0.7 Berry, j. (october 2011). leading with twenty-first century  (Page 8/9)

A theory of virtual educational organization

Drawing from the work of Mishra and Koehler (2006) who outlined the emerging digital pedagogy (see Berry, 2010) it was evident that the evolution of digital teaching was being supported by the parallel development of a nascent digital school structure. Although the K-12 educational organization was encountering implementation angst caused by the disruptive innovation of emerging digital structures, it was apparent that the school district was realigning resources and shifting priorities to support digital teaching and digital learning. Structure, according to Thompson (1961) “refers to the persistent qualities or given elements in the environmental conditions of choice or action which make it possible to explain and perhaps to predict action” (p. 8). As the traditional organization of brick and mortar teaching and learning blended with the virtual structure of teaching and learning, a hybrid educational organization began to emerge (see Figure 1). The structure for digital teaching and learning is the collective use of software that is supported by servers, routers, wires, and technical knowledge that will “explain and predict the action” of teachers as they teach and students as they learn.

A virtual educational organization is emerging from the traditional bureaucratically arranged organization described by Weber (1921) and Thompson (1961). Weber’s description of the 19 ^th century bureaucratically arranged organization has been the standard by which all models and theories of organization have been compared. In general, all organizations follow the maxim that any organization is a social structure “created by individuals to support the collaborative pursuit of specified goals” (Scott, 1998, p. 10). However, from the mid twentieth century to the present the study of organizational characteristics has generated a body of literature and theoretical analyses of organizations as rational, natural, and open with permutations and extensive descriptions that expanded, and further refined, theories of organization as structuralist, contingent, and layered. This case study presents a theoretical description that extends the bureaucratically arranged educational organization to virtual.

Population ecology: technology shaping educational organization

The population ecology model of organizational change explains the external feedback loop of social, political, economic, and, in this case, educational technology pressures reshaping the American educational system. A central theme of this form of organizational change is that “environments differentially select organizations for survival on the basis of fit between organizational forms and environmental characteristics” (Scott, 1998, p. 115). The population ecology model extends the theoretical premise that the virtual educational organization is a more open natural system being shaped by social, economic, political, and educational technology forces that require school systems to “change their characteristics through adaptation over time” (p. 115). Further, a culture is developing that reflects the growing influence of technology. As Schein (1985) described culture, it is the “emerging assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously, and that define in a basic ‘taken-for-granted’ fashion an organization’s view of itself and its environment” (p. 6). This organization is in the process of changing the cultural norm of teaching and learning by adopting a structure for virtual education.