Conference Agenda

This paper describes an organizational change project undertaken by a group of researchers affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Problem-based Learning at Aalborg University, Denmark (AAU). The current change project centers around Aalborg University Library (AUL).

AUL is a service organization within the university with approximately 60 employees working with a range of administrative and practical tasks for the university. Over the last five years, the AUL management had become increasingly aware that the character of the tasks that AUL undertakes has changed from primarily being individual, linear, and instrumental to being more and more collective, complex, and reflexive. Their conclusion was that the organization needed to change itself into a project-oriented organization (Gemünden et al., 2018; Huemann et al., 2007) to be able to respond to the demands they were facing. Thus, they invited the authors of this paper as scholars within project-oriented learning and organizational change to help them pave the way for this organizational transition.

Organizational change projects are often described as being either based on a top-down (Ryan et al., 2008) or a bottom-up approach (Yi et al. 2017). Both approaches have pros and cons. However, neither of these approaches have proven especially successful in fostering lasting organizational change (Fullan, 1994, Huber, 1991) and thus researchers have begun to explore other strategies. In this regard, Hargreaves and Ainscow (2015) discusses the possibility of combining top-down and bottom-up approaches to organizational change in a new approach which they call Leading From the Middle (LFM). This approach is defined by Fullan (2015:24) as “a deliberate strategy that increases the capacity and internal coherence of the middle as it becomes a more effective partner upward and downward, in pursuit of greater system performance”. LFM is a strategy that does not consider leadership as a position but as an activity (Robinson et al., 2007). Thus, leadership resides not in the position but in the task and therefore leadership in the project organization can and must be distributed amongst organizational members (Hamel & Zanini, 2020).

The LFM approach seemingly corresponds well with some of the core principles of problem-based learning (PBL) that requires collaboration and a high level of active participation and self-directedness within project groups. Therefore, the management team at AUL and the research group agreed upon a design for organizational development based upon a combination of the theory of LFM and the principles behind PBL and Dewey’s notion of experiential learning (Dewey, 1938, Kolb, 2014). Thus, AUL employees were to learn about working with complex problems in project groups by actually working with complex problems in project groups with the university researchers acting as supervisors and group facilitators.

PBL is an internationally recognized pedagogical approach in many areas and levels of education (Barrows 1996; de Graaff & Kolmos 2007; Savin-Baden & Major 2004). However, not much research has been done regarding PBL as an approach for promoting organizational learning and change (Thomassen & Jørgensen, 2020). Thus, we formulated the following research question to further investigate this matter:

How can the principles behind theories of Learning From the Middle and Problem-based Learning be combined and applied to effectively foster organizational learning and change?

To answer the research question, we designed a course for all staff at AUL and a plan for collecting data about the experience of the staff after completion of the course. In the section below, we shall briefly describe the design of the organizational change project and the data collection process.

Violence and bullying amongst youth have aroused political concern in Finland and in Europe (Cornell et al., 2020; Smith, 2016; Williams et al., 2018) to the extent that in Finland Prime Minister Sanna Marin´s government (Valtioneuvosto, 2019) has stipulated measures to prevent violence and bullying to develop a better safety culture in schools. (Bradshaw et al., 2014; Vallinkoski & Koirikivi, 2020). According to the Finnish Basic Education Act, responsibility within the schoolday falls unequivocally on the teachers and principals (Basic Education Act, 628/1998).

Researchers see safety culture as a part of an organization´s culture that relates to knowledge, skills and attitudes concerning safety (Biggs et al., 2013;Teperi et al.; 2018;Waitinen, 2011). Earlier studies have shown that the safety guidelines laid down at macro level are better implemented at micro level if the management of meso level actors - are active and visible (Bellibas & Liu, 2018; Zohar, 2002). A positive safety culture can result in improved workplace wellbeing and safety. A precondition for effective safety culture is that the organization shares the actions and documents with each other (Teperi et al., 2018, 2021.)

Although organizational safety culture has been widely researched within industrial organizations, there are very few studies regarding the safety culture of schools. The role of schools is multidimensional as schools need to provide a curriculum-based safety education for pupils. Secondly, in schools, the age distribution is heterogeneous including adults who are responsible for a group of young children (Somerkoski & Lindfors, 2018). Moreover, an analysis of the organization’s safety culture is not unambiguous; safety is often non-visible until it is lost (Hollnagel, 2017).

The study aims to establish an applicable method to assess an organization´s safety culture by making safety culture topics visible and reachable for every school. As part of the ONNI – Success in School Safety -project 2022–2023 on comprehensive school safety, the project researchers have created a pilot model, Systemic assessment model for safety and security culture in schools (SAMS). In order to answer the research question How to evaluate safety culture in Finnish comprehensive schools by applying the SAMS model? we analysed the semi-structured focus group interview data using theory-driven content analysis.

Further on, we implemented the model by grouping the topics to describe the most common features of a school's security culture (e.g. Vallinkoski & Koirikivi, 2020; Smith, 2016) These topics were safety management, documents, responsibilities, the detection of safety deviations, the processing of safety deviations, practical training, safety competence, resources, the prevention of bullying and harassment, the prevention of violence and crimes, cooperation with stakeholders, and participation. We assessed each of these topics by implementing and applying the Hudson (2007) safety ladder model by grouping each of the topics into five levels: vulnerable, reactive, normative, proactive and resilient.

At the vulnerable level of safety culture, deviations cannot be anticipated, but if they occur, they will be managed on a case-by-case basis. The security culture is dominated by randomness and situationality. At the reactive safety culture level, hazard situations are addressed after they occur. The requirements of normative safety culture level are based on the contents on the normative documents such as the curriculum or legislation. In the hazard situation, the regulations described in these documents are implemented. At the proactive safety culture level, school staff has identified human-induced near-miss and risky situations and there is a clear concept of how to handle the deviations. Finally, at the resilient safety culture level, the safety aspect is linked to all decision-making as a whole. By systematic action, deviations can be managed together. students, staff, and stakeholders are involved in the promotion of safety.