How Can Professional Development Gradually

Pinchot (1994) addresses this: ‘Despite all its successes, respect for bureaucracy is declining. As in so many other areas of life, what brought great success in the past has become the limitation of today. Suddenly everyone knows that bureaucracy is slowing us down and keeping our organizations internally focused and uncreative. It is time to question bureaucracy'. It is the beginning of a journey and a great opportunity for organizations to leave behind the bureaucratic system and become more productive and effective. It should start with relying on a system that develops and express the intelligence, judgment, collaborative abilities, and responsibility of their members. Changing the structure does not mean rearranging the organization chart in a new hierarchical pattern but focusing on liberating the potential of people working within the organization. The focus of the change will provide the conditions for staff being able to learn in order to freely lead.

MacBeath and Mortimore (2001) in their studies on school effectiveness, they argued that the system and culture of schools can separate people and prevent them from working coherently and collegially. The bureaucratic management approach can be one strong reason for this. Organizations work the way they work because of the way people do. Rules and regulations will not eliminate problems within the school even if they are changed. The difficulties that schools face is more deeply influenced by the kinds of mental models, and the relation between the staff members and the management who oversees the schools. To improve a school system, you must look first to the way people think and interact together before changing the rules. Otherwise, the new policies and organizational structures will fade away over time and the organization will revert to the way it was. Schools that train people to obey authority and follow rules unquestionably and not being part of the decision-making process, will have poorly prepared their students to be involved in the world we live in.

Seyomer Sarason (1990) argues that effective school reform cannot happen until people move beyond superficial conceptions of educational systems. They should recognize the unseen values and attitudes about power, privilege, and knowledge that keep existing structures, regulations, and authority relationships in place. If there are not fundamental shifts in how people think and interact, as well as how they accept and explore new ideas through discussions or professional development, then things will not add up correctly. Reducing the bureaucracy management approach, the first aim should be targeting having a team learning discipline. Having a group of staff who interact through dialogue and skilful discussions, will transform their collective thinking and learning into energetic and effective actions. Team learning can be fostered during staff meetings, in classrooms and between parents and teachers. According to David Pedder and John MacBeath (2008) article on school effectiveness and improvement, one of the main characteristics of schools promoting learning how to learn (LHTL) is promoting self-evaluation policy. It is essential for schools to start getting to know themselves better and grasp the vital connections between learning in classrooms, schools' management and the surrounding network. School self-evaluation stimulates the concept of double-loop learning (Ayrgyris and Schon, 1996) in which it helps teachers explore and challenge the beliefs and knowledge that shape their own practice and the practice of the school. When teachers start evaluating themselves, modifying their words, reorder their thinking, look for evidence to support their ideas and practice risk-taking decisions: This is called learning.

Building a learning leadership environment has a key challenge, it should start with creating the space and climate for school staff to reflect on and share aspects of their practice as mentioned before. This includes boosting and encouraging dialogue and risk-taking. Schools should start promoting the learning autonomy among teacher. Teachers have to start learning new knowledge, develop skills and reassess their roles. Teachers need to learn and get the support from their schools. A sense of the importance that learning how to learn is necessary and essential for staff as well should be created, and show them how this can affect the school bureaucratic system and gradually dismiss it. The idea of schools that can learn has become gradually more prominent during the past few years. It is becoming clear that schools can be reconstructed, improved, and sustainably renewed not only by command or regulations but by taking a learning orientation approach. During the past few years, people in many organizations have been called upon to act with greater autonomy, to draw their own conclusions, to lead as well as follow and to risk failure in decision making, so that they can build up capabilities for future successes. These are the skills that any learning organizations should demand.

Professional development and learning are most effective when it is involved in the context of educators' daily work. When learning is an important part of the school day, educators are engaged in the growth of the mindset. ‘Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other' so wrote John F. Kennedy in November 1963. In order to have successful leaders, they need to learn and leaders learn as they lead. When thinking about the relationship between leadership and learning, the leadership of others involves being first able to lead oneself. Self- learning and professional development is the start of leading. They are mutually embedded, so that as we learn we become more confident in sharing with and leading others. And as we lead we continuously reflect on and enhance our learning. Leadership as viewed today (Lee Bolman and Terrence deal, 1991) is an activity involving the member of the organization being influencing one another, taking the initiative of decision making on behalf of others, offering services, making moral choices for the wider good and modelling learning practices and behaviour. An organization with staff who allow self-evaluation, are professionally developed and have leadership skills will eventually allow the senior leaders and management to ‘hand out' or delegate certain roles and functions to others. Distributed leadership among people will dismiss bureaucracy over time and influential interactions arising will result in valued learning.