7 minute read
HOw DO wE SHAPE SCHOOL CULTURE?
By Christian Mba
School culture is a complex thing to define and harder still to create. In his article, Christian Mba argues that by focusing on four vital elements, you can influence the way your school culture develops its own unique identity.
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Ask any Marvel fan: when Thanos snapped his fingers, everything changed. Half the human population was wiped out in an instant. There were no corners of the earth that were untouched; the mortal landscape had been irrevocably transformed. Many of the Avengers, Earth’s mightiest heroes, disintegrated into dust.
Watching these events transpire on the silver screen prompted the question for the audience: where are the heroes? Where are the heroines? Will they return? There is something comforting about knowing who the heroes and heroines are. They serve as the embodiment of something bigger than themselves. They also provide us an insight into the wider culture they exist in. I also think it is a question that teachers and school leaders would do well to consider as they reflect on the organisational culture of their own settings. In their paper, Leading and Managing People in Education, Bush and Middlewood (2005) identify four central features of organisational culture that I believe are essential for healthy school cultures, ‘heroes and heroines’ being one. Imagine with me that each of these features are four concentric circles. For the purpose of this article, I have begun with the outer layer because I think this is the factor which is most easy to observe.
As you walk around your setting, who are the heroes and heroines among your student body? How would a guest know? Is it easy to observe to an outsider? In many schools, students are awarded badges or special ties or some other physical item to indicate their status eg. Head Girl, House Captain, student council, anti-bullying ambassador.
Some may view these as trite trinkets made of a bit of plastic and metal, but they are important icons that communicate something of the cultures they inhabit. My daughter recently received a Blue Peter badge in the post for submitting some evidence of her playing sports for a team. Nobody would be able to convince her (or me) that her badge is not valuable. It is valuable because the Blue Peter presenters, the BBC, and the wider national audience recognise it as valuable. In schools, we ‘make the weather’ for our young people. If we treat a badge for citizenship or a gold tie for Head Boy as important, then it will be important to our young people too.
These symbols will often be proff ered as part of the ‘rituals and ceremonies’ that exist in our settings. This is the second ring of our concentric circles. By rituals, I am of course not describing animal sacrifi ce or rain dances, but we do have rituals we perform in our schools. Assemblies. Sports Days. House Competitions. School productions. Summer fetes. These are just some of the diff erent activities and events we organise our calendars around during an academic year. It’s the ‘software for the mind’ (Gruenert and Whitaker, 2017) that shapes our organisational culture.
I think it is important to remember this following the system crash we have experienced over the last two years. As we reboot, there may be a temptation to delete some of these essential system processes because it is expedient, costeff ective or time-effi cient, but I personally believe this would be a critical error. These rituals and ceremonies are hard drives by which we both share our heroes and heroines and store our shared norms.
Imagine now our concentric circles have reached the inner ring. Bush and Middlewood (2005) describe the signifi cance of ‘shared norms and meanings’. My brother-in-law got me tickets to see Arsenal play at the Emirates at the start of the season. We beat Fulham 2-1. Despite the fact I was sitting next to a complete stranger, when Gabriel scored in the 86th minute, we hugged and jumped up and down like two toddlers in a reception playground. When the tune of the 1958 song ‘Tequila’ rang out around the stadium, we all knew to replace the song title with our centre back’s name, ‘Saliba’. The shared norms and meaning of a football fan are taught, caught and reinforced during the rituals and ceremonies of supporting that team. The same applies in our educational settings.
When I lead a formal assembly, I and the other adults in our school expect the students to fi le in quietly, sit in their registration groups and listen attentively. However, when I lead a House Competition, I and the other adults want the students to sit with their friends, to shout, cheer and sing along. Our new students in Year 7 are quickly learning that while you represent your House with pride and passion, we are ultimately still one community. We cheer everyone on, we celebrate everyone. The subtle nuances of our shared norms can only be observed when we are together in shared practices, activities and events.
At the core of our concentric circles are the ‘values and beliefs’ of the members of the organisation. This is what makes culture so tricky to shape and infl uence because it has to do with the individual beliefs of the people that make up the community. Every single person in your setting contributes to the collective values and beliefs of the school. Everyone. The governing body, the Headteacher, the
senior leaders, the pastoral and subject leaders, the teachers, the teaching support staff, the site staff, the catering team, the administration team, the reception team, the parents and carers, and of course, the students. How do you ensure that everybody believes and values the same things in the same way at the same time?
I don’t think you can.
But I believe we can influence the way people think and behave in particular settings. We do it all the time in other areas of our lives. The way I cheered and sang while watching The Gunners is completely different to how I behaved watching The Lion King in the theatre with my daughter. We clapped politely at appropriate points and waited to the end of the performance to give rapturous applause. In the interval, I traded my hearty meat pie at the Emirates for an exquisite - but expensive - tub of ice cream. There would be no chanting or hugging of strangers. The setting influenced how I behaved for the greater good of that particular organisation’s purposes.
Our learning environments are central to how we communicate our values and beliefs to everyone. What are the espoused values and beliefs of your school? Are they reflected in what everybody actually does? How important is teaching and learning? What are the shared norms? How balanced is the curriculum? What are the rituals and ceremonies? What do they communicate? Who are the heroes and heroines? Why are they given that status? How does everybody else know? The answers to these questions will go some way in helping to sketch the contours of the organisational culture in our schools.
As for Thanos, that mad Titan, he would be eventually vanquished by the Avengers. The blip, that period when the absence In order to adapt to the challenges of the pandemic, we have understandably had to cancel proms and Sports Days, move assemblies and Open Evenings online, scale back school productions and awards ceremonies; schools have not been able to function at full strength.
My hope is that, as schools begin to return to normality after the last few years of disruption, we too would be renewed in our shared sense of purpose. For many of our young people, school represents one of the most significant periods in their lives for the forming and shaping of their beliefs, values and worldviews. As teachers and school leaders, we shape the future. In this way, I think it is actually teachers who are Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
