THE real challenge facing teachers is to devise a "community of learning" where teachers are enthusiastically engaged with both parents and pupils, the Association of Primary Teaching Sisters was told yesterday.
Discipline policies may be based on long held assumptions which no longer work, said Mr Patrick Diggins, director of Drumcondra Education Centre.
Two hundred sisters from primary schools in the Republic gathered at St Patrick's College, Dublin, yesterday for the association's two day annual general meeting.
Speaking about "Whole School Development," Mr Diggins said that schools affected the lives of everyone in the area.
They proposed to develop people, an aspiration which no other institution would claim other than the church, he said.
The modem challenge facing all and especially leaders was to devise a community of learning, where parents are active partners in the process and where teachers are enthusiastically engaged with parents and students in creating a learning community.
Each school was unique and had its own ethos, but schools were also alike in the way they were organised, said Mr Diggins.
"Some are happy, vibrant learning places, while others are dull, regimented and stultifying. Schools are in a constant state of change and transition; however, the transition to the latter can frequently be very rapid," said Mr Diggins.
"This is probably because vibrant schools are grounded in values such as respect, justice, love, tolerance and trust. These values, once eroded or missing, drive the school into a downward spiral that is difficult to arrest."
A school plan was only part of what the school was about and the development of a school involved all parties working towards common goals, he said.
Referring to a paper by Mr Peter Senge entitled "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of Learning Organisations," he said discipline policies may be built on assumptions by teachers which do not work.
Teachers now needed to "look behind the obvious" and follow the example of children by learning to question everything.
He said: "Everything we do should be subjected to the question of relevance, cost and value. We should ask what is the relevance of homework, what is the cost and what is the value of this exercise."