School as open system

Brief review about school as open system:

Depending on its
relationship with the environment, systems are divided in
two broad categories - open systems and closed systems.
An open system interacts with its environment while a
closed system does not. In practical world there are no
systems that are absolutely closed. Systems that have
relatively limited interaction wit its environment are,
therefore, considered closed systems while those with
substantial interaction are considered open systems.
Schools are social systems in which two or more persons
work together in a coordinated manner to attain common
goals (Norlin, 2009). This definition is useful, for it
specifies several important features of schools: (1) they
consist, ultimately, of people; (2) they are goal-directed in
nature; (3) they attain their goals through some form of
coordinated effort; and (4) they interact with their
external environment. The definition, however, does not
elaborate on one important feature of schools deserving
special attention: All schools are open systems, although
the degree of interaction with their environment may
vary.
According to open-systems views, schools constantly
interact with their environments. In fact, they need to

structure themselves to deal with forces in the world

around them (Scott, 2008). In contrast, a closed-system
theory views schools as sufficiently independent to solve
most of their problems through their internal forces,
without taking into account forces in the external
environment. Consider a school closing or realignment of
school boundaries, for example. It affects the people in
the school and those outside it in both the community
it's moving from and the one it's moving to. Systems
theory works on the inside and outside of the
organization, as a way of understanding and anticipating
the consequences of any decision (Ahrweiler, 2011).
A system can be defined as an interrelated set of
elements functioning as an operating unit (Senge, 2006).
As depicted in Figure 1, an open system consists of five
basic elements (Scott, 2008): inputs, a transformation
process, outputs, feedback, and the
environmentSCHOOLING

Inputs:
Systems such as schools use four kinds of inputs or
resources from the environment: human resources,
financial resources, physical resources, and information
resources. Human resources include administrative and
staff talent, labor, and the like. Financial resources are the
capital the school/school district uses to finance both
ongoing and long-term operations.
Physical resources include supplies, materials, facilities,
and equipment. Information resources are knowledge,

curricula, data, and other kinds of information utilized by

the school/school district.

Transformation Process:
The school administrator's job involves combining and
coordinating these various resources to attain the
school's goals learning for all. The interaction between
students and teachers is part of the transformation or
learning process by which students become educated
citizens capable of contributing to society. How do school
administrators accomplish this? Work of some kind is
done in the system to produce output. The system adds a
value added to the work in process (Shaw, 2006).
This transformation process includes the internal
operation of the organization and its system of
operational management. Some components of the
system of operational management include the technical
competence of school administrators and other staff,
their plans of operation, and their ability to cope with
change. Tasks performed by school administrators within
the organizations structure will affect the school/school
districts outputs.

Outputs:
It is the principals job to secure and use inputs to the
schools, transform them while considering external

variables to produce outputs. In social systems,

outputs are the attainment of goals or objectives of the
school district and are represented by the products,
results, outcomes, or accomplishments of the system.
Although the kinds of outputs will vary with a specific
school, they usually include one or more of the
following: growth and achievement levels of students and
teachers, student dropout rates, employee performance
and turnover, school-community relations, and job
satisfaction.
Most of these require no elaboration; only the last one
requires some explanation. A school must provide
"satisfaction" to members of the school community
beyond the physiological needs (salary, working
conditions, job security) (Herzberg, 2009). Schools must
provide for employees' needs for affiliation, acceptance,
esteem, and perhaps even self-actualization if they hope
to retain a motivated, committed work force capable of
performing at maximum levels (Maslow, 1998).

Feedback:
Feedback is crucial to the success of the school operation.
Negative feedback, for example, can be used to correct
deficiencies in the transformation process or the inputs or
both, which in turn will have an effect on the school's
future outputs.

Environment:
The environment surrounding the school/school district
includes the social, political, and economic forces that
impinge on the organization. The environment in the
open systems model takes on added significance today in
a climate of policy accountability. The social, political, and
economic contexts in which school administrators work
are marked by pressures at the local, state, and federal
levels. Thus, school administrators today find it necessary
to manage and develop internal operations while
concurrently monitoring the environment and anticipating
and responding to external demands.
Since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
Act of 2001(Public Law 107-110), education has been
near the top of the national political agenda. The federal
law nationalized the discussion concerning the well-being
of public schooling in America. At the time the report was
released and subsequently, there has been concern with
an achievement gap in America (Darling-Hammond,
2010; DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Karhanek, 2010; Howard,
2011; Paige, 2011) and our academic competitiveness
with other nations, particularly in mathematics and
science (U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008). These
achievement gaps and academic comparisons have led
many people to conclude that the U.S. public school
system was underperforming.
With recognition of an achievement gap and the rise of
international educational comparisons, states began to

focus their policy on standards, accountability, and the

improvement of student academic achievement (Bulach,
Lunenburg, & Potter, 2008; Sunderman, 2008). Statewide
assessment systems were implemented nationwide. Thus
was born an era of high-stakes testing complete with
rewards and sanctions for low-performing schools.
The social, political, and economic forces that impinge on
the school organizationare not all state and national,
however. Local school administrators also face a number
of challenges that are exclusively local in nature, such as
bond referenda, difficult school boards, and teacher
unions. These local political issues can at times confound
state mandated policies (Lunenburg & Ornstein, 2008).
For example, school administrators often face mandated
programs that do not meet the changing demographics of
their student population. Teachers are often bound by
union contracts that conflict with the norms of their
particular school or school district. Superintendents are
expected to respond to federal mandates even though
resources are scarce. Zero-tolerance policies may require
expelling a student, even though it may not be in the best
interest of the student to miss school for an extended
period of time.
And educational leaders are faced with ongoing pressures
to show good results on standardized achievement tests,
while at the same time dealing with a growing number of
management duties, such as budgeting, hiring personnel,
labor relations, and site committees resulting from
school-based management initiatives.

Social Interaction in Schools:

All parts of the system are interdependent and
subject to influence by any other part.

The focus of the leader is on the whole, all parts, and

the relationships among all part.
Hanson
(1996)
Individual Behavior
Group Behavior
Formal Behavior
Informal Behavior
Individuals in schools function as members of the
faculty (the formal group), as well as members of
subgroups (informal groups) that exist within the
faculty.

School Effectiveness:
The behavior of individuals and the
interaction between individuals that
influence school effectiveness.

 The values held by an individual

working in schools largely determine
his/her willingness to work and the
amount of effort he/she will exert to
be effective in completing an
assigned task.
Boyatzis & Skelly (1995)

For the school to be effective,

the value of each individual
must be acknowledged and
utilized.

Leadership in a Social System:

The objective of the school leader
should be to develop a faculty with a needs disposition
that is compatible with the mission and goals of the
school. Leaders must give consideration to the entire
faculty, individuals on the faculty, and the interaction that
occurs between and among the faculty.

Examples:

This definition is a bit abstract, so let's explore it a bit. A

perfect example of an open system is a living organism
such as a human being. We actively interact with our
environment, which results in changes to both the
environment and us. For example, we eat to acquire
energy. We are subject to the sun's radiation and the
climate of our planet. We are exposed to natural and
artificial chemicals that can either help or harm us. We
also gather information whether it is learning the seasons
for agriculture or studying super string theory on the
Internet. Of course, interaction is a 2-way street. We act
upon the environment to gather, grow or hunt food. We
mine and harvest. Our technology has transformed the
surface of the earth and even the space above it with
orbiting satellites.

Now let's move on to an example related to

organizational management. A typical publicly-traded
corporation is a perfect example of an organization that is
an open system. A corporation is in constant interaction
with its environment. A corporation needs to gather
resources and information from its environment such as
capital, employees, natural resources, and information
from the market, government regulators and customers
in order to function and grow. The corporation also will
send resources back out into the environment with its
products, investments, and other activities in the
community. An organization must develop techniques to
manage the inflows and outflows of its interactions with

the environment in order to effectively function and

accomplish its goals.

Technology utilized:
Available technologies for Open Education are important
in the overall efficiency of the program. After available
technologies have been found, there needs to be
appropriate applications on the technologies for the
specific online education program.

Since Open Education is usually a different time and

different place for most individuals across the world,
certain technologies need to be utilized to enhance the
program. Technologies that can be used are primarily
online and serve a variety of purposes. Web Pages and
other computer based trainings may be used to provide
lecture notes, assessments, and other course materials.
Videos are provided and feature speakers, class events,
topic discussions, and faculty interviews. YouTube and
iTunesU are often used for this purpose. Students may
interact through computer conferencing with Skype or
Google+, e-mail, online study groups, or annotations on
social bookmarking sites. Other course content may be
provided through tapes, print, and CDs.

Drawbacks:
There are a number of concerns regarding the
implementation of open education systems, specifically
for use in developing countries. These include: a potential
lack of administrative oversight and quality assurance
systems for educators/materials in some programs;
infrastructure limitations in developing countries; a lack
of equal access to technologies required for students' full
participation in online education initiatives; and questions
regarding the use of copyrighted materials.

Open education is considered to be a revolutionary

approach to the future of education. This critical evolution
of instruction could have the potential to create a global
population that has access to rich material and incredible
resources worldwide. At this crossroads is the intent to
actively address real-life issues while preparing for the
ever-changing, complex world of technology. In order for
Open Education to be realized it must be publicly
supported and publicly good. The fundamental design of
Open Education intends to produce a threefold
educational experience that combines learning/research,
communication and collaboration, and the ability to share
findings with a specific population. This transformation
will impact the way people learn and the way research is
obtained. The openness of education is drawing
immediate attention as it will act as a necessary catalyst

for social development and as an agent of change. The

future of Open Education redirects the flow of education
from experts to students to reflect the intrinsic motivation
of the student in their learning process. Advocates of
Open Education are contemplating how their learning
experience should look like and then act in an
individualized manner to construct a personalized
educational experience. The original Open University in
the UK was founded on four key principles: being Open to
People, Open to Places, Open to Methods and Open to
Ideas. As the movement has grown, so have the ideals
behind it. Empire State College even has an open
curriculum allowing students to design their own degree
course.

With the realization of 'open curriculum,' the classic idea

that people will move to a place of learning, dedicate a
fixed amount of time to learning, and come out with a
specialized qualification shaped by local expertise is
certainly no longer the only option. Tremendous growth in
universities marks the late 20th and the beginning of the
21st centuries, while at the same time Internet
connections have facilitated a move toward distance
learning. Even more significant changes are happening in
the world of information, however. Internet systems are
causing us to question the value of personal knowledge
and to establish new measures of shared and selfpublished information that has not been judged by
conventional academic systems.

Predictions on the relatively new subject of Open

Education are proportionately unknown; especially being
the future of this design is strongly influenced by student
demand as well as contributions by intrinsically motivated
organizations, universities, and learners. A three-year
project funded by the Technology Enhanced Learning
Program on Personal Inquiry: Designing for EvidenceBased Inquiry Learning across Formal and Informal
Settings (PI), jointly conducted by Open University and
the University of Nottingham, examined the way the
classroom environment is integrating technology, blurring
the distinction between formal lessons, and
supplementing instruction with more informal leisure time
activities. The focus is on how to help students learn the
skills of evidence-based inquiry supported by technology
across formal and informal settings. Technology, and
mobile technology in particular, offers interesting ways of
supporting the transitions made by learners across
settings, for example between classrooms and afterschool clubs, or between in-school working and working in
the field.

As Open Education continues to grow, open and free

technology tools will be a critical component. Studio work
and virtual work will become the dominating portion of
curriculum instruction. MIT, a leading University that has
been working with Open Education, Open Course Ware,
for over 10 years is planning to focus in the upcoming

years on four major areas: Sharing Open Course Ware

everywhere, which entails making the course work easy
to find, adapting the material to various distribution
methods and new approaches to reaching under-served
populations; Serving Key Audiences specifically high
school students and independent learners; Creating Open
Learning Communities where learners can collaborate on
similar topics; Empowering Educators Worldwide.

Open Education students have a wide availability to

tremendous resources and their content should reflect
this vast availability to knowledge. The primary target for
Open Education Students is for them to be curators of
knowledge; similar to a museum curator seeking the
appropriate resources to produce their desired result.
Open approaches are rather different, as content can
come from many sources; the main opportunity may lie
not in being a producer of content but rather in being an
effective user and supporter of learners using such
content. Once a significant amount of material is
available, then skills in bringing together good patterns or
designs for learning and connecting them with
assessment and accreditation will be extremely valuable.

Learning philosophies:

Open education is motivated by a belief that learners

desire to exercise agency in their studies. Specifically,
people engaged in the learning process want: to conduct
inquiries about potential topics of study; to have a handson educational experience instead of a strictly textbookfocused education; to take responsibility for their
educational decisions; to experience the emotional and
physical side of education; to understand how education
and community are related; and, to have personal choice
in the focus of their classroom studies.

These learners do a great deal for one another in

promoting learning. Learning in a group environment or
contributing to a group is beneficial to the learner.
Collaborative group work has substantial benefits, such
as increased participation by all of the group members,
better understanding and retention of material, mastery
of skills essential to success, and increased enthusiasm
that can spur the participant on to independent learning.
The philosophy of an open education centers on student
learning and sees the teacher become the learning
assistant. Teachers are to observe, guide, and provide
materials for the learners. The teachers should facilitate
not dominate the learning process. Open education is
optimistic in the belief that the freedom of choice and
student direction will promote a better quality of learning.

Conclusion:

Schools are social systems in which two or more persons

work together in a coordinated manner to attain common
goals. All schools are open systems. An open system
consists of five basic elements: inputs, a transformation
process, outputs, feedback, and the environment. Schools
use four kinds of resources from the environment:
human, financial, physical, and information resources.
Through technology and administrative functions, the
inputs undergo a transformation process. In schools, the
interaction between students and teachers is part of the
transformation or learning process by which students
become educated citizens capable of contributing to
society. Open systems export a product into the outside
environment. In a school, the output may be students
knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes. Feedback
serves as a control mechanism. Negative feedback from
the outputs or environment can be used to correct
deficiencies in the inputs or the transformation process,
or both. The inputs are used to teach students who are
then exported into the outside environment. These
graduates continue to contribute energy to the school
system in the form of one or more resources (human,
financial, physical, or information). The importation of
new energy into the system triggers a new cycle.