The focus of this course is to build an overarching perspective on strategic thinking in educational organizations. There is an important change in organization theory from strategic planning into strategic thinking, and this course gives perspectives to reorient the roles of educational organizations at school, district and national levels.

The goal of this module is also to explore the special features of professional organizations, because educational organizations are on their very essence professional. The major changes that schools and other educational organizations undertake worldwide, call for new leadership skills, high professionalism, and organizational system-wide learning.

As part of the course, all students will process their individual cognitive styles. NOTE, that you will be sent the identification and password via a special mail: IEL staff will inform about the details. The concept of cognitive styles is then used in increasing understanding of individual differences, and more importantly, in creating the major framework in understanding organizational change, The Strategic Learning Cycle, developed by professor Jukka Alava in his dissertation.

The call to create communities of learners has increased. The aim of the course is thus to explore the core elements in organizational learning and in creating communities of learners, and to integrate individual learning into organizational change processes. By introducing the most recent research findings, the students are given possibilities to combine research to their real-life situations. Studying the changes in the organization’s task environment, its strategic readiness for change, and readiness to make operational change, a major framework to analyze organizational learning is also developed.