The Organizational Context of Learning: Framework for Understanding the Acquisition of Knowledge

This article advances the effort to understand organisational effects on the acquisition of knowledge by clarifying and elaborating the concept of the opportunity to learn and by introducing a theoritical framework oriented by the actions within the technical core of schools. The opportunity to learn is conceived of as having two major dimensions : the amount of exposure, which includes enrollment, rate and length, and the quality of exposure, which includes intensity and accessibility. Teachers and students make decisions about these dimensions, which are affected by the organisational inducements and information flows embedded in the organisational context. Organisational and individual resources also affect the preferences of actors within the technical core. Enrollment patterns in academic mathematics courses illustrate this framework.