San Diego's big boom: District bureaucracy meets culture of learning.

摘要

This dissertation---a single, qualitative case study---documents the early design and start-up activities of a districtwide change initiative in San Diego City Schools from summer 1998 through fall 2000. I chronicled what happened when incoming district leaders pledged to be active agents of change and to make instructional needs drive their system of schools. I pursued the following research question: What is the process of change for a large, urban school district that regards its entire district system-central office and schools as the unit of change for making learning a system-wide priority?;Through this research, I built a theoretical framework about processes of change from a blend of organizational theories in the sociological perspective. Specifically, I explored and applied as theoretical constructs two terms that were used by San Diego reformers---"bureaucracy" and "learning community"---to understand the structural goals of the district's reform initiative. I actively wrestled with the notion that large-scale, systemic change in a big urban district may require strong, even bureaucratic, methods to transition the system into supporting a culture of learning.;I found that a district focused around instruction can be at once bureaucratic and a community of learners. San Diego reformers transformed classic bureaucracy into a structure through which learning could be better supported. The thrust of the organizational shift came through the system's instructional orientation, whereby the operations of the district came to exist to serve instructional priorities. I determined that while a bureaucracy lends structure to a learning community and helps to direct learning toward a particular goal, a community of learners creates a context in which the system becomes self-reflective, rather than self-perpetuating, and in which organizational growth and knowledge development depend on members' relations to one another and their interactions around relevant data.;This case study extends the general knowledge base about districts, has implications for district organization and governance, and lends insight into strategic district leadership and theories of change. Most importantly, my work has implications for change theory, suggesting a reciprocal relationship between principled knowledge and top-down action.