Readings

 

Abstract: Adaptive Schools in a Quantum Universe

Robert Garmston & Bruce Wellman
"Adaptive Schools in a Quantum Universe."
Educational Leadership, 52 (7), 6-12.
April 1995 
 

Garmston and Wellman describe adaptivity as being necessary to survival in rapidly changing environments and describe a model for attaining adaptivity in schools. Their work draws on evolutionary biology and examples from the sciences of quantum theory, fractal geometry, chaos theory and others. Examples are provided linking this work with Eastman Kodak, the US Postal system and the American High School.

Paying attention to the flow and interchange of energy, more than things, is key to successful school leadership. We have taken for granted, they say, human energy fields which can be nurtured, harvested and directed toward improved schooling. This work predated much of the later emphasis and research on the student benefits of faculty collaboration.

Key concepts include:

• Five energy sources (efficacy, flexibility, craftsmanship, consciousness and interdependence)
• Holonomy (seeing elements in systems as both part and whole and treating them accordingly)
• Principles governing non linear systems such as schools
• Six organizational capacities for adaptivity
• Six professional capacities for adaptively sustained high performance
• Distributed leadership across four functions (facilitating, presenting, coaching and consulting)

Excerpt

An examination of the "new sciences" offers insights into new approaches to school improvement and provides practical tools and ideas for school refinement that can lead to improved learning for all students.

Information from the new sciences—quantum mechanics, chaos theory, complexity theory, fractal geometry and the new biology—can help educators rethink their approaches to school improvement and work in new ways within the principles suggested by these sciences. The new sciences reveal to us that we live not in a world of either/or but in the dawning of a world of both/and. Chaos and order are part of the same system; they exist simultaneously.

We recognize that simplification of the topic—albeit dangerous—is necessary in so brief an article.

As biologists and paleontologists observe animal species and examine their evolutionary history, they are redefining the meaning of species success. More than 40 different species of wildebeests can be found in the national parks of South Africa. Wildebeests are specialists, grazing in dry, open spaces. They are willing to migrate long distances in search of such areas. Wildebeests, like other specialists, are more sensitive to environmental changes. And, like other specialists, they are under greater evolutionary pressure than are generalists. They are adapted through specialization to specific conditions within tightly defined boundaries.

In the park lands of Africa is also the impala. In Kruger National Park in South Africa, more than 72 percent of all antelope present are impala. Impalas thrive on a wide variety of vegetation, and can make themselves at home in many different settings. Because of this flexibility, impalas are highly adaptive and are able to adjust as conditions around them change.

All around us, organizations are struggling to attain the impala's degree of adaptability.

To be adaptive, organizations must continually ask two vital questions: Who are we? and What is our purpose? Schools create adaptivity by:

• basing decisions on these two questions and filtering responses through agreed upon core values, such as a respect for human differences and respect and caring for others;
• shifting decision-making authority to the people most influenced by the decision;
• restructuring the day and year to increase the time teachers have to interact collegially with one another;
• setting outcomes and standards that signal a passion for excellence and attention to qualities that are based on real-world needs; and
• supporting faculty members in collaboratively setting and working towards self-defined goals.

If adaptivity is the central operating principle for successful organizations and for successful schools, then we must search for sources of energy to vitalize this process.