ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the causes and consequences of organizational learning (OL) in schools and to discover those leadership practices which contribute to such learning. Included within the meaning of out-of-school conditions are initiatives taken by those outside the school, or conditions which exist outside the school that influence conditions and initiatives inside the school. School leadership has emerged as an important explanation for variation in OL. Little distinction was evident in the data concerning district conditions between conditions which effected individual as distinct from collective learning. Interviews with teachers about community conditions fostering OL suggested that parental agreement with the school’s direction and practices, an atmosphere that welcomed parents into the school, and active participation of parents in the school were important. The interviews provided relatively little evidence that principals in the six schools, as a group, held high performance expectations for their staffs, at least that their staffs could detect.
