Dutch primary schools and the concept of the learning organization

Since the 1990s the concept of the learning organization has been promoted as a way to restructure educational organizations to meet new challenges such as more autonomy, school improvement and better performances. Gradually, schools have started to use the concept and are developing tools and processes for testing the ideas in practice. This article pursues two goals. First, it explores how the more visionary and theoretical framework of the learning organization can be translated into the daily practice of primary schools. For that purpose ten experts were extensively interviewed in the field of educational innovation and asked questions about the conditions, stimuli and obstacles for organizational learning. Second, the authors give examples of how some Dutch primary schools act as learning organizations. Using these examples, the article explores how the idea of the learning organization is put into practice in the field of education and how we can learn from these examples.