Allowing for change: Chaos theory, learning organizations and the role of the educator

Issues such as educational policy or organizational learning are seldom examined from a perspective that focuses on learning: knowledge creation, exchange and management. Often these issues are examined with an oversimplified view of learning, as a single key process rather than a set of knowledge activities. As a result, educational research has not adequately approached educational issues as a relationship and continual process of transformation occurring in a connected, related and changing world. Educating has become an isolated, fragmented, linear and minimally responsive activity; while the role of the educator has centered on transmission and control.; In this thesis we have equated change with learning. We developed a learning lens that focuses on how we create exchange and manage knowledge. Knowledge-creating activities are activities that involve generating knowledge through the engagement of experience. Knowledge-exchanging activities are interpersonal learning activities. These relationships allow individuals the ability to extend, discern, maintain, hone and renew their knowledge with each other. Knowledge-managing activities are the coordination of knowledge-creating and exchanging activities. These activities allow organizational learning to occur as well as provide a greater framework to contextualize individual knowledge creating and exchanging activities.; In this thesis we applied this lens comparing and contrasting the learning in two opposing social structures: a mechanical organization and a learning organization. We were particularly interested in the role of an educator within a learning organization. During our exploration we established that when applying each lens on the coordination of social organization we found a difference in purpose and the coordination of an organization.; The significance of this inquiry is the initiation of the discussion of an educator in a learning organization in a dynamic environment and the establishment of examining educational issues with a learning lens. Of even greater significance, this thesis has created a lens that takes into account knowledge creation, exchange and management. This lens helps us examine educational issues in regard to the social context and internal and external dynamics to maintain, extend, and renew knowledge in order to interact with its environment.