Replying to LO25396 -- You may be interested in the new book just published about learning organizations and education. The book is Schools That Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education. The authors are Peter Senge, Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Timothy Lucas, Bryan Smith, Art Kleiner, and Janis Dutton. Perhaps I should first introduce myself. I am Janis Dutton and have been a lurker on these pages for a number of years. After more than four years of intensive action research around this topic, I have no qualms about shamelessly promoting the work people in schools and communities are doing around LO concepts. Only a small portion of this work fit into the 600 page limit we had to work with. I changed the subject of this message slightly because the issues in higher education and k-12 are not that dissimilar. In fact, the issues in education are similar to those in any organization with one exception. Education as an arena is fundamentally more complex. We asked the question: "What happens when the theories and practices of organizational learning meet the theories and practices in education?" We discovered that this intersection is indeed an exciting place. The book is divided into four main sections: Getting Started (An overview and primer for the five disciplines;) Classroom (environments for learning;) School (The formal institutions of learning;) and Community (The supporting influences or the larger system.) We call these the nested systems. The five disciplines form the warp around which we weave stories; theories, tools and methods; and guiding ideas. Within this structure we try to avoid the idea that the discipines exist, or can be practiced effectively, when separated from each other. I believe that anyone working with the LO concepts in their organizations will find this book valuable. Learning, as we all know, is not just for children or college students. In the process of creating LO's we have to create vibrant environments for learning in which the five disciplines are both content and process, and the multiple conditions which enhance or inhibit individual and collective learning must be understood. We have to understand the instutional barriers to creating those environments, and we have to understand the influences beyond our immediate systems. People in any organization can learn from the work that people are doing in education. Perhaps more importantly, if we are truly systems thinkers, we have to know how to help recreate our schools, because we are part of the system that created them to begin with, and ultimately responsible for their success or failure. Janis -- Janis Dutton Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash Public Dialog on Learning Organizations --