This document discusses culture change and the role of teachers as culture brokers. It makes the following key points: 1. Culture is the set of shared values, beliefs, and norms that guide the thinking and behaviors of members of an organization. Culture is continually changing both materially and non-materially. 2. Teachers can act as culture brokers to bridge differences between their own culture and their students' cultures. This involves acquiring cultural knowledge, facilitating strategic learning approaches, and creating opportunities for critical dialogue. 3. As managers and future principals, being sensitive to cultural symbols and changing underlying messages is important for effectively bridging cultural gaps and influencing culture change in a school.

1. Bataan Peninsula State University
Balanga City
Graduate School
Culture Change
Prepared by:
YOLANDA D. REYES

2. Culture is the set of values,
guiding beliefs, understanding
ways of thinking and norms shared
by members of an organization.

4. Culture Change

5. • C – continuously
changing
• U – unique
• L – link to
progress/history
• T – trademark
• U – unquestionable
• R – risk
• E – endless/eternal
• C – critical
• H – hopeful
• A – adaptive
• N- ew
• G –grateful
• E - empowered

6. Functions of Culture
External adaptation
• shapes expectation
of others
• guides & controls
behavior w/
outsiders
• influences
perceptions of the
organization by
outsiders
Internal integration
• Determines how members
relate to one another
• Shared by most members of
the organization
• Constitute collective
perspective
• Provides sense of identity for
members
• Guides and control behavior
• Allows anticipation of action
of others
• Enhances commitment

7. Societies continually experience
cultural change both material
and non material level
• Material culture – computers and electronic
coding have made it possible to create a
unique health identifier for each person in
Canada. This would enable us to make a data
base that included everyone’s individual
medical records from birth to death-it could
be used by health providers and insurance
companies to transfer medical records
anywhere quickly BUT

8. Societies continually experience
cultural change both material
and non material level
• The available tech does not mean that it
will be accepted by the people who
believe (non-material culture) that such a
national data bank would be an invasion
of privacy that could be abused by other.

9. Culture change is a
process
• Cultures change in 3 ways:
• Discovery – the process of learning
about something previously unknown or
recognized
• Invention – the process of reshaping
existing cultural items into a new form

10. Items of material culture are more likely candidates
for diffusion than ideas or behavior patterns.
• Diffusion – the transmission of cultural
items or social practices from one group
or society to another.
• How does diffusion occur?
• exploration
• Media
• Tourism
• immigration

11. Other causes of cultural
change
• Pressure arising from:
• Political ideas
• Environmental concerns
• Health concerns
• Social issues

12. Cultural lag – a gap between the
technical development of a
society and its moral and legal
institution.
• This happens when material culture
changes faster than non material culture,
and it creates a lag (space) between the
2 cultural components.

13. Cultural lag is present
when:
• One generation of the culture may
adapt to change quickly while another
does not.
• Computers, ipod, e mail, chatting etc,
most young people have mastered this
technology while parents/grandparents
are unable to operate or understand
this technology.

14. Cultural diffusion or
cultural confusion?
• Kentucky Fried Chicken
• “Finger lickin’ good”
• In China: “Eat your fingers off”
• Pepsi
• “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation”
• Translated into Tawainese as:
• “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the
dead”

15. Cultural Elements
• Hidden elements
• Values about what is
important
• Norms about
appropriate and
inappropriate behavior
• Assumptions and beliefs
about what is true
• Attitudes toward others
and issues
• Visible elements
• Symbol – things that
stand for something
else
• Material object that
hold cultural meaning
• Heroes – company role
models, highlight the
values and norms a
company wishes to
reinforce

16. Tools for change
• Information
• Support
• resources
"Unless you are prepared to give up
something valuable you will never be able
to truly change at all, because you'll be
forever in the control of things you can't
give up."
— Andy Law

17. What do we mean by innovation?
the successful exploitation of new ideas
…at least two types of innovation
• Entirely new ideas
• Re-working of an old idea or the transferring and embedding of
existing ideas in to a new setting
From presentation by Valerie Hannon, Innovations Unit

18. the nature of innovation ….?
Incremental
Innovation
•Minor modifications to
existing product
•Swims with the tide
•Starts with the present
and works forward
School
improvement ?
Radical
Innovation
•Significant breakthrough
representing major shift in
design
•Swims against the tide
•Starts with the future and
works backwards
Transformation ?
From presentation by Valerie Hannon, Innovations Unit

19. • Social change is the transformation of
culture and social organisation/structure
over time.

20. Characteristics of social change
• * It happens everywhere, but the rate of change
varies from place to place.
• Social change is sometimes intentional but often
unplanned.
• Social change often generates controversy.
• Some changes matter more than others do.

21. What causes social change?
• 1. culture
• 2. conflict
• 3. idealistic power
• 4.The need for adaptation
• 5. environmental factor
• 6. economic and political advantage
• 7.demographic factor
• 8.social movement and change

23. Teacher as a culture
broker
• Culture broking – act of bridging, linking or
mediating between groups or persons of
differing cultural backgrounds on the
purpose of reducing conflicts or producing
change .
• In teaching, emphasis is on the teacher
becoming the culture broker between
themselves and their students at a
personal level but also as facilitating

24. Cultural broker – person who facilitates
the border crossing of another person or
group of people from one culture to
another culture. (Jezewski,2001)
• Skills necessary for teachers to become
culture brokers:
• 1. acquiring cultural knowledge
• 2. becoming change agents
• 3. translating knowledge into practice

25. Roles of Teachers
• 1. cultural organizers – who facilitate
strategic ways of accomplishing tasks
so that the learning process involves
varied ways of knowing, experiencing,
thinking and behaving.
• 2. cultural mediators – who create
opportunities for critical dialogues and
behaving.

26. • 3. orchestrators of social contexts –
who provide several learning
configurations including interpersonal
and intrapersonal opportunities for
seeking, accessing and evaluating
knowledge

29. As managers,principals, and soon to
be principals we need to be a culture
broker and as a culture broker we
need to be sensitive to look for
symbols that we can use to bridge the
gap. It’s not difficult to be a culture
broker only if we know how.

30. © Blood and Thorsborne, 2005
Culture is the result of messages that are
received about what is really valued. People
align their behaviour to these messages in
order to fit in. Changing culture requires a
systematic and planned change to these
messages, whose sources are behaviour,
symbols and systems.
Taylor, 2004