Transforming School Culture

📖 The Scoop

This book is designed to help educators recognize and, if necessary, change a school's culture. It guides principals, other administrators, and teachers in the process of shaping the culture of their schools. For those who have already begun the process, the book provides insights, examples, and reassurance that their efforts are headed in the right direction. Chapter 1 provides a framework to help leaders understand the terms "culture" and "climate." Chapter 2 establishes the importance of culture by reviewing some of the research evidence, which shows that school culture influences student and teacher motivation, school improvement, leadership effectiveness, and academic achievement. The third chapter examines three levels of organizational culture outlined by Edgar H. Schein (1984)--tangible artifacts, values and beliefs, and underlying assumptions. Chapter 4 describes several instruments and qualitative procedures that a leader can use to identify and measure school culture at each of Schein's three levels. The next three chapters offer three perspectives on the process of transforming a school's culture--the systems approach, vision building, and the leader's role as learner, motivator, and modeler. Practical suggestions for culture-building are also given. (Contains 72 references.) (LMI)

Genre: Education / General (fancy, right?)