The document discusses school culture and the role of leadership in shaping culture. It defines culture as the shared values, beliefs, and practices within a school. School culture is transmitted through both visible artifacts and underlying assumptions. The document outlines that effective leaders shape culture by understanding the current culture, assessing which elements support the school's mission, and reinforcing positive aspects while transforming negative ones. A positive culture has characteristics like leadership, celebration of success, honesty and participation, while a negative culture exhibits weaknesses like lack of direction and trust. The most important role of leaders is to understand and influence the culture of their schools.

1. School Culture
“The way we do things around
here” (Bower,1966)

2. Aims
 What is school culture ?
 The impact of culture
 Leadership and School Culture –your
context
 Leading my School Culture

3.  The challenge for leaders is to go beyond a focus on
 day-to-day management concerns and crises and to
 focus on the larger purpose of work and of the
 institution in which the work is carried out…The
 deeper and more important task is to give passionate,
 relentless attention to mission and purpose, continually
 seeking ways to offer the gift of significance to one's
 constituents.”
 -Bolman and Deal, Leading with Soul

4. 
“The bottom line for leaders is
that if they do not become
conscious of the cultures in which
they are embedded, those
cultures will manage them.”
Edgar H. Schein, 2004

5. What do we mean by school
culture ?
 If a teacher walked into a school , how would
they “pick up” the culture ?
 Culture is the most powerful source of
leverage for bringing about change in a
school – or any organization, for that matter.
Thomas J. Sergiovanni

6. Culture – a Definition
“The collection of relatively uniform and enduring
values, beliefs, customs, traditions and practices
that are shared by an organisation’s members,
learned by the new recruits and transmitted from
one generation of employees to the next” Edgar
Schein
“The way we do things around here…”
“The collective programming of the mind”

7.  A set of common understandings around which action is
organized, . . . finding expression in language whose
nuances are peculiar to the group (Becker and Geer
1960).
 A set of understandings or meanings shared by a group of
people that are largely tacit among members and are
clearly relevant and distinctive to the particular group
which are also passed on to new members (Louis 1980).
 A system of knowledge, of standards for perceiving,
believing, evaluating and acting . . . that serve to relate
human communities to their environmental settings (Allaire
and Firsirotu 1984).

8.  What are the challenges you face in the
current climate in maintaining the
culture of your school?
 What are the cultural changes that are
taking place within the school context
because of external factors?

9. Three Levels of Culture
Artifacts
Espoused Values
Underlying Assumptions

10.  Level One
 What you might see on your
first visit – first impressions
 Level Two
 Values, beliefs, “the way
things should be done”
 These are “testable” in the
physical environment
 Level Three
 Fundamental beliefs about
school, students, etc.
 Reason for being
Three Levels of Culture

11. “The way we do things around
here!”
(Bower, 1966)
norms
shared meanings
regularities artefacts
practices
ceremonies
rituals
myths & legends symbols
traditions
beliefs
understandingsattitudes
values
Assumptions
Mental models – mindsets
A

12. Physical Structures
Language
Rituals and Ceremonies
Stories and Legends
Communication Networks
History
Beliefs
Values
Assumptions
Artifacts of
Organizational
Culture
OrganizationalOrganizational
CultureCulture
Elements of Organizational
Culture

13. How Culture Evolves
Practice
Belief
Shared Tacit Assumption
Taken for granted!
Problem /
Need
Solution Continued SuccessContinued Success
Culture

14. Shaping culture
Three processes school leaders can use to
shape
the school culture:
1. Read the culture to identify current norms and
values
2. Assess the culture to determine which elements
support the school’s purpose and mission
3. Shape the culture by reinforcing positive aspects
and working to transform negative aspects
Reference: Peterson, Kent (2002). Positive or Negative? Journal of Staff
Development, 23:3

15. Positive School Culture ?
 What are the characteristics of a positive
school culture
 How does it affect teaching and learning?

16. POSITIVE CULTURE

LEADERSHIP PERMEATES
 SUCCESS IS CELEBRATED AND
RECOGNISED
 HONESTY, OPENESS ARE EVIDENT
 EXTERNAL INVOLVEMENT
 PARTICIPATION IS ENCOURAGED
 OPEN TO CHANGE
 TAKES RISKS
 SOCIALISATION21st Century Leadership21st Century Leadership

17. Negative School Culture ?
 What are the characteristics of a negative
school culture
 How does it affect teaching and learning?

18. NEGATIVE CULTURES

19.  Weak leadership
 Lack of direction/rudderless
 Closed and secretive
 Mistrust / suspicion
 Bully tactics
 Fear/anxiety/isolation
 Tension/stress
 Inconsistency
 Destructive internal competition
 Controlled
CHARACTERISTICS OF A TOXIC CULTURE

20. Cultural Nutrients - Toxins
 Exercise

21.  Every school has skeletons
 These skeletons become a
part of the culture – good or
bad
 The way a community deals
with these “skeletons: speaks
volumes about its “culture” and
commitment to self-
improvement

22. Leadership
"It can be argued
that the only thing of real importance that leaders
do is create and manage cultures;
that the unique talent of leaders is their ability to
understand and work with culture;
and that it is an ultimate act of leadership to
destroy culture when it is viewed as
dysfunctional." (Schein, 2004)

23. Culture is transmitted and
embedded by…
Primary Embedding
Mechanisms
 What leaders pay attention
to, measure and control
 How leaders react to critical
incidents
 How leaders allocate
resources
 Leader’s role modelling and
coaching
 How leaders allocate
rewards and status
 Recruitment, selection,
promotion and exit
Secondary Reinforcement
Mechanisms
 Design and Structure
 Systems and Processes
 Rites and Rituals
 Physical space, facades and
buildings
 Stories about important
events
 Creation of heroes
Can become Primary over
time!

24. If a head is consistently interested in one
thing, it will become a centerpiece of
school culture. If a head is inconsistently
interested in many things, unclear in
communicating with employees, or
inconsistent in decision-making or
defining priorities, people will spend a lot
of time trying to figure out what’s going
on. The head’s inconsistency will
become a central feature of the school
culture. (Understanding School Culture,
Michael Thompson

25. Requirements for Successfully Changing
Organizational Culture
 Understand the old culture first
 Support employees and teams who have ideas for a
better culture and are willing to act on those ideas
 Find the most effective subculture in the organization
and use it as a model
 Help employees and teams do their jobs more
effectively
 Use the vision of a new culture as a guide for change
 Recognize that significant cultural change takes time
 Live the new culture

26. Belief Practice
Changing Culture

27. TO CHANGE YOUR
SCHOOL’S CULTURE
Promote your mission, vision, values and
goals.
Bring your staff together to find best
practices.
Sustain the culture through
communication.
Persist.
Confront problems.www.schoolofeducators.com

28. My School
 Pick 1 practice in your school you would
like to change or introduce and 1 that
you would like to maintain
 What are the beliefs , assumptions on
which this practice is based
 How will you bring about this change?

29.  Symbol of Culture
 Potter who shapes the
Culture
 Poet who uses language to
describe the Culture
 Actor who plays out the
values and vision
 Healer who presides over
life transitions in the
community
The Leader is: