A Tale of Two Sectors: Differences and Similarities

Modern theories of organizational change and adult learning, as well as the integration of technology in the content and practice of professional development, have shaped private-sector training and staff development to the point where it looks very different from that in the education sector. According to Nell Eurich (1990), one reason the private sector has gone beyond education in providing effective professional development is because products change so fast; companies feel compelled to continually improve their employee education programs just to keep up with product design.

In the private sector, U.S. firms spend on average about 2 percent of overall payroll expenditures on training and development (Bassi, Cheney, & Van Buren, 1998). According to William Ouweneel, program manager in the corporate education department at IBM, "Education is a given in our business…the question here is never if we should train—it's how do we train?" (Castner-Lotto, 1988, p. 257). However, similar to some of the barriers preventing the spread of good professional development models for teachers is the private sector's struggle to provide some degree of consistency, or standardization, through the centralized development of courses and instructional materials. At the same time, companies struggle with the delivery of training and development that is adapted to meet the needs of a particular locale.

Another similarity with education is what Fred Kofman and Peter Senge (1995) characterize as three "cultural dysfunctions" that prevent organizational learning. Kofman and Senge argue that:

• Because organizations respond to challenges in a fragmented manner, solutions are often piecemeal and insufficient.
• While competition tends to drive the need for professional development, it often leads the organization to focus only on short-term, measurable results. "Fascinated with competition, we often find ourselves competing with the very people with whom we need to collaborate."
• Most organizations are limited by an approach to learning that is primarily reactive. In other words, most learning is usually in response to some outside force that often prevents the systematic improvement of products and process.

How companies overcome these "cultural dysfunctions" has significant implications for school administrators and state policymakers struggling to implement a more holistic approach to professional development for teachers.

Previous | Table of Contents | Next