Chapter summary overview and key concepts

¶ … teaching situation presents many challenges. One of these is the illusion that teaching a particular subject within a school occurs within a type of vacuum. In other words, the teacher's classroom is physically isolated from the rest of the school, creating a sense that there is little that connects the teaching of one particular subject with the others. In this way, finding solutions to problems could also prove challenging, since teachers may feel as if nobody outside of their classroom has similar experiences or challenges. Hence, the solutions to problems are also perceived to necessarily occur in isolation. However, the chapter offers some concepts that can help to mitigate these challenges. The first is to see the organization, in this case the school, as an integrated system, and the second is to use a specific method, the 7 Step Method, to analyze problems and find solutions in an organized and critical way.

According to the chapter, we tend to believe that organizations are places where many tasks are done. One teacher in a school, for example, teaches mathematics, another teaches English, and yet another teaches natural sciences. One administrator at the school takes care of the financial aspect of running the school, while another works with communications. There are few apparent connections among these different tasks.

The chapter suggests that the entire organization should be seen as an integrated system, which can only function when all its parts are intact. Indeed, all teachers and administrators rely on each other to reach and maintain the goals of the school, which is to offer excellent and effective education.

As such, the school is seen as a system in which various processes takes place. Suppliers provide books, teachers transform the information in these books to a final output, which is teaching, to achieve a final outcome, which is learning. Once this is applied to all the classrooms in the school, it becomes clear that there are no isolated systems within the school system, but that each component works with the other components to ensure effective outputs that customers perceive as valuable. Hence, when a teacher encounters a problem in his or her classroom, viewing the school as a system would reveal the fact that others may have faced the same challenge and can help to overcome it. This is again beneficial for the entire system, which would run more smoothly because all the processes that drive the goal of the system work well.

The 7 Step Method is a solution-oriented method that relies on scientific methods not only to obtain solutions but also to initially describe and analyze the problem. By doing this, more effective and efficient solutions can be obtained. The method, as its name suggests, consists of seven steps, each with a purpose and output.

The first three steps concern an analysis of the problem, where it is defined, the surrounding situation described, and the cause of the problem analyzed. Only after the third step is a solution proposed. Solutions are proposed and tested, and their results analyzed. After appropriate solutions have been identified, they are standardized throughout the organization, while the final step entails a projection of future plans.