If all members of the group are engaged in the search for useful models, outmoded models are likely to drop away. Shared Vision - Senge emphasizes the value of a vision constructed from the individual visions of group members rather than handed down from the top of a hierarchy. He describes the difference between commitment and enrollment on the one hand, where participants invest their selves in the journey, and compliance on the other hand, where people may go along, but only with reluctance and dragging feet. He differentiates between discussion on the one hand, which is generally adversarial, and dialogue on the other hand, which is collaborative. Discussion predominates in most groups with people taking positions, defending those positions and attacking the positions of other factions.
Dialogue is rare and counter-cultural.
People come to meetings knowing they will leave better informed than they were when they arrived. The first step in paradigm busting, then, is the creation of a learning culture, one in which questioning how we go about educating children becomes routine. Asking how we might improve quality becomes a daily challenge. Profiled in the November 18 Education Week , this promising initiative sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust places the responsibility for invention where it belongs, with the classroom teacher, but it does so with groups which can form a consensus around key values and can develop a program with strong appeal and identity, one which is not a mish-mash or disappointing amalgam of conflicting perspectives. With the arrival of the Clinton administration, public school choice is likely to replace voucher systems as the hot reform topic.