1

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 4
 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. 5
• 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. 7
• Several cultures within a school:
– 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.
• Balkanisation; where teachers are 8
 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
9
or worse’.
 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
– 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)
– 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 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 13
 SOCIAL CONTROL

HIGH LOW

HIGH
HOTHOUSE WELFARIST
SOCIAL
COHESIO
N
FORMAL SURVIVALIST
LOW

14
• 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.

15
 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.

17
• 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.
•
19
 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 20
• 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
21
• 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.
22
“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