EXPLORING OUR SCHOOL CULTURE
• What is school culture?
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• 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
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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.
“The way we do things around here” (Deal and Kennedy
,1983)
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• 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
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 culture but they
are not its “basic assumptions”.
• 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)
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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:
– Pupil culture, teacher culture, leadership culture, support
staff culture, parent culture…
• 4 existing teacher cultures:
1. Individualism; classrooms as egg-crates where
autonomy, isolation and insulation prevails
2. Collaboration; teachers choose, spontaneously and
voluntarily to work together without an external
control agenda.
3. Contrived collegiality; collaborative working
relationships are compulsorily imposed, with fixed
times and places set for collaboration.
4. Balkanisation; where teachers are neither isolated nor
work as a whole group. (A. Hargreaves, 1994)

4 typologies of schools
Do Schools have different Cultures? • Moving schools; effective, broad range of pupil learning
outcomes, people within actively work together to respond to the
Improving Declining changing context, know where they are going, have systems and
the will and the skill.
Moving Cruising • Cruising schools; league tables and other rankings based on exam
results rather than ‘value added’, their students achieve in spite of
Effective their teaching qualities, possess underpinning norms of
contentment, goal diffusion, top-down leadership, reactive,
conformist,
• Strolling schools; moving towards some kind of school
Strolling improvement at an inadequate rate compared with the pace of
Struggling Sinking change, neither effective nor ineffective;
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.
• Sinking schools; ineffective, staff out of apathy not prepared or
able to undergo change, isolation, blame and loss of faith
‘The rapidly accelerating pace of change make standing still dominate, failure is blamed on inadequate parenting or
impossible. Schools either get better or worse’. unprepared children, common in deprived areas.
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Exploring our School Culture
• Who is to be involved in making the diagnosis
– 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.
A. Direct methods of diagnosis
B. Indirect methods of diagnosis
• school’s internal review, views of students/parents,
evidence that comes to you as feedback
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Handy and Aitken (1986): 4 types of school
Culture
• The Club Culture (a spider’s web)
– 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)
– 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)
– The school as a friendly matrix of teams which achieve a
range of planned tasks to solve organizational problems.
• The Person Culture (a cluster)
– The school as a minimally organised resource for the
development of its members’ talents and exercise of the9ir
skills.
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• In practice participants will rarely identify the SOCIAL CONTROL
school with a single type and will be influenced LOW
HIGH
by the labels.
• Large schools (secondary) display a degree of HIGH
balkanization and collaboration and HOTHOUSE WELFARIST
individualism may characterize different parts of SOCIAL
the school or different aspects of life in school. COHESION
• Successful schools get ‘the right mix at the right
time’, an appropriately dynamic model of how FORMAL SURVIVALIST
school cultures work, but difficult to capture in a LOW
written diagnostic instrument (Handy and
Aitken, 1986).

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

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B. 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.
C. 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.

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D. 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.
• the ethos is often one of insecurity and low
moral.
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• 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 counter-cultures will need to
interact to find innovative solutions to complex and
unpredictable circumstances. (Fink and Stoll 1998)
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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, 1999).
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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 instruction….. And new forms of
professinalism for teachers….. (Fullan, 1996)
• This is no task for the faint hearted.
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• 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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