I. Introduction
The study is aimed at emphasising selected aspects of smart education with regard to the school perceived as an intelligent knowledge-based organisation challenged by state-of-the-art civilisational and technological educational solutions. The analysis perceives education and school in public administration in the perspective of an intelligent organisation phenomenon.1 Note that the administration is ‘a purposeful gathering of individuals in the service of a public mission in the first place, and subsequently, the sum of devices at their disposal’.2 Administration as an intelligent organisation cherishes individuals both as its members and as the subject of its administrative operations.3 Administration is a system created by individuals to carry out continuously and systematically the public mission of common welfare (…)’.4 Merging the concepts of education/school treated as common welfare with the idea of intelligent administration involves the aspect of brainpower that contributes knowledge and necessary educational potential to the organisation. Public administration operations translate into the image of the whole state.
School that strives to persevere in a dynamic environment is supposed to meet the standards of ‘a learning organisation’.5 Subject literature indicates that school ‘should evolve from a teaching institution into an entity aimed at organising the space to facilitate students’ learning’ – the school for learning.6 School as an organisation7 was made to modify the way it operates, to improve its management system, to implement modern methods of learning and education, to meet the standards of civilisation and information technologies. Undoubtedly, the era strongly influenced by computers and the Internet has seen substantial changes in the access to knowledge and information, the ways they may be processed. The social relations strongly affected by the common use of information and communication tools have been modified, too8. Whilst developing a new education/school style one has to consider the new profile of contemporary students’ generation.9
Owing to dynamic environment transformations, school has been changing into a service institution,10 into a new school marked by joined activity based on the relations and cooperation.11 The idea was specified by the educational process definition and referred to in the Education Act12: ‘In the Republic of Poland education is considered as the common good of the entire society’. The concept of the ‘common good’ must be perceived as fundamental for state administration bodies in general, not only in the sense of their public tasks execution.13 It is understood as ‘all the values identified by the Constitution and by the legislative acts; values protected by law’.14 Public administration is obligated to comfort the educational expectations of the society as a whole and of every individual (social approach and respect for human needs); it also takes responsibility for proper execution of the obligations.15 Significantly, ‘the state is the only body that can provide intellectual, organisational and financial resources along with appropriate legislation to introduce new rules and implement reformed institutions in the state's structures and activities’.16 Education and teaching are crucially important for the development of the society as well as for promoting individual active commitment in the state's and social public zone. They should be perceived as one of the key priorities for the public administration, which, in turn, as an institution is a group of citizens organised to perform their tasks and duties in the assigned area (activity zone) using tools at their disposal (resources). Notwithstanding their theoretical status as public service or any other, they will always constitute a group of individuals in the service of a certain public mission in the first place and, subsequently, the sum of devices at their disposal.17 Administrative studies define the state as an organisational entity including administration activities, emphasising the concept of public administration as a particular kind of human activity.18
II. Knowledge – Fundamental Competitive Advantage of a Society
Knowledge – learning strategies – and state-of-the-art digital technologies constitute the crucial challenge for the development and building competitive advantage of contemporary economies.19 Digital reality challenges involve considerable institutional and social transformations. The challenges are determined by the participation in global processes through the Internet. The vision of an efficient state assumes cooperation with other countries and their citizens’ cohabitation within the common global reality.20 Note that the strategy of the development of public e-services and the society's digital competence includes one of the key priority national projects – Digital Poland Operational Programme 2014–2020 (Program Operacyjny Polska Cyfrowa 2014–2020 or POPC) – focused on reinforcing digital foundations of the state development (wide access to the fast Internet, effective and user-friendly public e-services as well as permanently growing level of the society's digital competences).21 Development of the state science and technology systems and growing intellectual potential have become the sine qua non of building the knowledge-based economy22. Social development is closely related to how effectively a society can build and use knowledge in the market23 and should be recognised as intellectual resource with direct impact on the economic development regardless of whether codified of not. ‘Knowledge’ changes depending on the perspective.24 At school, knowledge is perceived as25 ‘professional knowledge (core of the service) in the sense of the basis of educational services specified in the syllabus and the subject competence; organisational knowledge (crust for the professional knowledge) related to school administration and abiding by legal regulations. Unconventional methods of supervising and coordination will ensure order and harmony; school management and marketing competence (developing organisational knowledge) will distinguish it in a competitive environment (benefits for clients, sales of educational services, original and variable activities). As school marketing means knowledge marketing, school management should be aware of the anatomy of the knowledge it tries to sell’.
Knowledge-based economy is founded on two pillars – Information Society and modern technologies.26 Such an economy is ‘1) focused on knowledge and information being the base for production, productivity and competitiveness not only in terms of enterprises but also in terms of entire regions, cities, towns and countries (…), 2) based on the efficiency generated by knowledge and information. It is global, which does not mean total globalisation but defines the character of the core activity focused around two systems of economic globalisation – joined electronic financial markets and the globally organised production of goods and services (…), 3) organised in the network system in the form of decentralised networks inside enterprises, networks between organisations as well as networks of small and medium affiliated companies (large corporations’ subsidiaries). Such networks make an economy exceptionally flexible and responsive. It is an information, global and network-based economy where all the elements are interdependent. All things considered, it is not only knowledge-based economy but a complex phenomenon which deserves the name of a new economy’.27 It is determined by28 1) human capital, 2) universities, as well as research and development institutions, 3) financial and credit institutions and 4) IT infrastructure. Knowledge-based economy is epitomised by a learning organisation.29 Note that knowledge and skills cannot be inherited; therefore, it seems rightful to anticipate the concept of ‘a consumption society’ to be replaced by the idea of ‘a learning society’.30 The value of education has a great impact here so the breakthrough changes in the education make the growing part of the society perceive education as the lifelong process.31
III. Education – Space Based on Knowledge
Education is a part of public administration that, in turn, is a part of state. The state, as ‘an intelligent body created through long-lasting transformations for hundreds of years’, should be supported by public administration shaped as a smart organisation.32 Intelligent administration ‘ought to be understood as the one which, in compliance with logical principles, rationality criteria and fairness requirements, with no extra organisational effort, financial or human resources, is able to lawfully foster its fundamental values and at the same time meet expectations expressed by an individual or a group of individuals. It should also be able to prevent loss that a less intelligent organisation or the subject of its operations would face under the same conditions.33 Intelligent administration – a synonym for the state – ‘involves people, deals with people and is run by people because administration is made by people only and they are the addressees of all its administrative operations’.34 Growth of knowledge-based economy depends on the quality of human capital, its creativity, innovative skills and ability to respond to novelties. At present, the values are developed mostly in the process of education that provides knowledge-based space. A country competitive advantage is determined by the society's educational potential. The market of educational services has been getting competitive at all levels of education, notwithstanding the legal status or location35. There is an obligation to monitor market changes, in particular with regard to the needs and expectations declared by potential consumers of educational services.36
Growing demand for education calls forth a breakthrough revolution in the area of knowledge acquisition tools. Educational services supply is, by all means, featured by IT and communication development that stimulates unprecedented widespread access to knowledge and education. Computers and the Internet have been changing learning and teaching methods and pose the challenge of new tasks for public institutions. Programming lessons and developing IT infrastructure at schools as well as dedicated trainings for teachers belong to priority projects carried out by the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of Digital Affairs in the area of school modernisation.37 The above is exemplified by the government-run programme of National Educational Network (Ogólnopolska Sieć Edukacyjna or OSE) aimed at building the Internet access network that would connect all the schools in Poland. Its main objectives include 38 ‘1) providing schools with the Internet access with the throughput not less than 100 Mb/s and related security services; 2) providing schools with education contents and ensuring assistance in the process of developing digital competencies’. OSE implementation will facilitate39 ‘1) civilizational transformation of teaching methods from analogue (paper books) to digital (making use of the Internet content) education; 2) implementation of new forms of education and new teaching programmes for digital competences and skills (e.g. widespread programming lessons); 3) levelling educational opportunities for all Polish students, in particular those who inhabit sparsely populated areas and attend small local schools where free access to state-of-the-art resources and knowledge streams seems critical for their potential development; 4) transfer of knowledge and experience between education institutions by means of modern technologies’. In addition, there are two basic conditions to be satisfied for a society to be recognised as an information society40 – up-to-date telecommunication network accessible for all the citizens as well as extensive, widely available IT resources. It is important to educate the society towards further development and so everybody could take up full range of opportunities offered by the media of mass communication and information and enjoy the benefits at every stage of their life.
Intelligent administration is expected to be predictive when providing educational services, yet, in the still changing administrative reality, the requirement seems hard to satisfy. Education-related responsibilities should be perceived as public tasks understood as ‘tasks taken over by the state to satisfy individual and group expectations resulting from their cohabitation within societies’.41 Owing to the dynamic interpretation of the concept of public task, it is difficult to identify its scope. Moreover, public administration activities are dedicated to a human being with their variable and varied expectations.42
IV. School as an Intelligent Institution – a Learning Organisation
Education provides foundation for intelligent administration that ‘is supposed to hire astute individuals, passionate creators, renowned experts on state and society affairs whose brilliant intellect does not overlook the importance of practical solutions and objective servants, free of personal interest that may coincide with their duties (…)’.43 One of the basic criteria for public administration recruitment, including the education sector, is the candidates’ academic background. Taking into account changing social, economic and technological school environment, it is necessary to look for educational solutions that will satisfy the postulates of “a learning organisation” philosophy’.44 In addition, ‘an intelligent organisation's ability to learn makes it also “a learning organisation”’.45 School, as a specific type of an institution, is called intelligent according to the following classification 46: ‘contextual intelligence (ability to identify school environment requirements, understanding school's position in the environment, ability to adjust to surrounding conditions); strategic intelligence (ability to develop a vision, to establish clear objectives and create transparent plans, potential to implement the plans); academic intelligence (potential to lead the process of high-level teaching and learning, promotion of students’ and teachers’ commitment in their pursuit for high achievements, positive attitude towards successful performance); reflective intelligence (ability to monitor and evaluate school performance, ability to read and analyse the results obtained, effectiveness evaluation and looking for improvement solutions); pedagogical intelligence (focus on learning at all stages of school education, excelling learning processes, challenging conventional and conformist approaches); cooperative intelligence (teamwork skills and cooperation potential); emotional intelligence (ability to express emotions, ability to experience peers’ empathy, learning from mistakes, potential for reciprocal motivation); spiritual intelligence (empathy, ability to share, facilitating reflection on fundamental issues in teaching); ethical intelligence (ability to develop transparent system of values and beliefs, giving the sense of moral order)’. Features attributed to school perceived as an intelligent organisation47 is able to learn, is able to create knowledge, is innovative, has the potential to achieve high results and to develop and efficiently adjusts to the surrounding environment. According to Elsner, a learning school is characterised by48 ‘self-improvement resulting from learning processes inside the school society, which as a permanent phenomenon is a part of the school regular operations and enables continuous self-reflection, self-assessment and outlines change directions; learning and self-improvement process is common in its nature, there are ready mechanisms making it possible for everybody to join and so the process of transformation becomes egalitarian, not limited to a bunch of alienated enthusiasts; learning is related to action, an institution creates friendly environment; self-improvement strategies emerge from real needs and expectations while the learning results are implemented in practice immediately; everybody is entitled and invited to join the learning process which enable common understanding for changes; school becomes the space for the exchange of ideas, dialogue, experience analysis in order to facilitate students’ development through systematic improvement of school performance’.
Perceiving school as ‘a learning organisation’ in practice means building its potential to create own future.49 Learning organisation provides space where people can develop their qualifications, learn and improve.50 The fundamental resource of a learning organisation, the precondition for its survival and growth is knowledge – an attribute of a smart organisation.51 ‘An element of fundamental importance for every school to survive is continuous self-improvement mostly through pursuing for new methods of acquisition, using and updating knowledge’52. Subject literature indicates that an intelligent organisation ‘(…) relies on aggregated competence of particular employees who are supposed to continuously extend, develop and share their knowledge’.53
Nowadays, dynamic changes are difficult to adapt to and unpredictable. New approach to schools and educational institutions, where newly acquired skills should be built and used, is necessary to take up the challenge of social transformations and new conditions of educational environment. It is important how schools are perceived by surrounding environment, parents and cooperating institutions.54 School as a creative learning organisation is supposed to respond to the variability of environment that expects new innovative knowledge55. The issue of formal education ‘in the context of complex social structures and wide scope of knowledge should be referred to. Schools ought to provide assistance in processing information, acquiring organised knowledge and developing desired approaches. Formal education plays a major role in the times of unrestricted access to knowledge through all kinds if media that autonomously create and reformulate ideas and values’.56 School as ‘a learning organisation’ ‘should take advantage of teachers’ intellectual potential, support them and mobilise to “pursue new solutions”, to create, modify and transfer knowledge. Such an organisation also relies on teamwork, developing knowledge structures, activating learning process and facilitating proper use of teachers’ and students’ intellectual potential. (…) a student has the right to choose the way of knowledge acquisition according to their individual style of learning’.57 At present, we are dealing with a new student for whom a natural environment is a digital one.58 Significantly, fast moving globalisation is accompanied by dramatic development of technology and by social migrations; wide spectrum of development opportunities should encourage teachers to improve their skills continuously, to excel their professional competence in order to meet the objectives of teaching programmes by taking student-oriented approach into consideration.59.
According to the administration studies, ‘public administration should be developed in any possible way, regardless the author of a worthwhile idea; it is only important to consolidate the idea, to implement it and make the best use of it’.60 Building and development take place in the area of education and knowledge (academic and non-academic), which will determine and influence future generations of public administration staff. Their brainpower, educational potential and intellectual resources (knowledge, skills and experience)61 will ultimately serve the welfare of the society. Intelligent administration may win the respect for the organisation itself and for its services rendered to the society.