NTN Learning Organization Framework

The NTN Learning Organization Framework:
An Approach to Improved Alignment with Purpose

At NTN, we believe all students are capable of great achievements and acknowledge that schools, by design, play a critical role in supporting student success. This will require school and district leaders to lead the work of disrupting cultural and instructional opportunity gaps by cultivating deeper learning conditions that result in “outcomes that matter” for each learner. The word “each” matters because this is more than just making deeper learning experiences available for all learners, but also demanding that each learner has the resources they need to succeed in those deeper learning environments.

At New Tech Network (NTN), we firmly believe that school and district leaders can and must lead the work of closing opportunity gaps by cultivating learning-centered conditions that directly disrupt systemic inequities. This equitable and inclusive vision for continuous learning implores us to co-design our schools and districts as learning organizations. Our schools and districts must serve as hubs for this type of learning -- where “people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together” (Senge, 1990). 

Undertaking this kind of systemic, transformational change requires leadership that is relentlessly focused on a shared purpose through the intentional alignment of learning-centered structures, the development of a learning-centered culture, and the cultivation and distribution of learning-centered leadership. Keeping these components in alignment depends on a leader’s ability to actively support and sustain inquiry-based professional growth and development. The recurring practice of inquiry animates the learning while simultaneously reinforcing these key components, making it an essential element of the system. The Learning Organization Framework below represents how NTN believes a school’s adult learning should be organized to continuously adapt in the ongoing pursuit of their shared purpose.

NTN’s Learning Organization Framework: Shaping the System for Alignment with Purpose