Culture Lect 2

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EXPLORING OUR SCHOOL CULTURE • • • •

What is school culture? What does school culture look like? Do schools have different cultures? Effective vs Ineffective – Improving vs Declining School cultures. 4 typologies of schools – Moving schools – Cruising schools – Strolling schools – Struggling schools – Sinking schools. • 4 Existing Teaching Cultures (A. Hargreaves; 1994) – Individualism – Collaboration – Contrived collegiality – Balkanisation 2

• Exploring our school culture – the direct methods of diagnosis – the indirect methods of diagnosis • The 4 types of School Culture (Handy and Aitken (1986) – The Club culture – The Role culture – The Task culture – The person culture • Social Cohesion vs Social Control in schools – The ‘formal’ school culture – The ‘welfarist’ school culture – The ‘hothouse’ school culture – The ‘survivaist’ school culture

• Changing our school Culture 3

WHAT IS SCHOOL CULTURE? • • • • • • •

Language and rituals Norms that evolve in working groups Dominant values espoused by an organisation Philosophy that guides an organisation’s policy Rules of the game of getting along within the organisation The climate conveyed in an organisation (Schein 1995) These frames reflect the organisation’s

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Basic Assumptions and Beliefs:

• the deeper level within an organisation • that are shared by members • that operate unconsciously • define in a basic “taken-for-granted” fashion an organisation’s view of itself and its environment. • These are the heart of school culture and what makes it so hard to grasp and change.

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• Each school has its own mindset of school life in relation to what occurs in its external environment. • A school’s culture is shaped by: – Its history – Its context (parents, Ed. Devision, Political and economic forces, NMC, MUT, external context. – The people in it (the potential for clashes of values between the adults and students in a school is considerable (Hargreaves et al., 1996) 6

What does School Culture look like?

• School Culture is expressed through 3 inter-related dimensions: • Professional relationships: the way people relate to and work together. • Organisational arrangements: the management of schools’ structures, systems and physical environment. • Opportunities for learning: the extent of the learning focus for both students and adults – learning enriched and learning impoverished schools.

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Several cultures within a school: –

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Pupil culture, teacher culture, leadership culture, support staff culture, parent culture…

4 existing teacher cultures: Individualism; classrooms as egg-crates where autonomy, isolation and insulation prevails Collaboration; teachers choose, spontaneously and voluntarily to work together without an external control agenda. Contrived collegiality; collaborative working relationships are compulsorily imposed, with fixed times and places set for collaboration. 8 Balkanisation; where teachers are

Do Schools have different Cultures? Improving Declining Moving

Cruising

Effective

Strolling Struggling Sinking

Ineffective

‘The rapidly accelerating pace of change make standing still impossible. Schools either get better or worse’.

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4 typologies of schools • Moving schools; effective, broad range of pupil learning outcomes, people within actively work together to respond to the changing context, know where they are going, have systems and the will and the skill. • Cruising schools; league tables and other rankings based on exam results rather than ‘value added’, their students achieve in spite of their teaching qualities, possess underpinning norms of contentment, goal diffusion, top-down leadership, reactive, conformist, • Strolling schools; moving towards some kind of school improvement at an inadequate rate compared with the pace of change, neither effective nor ineffective; • Struggling schools; ineffective, in spite of their unproductive results they struggle hard and invest considerable energy to improve, they have the will despite lacking the skills. 10 • Sinking schools; ineffective, staff out of apathy not

Exploring our School Culture •

Who is to be involved in making the diagnosis –

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Involve as many people as possible so as to uncover very different perceptions of aspects of the school’s culture – head, teachers, students, parents, advisers, consultants… The involvement of people in the diagnosis may motivate them to engage later in the change process within the school.

B. Direct methods of diagnosis C. Indirect methods of diagnosis •

school’s internal review, views of students/parents, evidence that comes to 11 you as feedback

Handy and Aitken (1986): 4 types of school Culture •

The Club Culture (a spider’s web)

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the school as an informal club of like-minded people whose task is t achieve the mission of the head who is at the centre of things.

The Role Culture (a pyramid)

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The school as a set of job-boxes co-ordinated to execute the work of the organization, which the head manages through a formal system.

The Task Culture (a grid)

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The school as a friendly matrix of teams which achieve a range of planned tasks to solve organizational problems.

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The Person Culture (a cluster)

The school as a minimally organised resource for the development of its members’ talents 12

• In practice participants will rarely identify the school with a single type and will be influenced by the labels. • Large schools (secondary) display a degree of balkanization and collaboration and individualism may characterize different parts of the school or different aspects of life in school. • Successful schools get ‘the right mix at the right time’, an appropriately dynamic model of how school cultures work, but difficult to capture in a written diagnostic instrument

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SOCIAL CONTROL

HIGH SOCIAL COHESIO N LOW

HIGH

LOW

HOTHOUSE

WELFARIST

FORMAL

SURVIVALIST

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• Schools require social control over teachers and students so that they work together in orderly ways, concentrate on teaching and learning and avoid the possibility of distraction and delay • At the same time schools have to maintain social cohesion, social relationships that are satisfying, supportive and sociable.

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4 types of school cultures according to whether the social control and social cohesion dimensions are high or low. • The formal school culture; (high social control, low social cohesion) – – – –

puts pressure on students to achieve learning goals but weak with regards social cohesion between staff and students. school life is orderly, scheduled, disciplined with a strong work ethic. academic expectations are high, with a low tolerance for those who don’t live up to them for students staff are relatively strict, though institutional loyalty is valued. The school is often a ‘tight ship’ fostering ‘traditional values’. 16

• The ‘welfarist’ school culture; (high social cohesion, low social control) • the focus is on individual students development within a nurturing environment and child – centred educational philosophy • work pressure is low; so academic goals get a lower priority then social cohesion goals of social adjustment. The ‘caring’ school with a strong pastoral system.

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• The ‘hot house’ school culture’; (high social cohesion, high social control) • all are under pressure to participate actively in the full range of school life. • expectations of work, personal development and team spirit are high. • teachers are enthusiastic and committed and want the students to be the same. 18

• The ‘survivalist’ school culture; (low social cohesion, low social control) • failing school – social relations are poor, teachers striving to maintain basic control and allowing students to avoid academic work. • lessons move at a leisurely pace. • students under-achieve. • teachers feel unsupported by senior colleagues and enjoy little professional satisfaction. •

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RECULTURING • A challenge of transforming mind-sets, paradigms, images, metaphors, beliefs, and shared meanings that sustain existing….realities and of creating a detailed language and code of behaviour through which the desired new reality can be lived on a daily basis…. It is about inventing what amounts to a new way of life. (Morgan 1997) • ‘the process of developing new values, beliefs and norms. For systemitic reform it involves building new conceptions about 20 instruction….. And new forms of

• If schools are to become professional communities and to continue to be effective in the future, they will need to build structures which promote: Interrelationships and Interconnections • Develop cultures that promote: Collegiality and Individuality. • Not only must school’s culture promote group learning but it must honour individuals, because creativity and novelty will be required to deal with an unknowable future. Cultures and countercultures will need to interact to find innovative solutions to complex and 21 unpredictable circumstances. (Fink and

• The orientation of these cultures is one of continuous learning and improvement. • They are characterised by; – – – – –

collaboration opportunism, adaptability partnerships, alliances

• Membership of groups overlaps and shifts over time to meet the needs of the circumstance and context.

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“Changing schools is not just about changing curricula, teaching and learning strategies, assessment, structures, and roles and responsibilities. It does not just happen by producing plans as a result of external inspections or by setting targets because data, even valid and sensitively analysed data, suggests that all pupils or certain groups of pupils could be doing better. It requires an understanding of and respect for the different meanings and interpretations people bring to educational initiatives, and the nurturing of the garden within which new ideas can bloom” (Stoll, 23