Chapter 1 050213 124021

COURSENOTES
COURSE TITLE: MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION
COURSE CODE: EPB2033
PREPARED BY: TENGKU NOORAINUN TENGKU SHAHDAN

COURSE: EPB2033: MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION
FACULTY: EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
TOPIC 1: The School as a Social System
(Textbook Chapter 1)
1.0 Introduction
This topic will explain schools as a social system and as an open system. The topic also
covers the basic assumptions for social system. Learners should be able to give example of:
(a) a social system; (b) an open system. At the end of this topic, learners should be able to
explain how a complex process of social system provides a conceptual basis for
organizational analysis and administrative problem solving.
1.0.1 Overview
• The notion of a social system is a general one. It can be applied to social
organizations that are carefully and deliberately planned or to those that emerge
spontaneously. The school is a system of social interaction; it is an organization
wholly comprise of interacting personalities bound together in an organic
relationship (Waller, 1932). Schools are open social systems with five important
elements or subsystems: the structural, the individual, the cultural, the political,
and the pedagogical. The teaching-learning process is the technical core of the
school social system. Schools are service organizations that are committed to
teaching and learning. The ultimate goal of the school is student learning; in fact,
its very existence is based on such activity.
1.1 Key Contents
1.1.1 Social-Systems Model: Basic Assumptions
• All social systems have some activities and functions that are accomplished in a
fairly stable fashion. For example, if we conceive of a society itself as a social
system, then the routine and imperative functions of educating, protecting, and
governing are performed by educational, legal, and governmental institutions.
• As a social system, the school is characterized by an interdependence of parts, a
clearly defined population differentiation from its environment, a complex
network of social relationships, and its own unique culture. Explicit assumptions
examine the school as a social system is given below:
o Social systems are open systems: Schools are affected by
state mandates, by politics, by history, and a host of other environmental
forces.
o Social systems consist of interdependent parts,
characteristics, and activities.
o Social systems are people: Teachers act on the basis of their
needs, beliefs, and goals (motivations) as well as their roles.
o Socials systems are goal oriented: Student learning
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o Social systems are structural: School systems have division
of labor, specialization, and hierarchy.
o Social systems are normative: school have formal rules and
regulations as well as informal norms that prescribe appropriate behaviour
o Social systems are sanction hearing: Schools have formal
mechanisms such as suspension, termination, tenure, and promotion.
o Social systems are political: Schools have power relations
that inevitably affect administrator and teacher activities.
o Social systems have distinctive cultures: Schools have a
dominant set of shared values that influence behaviour.
o Social systems are conceptual and relative: For one
purpose, a classroom can be considered a social system
o All formal organizations are social systems: BUT all social
systems are not formal organization.
1.1.2 Key Elements of the School System
• Formal organization explicitly established to achieve certain goals. Goals are the
desired ends that guide organizational behaviour. Specific goals direct decision
making, influence the formal structure, specify the tasks, guide the allocation of
resources, and govern design decisions. Figure 1.1 stated the major elements, or
subsystems of a social system. Behaviour in formal organizations is influenced
not only by structural and individual elements but also by cultural and political
elements.
• Structure is defined in terms of formal bureaucratic expectations, which are
designed and organized to fulfil the goals of the organization. Organization
consists of people, deliberate structure and purpose. Bureaucratic expectations are
formal demands and obligations set by the organization; they are the key building
blocks of organizational structure. Bureaucratic roles are defined by sets of
expectations, which are combined into positions and offices in the organization.
In schools, the positions of principal, teacher, and student. A teacher, for instance,
has the obligation to plan learning experiences for students and has the duty to
engage students in a pedagogically effective manner.
• The individual is viewed in terms of the needs, goals, beliefs, and cognitive
understandings of work roles: the individual provides the energy and capacity to
achieve the organization’s goals. They learn what their job is about by monitoring
and checking their own behaviour. Their motivation and cognition are influenced
by such factors as beliefs about personal control and competence, individual
goals, personal expectations for failure and success, and work motives.
• Culture is the shared work orientations of participants; it gives the organization
special identity. Organizational culture distinguishes one organization from
another and provides members with a sense of organizational identity. In a
school, shared beliefs and informal norms among teachers have a significant
impact on behaviour. Cultures provide members with a commitment to beliefs
and values beyond themselves. Culture represents the unwritten, feeling part of
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the organization (Daft, 1994). Communication of feelings is easy among peers,
especially friends. Shared orientations help maintain feelings of personal
integrity, self-respect, and belonging.
• Politics is the system of informal power relations that emerge to resist other
system of control. It is illegitimate because it is behaviour usually designed to
benefit the individual or group at the expense of the organization. There are
always those who want to seize power for their own personal ends. Power
relations get played out in a variety of ways: political tactics and games,
bargaining, and conflict resolution.
Figure 1.1 Internal Elements of the System
1.1.3 School as an Open System
• The open-system model views organizations as not only influenced by
environments, but also dependent on them. At general level, organizations are
easily pictured as open systems. Organizations take inputs from the environment,
transform them, and produce outputs. For example, schools are social systems
that take resources such as labor, students, and money from the environment and
subject these inputs to an educational transformation process to produce literate
and educated students and graduates.
• An open system is a set of interacting elements that acquires inputs from the
outside, transforms them, and produces outputs for the environment. People,
raw materials, information, and money are the typical inputs for organizations. In
the transformational process, these inputs are change into something of value
called outputs, which are then exported back to the environment. Outputs are
usually products and services, but they may also include employee satisfaction
and other by-products of the transformation process. Classrooms, books,
computers, instructional materials, teachers, and students are critical inputs for
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Transformation Process
Structural System
Cultural System Political System
Individual System
OutputsInputs
4
Environment

schools. Ideally, students are transformed by the school system into educated
graduates, who then contribute to the broader environment or society. These three
elements of an open system are illustrated in Figure 1.2
Figure 1.2 Open Systems with Feedback Loop
Key properties of Open Systems
• An open system is concerned with both structure and process; it is a dynamic
system with both stability and flexibility. To survive, the organization must adapt
and to adapt, it must change. The interdependence of the organization and its
environment is critical.
• Feedback - Information about the system that enables it to correct itself.
• Boundaries - Energy in boundary activities such as parent-teacher meeting,
community service projects, and adult education programs.
• Environments - Anything outside the boundaries of the system that either affects
the attributes of the internal components or is change by the social system itself
(will discuss further in Chapter 7)
• Organizations are complex and dynamic. They have formal structures to achieve
specified goals, but are composed of people who have their own needs, interests,
and beliefs that often conflict with organizational expectations.
1.2 Summary
Schools more than any other kind of organization should be learning organizations, that
is, places where participants continually expand their capacities to create and achieve,
where novel patterns of thinking are encouraged, where collective aspirations are
nurtured, where participants learn how to learn together, and where the organization
expends its capacity for innovation problem solving (Senge, 1990)
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Transformation Process
Outputs
Products
Services
Inputs
People
Materials
Finances
Environments
Feedback
People
Materials
Finances
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1.3 Tutorial Activities
1.3.1 Activity 1
Interview your friend using the social-systems model described in this
chapter. Ask about school-community relations (environmental opportunities
and constraints) and the perceived effectiveness of his or her school. Analyze
the answer based on the followings:
(a) The structure of the school
(b) The teaching and learning system
(c) The culture of the school
1.4 REFERENCES
Wayne K. H, & Cecil G. M. (2008). Educational Administration: Theory, Research,
and Practice. Eight Edition -International Edition. New York: McGraw – Hill
Companies.
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Chapter 1 050213 124021

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Chapter 1 050213 124021