Litvin (1997) attacks such essentialism, ascribing the taxonomy of groups to a Western Platonic purportedly scientific paradigm. UCEA. Subordinates expect superiors to act autocratically. As a second exemplar, in China the millennia long influence of Confucianism has led to a compliance culture, the impact of this cultural norm being a tendency to see change as an event rather than a process (Hallinger, 2001, p. 67). If leaders believe that a dominant culture is identifiable or achievable, and that it is a single, stable and unifying phenomenon, then changing it becomes a matter of choice, but relatively straightforward and without any moral ramifications. It is also a response to the greater sensitivity brought about by the increasing diversity within many societies and the insistence that a perspective based on a single dominant culture risks sustaining a hegemonic, ineffective and excluding approach. | Contact us | Help & FAQs Walker, A. Begley, P. you are agreeing to our use of cookies. However, over a decade ago, Heck (1996) suggested that advances in statistical methods held some hope of achieving conceptual and metric equivalence in investigating theoretical models across nations and within organizations. School culture and culture in general are often labeled as self-evident. Stoll and Fink (1996) created a typology of five types of school culture: moving (dynamic and successful determination to keep developing), cruising (rather complacent, often with privileged learners who achieve despite little school dynamism), strolling (neither particularly effective or ineffective, but long term not keeping pace with change), struggling (ineffective but trying to address issues), and finally sinking (ineffective and not improving). As we shall demonstrate later in the chapter, it is getting to understand these values and beliefs that is a critical first step for educational leaders in developing the skills to manage, develop and evolve culture in their school. (2003). Analysis of the content of programs might suggest that such commitment is largely camouflage for neglect of such values (Lopez, 2003; Rusch, 2004). (1999). Buckingham: Open University Press. P. C we elaborated a typology of school improvement trajectories: we identi ed 4 di erent trajectories of school improvement. Once the inputs are understood and the intended outputs identified, the major challenge for the school leader is then to organize and operationalize the processes within the school to enable pupils to travel from their cultural starting point to the output position the school seeks to achieve. Deciding which cultural assumptions to attempt to embed in the design and delivery of development, including the degree to which they will replicate or challenge dominant cultures; Deciding how best to equip leaders with intercultural competence, so that they in their turn can decide which cultural assumptions to attempt to embed in their school leadership, including the degree to which they will replicate or challenge dominant cultures. (2006). Hanges, S. eBook ISBN: 9780203872239 Adobe His ideas were widely influential. Effective. Lakomski, G. ), Effective educational leadership (pp. Metaphorically culture is like the air we breathe; all around us, vital, and yet difficult to discern and to change. Journal of Management Development, 15(5), 421. Each of the cultures influences and is influenced by each of the others. Hallinger More research of this kind, exploring fit not only to the dominant culture of the nation/region, but also fit to the multiple cultures within the nation or region would provide a potentially powerful antidote to programs which are currently not culturally inclusive. The processes of cultural change in schools have been considered extensively in the literature (e.g. The organization's relationship to its environment. There is also a preference to face facts whether positive or negative. There is relatively little attention paid to middle leaders such as department heads and teacher leaders (Bush & Jackson, 2002). Cranston, N. In terms of cultural outputs school leaders need to understand both what the external societies expect from the school and what they wish to achieve themselves this will require an integration of their personal and professional values, their vision of the purpose of schooling, and the visions and values of the key external stakeholders. (2002). (Hoppe, 2004, p. 333), a set of shared values and preferred actions among members of a society that largely determines among other things, the boundaries within which leader development is possible. London: Sage. The first is that leaders are passive ambassadors of culture. Subordinates expect superiors to act autocratically. Despite some advances since that time, understanding of culture and its relationship to leadership and its development remains empirically underdeveloped. Within this, however, there may exist several cultures: Stoll and Fink (1996)25 pupil culture, teacher cultures, a leadership culture, non-teaching staff culture, and parent culture. A perspective on women principals in Turkey. Processual competencies, comprising intrapersonal competencies and cognitive competencies (2003, p.84), are also needed. This paper's focus is school culture as 10. Waters (1995) has identified three interwoven strands to globalization political globalization, economic globalization and cultural globalization. Images of Organization, Powell, A. G. Aitken, R. Many leaders are constrained to varying degrees by the pressing demands of accountability and competition which in themselves create a dominant cultural context. Stoll (2000) gave a general definition on the foundations of school's cultures. In contrast the assessment of educational leaders often assumes that consideration of cultural fit is unnecessary in relation to standards which are uncritically accepted as international. Stier insists that the latter cannot be achieved by content competencies alone. Not only may there be particular cultural assumptions about the relationship between staff and principal, the principal and regional/national authorities, but underpinning ontological assumptions may be distinctive. P. As within continents or regions, within each nation, a common culture cannot be assumed, the differences between the culture of Native Americans, Hispanic and African American women and that of white males within the United States being an example given above. (1998). Elmes Cultural Influences on Leadership and Organizations: Project Globe. Similarly, the selection of teaching staff provides at least an implicit and possibly an explicit mechanism of shaping a key cultural input into the school. They begin by discussing the historical, social and organizational forces that create continuity in education; which . A number of summative frameworks for analyzing culture have therefore been developed which seek to reduce the complexity of culture to simplified types which can be labeled for ease of comprehension. (2002). & Handy, C. A more flexible and subtle shaping will be needed. (1997). We would also suggest that pupils, although seldom asked, would hold . P.J. , Hodgkinson, C. Young Javidan ing the micropolitic and the school culture as key components to study school improvement . Accultured, automatic, emotional responses preclude awareness of internalized culture. Bridges, E. Challenging the boundaries of sameness: leadership through valuing difference. Cultural fluency will be predicated on more than cognitive effort (Lakomski, 2001). London: Penguin. Ribbins The processes of globalization have been a significant feature of all dimensions of society and economy over the last three decades. However, a model which merely identifies cultural elements doesnt take account of the dynamic nature of culture and it is useful therefore to consider culture in the context of a systems perspective on organizations. The typology tool was first developed in 1997 as a hands-on, practical method of defining for discussion purposes a school's stage or type of culture. Identity based and reputational leadership: an American Indian approach to leadership. , Following our examination of globalization and culture in the previous section, we consider here the picture of culture within educational leadership internationally. International Studies in Educational Administration. London: Sage. (1997). Powell, Farrar and Cohen (1985) used research from fifteen high schools to depict a culture of easy and uncritical acceptance of underachievement. Although researchers are just beginning to document the effectiveness of the PLC culture, early indications show that it has a significant positive effect on student learning (Lee & Smith, 1996; Louis & Marks, 1998; Stoll et al., 2006; Wiley, 2001). Leadership learning the praxis of dilemma management. 6886). Abstract. Conceptualizing the schools culture through such a systems approach helps clarify the challenges for school leaders in relation to culture. International Journal for Leadership in Education, 7(2),127146. ), Managing the Organizational Melting Pot: Dilemmas of Workplace Diversity (pp. Shah, S. The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace; National Association of Secondary School Principals (U.S.); National Association of Independent Schools. & New York: Teachers College Press. We need to work in organisations, collectively developing an understanding of where they are going and what is important. The first proposes four 'ideal type' school cultures, based on two underlying domains; the second, a more elaborate and dynamic model, proposes two 'ideal type' school cultures, based on five underlying structures. He also insisted that the complex creation of culture was the result of multiple inputs from staff, learners and the wider community. (Eds. (1991). At the exogenous level, there appears to be widespread cultural homogeneity implicit in leadership development; that is, whether explicitly acknowledged or not, development is underpinned by some degree of belief in leadership as an invariable activity (Walker & Walker, 1998; Bhindi & Duignan, 1997): this despite recognition that even the word leader has very different connotations in different cultures (House, 2004). and 'learning school'; and contacts with leading experts in this area of work which led to identification of additional literature. Hallinger (2001) notes the changing aims of Asian education and specifically the global standards applied to assessing the quality of education in Hong Kong. P. W. Each of these contexts has a culture that expresses itself conceptually, verbally, behaviorally and visually, and which is a product of the complex interaction of communities, socio-economic contexts and contrasts, ethnic and faith-based values and beliefs, and the history of that community as a whole and of the individuals within it. Leaders interact with culture at the organizational level both in terms of efforts to include the multiple cultures which may be present and also to sustain, adapt or change the dominant culture. Our intent in this paper is to provide a retrospective of the past few years to provide some helpful insights into the change process in school systems. Bush, T. & Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The political perspective would see educational leaders as seeking to generate in their pupils and staff a critical view of society, to challenge existing orthodoxies and to become citizens able to participate in social and cultural change. Similarly, Bajunid (1996, p. 56) argues that the richness of Islamic teaching is absent from concepts of leadership. 2 C. BELLEI ET AL. If culture embeds, among other things, power relations, then the issue of programs matching or challenging dominant cultures becomes a matter of negotiating competing notions of appropriate power relations, political and social structures. , & Gupta This unique culture will reveal itself through a number of institutional characteristics: While these representations are identifiable and mostly tangible, the illusiveness of the concept of culture lies in the fact that it is an holistic concept which is more than the sum of these component parts. Certainly it would be helpful to undertake an educational equivalent of the GLOBE project (House et al., 2004) and to establish the education leadership attributes and behaviors that are held in common across a large number of nations and those elements that are culturally contingent. This may be interpreted in several ways ranging from the operational to the political. Educational Leadership: Ambiguity, Professionals and Managerialism. The identification of the relevant culture and the group to which it is appropriate is predicated on the notion that humans can be classified, that a specific culture can be assigned to those in a particular geographic area or sharing a particular characteristic such as gender, language, ethnic background or religion. The development of a professional school culture is an important approach for promoting teacher learning (Stoll & Kools, 2017). Hofstede, G. , (2001). , It is probably for this reason that . & Kachelhoffer, P. Their typology distinguishes club, role, task and person cultures in organizations, and enables a simple analysis of the dominant cultural themes within a school or a team. His critique suggests that there is insufficient time given in such an approach to understanding existing cultures, both at a general level and in terms of the underpinning key components and variables, and the consequence is cultural imperialism. Organisational Culture and Leadership. ), The Life and Work of Teachers (pp. The GLOBE project was undertaken in a business context. The first relates to the ways the day-to-day operations of the school interact with the outside world. In this line, a study . However, Lumby et al. Kaur Hayers, P. Similarly, Louque (2002) challenges the appropriateness of the culture embedded in the selection and development of educational leaders to Hispanic and African American Women. Sapre, P. (Eds. After graduation, 76% of students from this school go on to attend a 4-year college. Al-Meer, A. Walker, A. International Journal for Leadership in Education, 4(4), 367381. Its view of the nature of human activity does it believe that people behave in a dominant/proactive mode or a passive/fatalistic mode? London: Sage. Stoll and Fink (1996) developed a model in determining the school culture. Hwang, K. K. At the international scale, for example, the work of Hofstede (1991), has sought to provide a broad general analysis of national organizational cultures. Cultures Consequences, Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations (2nd ed.). & ABSTRACT In 1986, the Halton Board of Education in Ontario, Canada initiated an Effective Schools Project. ), Leading Schools in a Global Era: A Cultural Perspective, Peabody Journal of Education, Litvin, D. R. However, such a perspective ignores the ability of schools to select many of the cultural inputs. (2001). Accessed online 16.2.07. In China the relatively low contact hours enjoyed by teachers combined with a culture of comfort with peer critique has resulted in teacher groups working together for a considerable proportion of their time to achieve change (Bush & Qiang, 2000), while principals spend much of their time on operational administration (Washington, 1991). Creating this culture of change by constantly challenging the status quo is a contact sport involving hard, labor-intensive work and a lot of time. In many countries the principal may indeed be key. Hoppe (2004) believes US leaders have little difficulty in receiving negative feedback. Duignan, P. Corporate rituals: The rites and fituals of corporate life. According to Mortimore (1991), a lot of improvement efforts have failed because research results were not translated adequately into guidelines for educational practice. Boosting pupil's progress development Working together to respond to changing context Know where they are going and having the will and skill to get there Possess norms of improving schools1.MOVING REFERS ON THE FOLLOWING: (2003). Two distinctive views of this connection can be identified (Collard, 2006). Ribbins, P. Bryant, M. We have looked at three theoretical aspects of culture here. Despite the difficulties of establishing the meaning of the concept of culture, it is used ubiquitously as a key variable, Janus-like, suggested both to influence and be influenced by a range of factors which impact on education. Pupils, staff and school leaders have an on-going engagement with external stakeholders, from parents, to neighbors, to employers, to the media, and every one of those interactions conveys a message about the culture of the school and its underpinning values. There have, of course, been many more attempts to categorize school cultures, each offering a particular perspective to illuminate the nature and effects of culture. Skip to page content. (2004). Mentoring is therefore flavored by ease and acceptance of the views of seniors but sensitivity to negative feedback. Leithwood, K. In the context of education this is seen through the promotion of policies and practices around the globe that have been initially developed in the west, based often on western approaches to educational management and the key concept of economic rationalism. Such a perspective suggests that the dominant culture, were it to be discerned with any certainty, would be embedded, unexamined and therefore unchallenged, in preparation and development programs. You can find out more in our Privacy Policy. The interrelationship of culture with leadership and its development is the focus of this chapter. (Litvin, 1997, pp. Dorfman Everyone expects superiors to enjoy privileges, and status symbols are very important. & School culture, therefore, is most clearly seen in the ways people relate to and work together; the management of the school's structures, systems, and physical environment; and the extent to which there is a learning focus for both pupils and adults, including the nature of that focus (Stoll & Fink, 1998) or simply the distinctive identity of . Despite the recognition that culture is an elusive and diverse concept, identifying some of the existing intellectual paradigms of culture is an important starting point. Educational Administration Quarterly, 39(1), 6894. Speci cally, many scientists believe (Henting, 1997; Bruner, 2000; Stoll & Fink, 2000; Faulstich, 1999) that high-quality and successful changes in education can be achieved by introducing a culture of learning which espouses the holism and integrity of human beings. Teacher cultures have received most . Whittier Christian High School is a highly rated, private, Christian school located in LA HABRA, CA. (1996). Firstly, it examines key theoretical models and perspectives on culture. School culture is the set of shared values, beliefs and norms that influence the way educators and administrators think, feel and behave in schoolplace. Stoll and Fink (1992) think that school effectiveness should have done more to make clear how schools can become effective. Leadership and culture: Conceptual and methodological issues in comparing models across cultural settings. As in the GLOBE project, subgroups within nations might be also identified for inclusion. Moller, J. , & (2004). Throughout the world a great deal of effort and money has been expended in the name of educational change. International Studies in Educational Administration. Ogawa Wong, K.
