School culture - a personal view

Reflections on 'School Culture'

Talking about culture is always uncomfortable for me but then again it may be because my culture is often described as being very 'correct' and 'prescribed'. Anyway, I really liked the analogy in Stoll's article, describing 'culture' as a screen or lens through which we see the world with our own eyes. I believe that is very much so and explains why so many people are o.k. with something and others think it is outrageous, e.g 'plastic bags for free in supermarkets'. My culture is shaped through my upbringing in Germany and on top of that I was raised by my grandparents. That really has changed the way I see the world.

New Lynn's social fabric

Looking at New Lynn's urban plan from 2010 is a reflection of the schools cultural composition. Over the past decade New Lynn has established itself as a gateway for new immigrants from all parts of the Pacific and Asia. The New Lynn caucus has with 32 percent the highest amount of people with an Asian background in all of West Auckland and features the lowest percentage of Maori and Europeans. The urban plan predicts the trend to continue that there will be considerable growth in the migration from people with Asian or Pacific Island ethnicities into the area with further decline in the numbers of Europeans. The Social Deprivation Index for New Lynn sits on a band from 7-9 which indicates higher levels of deprivation. Income levels in New Lynn are rather low when compared with the regional average, only 11 % of people in the caucus earn more than $50,000, with an averaged median of $20,880. The statistical facts are only in parts represented by our school population. Students are coming form wide range of cultures but there still is predominantly a European majority. 

School Culture

School culture of the School seems to me being the driving force behind this because no other school in the close vicinity had such a role growth in the past years. The school is a school of choice for most of the European residents in the area which could have enrolled the children in schools that are much closer to their homes. It is a compliment to the school leadership that they managed to create this image to the community and have attracted so many enrolments.

My view from the inside is, 'say and do' certain things and you will attract a wanted response. In other words, I think the school has done a great job to upgrade its visual appearance and creating a 'feeling' of openness and forward thinking.

In terms of school culture I struggle to identify what defines and drives it. Like I said above, it seems to me that management is doing very well to give the school the 'feel good' vibe, doing and saying everything that ticks the boxes in the parents books. For me it is a show, do we really need a 25 metre pool to teach our students how to swim?

Using Hargreaves 'Typology of School Culture' (Hargreaves, 1995), I see the school's best fit as Anomic, lack of social cohesion and low social control. In Stoll and Fink's (1996) Typology the school qualifies as 'Cruising', which I believe is a very fitting description, I have been cruising for a while now and I don't like it. Why don't I like it, well there a number of implications that come with a cruising state. First no drive to achieve anything, the word explains it 'cruising', not accelerating, not braking, just cruising. Picture one of the great American Highways, dead straight as far as you can see, all you can think of is boredom or self-driving car to soak in the scenery, if there is one.

Stoll's view is that 'school culture' is very important but in regards to school improvement is also one of the most neglected concepts (Stoll 1998). That is exactly the case were I teach from my point of view. I have so far only once witnessed how school leadership has made an attempt to create something like a sense of belonging or connectedness within the staff. Unfortunately it left not only myself wondering "what was that all about." I know the difference because I was so fortunate to work with a principal over number of years who possesses the knowledge and competence to understand the importance of changing school culture. Not everybody agreed but there was a clear pathway ahead. In hindsight I would go back and recommend more community engagement from teaching staff to get more involvement and 'buy-in" but no comparison to my current school.

In summary the main issue for me is being exposed to this, I should speak up but to what end, to completely alienate myself, better not. These are the realities in schools, I heard other stories during the mindlab course that made me shiver. It is true what they say about leadership ...

References

http://www.waitakere.govt.nz/abtcnl/pp/pdf/2010/newlynnurbanplan/1-socioeconomic.pdf

Stoll. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-_NvhlcusQ

Community of Practice

Reflections on Community of Practice 

In his essay about Community of Practice E. Wenger made it very clear to me that learning is a social activity, at least that's what I got out of it. Building knowledge is enabled through an act of participation in some sort of learning system, like the mindlab evenings, "what is your understanding of ...", the lecturer enquired. Through the shared discussion of individuals, abstract concepts were attached with a personal perspective, were filled with an interpretation of someone, connected to personal experience. Much as E. Wenger points out that knowledge and competence grows over time and is impacted by our own experiences, both influence one another, one can't be without the other.
This brings me to my literature review which focussed on the preconditions of successful teacher collaboration in an ILE. Overlapping both areas it surprises me that Wenger's ideas were not mentioned anywhere in the studies that I reviewed, it seems so obvious to me that an essential precondition for teacher collaboration is to form a community of practice. Like Wenger the sources that I reviewed identified the same problem, like effective teacher collaboration, community of practice can't be created, only fostered. I believe this is true for both because for me two teachers and their students are already a community. In a way, success of community depends on the energy that the community itself generates, not on an external mandate (Wenger, E., 2000).