environment. The chapter includes an analysis of the most active players in the processes of self-organization in the 14 case studies (principals, teachers, teacher networks, students, parents) and the investigation of the role of external players (schools, territorial bodies, national or international companies and institutes) in such processes. The chapter also covers the limits to and the prospects for the research.

The introduction sets the context of the research: the rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is shifting the boundaries of educational possibilities, the growing importance of online learning, the spread of homeschooling experiences and Self-Organized Learning Environments of great educational effectiveness. These phenomena give the school system new unprecedented challenges. This work aims at studying and empirically verifying how to foster the development of an innovative learning environment, how it is implemented and what its level of innovation is compared to traditional methods. The authors investigate the organizational variables of learning environments, the factors that make them innovative and to what extent. In particular, they investigate whether the introduction of a learning environment is favored as an alternative by top-down approaches or bottom-up approaches. The book is divided into three parts: Part One is about learning environments; Part Two deals with self-organization in schools; Part Three concerns field research.

This chapter deals with the literature concerning innovative learning environments. Fifteen significant contributions are described and five international case studies are analyzed as examples of best practice. The authors then identify 22 key variables of innovative learning environments, divided into four categories: actors, organization, learning and tools. The 22 variables (each with its own structure and relative measure) represent the basis for the construction of the framework proposed to measure the degree of innovation of learning environments. The framework is accompanied by a questionnaire for the measurement of a learning environment. The challenge is therefore the construction of learning environments that involve a multiplicity of actors, based on a flexible organization, designed on the key variables of learning and characterized by a high profile of technologies and equipment. The reader may also take advantage of a focus on the classes of the personalization of learning (standard, individualized and personalized), of the formalization of learning (formal, non-formal and informal), and a focus on the characteristics of teaching and learning in terms of objectives, levers, actions and processes.

Luigi Berlinguer writes at the conclusion of his “Preface” to this volume: In other words, we propose another kind of school, not the one managed so far by the apparatus in Viale Trastevere (the seat of the Italian Ministry of Education); a truly autonomous, self-organized school, the true school of autonomy, which is able to understand and value the contribution of artistic experience, creativity, work culture, their full formative nature for the cultural and social formation of the citizen, in a truly democratic country.

Self-Organised Schools: Educational Leadership and Innovative Learning Environments describes the results of the research we carried out at fourteen Italian schools that highlight how there is a positive correlation between the capabilities of school self-organization and the innovativeness of learning environments: in other words, the more self-organized schools are, the more innovative learning environments are. The results of this work are part of the strand of research of bottom-up emergency and self-organization, an extremely fruitful trend as shown by Sugata Mitra, the founder of the Self-Organized Learning Environments, according to whom, "education is a self-organized system where learning is an emerging phenomenon". This book gives new insights on self-organization studies, and most of all, to the idea that change - organizational and educational innovation - sparks from the bottom. This book is aimed specifically at school principals of all levels, scholastic reformers, educational scholars, organisation and management consultants who want to innovate learning and management of learning. These actors will benefit drawing useful examples from more than thirty different learning environments worldwide, fourteen examples of schools that self-organize, two frameworks - and two ready-to-use questionnaires - measuring the innovativeness of a learning environment, and the capability of a school to self-organize. Self-organization is the most fascinating future of innovative principals

This chapter introduces the reader to the theory of self-organization in organizations, its characteristics, the perspectives and the possible questions it may imply. Intentionally, it does not refer to the peculiarity of schools, to which the following chapter is dedicated. In particular, it examines the great importance that self-organization plays in the processes of change in organizations. Two relevant experiences are analyzed: Jesuit self-leadership and self-activation in Toyota. Later, the chapter focuses on the organizational capabilities that allow self-organization: interconnection, redundancy, sharing, restructuring. The authors, therefore, answer questions such as: is hierarchy inevitable? Can focused organizations be self-organizations? Can self-organization be planned? The authors conclude by asserting that hierarchy and self-organization are not antithetical, but coexist in the time and space of organizations. The reader may also gain from an analysis of the styles of leadership (laissez-faire, command, conduction, construction) in terms of the role of the leader (active or passive), effectiveness of leadership (present or absent), style of government (absent government, control, supervision); organization (one mind or multiple minds).

In this chapter the future school perspectives are examined first of all, illustrating a series of studies that identify possible scenarios. The first identifies six, the second four, the third investigates the impact of new digital technologies; the fourth explores the conditions of scholastic change in the current socio-economic and cultural context. Answers are given to questions such as: Will the existing bureaucratic model be extended? Will schools continue to do as they have always done, according to top-down models? Or will the state withdraw from the management of the school, creating the conditions for a school immersed in the market model, innovative and dynamic, but exclusionary and unequal? Or will the school strengthen its role in close collaboration with the social community, focusing on learning, experimentation and innovation? Or, again, will we have the disappearance of schools, replaced by learning networks of students, parents or professionals? The school is then analyzed as a complex system, contextualizing the study within the research fields known as School Effectiveness and School Improvement. Finally, the regulatory context of school autonomy is briefly described, within which the processes of change from the bottom up can be activated which give rise to self-organization.

This chapter researches the nature of learning, how learning has changed with the advent of technologies and what is the role of informal learning. It deals with the ways in which learning is most effective and analyzes the concepts of learning environment, self-directed, emerging and self-organized learning. Traditional educational approaches are not able to cope sufficiently with the changes that the OECD countries are experiencing. The OECD investigated the ways in which learning is most effective, and innovative learning environments seem to be the most promising prospect. Effective, but in a different sense compared to the OECD criteria, are also those Self-Organized Learning Environments experimented by Sugata Mitra starting from 1999: given certain minimum conditions – a computer, a high-speed connection, companions – education is “a self-organizing system, where learning is an emerging phenomenon”. Ken Robinson hopes that in order to teach how to be creative in school, one must develop the self-directed learner, or the learner who gradually develops his own autonomy, establishes goals, plans, “self-evaluates, self-manages, while self-monitoring”. But the conditions must be created: innovative learning environments build up the conditions for emerging learning.