Educational Management Administration Leadership Kathleen Wagner Management System Design for a Learner

Introduction Application of business principles to education is not new. The perspective taken here is one of viewing the school as an organization, not unlike a business organization. The new breed of successful business organizations recognizes the primacy of the customer and acknowledges the customer as its purpose for existence. Customer need and service drive and inform the management system used to plan, direct, and evaluate the organization. The process used to develop and implement the management system in these transfor-mational organizations is highly engaging and participative, such that the key stakehold-ers are part of the reality that is being crafted (Banner and Gagne, 1995). Similarly, the purpose of the schooling organization ought to be the student, where optimal learning is enabled and supported by the management system. As developed by Rogers, the concept of learner centered education is derived from client centered therapy. Its essence is the enabling of the client or student who assumes full responsibility for decisions and actions and their consequences. The therapist or educator assumes the role of trusted facilitator, assisting the individual in tapping his urge for growth towards becoming a self-directed person and pursuing freely 'ideas, concepts, skills, values' (Withall, as cited in Marjoribanks, 1991: 98, 99). Student or learner centered schools, while much discussed in concept and praised in terms of approach, are rare in reality (Banathy, 1993). The literature offers a number of possible reasons for this situation. One of these is the lack of organizational arrangements in place to support this direction. According to Banathy (1993: 33), when the focus is on learning: 'the learner is designated as the key entity and occupies the nucleus of the systems complex of education. The primary system function is designing arrangements and resources by which the learner can master learning tasks.' However, the traditional school management system typically drives and reinforces a behaviorist approach. As Banathy claims, the misdirected focus is on administration and instruction when what is required is a reinvention where the learner is the key actor at center stage. In the latter situation, the teacher is the facilitator, responsible for the management of the learning resources. These two contrasting approaches to educational design and management are not unlike Freire's (1981) concept of bank deposits versus learner centered problem-posing education, the latter consistent also with Piaget's view of intellectual development. The organization of schools and classes in '30-student teaching boxes for …