Abstract
Purpose. The purpose of this study was to describe, measure, compare, and contrast the perceptions of California high school teachers and site administrators regarding the degree to which Senge's (1990) 5 disciplines—mental models, personal mastery, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking—are present in their schools. A second purpose of this study was to identify the relationships between the perceived degree to which Senge's 5 disciplines are present in high schools and student achievement, as measured by the similar schools ranking (SSR) earned at each school. A third purpose was to confirm the validity and reliability of Park's (2006) instrument. Methodology. This correlational study described and measured the relationship between characteristics of learning organizations and student achievement, as measured by the SSR. Findings. A Spearman bivariate correlation analysis of educator responses, combined and broken down by role, confirmed that team learning was significantly correlated with student achievement at a significance level of .001 for all educators and .002 for administrators. Administrators' data also confirmed correlations between student achievement and the 5 disciplines combined (.028), team learning (.044), and systems thinking (.035). There were no significant correlations for teachers. Conclusions. The instrumentation used to collect data was hampered by multicollinearity between the 5 constructs. The divergent responses of principal and teacher groups combined to mask some of the relationships found in the administrators' data. Therefore, related research should continue to include administrators and teachers but would benefit from surveying a more homogeneous group of teachers at the high school level—core curricular area teachers, for instance. Recommendations. A future study should be conducted using a survey instrument with fewer questions to combat response fatigue. Breaking the teacher respondents into subgroups—core curricular area versus elective teachers—would give a clearer indication of any differences in perception between groups of teachers in large faculties. The study should be replicated with a greater number of subjects in a greater number of administrative and academic positions.