The Relationship between School Culture, Leadership and Educational Change

Introduction

    This dissertation will determine and analyze the significant interrelationship between the school culture, leadership and change through a specific example chosen by the author. In this discussion, Hong Kong’s educational restructuring through its major school reforms will be taken into account. Its relation to the topic will be the main argument of this paper. The effect of the teachers and school administration’s commitment to these school reforms will be analyzed in terms of student achievement, teacher productivity and overall improvement of educational quality.
    For the purpose of understanding the discussion, the author finds it necessary for a brief overview of certain terminologies that will be used for this paper.
School Culture
    One thing that the field of education lacks is a clear and consistent definition of school culture. It has been used synonymously with a variety of concepts such as climate, ethos and saga (Deal, 1993). The concept of culture came to education from the corporate workplace with the notion that it would provide direction for a more efficient and stable learning environment.
    For centuries, scholars have argued about the meaning of culture. Clifford Geertz (1973), a noted anthropologist, has made a large contribution to the current understanding of the term. According to him, culture represents a historically transmitted pattern of meaning. Those patterns of meaning are expressed both explicitly through symbols and implicitly in our taken for granted beliefs. Terrence Deal and Kent Peterson (1990) noted that the definition of culture includes deep patterns of values, beliefs and traditions that have been formed over the course of history. Paul Heckman (1993) reminds us that school culture lies in the commonly held beliefs of teachers, students and principals. These definitions go beyond the business of creating an efficient learning environment. They focus more on the core values necessary to teach and influence young minds.
    Hence, school culture can be defined as the historically transmitted patterns of meaning that include the norms, values, beliefs, ceremonies, rituals, traditions and myths understood, maybe in varying degree, by members of the school community (Stolp and Smith, 1994). This system of meaning often shapes what people think and how they act.
    The impressive results of school culture have long been compiled by researchers. One result noted that a healthy and sound school culture is strongly correlated with increased student achievement and motivation as well as the productivity and satisfaction of the teachers.
    In a study by Fyans and Maehr (1990), they looked at the effects of five dimensions of school culture namely academic challenges, comparative achievement, recognition for achievement, school community and perception of school goals. In their survey of 16, 310 students from 820 public schools, they found support for the proposition that students are more motivated to learn in schools with strong cultures.
    In line with a project at improving elementary student scores, Jerry L. Thacker and William D. McInerney (1992) studied the effects of school culture on student achievement. The project they studied focused on creating a new mission statement, goals based on outcomes for students, curriculum alignment corresponding with those goals, staff development and building level decision-making. The results were significant as the number of students who failed an annual statewide test dropped by as much as 10 percent. These results are consistent with other findings that suggest the implementation of a clear mission statement, shared vision, and school wide goals promote increased student achievement.
    School culture was also found to be correlated with teachers’ attitudes towards their work. Yin Cheong Cheng (1993) made a study which profiled effective and ineffective organizational cultures. In this research, Cheng found out that stronger school culture results to better motivation for the teachers. Thus, in an environment with strong organizational ideology, shared participation, charismatic leadership and intimacy, teachers experienced higher job satisfaction and increased productivity.
    In general, the findings of these studies proved how important school culture is in many aspects of the educational system.
Leadership and Educational Change
    By definition, leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals toward a common goal. Leadership is also process which implies that a leader must continuously grow and develop both in character and competence. In the same way, an educational leader or reformer must possess such qualities as a leader.
    Traditionally, the task of schooling has been to transform children into full functioning adults capable of succeeding in the culture of the time. Educational reformers from antiquity to the present have attempted to prod educational institutions to modify and change fundamental tasks and processes. Changing a subject matter can be difficult, however, reforming the infrastructure of schooling and the dynamics of those human interactions is monumental. This is the challenge and focus of the contemporary educational leader. Thus, leadership is more than a position or role. Leadership at its core is fundamentally a dynamic, chaotic, human relational process. The leader, follower and context are the three structural dimensions involved in this process. How each individual engages in that process; perceives or defines each of the dimensions of the process can significantly shape the personal and collective metaphors that guide individual and collective action (Richford, 2001). Hence, movement is essential in educational leadership in order to bring about educational changes.

Case Study: Hong Kong’s Educational Restructuring and its Major Reforms
    As mentioned in the introduction, the correlation of school culture, leadership and change with the educational reforms in Hong Kong will be given focus in this paper.
The Leader: Hong Kong’s Policymakers
    Since the beginning of the 1990s, Hong Kong has experienced similar pressures for school restructuring as many English-speaking Western countries. Policy transforming Hong Kong’s schools initiatives have been introduced which bear close similarity to those of other systems, notably England and Wales, Australia and the USA. This is not surprising since Hong Kong’s policy makers looked to these countries for the blueprints on which to base school management reform. Although school and curricula reforms in Hong Kong have been commonplace since the 1970s, the reform agenda of the 1990s, as in other systems, represents a wholesale and comprehensive effort to restructure (Dimmock and Walker, 1998).
    After several decades of education policy focused on quantitative and logistical concerns, focused on coping with student numbers, the Hong Kong Government, in 1991, turned its attention to improving the quality of education, a theme which has dominated policy for most of the final decade of the twentieth century, not only in Hong Kong, but throughout many Western and Asian countries (Dimmock and Walker, 1998).
Initiation for Change: The Implemented Major Reforms
    In the 1990s, the current wave of restructuring is centered on three major policy initiatives. These reforms include the School Management Initiative (SMI) (Education and Manpower Branch and Education Department, 1991); the target-oriented curriculum (TOC) (Education Department, 1994); and Quality School Education (QSE), best known as ECR7, or Education Commission Report No. 7 (Education Commission, 1997). In common with the restructuring of school systems elsewhere, these initiatives can be conceived as two-pronged, one aimed at reforming the administrative, managerial and governmental aspects of schools, the other targeting curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment.
    The formation of these reforms was derived from the identification of some of the weaknesses of Hong Kong schools which includes inadequate management structures and processes, poorly defined roles and responsibilities and the absence or inadequacy of performance measures. The need for an emphasis on detailed controls rather than frameworks of responsibility and accountability as well as an emphasis on cost control at the margins rather than cost effectiveness and value for money were also identified (Education and Manpower Branch and Education, 1991, p. 9).
In the international context of school restructuring, Hong Kong’s SMI is the equivalent of the “local management of schools” (LMS) in England and Wales, “school-based management” in the USA and the “self-managing school” concept in Australia. As previously noted, the SMI is to be seen within the context of general reform of the public sector with its greater emphasis on accountability for performance. However, it is also to be seen within a second context, namely, that of school effectiveness, with its characteristic features of devolution and delegation of decision making according to the principles of subsidiary. Typically, such restructuring involves complex changes in roles, rules and relationships of stakeholders. While delegation of financial responsibility to schools provides them with greater flexibility of resource use, curricular frameworks often turn out to be more centrally controlled than before. School accountability increases not only to the central office, but also to community representatives on school boards and councils. Hong Kong’s SMI displays all of these hallmarks. The SMI aimed to define more clearly the roles of those responsible for administering schools, particularly sponsors, managers and principals; to provide for greater participation by teachers, parents and former students in school decision making and management; to encourage more systematic planning and evaluation of school activities; and finally, to give schools more flexibility in the use of their resources (Dimmock and Walker, 1998).
    On the other hand, the strong thrust of ECR7 (Education Commission, 1997) is to develop schools with quality school cultures, and to introduce a framework by which to monitor and assure quality. The marked change in nomenclature from “effective schools” to “quality schools” is in line with shifts in English-speaking Western countries, and with recent developments in relevant academic literature. Problems in the school system are recognized by the commission to center on the lack of a quality culture. In support of this claim, the commission cites as evidence the fact that many schools do not have development plans linked to goal achievement; most schools do not have clear targets for both academic and non-academic students; and many do not have appraisal systems to assess the performance of principals and teachers. In addition, there is poor support for schools in promoting a quality culture. Moreover, principal preparation and teacher training programs are regarded as inadequate in preparing a cadre of professionals who can cope with the changes required, and the Education Department does not promote quality development in schools (Dimmock and Walker, 1998).
    While the SMI and ECR7 initiatives embody Hong Kong’s attempts to reform school governance, management and administration, the so-called target oriented curriculum (TOC) constitutes their parallel in curriculum reform. TOC is a major curriculum reform aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of teaching and learning. Its phased introduction began in 1995 and eventually it will permeate all primary and secondary schools to cover the years of compulsory schooling. TOC is based on the following features (Morris et al., 1996):
• Planned and progressive learning targets and objectives for four key stages of learning;
• Development of curriculum content, teaching and learning strategies, and assessment related to the learning targets;
• Balanced development of students’ higher thinking abilities, skills and attitudes, in addition to a sound base of subject knowledge;
• A developmental approach to student capabilities and integrative use of knowledge;
• A learner-centered approach in all aspects of curriculum planning, teaching and assessment;
• The construction of knowledge through the processes of learning is as important as the product of these activities, thereby shifting the emphasis of teaching and learning;
• Five interdependent ways of learning and using knowledge are emphasized: communicating, inquiring, conceptualizing, reasoning and problem-solving;
• Individual differences and the needs of individual students;
• Criterion-referenced assessment with systematic formative and summative assessment procedures (rather than norm-referenced assessment);
• Charting and reporting of students’ progress through the four key stages with reference to learning targets.
    TOC therefore advocates the use of learning and assessment tasks with systematic reporting procedures instead of just exercises, tests, and examinations presently adopted in Hong Kong. Having described the major administrative and curriculum reforms over the past decade, it is instructive to consider their outcomes to date (Dimmock and Walker, 1998).

Educational Change: The Effects of the Educational Reforms
    Of the three major policy initiatives, only two – SMI and TOC – have been implemented for a length of time sufficient to gauge reactions and effects at this juncture. ECR7 was published in 1997 and its acceptance by the Government will see its staged implementation from 1998 onwards. It should not be long, therefore, before its effects begin to permeate the system.
    Based on the findings of the Task Group Evaluation of the SMI Scheme (1997), they found out that on the best case scenarios, there was evidence that participation in school management had enabled teachers to cope more easily with changes and that standards of teaching had risen due to professional development. Equally, more systematic planning and reporting of school activities had resulted in teachers having a better job orientation and making more competent professional judgments. In addition, greater flexibility in the use of resources enabled teachers to access facilities more promptly to support their teaching practice and was conducive to their participation in budgeting their teaching plans. In turn, greater teacher participation seemed to encourage more student-centered activities while increased resource flexibility led to the closer match between resources and the needs of students. However, the relationship between all of these effects and student learning outcomes was found to be tenuous and somewhat inconclusive (Dimmock and Walker, 1998).
    Most agree that SMI, as an initiative in school-based management, provides better opportunities and contexts for building school cultures in which teachers and principals feel professionally empowered and motivated to improve the management of schools. This, in turn, has the potential to feed through to benefit classroom teaching and learning, but there is no guarantee that such connections will be forged. Many intervening processes are critical if the potential is to be realized (Dimmock, 1995). The actual effects of SMI therefore vary from school to school, depending on the particularities of each.
    At the school level, TOC has had beneficial effects in the following respects. More cooperation and teamwork between teachers has improved school climates, more professional development opportunities have resulted and the school TOC coordinator has become a focus of curriculum reform and leadership. At the classroom level, however, more problems than benefits have emerged. Teachers are experiencing great difficulty in getting beyond the rhetoric and operational key elements of TOC, such as, task-based learning, criterion-referenced assessment, individualization and group work. While these are early days in a major reform which will take years, and while all reforms will deviate in practice from policy intention, the warning signs are already apparent. The success of TOC will ultimately be judged by its penetration into classroom practice.
Conclusion
    From this concrete example of the education reforms in Hong Kong, the interrelation of the school culture, leadership and educational change is very evident. The Hong Kong policy makers which serve as leaders of the educational system were able to formulate such reforms as the SMI and TOC after they have studied the current state of Hong Kong schools. This is by far, one of the most important steps in implementing school reforms and that is, analyzing the present school culture. By being able to do this vital step, the administration and the students were able to adapt to changes brought about by the implemented reforms. Thus, the educational change, which in this example is quality education, was achieved, thus resulting in the encouragement of student participation and achievement, motivation of the teachers and improvement of school management.

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