Journal of

Educational Educational change in

Administration
36,5
Southeast Asia
The challenge of creating
492
learning systems
Philip Hallinger
Professor, Vanderbilt University, Chiang Mai University
and Melbourne University

Journal of Educational
Administration,
Vol. 36 No. 5, 1998, pp. 492-509,
© MCB University Press, 0957-8234
Every few hundred years throughout Western history, a sharp transformation has occurred.
In a matter of decades, society altogether rearranges itself – its worldview, its basic values, its
social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions. Fifty years later a new world exists.
And the people born into that world cannot even imagine the world in which their
grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born (Drucker, 1995, p. 75).
This quotation highlights the fact that we live during an era in which the pace
and scope of change are unprecedented. Nowhere in the world is this
observation more salient than in the rapidly developing nations of Southeast
Asia. The same global change forces that manifest in the USA, Europe,
Australia, Canada, and Japan, have an even greater impact in Southeast Asia.
The social, economic, political and cultural institutions in the developing
societies that comprise this region face the challenge of adapting to the same
global standards in trade, commerce, education, human rights, and
manufacturing. Yet, they must play this highly competitive global game with
far fewer resources.
In the education sector, this is also the case. While policymakers and
analysts frequently mention education as a key factor in Southeast Asia’s recent
economic success (Rohwer, 1996), this obscures the wide range of variation in
educational development within the region (e.g. from Singapore to Thailand to
Indonesia). Moreover, it ignores the fact that some of the traditions and
practices that figured in the region’s educational achievement will impede
further development unless they can change (e.g. emphasis on rote learning,
highly centralized decision making).
Learning is the keystone to successful adaptation, not only for individuals
but also for organizations. Successful organizations tap the knowledge that
exists in the workforce and among customers. Leaders in successful
organizations create shared knowledge and apply this learning to adapt to a
rapidly changing environment (Stewart, 1997).
An earlier version of this paper was prepared for presentation at the Conference of the
Australasian Association of Senior Educational Administrators, Perth, Australia, August 1997.
 This observation has given rise to the notion of the learning organization Educational
(Senge, 1990). Although the concept originated in the private sector, it has since change in
spread into schools as well. This seems appropriate for just as knowledge is the Southeast Asia
focus of the educational enterprise, shared knowledge is the focal point of the
learning organization (Leithwood, 1995).
This orientation to school reform differs from traditional approaches to
school reform. These have tended to focus on first order changes such as 493
implementing a specific reform policy, practice, or process (e.g. effective
schools, school-based management, staff empowerment, higher standards). A
learning organization focuses on second order change in order to increase the
general capacity for learning in the workplace. This allows the organization to
bring about whatever changes it deems appropriate. A school that functions as
a learning organization has the capacity to innovate successfully in response to
its changing environment.
The application of learning organizations in education has tended to focus on
the schoolhouse. However, it is equally important to consider the role of system
leaders. This seems especially important in Southeast Asia where system
leaders continue to wield considerable authority when compared with nations
like the USA, New Zealand or Australia. Centralized decision making may be
one of the factors that led to past success, but which is now an obstacle to
change. If this is the case, what role can system leaders in Southeast Asia play
in the transformation of schools from order takers into self-renewing learning
organizations?
This challenge represents the focus of this paper. It begins with an
examination of the context in which schools operate today in the Asia Pacific
region. The analysis here will focus particularly on countries in Southeast Asia.
Next the paper presents a framework for viewing schools as learning
organizations. Finally it considers functions that Southeast Asia’s system
leaders can play in supporting the transformation of schools into learning
organizations.

The impact of global change forces on education in the Asia-Pacific

region
This is a period of unprecedented change for Southeast Asian societies. The
breadth and rapidity of change are not only overwhelming, but also seemingly
unstoppable. Changes come, for the most part, from outside our borders and are
seldom sought (O’Toole, 1995). While it has become trite to say that change is a
constant today, this is actually rather unusual for human society (Drucker,
1995). The second half of the twentieth century, indeed from 1970 forward,
represents a period of dramatic, transformational change.
A more powerful global media as well as greater access to information via
rapidly expanding networks of transportation, communication, and commerce
challenge traditional ways of living and working (Naisbitt, 1997; Ohmae, 1995;
Rohwer, 1996). Societies throughout the Asia Pacific region, but especially those
in Southeast Asia, have strained to accommodate new values emanating from
Journal of the global culture. Social, economic, political and cultural institutions have
Educational undergone radical transformation in little more than a decade.
Administration Schools – along with the family and religious organizations – represent one
of the primary social institutions responsible for cultural transmission.
36,5 Consequently, societal changes have filtered through to the schoolhouse as well.
In fact, the very purposes of schooling have shifted within the space of a decade.
494 This section will review the impact of selected global change forces on
education in Southeast Asian societies.

Globalization of the educational ideal

A key change force in this era of globalization has been the expansion of
information, communication, and transportation networks. Combined with a
more active and open global media, this has resulted in much greater access to
information in Southeast Asia. Throughout the region, there is now ready
access to global images and trends via the BBC, CNN and, the Wall Street
Journal. In fact, the same movies, advertisements, sporting events, and soap
operas beam into homes in Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and
San Francisco. Ohmae (1995) contends that developments in information
technology have combined with more fluid national boundaries to create a new
context for all organizations:
these developments have changed what customers everywhere can know about the way other
people live, about the products and services available to them, and about the relative value
such offerings provide … Indeed consumers around the world are beginning to develop
similar cultural expectations about what they ought to be able to buy as well as about what it
is they want to buy (Ohmae, 1995, pp. 28-9).
An unanticipated consequence of this information revolution is that consumers
are beginning to define the meaning of quality education globally, rather than
locally or even nationally. Fears of national competitiveness within the global
economy now shape policy decisions made in education from Ottawa to
Manilla. Increasingly, policymakers (and parents) throughout the Asia Pacific
region view a quality education as preparing students to be:
• lifelong learners;
• able communicators in both a native and an international language (e.g.
English, Mandarin);
• technologically skilled for the workplace and daily living;
• cognitively prepared for complex tasks, problem-solving, and the
creation of knowledge;
• socially, politically and culturally responsible citizens.
This is an expanded and ambitious agenda for educational systems, especially
so for the developing nations of Southeast Asia. The notion of education as a
public enterprise is well enshrined in Southeast Asia. Nations such as Thailand,
Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines experienced rapid development over
the past 20 years and this is evident in their educational systems. Each country
has developed a human and physical infrastructure to provide education to Educational
their youth. change in
Yet, even these societies are still making the transition to 12 years of Southeast Asia
universal compulsory education. Nations such as Cambodia, Laos and
Myanmar lag much farther behind. The capacity of these educational systems
to meet the new demands of this global age via traditional means is in
question. 495
Can Southeast Asia’s education systems both meet the demand of an
expanding student population and satisfy rising expectations for educational
quality? The answer to this question remains open. Without a doubt, however,
public educational systems in the region are under increasing pressure to attain
the global educational ideal. The rising middle class in Southeast Asia sees
what kind of education Western nations provide and are demanding similar
quality for their children.
Thus, in many countries, it is parents who are applying the pressure for
educational reform. Some of the pressure is direct (i.e. exercising voice), and
some is indirect (i.e. exercising the option to exit the system). It is only in the
recent past that an international market has developed for private K-12
education in the region. Parents with sufficient resources in Thailand, Hong
Kong, Indonesia, Taiwan, China, or Malaysia no longer think twice about
sending their children abroad for an education that more closely fits their
perception of the global educational ideal. The traditionally high value placed
on education in Asia makes economic sacrifice for the young a natural choice
among the middle class.
Even policymakers in developed nations in the region have changed their
view of education. Policymakers in nations such as the USA, Canada, and
Australia used to view education primarily as an inexpensive tool for
enhancing international relations and goodwill. Today, newspapers in Kuala
Lumpur, Bangkok, Jakarta, and Hanoi are filled with advertisements from well-
known private schools located in the industrialized countries. Australia, in
particular, is leading the way in conceiving of education and human resource
development as an export industry.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, the trend was to solicit paying students
from developing countries in Southeast Asia to attend school in the
industrialized countries. Now, for example, many Australia-based schools have
changed their approach. Some have formed strategic partnerships with schools
in the developing countries. Others have actually opened new branches abroad
in these new consumer markets. Still others are developing their capacity to
enroll students in distance learning as an additional means of tapping less
developed foreign markets that have a demand for educational services
consistent with the global ideal.
Still more ambitious are indigenous start-up schools that explicitly capitalize
on the dissemination of the global educational ideal. Founders build these
schools around a core set of internationally accepted educational values and
innovations. These often include high standards, cooperative learning, and the
Journal of widespread use of learning technology. Teachers typically provide instruction
Educational in both English and an indigenous language and the school experience gives
Administration equal attention to issues of globalization and values of the local culture.
36,5 Such enterprises have formed throughout the Asia Pacific. In Australia, the
state of Victoria has developed Schools of the Future, a program designed to
stimulate innovation. In Malaysia policymakers have formulated a national
496 program to develop Smart Schools. These are intended to supply students who
can contribute to the nation’s ambitious effort to foster advanced technological
capacities. In Thailand, the Tridhos Three Generation School was recently
founded with the expressed intent to develop a new generation of leaders for
Thailand: leaders who have been educated in line with the global educational
ideal. These and similar enterprises will increasingly define what citizens in
Asia Pacific societies think of as quality education.
Not surprisingly, system leaders in Southeast Asia have generally reacted to
these innovations in education with stop-gap measures. Until recently, the
absence of a large middle class meant that few consumers had the resources
needed to exercise a choice outside the public schools. This offered built-in
protection for public educational systems, shielding them from pressures for
change. That is changing rapidly.
The recent economic downturn in the region has slowed the pace of
expansion of private education. Many parents who sent their children abroad
for schooling have called them back home. Others who would have sent them
abroad for school, are keeping them home. This, however, is a short-term trend.
The traditional Asian emphasis on education combined with continued
economic development – even at a slower pace – suggests that the demand for
quality education will remain high in the region. System leaders who do not
respond successfully to this demand will lose public support, resources, as well
as able students.

Multiculturalism within a global culture

Jesse Stuart, an American educator, once characterized education as “the thread
that runs so true”. By this he meant that teachers weave the fabric of society
helping to maintain the integrity of the culture.
During the past few decades, Western societies have witnessed the
fragmentation of the nuclear family and a gradual decline in the moral
authority of religious institutions. This has placed greater pressure on
schools to maintain the cultural cohesion of Western societies. Global change
forces are creating a similar trend in Southeast Asia as well. Ohmae (1995)
notes:
The essential continuity between generations, on which every society necessarily depends for
its integrity and survival, has begun to fray … The web of culture used to be spun out of
stories a child heard at a grandparent’s knee. In today’s increasingly subnuclear families, it
derives from a child’s experience with interactive multimedia (Ohmae, 1995, pp. 30, 37).
This leaves schools as the primary social institution responsible for cultural Educational
transmission. This is a fascinating development since news about education change in
in Asian newspapers tends to focus on the need to upgrade students’ Southeast Asia
cognitive performance. While this is indeed a priority, today schools must
reassert their role as vehicles for helping societies adapt to social and cultural
change.
Immigration patterns throughout the Asia Pacific region leave no doubt that 497
cultural integration represents an important and continuing educational
challenge. From Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia to the USA, New Zealand
and Australia, multiculturalism has assumed central importance as an
educational issue. More open borders have led to increased migration
throughout the Asia Pacific region.
An unanticipated consequence is the need for nations to define their cultural
identities in this global era. The recent Australian controversy over Asian
immigration has raised the question of what it means to be Australian to a new
level of national attention. In the USA, bilingual education and all that it
represents for the broader issue of cultural integration is a predictable hot-
button issue for schools. In Thailand, the economic recession has revived
interest in the underlying values that comprise Thai culture.
Interestingly, policymakers in Southeast Asia have traditionally taken this
issue more seriously than in the West. Most countries in the region have
significant cultural minorities and policymakers have typically viewed cultural
integration as a high priority in national development. Consequently, East
Asian school systems have tended to address the cultural and moral aspects of
education more directly than in the West (see Appendix).
In Malaysia, for example, integration of Malays, Indians, and ethnic
Chinese into a single society represents a predominant goal for the
educational system. This has spurred Malaysian educators to consider the
role of schools (as well as families and religion) in building and sustaining a
national culture.
Bergotong-royong or “community-effort” is a time-honoured custom practiced by Malaysians
… It is therefore important for the spirit of community effort to be instilled in the
consciousness of all Malaysians, particularly the young. The spirit of goyong-royong sows the
seeds of neighborliness and the strengthening of unity (Tun Uda and Raja Fuziah bte Raja,
1990, p. 16)
In the Philippines the trait of Bayanihan – cooperation or team spirit – imbues all
relationships in the workplace. Each member is expected to contribute no matter
how small, emphasizing the importance of participation over mere observation.
Schools are expected to actively develop this norm among the youth.
These observations highlight the importance of non-cognitive outcomes of
education. Yet, policymakers find themselves increasingly in the position of
making tradeoffs between policies that foster cultural integration and those
designed to promote technical competence (see Rahimah in this issue).
Moreover, the spread of the global culture leaves even those leaders most
committed to economic integration uncomfortable. As Senior Minister Lee
Journal of Kuan Yew of Singapore has observed: “We are all groping towards a destination
Educational which we hope will be identifiable with our past … We have left the past behind
Administration and there is an underlying unease that there will be nothing left of us which is
part of the old” (Economist, 1994, p. 12).
36,5
Emerging technologies
498 Technological innovation is having a broad impact on modern living. Consider
the explosive growth of the Internet since 1995. It has grown from a virtually
unknown computer domain used by academics to a broadly-accessed network
at the forefront of global communication and commerce.
Even technologically advanced nations are struggling to integrate new
technologies. Despite the fact that policymakers often expound on technological
development as a national priority, the actual response is typically much slower.
For example, take Australia which prides itself on its technological innovation.
There “The federal government has been warned it has just three to five years
to develop a long-term strategic vision to reverse Australia’s slide down the
scale of international competitiveness in information technology and
telecommunications” (Zampetakis, 1997).
Japan, which has been at the forefront of technological development for the
past 30 years, represents another salient case. In the past, the Japanese system
of education provided a high quality, advanced technological education for its
elite students. The typical Japanese classroom held few if any computers for
general learning and instruction. This system worked effectively when
technology was primarily the domain of scientists and engineers.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, however, this method of educating
youth for (and with) technology is suddenly outmoded. In a few short years the
diffusion of technology throughout society has made the ability to use
technology, particularly in the workplace, a necessity. Today, schools must
bring technology into the classroom so that all children have the opportunity to
learn how to use it at an early age.
It is the combination of expertise and human skill in using technology – not
simply technological development – that is critical here. This is why it is so
important for youth to have an early exposure to technology in their education.
The goal must be for children to learn how to integrate the use of technology
with expertise gained in their respective domains of work.
This has only recently become obvious in the workplace. For example, the
Shiseido Co. Ltd, a large Japanese cosmetics company, automated much of its
manufacturing processes during the 1980s. Only after they had invested
millions of dollars in robotics did they make a startling discovery: “The key to
producing high-quality products was still skilled workers and their suggestions
… that realization has triggered a nationwide campaign to salvage the
disappearing human skills that robots are unlikely to match in the near future”
(The Nation, 1997, p. 14).
The challenge for the developing nations of Southeast Asia is, however, even
greater than for nations such as Australia and Japan. Integration of
technology into schools will require a much more significant per capita Educational
investment. In addition, the skills needed among school teachers to use change in
technology in schools are at a greater premium within these societies. Finally, Southeast Asia
as noted in the prior section, these demands must be fulfilled at the same time
as these developing nations are trying to meet basic needs for universal
education.
Be it Japan, the USA, Malaysia, Australia, or Thailand, the integration of 499
technology into schools represents a major challenge in terms of vision,
investment, and educational change. The ability to change ingrained patterns
of educational practice to meet the demand for technological adaptation is in
question. Yet the consequences of not meeting this challenge are too significant
to ignore.

The information explosion

Changes in the content and dissemination of knowledge are also having a subtle
but deep impact on the purposes and practices of education. The pace of
innovation in many fields (e.g. computer science, biology, medicine,
biochemistry, library science, physics, law, nursing, education) has accelerated
greatly in recent years (Naisbitt, 1997). Consequently, scholars in most
disciplines view knowledge much more dynamically than in the past.
This has profound implications for the practice of schooling. What is learned
in schools today, may be obsolete in just a few short years. As Engel has noted:
Those who embark on higher education now will still be active in professional practice well
towards the middle of the next century. They will practice during a period of accelerating and
massive change. Change, as it relates to their profession, will make self-directed learning
throughout their life a sine qua non (Engel, 1991, pp. 45-6).
Yet, schools have traditionally organized instruction and measured student
success in terms of student mastery of a defined and fairly static set of subject
matter. This represents a major problem when the subject matter is changing
rapidly. Roland Barth (1997) has defined the at-risk student as, “any student
who leaves school before or after graduation with little possibility of continuing
learning” (p. 7). Schools, while still in the business of teaching content, will need
to revamp instruction so that students are both motivated and have the skills
for independent, self-directed, lifelong learning. This challenge extends to all
levels of schooling and countries.
In Japan, for example:
[T]he students at Keio University’s experimental campus … are all on-line … If they want to
consult an expert anywhere in the world, they can reach him or her the same way. What a
professor says in class no longer has to be treated as unquestioned gospel … They have
stopped being passive consumers of an educational experience defined, shaped, and evaluated
by the Ministry of Education. The technology has allowed them, in a most non-Japanese
fashion, to become definers and shapers and evaluators – and questioners – themselves
(Ohmae, 1995, p. 36).
In addition to the creation and dissemination of knowledge, the type of creative
thinking required of students is also changing. As Rohwer has noted:
Journal of [I]deas are the critical input in the production of more valuable human and nonhuman capital
… These days you not only do not have to reinvent the wheel, you can find out how to make
Educational the car and then improve on the carmaking process yourself. This is why countries starting
Administration out far behind the rich world have the chance – if they get things right – to make up ground
36,5 so fast … As countries move up the income scale they have to start producing ideas as well as
just importing them (Rohwer, 1996, pp. 74, 77).
While this is an educational challenge for all nations, it presents a special
500 problem in Asia. The traditional Asian emphasis on rote learning and
discipline has often been viewed with envy by educators in the West. Now the
changing economic context of schooling has raised the stock for problem-
solving and the creative generation of ideas. The business community is
demanding that school graduates be able to go beyond simple reproduction of
knowledge.
Unfortunately, Asia’s educational systems have not yet adapted to meet this
changing need. They are still grounded in traditions that limit rather than foster
students’ independent, creative thinking and practical problem-solving. In the
words of Sippanondha Ketudat, a respected former Minister of Education:
[S]tudents should not be blamed for poor academic performance. The fault lay instead with
the learning process … [S]chools and parents should … create a learning atmosphere to
encourage students to think analytically. Schools spend too much time teaching by rote and
doing multiple choice tests (Bunnag, 1997, p. 2).
Southeast Asian nations will be unable to continue economic development
from agricultural to low-level industrial to high-level industrial and
information-based societies without change in this domain. The school
systems were never designed to produce highly motivated, independent
learners. The capacity of Southeast Asia’s schools to meet this challenge is by
no means assured.
Schools throughout the world have traditionally been bastions of
conservatism. Tyack and Hansot (1982) referred to the schoolhouse as the
community’s “museum of virtue” – guardian of the culture’s most cherished
values and traditions. The public rhetoric of policymakers to the contrary,
schools have never operated at the front-edge of social change. They have
never been designed to change easily because that is not what societies want
for their young. This is borne out by the experience of reformers over the past
several decades and is just as true in Chiang Mai or Manilla as in Sydney or
Dallas.
The global educational ideal is reshaping the context for leaders of
educational systems. Pressures for cultural integration, technological
development, critical thinking, and life-long learning are changing the priorities
for educational systems throughout the world. Public schools in Southeast Asia
are still in the process of meeting basic demands for infrastructure and universal
education. Yet, their educational systems must measure up to a similarly high set
of expectations emanating from both local and global conditions. The current
economic crisis in Asia means accomplishing all of this with fewer resources.
This poses a special problem for system leaders in the region.
Schools as learning organizations: a role for system leaders Educational
System leaders in Southeast Asia have responded in various ways to the change in
challenges identified above. In part, they have looked abroad for educational Southeast Asia
policies and methods that could help achieve this expanded agenda for school
reform. To a certain extent this has meant emulating practices derived from
those educational systems which their consuming public admires (e.g. the UK,
USA, Australia). Thus, it is possible to find Western-derived educational 501
policies from school-based management to shared decision-making, school-
level programs from effective schools to accelerated schools, and teaching
practices from cooperative learning to thinking skills in schools in Southeast
Asia.
Implementation of these programs in Southeast Asian schools has not,
however, always found a fertile ground. Cultural norms and institutional
structures have complicated the already difficult task of bringing
programmatic change to schools (Cheng, 1995, 1996). Moreover, in many
cases, educational reform has been piecemeal and almost always centrally
directed by education ministries (see Rahimah, also Dimmock and Walker in
this issue). The result has been disappointing in light of the resources
expended. System leaders in Southeast Asia need more comprehensive tools
that enhance the possibilities of implementing change successfully at the
school level.
This leads to consideration of the concept of the school as a learning
organization. This is “an organization that is continually expanding its
capacity to create its future” (Senge, 1990, p. 14). Embedded in this discussion
of the school as a learning organization are five assumptions:
(1) Schools differ in their capacity to change.
(2) Schools represent communities of learners.
(3) Teachers are adult learners.
(4) The role of the principal in a learning organization is “head learner”.
(5) The role of system leaders is to create a context for schools that fosters
their ability to learn and change on a continuous basis.
These assumptions focus attention on the need to create school systems in
which staff engage in continuous learning individually and collectively.
Furthermore, these assumptions suggest that the individual learning of staff
actually depends on the learning of others in the school community. Here the
community may be a group of students, a classroom, the school, or a network of
schools.
System leaders must recognize that in the information age, their role involves
leveraging the knowledge that exists within the system in order to increase the
capacity of schools to improve themselves. Their role is to take steps that
“increase the collective IQ of the system” to improve (Engelbart, 1995). This
second order approach to change focuses on improving the capacity to improve,
rather than on direct implementation of specific reforms. Notably, you cannot
Journal of manage the intellectual resources of the organization unless you can locate it in
Educational places that are strategically important and where leaders can make a difference
Administration (Stewart, 1997).
We see several functions as especially salient. System leaders can influence
36,5 the context of individual schools through their role in creating a context in
which schools can determine their central purposes. System leaders also
502 control structural features of the system and influence the development of
people. Finally, system leaders play a key role in managing and providing
information that individual schools can use in their attempts to bring about
change.

Creating a shared vision

Senge (1990) identified shared vision as one component of a learning
organization. Similarly, scholars frequently mention a clear mission as a
hallmark of effective schools. There is little doubt today that consensus among
key constituencies over values, purposes and goals represents a desirable
characteristic of schools. Moreover, research bears out that this is a factor that
school-level leaders can influence (Hallinger and Heck, 1997).
There is, however, less guidance on how system leaders can foster a shared
vision and goal consensus in schools. In Southeast Asia, system leaders have
seldom asked this question. They have simply assumed that goal-setting was
the province of the Ministry of Education and that schools would accept those
purposes as meaningful and appropriate. That assumption is, however,
incompatible with the notion of learning organizations in which staff identify
needs and develop a common vision of how to proceed.
For system leaders, this is a double-edged blade. As McLaughlin (1990, p.
13) of Stanford University has observed: “You can’t mandate what matters to
people, but what you do mandate does matter”. On the one hand, the global
trend towards decentralization of educational decisions posits that
constituencies at the grass-roots level (e.g. the school) possess the best
information to set goals. At the same time, even the most decentralized
systems (e.g. New Zealand) retain some interest in ensuring that certain
societal purposes are achieved in education. Caldwell (1997, p. 2) has
described the approach taken to goal-setting in the Australian state of
Victoria:
There is a curriculum and standards framework for all primary and secondary schools, local
selection of staff, and an accountability scheme that calls for the preparation of annual reports
to the community … Each school has a charter that reflects commitments to meeting local
needs and priorities as well as those of the state as a whole.
Increasingly, policymakers are choosing to achieve a blend of central purposes
and local initiative by combining decentralized management with a more
centralized curriculum. This is the case in diverse locales such as the UK,
Australia, and Hong Kong. System-wide goals are defined as priority areas of
curricular focus for all schools. For example, the ability to use technology, the
use of international languages such as English, Spanish, or Mandarin, equal Educational
access to quality education for different groups of students all represent system change in
goals that societies may view as paramount. Southeast Asia
Schools that have demonstrated a capacity to innovate exhibit a paradoxical
trait. They are able to successfully adapt to change, but they are also able to
screen out unneeded or inappropriate proposals for change. They develop a
finely-honed intelligence about what is needed given their current goals and the 503
needs of the school and its people. Moreover, staff in such schools are also able
to learn what is necessary in order to adapt to change.
As Senge (1990) notes, part of functioning as a learning organization entails
determining your purposes, creating a shared vision. Too many centrally
established goals operate against the desirable features of local initiative.
Learning – at the individual or the organizational level – is a process of
discovering what you need to know. Thus, system leaders would be advised to
limit their mandates to what is essential.
Finally, system leaders can create a more fertile context for schools to create
shared visions of learning for their students by practicing “creative
destruction”. Policy accretion is never-ending and schools eventually find
themselves burdened by conflicting sets of out-dated policies, standards, and
expectations. As Drucker (1995) notes:
Society, community, and family all try to maintain stability and to prevent, or at least to slow,
change. But the modern organization must be organized for innovation – for “creative
destruction”. [Its] function is to put knowledge to work. It is the nature of knowledge that it
changes fast and that today’s certainties always become tomorrow’s absurdities.

Fostering learning networks

Scholars have enquired into why the Southeast Asian nations have been so
successful in adapting to change over the past 20 years. Rohwer suggests that it
has to do with two factors. First, governments to a large extent avoided the
Western urge to intervene in the lives of people. Second, these societies
maintained strong social institutions such as family, neighborhood, and
community.
[S]ocial protection is at heart a doctrine of conservatism. It is about guarding people against
the destructive effects of change, which in practice means guarding them against change, full
stop, since the creative and destructive aspects of it come as a package. As the force of
technology has grown, it has become apparent that the only social and political organizations
capable of thriving are those based on accepting and adapting to change rather than trying to
soften its blow (Rohwer, 1996, pp. 21-2).
It is interesting to note that an exception to this principle of limited government
intervention has been education. Asian governments have typically relied on
highly centralized education bureaucracies to make every decision from
curriculum content to the weight of a student’s book bag. Moreover, they have
tended to shield these systems from any hint of competition through strict
regulation of private schooling. Only recently some systems, such as Thailand,
Singapore and Hong Kong, have begun experimenting with different modes of
Journal of decentralization, though with mixed results (Cheng, 1996; Dimmock and Walker
Educational in this issue).
Administration In fact, the dichotomy of centralization/decentralization fails to capture an
essential feature of the information age: the gradual disintegration of the
36,5 political and institutional boundaries. Today, fluid networks are replacing
traditional organizational forms (Naisbitt, 1997; Ohmae, 1995). Here the private
504 sector is well ahead of schools. As Ohmae (1995, p. 96) observes:
The trick is to develop policies that help companies to learn and respond quickly to changing
conditions – rather than policies that either protect or isolate them from competition or
external change. The goal, in other words is to foster the development of flexible
communities of interest through local networks. These networks provide multiple forums for
collaboration and the exchange of opinions … The heart of the challenge, remember, is not to
solve all problems locally, but rather to make it possible to solve them by harnessing global
resources.
Kanter (1995) makes a similar point in discussing the concept of collaborative
advantage: the ability to derive benefits from alliances, partnerships, and other
linkages. Some of Asia’s most successful companies have followed this
approach, creating strategic partnerships with Western companies. These
alliances foster mutual benefits as the partners learn from each other (Jager and
Ortiz, 1997).
These observations are also salient to educational organizations. Schools
must forge connections with other schools and even with organizations outside
of the education sector (Fullan, 1993). System leaders can enhance
experimentation at the local school level via loosening the strings of private
schooling, through system decentralization, and by fostering the development
of school-to-school networks. This is already happening within the region, but
mostly at the higher education level.
Over the past decade many Asian universities have formed partnerships
with Western universities. These alliances provide numerous benefits to faculty
and students as well as to the institutions. Benefits can include an expanded
pool of learning resources, stimulation and ongoing support for innovation,
enhanced opportunities for faculty development, and renewal of curricula.
While these partnerships must overcome predictable obstacles, the benefits are
substantial. In the best cases, they smooth the transition to a new vision of
schooling for both institutions.
Unfortunately, primary and secondary schools have been slower to tap the
possibilities of partnerships outside the defined relationships imposed by
institutional boundaries. System leaders should consider how they can reduce
obstacles that may exist among schools for developing such alliances. Note,
however, Ohmae’s observation, “the goal is to develop flexible communities of
interest”. Locally determined needs or purposes should dictate the formation of
networks among schools. The existence of global information networks such as
the Internet make this possible today.
Common purposes may reflect projects or experiments in which schools
engage on an ad hoc basis. For example, in the USA a network of schools has
organized around participation in a project, “Schools for thought”. Schools Educational
engaged in this project share experiences, learnings, successes and mistakes change in
with one another based on their common interest in organizing curriculum, Southeast Asia
instruction and management around the goal of enhancing students’ thinking.
Moreover, schools throughout the world periodically link up through online
video conferences. These present opportunities for students to apply their
learning in live challenge contests. 505
Students can see how their learning takes place within a global community
of learners. Likewise, teachers begin to see their learning as taking place within
a community. Finally, schools see their own learning and change within a larger
context as well.
Information technology and networking represent important vehicles for
stimulating the development of schools into learning communities. Schools
become units within fluid networks, not based upon arbitrary institutional
affiliation, but upon perceived needs and common interests. This notion of
networks shifts our traditional notion of the learning community from the
school to a much broader context. This seems especially important in
Southeast Asia as a means of expanding the resource base available to
schools.

Developing the capacity through personal mastery

The focus in this article is on developing the capacity of schools to adapt to
change, whatever those changes may be. Yet, in the end change in the school
will only occur after the people who make up the organization themselves
change their behaviors and attitudes. Personal mastery is another of the
elements Senge (1990) has proposed for learning organizations. Change at the
individual level depends upon the capacity to master new skills, develop new
attitudes, and come to new understandings. This is a lifelong process that goes
beyond initial certification as a teacher.
A persistent problem facing schools throughout the world entails how to
foster staff learning throughout their careers. Surprisingly, within the
educational sector, lifelong learning has been conspicuous by its absence as a
professional norm. Even in nations with highly-developed systems of
professional certification, professional development for educators has generally
been viewed as an option based upon individual choice.
System leaders must recognize that when the choice of whether to engage in
professional development is left to the individual, some will simply neglect it.
The process of change requires both pressure and support (Fullan, 1993). The
clear articulation of system expectations for growth is not incompatible with
the culture of a learning organization.
Policies that hold schools and staff accountable for continuous development
are appropriate, even in decentralized systems. At the same time, the choices of
how to develop and in what domains are best left to schools and individual staff.
Part of a school’s annual planning process ought to determine the areas in
which the staff will engage in learning collaboratively.
Journal of In the USA, system-level authorities have had an impact on the professional
Educational norm of continuous learning through the sponsorship of regional learning
Administration academies for teachers and school leaders. Teacher centers and principals
centers have fostered the belief that learning is a lifelong responsibility for all
36,5 educators. Notably, this transformation has occurred not through a top-down
insistence, but on engaging practicing teachers and leaders in meaningful
506 development programs. Moreover, these programs have been cross-district and
even cross-region, again stimulating the development of ever-larger
communities of learners.

Management of information
As noted above, a revolutionary change in this era concerns access to
information. This information is increasingly carried throughout the world on
the Internet and through organizational Intranets. This is transforming the
management of organizations.
[A]t the company level, they have changed what managers can know in real time about their
markets, products, and organizational processes. This means that managers can be far more
responsive to what their customers want and far more flexible in how they organize and
provide it (Ohmae, 1995, pp. 28-9).
The skillful use of relevant information is a characteristic of learning
organizations. Salient, real-time information enhances the possibility of
learning, for organizations and individuals. Organizations are just beginning to
realize the potential of global information access. Engelbart (1995) a pioneer in
experimenting with the use of information technology to improve
organizational learning claims:
Information technologies may be able to serve as the connective tissue between people and
information. The result would be an increase in the organization’s collective IQ, which would
in turn supercharge a group’s ability to improve itself over time (Engelbart, 1995, p. 3).
Technological innovation, if put to proper use in schools, can assist principals,
teachers, and parents in making better decisions. Educational organizations
are, unfortunately, lagging behind business both in terms of access to and use
of information. This is especially the case in Southeast Asia where local school
leaders have traditionally been cast in the role of order takers rather than
decision makers.
In a learning organization, staff need access to information about the
progress they are making in meeting the challenges they face. As schools
possess more of the technology needed for networking, it will be possible to
manipulate student assessment data in real-time. For example, students can
take tests that are scored and transmitted back to schools immediately.
Moreover, analytical functions such as disaggregation of results by different
groups of students can be accomplished easily and quickly.
A school could also make use of an Internet Website set up by system staff
for data collection from staff, students and the community. The Website would
possess the capacity for easy analysis of the data by administrators at the
school level in order to generate different profiles of the school’s current status. Educational
In the future, it will be possible for members of the community to also respond change in
to surveys in this way from their homes and businesses. Schools will be able to Southeast Asia
make more informed decisions and system level authorities will be able to
monitor and fulfill their accountability function even in highly decentralized
systems.
Even where the technology is present, individual schools may lack the vision 507
and resources to generate systems of data collection and usage on their own.
Yet, such information is potentially useful for school-level planning. The
economies of scale that operate at the system level make development of these
information systems possible.
Keys to success in this domain are timeliness and simplicity. School staffs
need information in real-time. Moreover, they cannot wade through dense
information during the scarce time they have to work together on school-wide
planning. System leaders should ensure that information reaches schools in a
manner that is intuitive, useful, and timely for use in learning about what is
working and what is not. This goes for measures of progress towards school
goals, educational standards, parent satisfaction, or other initiatives (Jensen,
1997).

Conclusion
This article has sought to connect the concept of the school system as a learning
organization to the context of education reform in Southeast Asia. The paper is
premised on the proposition that during a period of rapid change schools must
develop the capacity for continuous innovation. Traditionally, regional
approaches to school reform focused on the implementation of specific
centrally-mandated educational reforms. The paper has argued that this
approach is outmoded.
The paper has presented a number of ways in which system leaders can
build the learning capacity of their schools:
• Focus on improving the capacity of the system to improve: the system’s
collective IQ.
• Set broad directions for schools, but leave room for local adaptation of
purposes and selection of methods and practices.
• Practice creative destruction; reduce policy accretion and stimulate local
initiative.
• Create a policy context that supports teachers as life-long learners and
schools as learning organizations.
• Create a policy context that supports experimentation and inter-cross-
region and international school to school partnerships.
• Provide incentives and support for schools to participate in electronic
networks for staff development and for solving common problems.
Journal of • Manage information; help schools develop their capacity to use
Educational information effectively for learning and decision making.
Administration Implicit in the approach taken in this paper is the assumption that developing
36,5 learning organizations is a process of cultural change (Fullan, 1993; Senge,
1990). That process is by definition slow. Moreover, contrary to the inclination
of system leaders in Southeast Asia’s educational bureaucracies, cultural
508 change is not easily susceptible to direct manipulation. Thus, the
recommendations presented here focus on shaping the context in which schools
operate rather than on seeking to control behavior at the local school level. This
approach does not underplay the importance of system leadership, but it does
define it quite differently.
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Appendix. Asian teaching of Asian values

• A 1994 Values Education in ASEAN seminar discussed how to insert Asian values into school
curriculums – at the beginning of a child’s education.
• In Singapore, the one class not taught in English is moral education.
• South Korean children spend two hours a week studying the “26 virtues” dealing with the
individual, family, and country. A “national ethics” class is taught in secondary school.
• Taiwanese students receive 40 minutes per week of “moral education”. During 1995 and 1996,
about 1,000 private schools opened in Taiwan to teach the Chinese classics.
• Members of Hong Kong’s Community Youth Club are taught to “learn, be concerned, and
serve” (Naisbitt, 1997, p. 109).