What’s What in Education? №4 School Culture

Professor: If I was to walk into your school on Monday, how do you think I would feel after being there and walking around for a half hour?

Student A: I think you would say it’s a well-organized school, where kids are actively working.

Student B: I think you would feel good about the place and feel welcome there.

Student C: Honestly, I think you would be looking for the nearest exit! (Laughter)

Professor: Well…I appreciate your honesty! Each of you was describing the “climate” of your school. How it makes you feel to be there…warm and fuzzy, cool and indifferent, unwelcome, etc. But today I want to talk about why people in your school act the way they do. What they think is important. The topic is “school culture.”

I have been studying school culture for more than thirty years. The topic of my doctoral dissertation was “The Organizational Culture of Academically Dissimilar Elementary Schools.” I looked at pairs of schools that had the same basic demographic profile — size, enrollment, grade levels, socio-economic status, and student population — but very different levels of academic achievement. I found that what made these schools so different from one another was their school culture.

The origins of school culture were in the world of work, where scholars like Edgar Shein were investigating “organizational culture.” Educators like Terry Deal and Kent Peterson (along with Ron Edmunds and many others) used this as the basis for their study of schools. The components of school culture have been identified as the kinds of behaviors that convey the vision and the values of the people that work there. These behaviors can be seen in:

• Rituals: celebrations and ceremonies, rites of passage, and shared quirks and mannerisms.
• Hero Making: role models, hierarchies, public rewards, and mentors.
• Storytelling: shared humor, common anecdotes, foundation myths, and both oral and written history.
• Symbolic Display: decoration, artwork, trophies, and architecture.
• Rules: etiquette, formal rules, taboos, and tacit permissions.

Source: Hobby, R., Hay Group Management 2004

According to Deal and Peterson (1999), research suggests that a strong, positive culture serves several beneficial functions, including the following:

• Fostering effort and productivity.
• Improving collegial and collaborative activities that in turn promote better communication and problem solving.
• Supporting successful change and improvement efforts.
• Building commitment and helping students and teachers identify with the school.
• Amplifying energy and motivation of staff members and students.
• Focusing attention and daily behavior on what is important and valued.

A school’s culture sends signals not only to students but also to staff. Teachers and school leaders also must work to build positive norms related to their own work. According to Robert Marzano (2003), this part of a school’s culture has to do with professionalism and collegiality — whether teachers believe and act as if they can achieve positive outcomes for students and whether they support each other, working collaboratively to achieve common goals.

When alignment is tight and the culture is strong, new students and staff members pick up on an organization’s true vision and values almost immediately, whether the culture is negative or positive. According to Peterson and Deal, students “know things are different in a positive or negative way — something more than just rules or procedures.” Teachers are quick to get the message too. “Within the first hour of a new assignment, teachers begin to sift through the deep silt of expectations, norms, and rituals to learn what it means to become an accepted member of the school.”

According to Michael Fullan (2007) school culture can be defined as the guiding beliefs and values evident in the way a school operates. “School culture can be used to encompass all the attitudes, expected behaviors and values that impact how the school operates.”

More recently, Dr. Allison Adler of the Palm Beach County (Florida) Public Schools has written extensively about The Single School Culture. This is a way of organizing and running a school. It begins with: Shared norms; Beliefs; Values and Goals. This results in a common vision, beliefs, practices, and expectations. It requires communications, training, evaluation, and supports to facilitate success, based on the following tenets:

*All students have a right to be taught by effective teachers

*All students can achieve at grade-level proficiency and higher

*All students can graduate college and career ready

*All students, teachers, and staff can develop with effective effort

*We all model ethical and respectful behavior

*We follow a uniform set of practices and procedures that positively norm both student and adult actions and create an ethos of fairness

*We create environments that reduce the barriers to learning that may be academic, behavioral, or social/emotional

*We foster positive relationships among stakeholders

*We recognize and value the contributions of all

*In times of change, we have an open, respectful dialogue around why change is occurring

*We monitor and evaluate academic, behavior and climate data to support a Single District Culture ©

Broadly defined, positive school cultures are conducive to professional satisfaction, morale, and effectiveness, as well as to student learning, fulfillment, and well-being. The following list is a representative selection of a few characteristics commonly associated with positive school cultures:

• The individual successes of teachers and students are recognized and celebrated.
• Relationships and interactions are characterized by openness, trust, respect, and appreciation.
• Staff relationships are collegial, collaborative, and productive, and all staff members are held to high professional standards.
• Students and staff members feel emotionally and physical safe, and the school’s policies and facilities promote student safety.
• School leaders, teachers, and staff members model positive, healthy behaviors for students.
• Mistakes not punished as failures, but they are seen as opportunities to learn and grow for both students and educators.
• Students are consistently held to high academic expectations, and a majority of students meet or exceed those expectations.
• Important leadership decisions are made collaboratively with input from staff members, students, and parents.
• Criticism, when voiced, is constructive and well-intentioned, not antagonistic or self-serving.
• Educational resources and learning opportunities are equitably distributed, and all students, including minorities and students with disabilities.
• All students have access to the academic support and services they may need to succeed.

Reform

School culture has become a central concept in many efforts to change how schools operate and improve educational results. While a school culture is heavily influenced by its institutional history, culture also shapes social patterns, habits, and dynamics that influence future behaviors, which could become an obstacle to reform and improvement. For example, if a faculty culture is generally dysfunctional — i.e., if interpersonal tensions and distrust are common, problems are rarely addressed or resolved, or staff members tend to argue more than they collaborate or engage in productive professional discussions — it is likely that these cultural factors will significantly complicate or hinder any attempt to change how the school operates. Without a school culture that is conducive to improvement, reform becomes exponentially more difficult.

The following describe a few representative examples of common ways that schools may attempt to improve their culture:

• Establishing professional learning communities that encourage teachers to communicate, share expertise, and work together more collegially and productively.
• Providing presentations, seminars, and learning experiences designed to educate staff and students about bullying and reduce instances of bullying.
• Creating events and educational experiences that honor and celebrate the racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of the student body, such as hosting cultural events and festivals, exhibiting culturally relevant materials throughout the school, inviting local cultural leaders to present to students, or making explicit connections between the diverse cultural backgrounds of students and what is being taught in history, social studies, and literature courses.
• Establishing an advisory program that pairs groups of students with adult advisor to strengthen adult-student relationships and ensure that students are well known and supported by at least one adult in the school.
• Surveying students, parents, and teachers about their experiences in the school, and hosting community forums that invite participants to share their opinions about and recommendations for the school and its programs.
• Creating a leadership team comprising a representative cross-section of school administrators, teachers, students, parents, and community members that oversees and leads a school-improvement initiative.

Reality Check: I have found that you can’t change the personality of individual faculty members by brute force! If you work hard to create a warm, accepting, student-centered, productive environment around them, they may

1. Alter their behavior in order to “fit in” with their colleagues

2. Leave

3. Give lip service to the culture, but position themselves as the school’s cranky individualist

4. Try to organize a revolt

I hope this was helpful in some way!

References

Overview of Single School Culture, Alison Adler Ed.D. 2019 https://www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/cms/lib/NC01001395/Centricity/Domain/53/2.2SingleSchoolCultureOverviewHandout.pdf

The Glossary of Education Reform: School Culture 2013 https://www.edglossary.org/school-culture/

Deal, T. E., & Peterson, K. D. (1999). Shaping school culture: The heart of leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Hobby, R. (2004, March). A culture for learning: An investigation into the values and beliefs associated with effective schools. London: Hay Group Management. (p. 6). Retrieved October 3, 2006, from http://www.haygroup.co.uk/downloads/Culture_for_Learning.pdf