The notion of “school culture and the sub-cultures” within Australian schools
Introduction
Culture is simply defined as shared beliefs, customs, practices, norms, policies, social behavior and values of group. In academic context, culture reflects the dynamicity of each institution wherein ‘the way we do things here’ is the mantra. What shapes school culture are rituals, expectations, relationships and decision-making processes. Unique attributes could be also evident in curricular focus, extra-curricular activities and graduation requirements. Teacher and student interactions are intrinsic part of school culture. Nevertheless, a school culture could be shaped, enhanced and maintained through school leadership. Australian school culture is not an exemption as it also shaped through various relationships between student, teachers and the management. In this paper, such school culture and subcultures will be explored as well as the implications for the teaching community.
School culture in Australia
In Australian schools, attention was provided to creating and maintaining a school culture that valued learning not only amongst the students but also among the staffs. The principal took great pains in explaining interconnections between teachers and administrative leaders in bringing school’s purpose, structure, function and culture into alignment. Backward mapping process is evident in the culture whereby the primary focus is understanding what the school wants the student to achieve and build pedagogy and teaching practices around that premise. From there, the necessary step is to build structures and leadership and the culture in the way to support the actions of the teachers and the management itself. In this way, schools are able to ensure the close link between what leaders do inside the schools and what happens to the students inside the classrooms (MacBeath et al, 2008, pp. 92-93).
Dimmock (1993, p. 107) contends that school culture in Australia are built subjectively and is manifested in the everyday business of school life. School activities are the medium for value display. Even so, key elements of schools cultures apart from values, beliefs and meanings are heroes, rites and rituals. Choice and recognition of heroes, for instance, occurs within the cultural boundaries identified through value filter. Cultures are espouses all around excellence in various aspects like sports, academic and artistic among others hence sporting, social, academic and artistic heroes will be recognized and honored by students. Through this, schools could possibly create an inclusive culture without disruptions to the teaching and learning process. Schools could also promote value clarification, school-wide actions, pedagogical decision-making and understanding identities (Moss, 2006, p. 4)
Australian school cultures could be also professional and bureaucratic, with values underpinning both. Bureaucratic domain focuses on mediating between schools and community while professional domain focuses more on teaching and learning and the collegiality that surrounds the process. Differences in schools could be highlighted through attention to the balance or proportion to each domain and perhaps the degree of excellence can be identified through similar means. School-based management negotiates time and importance between the two domains. By which domain should be dominant in schools are decided by the principals, perceived as a significant role in shaping the choices that are made in regard to the development of domain within schools (Dimmock, 1993).
The concept of coupling is also embedded on Australian school cultures. Coupled events are responsive but each event preserves its own identity and evidences of its physical and logical separateness. For example, schools have straightforward tasks and standards and consistent inputs and identified outcomes but with structures that are warranted and workable. With school processes improvement at the helm, schools could hire additional teachers whenever necessary but outcomes must still be consistent if not to be improved further. Aside from schools’ definite goals, technological advancements, activity coordination and connected structural elements are changed when the needs arise but different priorities for school outcomes must be also changed in the process (Dimmock, 1993).
Spoehr (1999, p. 252) assessed that the directions that Australian schools are trying to pursue is from a stuck culture into collaborative and socially critical culture. A stuck culture is where low levels of teacher, deficit view of students and teacher privatism are evident. Collaborative is more particular in collegiality wherein the whole teaching community within a school is willing to work together towards the pursuit of improving student learning. Teachers in a collaborative culture continually test and evaluate the adequacy of their theories about teaching and learning. Thereby, a collaborative culture that is now dominant in the Australian academic society covers coherent school planning, student-centered and curriculum development-driven. Compared to socially critical that emphasizes social justice emphasis, critically reflective teachers, promote critical literacy and celebrate difference.
Subcultures
Some kinds of solidaristic attempt to resist the dominance of mainstream school system are school subcultures. Ethnicity, class and gender play significant role in the emergence of various subcultures within schools. For instance, ethnic schools have become a major feature in Australian academic system before and now minorities like aborigine and refugees to enable children form ethnic constituencies to master curriculum necessary both for the success of national examinations while also maintaining elements of ethnic cultures. Nonetheless, they form part of the general independent school system (Verma, 1989, p. 73). Class and again gender also have roles in subculture creation. Versions of masculinity and femininity within schools are perceptible in sports and cheerleading but the former is more regarded as an achievement of unity and school spirit than the latter (Henry, 1988, p. 155).
Subcultures in Australian schools are lived culture, encircling day to day routines, habits and actions. The broader culture in the domestic society is where emergent subcultures depend their identity to some degree and there are subcultures existing on the basis of culture heritage like Irish, Lebanese and Bosnian Australians. Exposure, familiarity and extent of emersion on some subcultures regardless of race and class are also indicators of belongingness in some subcultures. Coolness, for example is best epitomized by what music genre they are listening and what language they are speaking, mostly street slang. The culture of adolescent within Australian schools is also subdivided into other subcultures such as deviant subcultures (Bahr and Pendergast, 2007, p. 180).
The Australian educational system itself also unconsciously bred various subcultures particular in the structure of the system. One clear example of this is the further division among private schools. Elite schools, which are comprised of relatively a small fraction of the private sector, appear large in social importance and public image. There are schools that are committed in maintaining particular subcultures which is basically based in religion and ethnicity. Alternative schools are hone own subcultures that rest particularly on the educational notions of community and individual development. Moreover, these private schools could be also divided as profit-making and charity schools (Marginson, 1997, pp. 48-49). Although these schools maintain grounds of subculture, a differentiation is based on the ground of quality and extent of responsibility.
Despite the inexistence of subculture in Australian school system, creating a learning community is always the entrenched goal. However, the fact that subcultures affect the teaching and learning process cannot be ruled out as Vrasidas and Glass (2004) made mention that subcultures could lead to complexity in academic work. Involvement of teaching staff is a priority to respond to the dilemma, requiring a fundamental shift in the teaching and learning culture rather than just the relaying and acquisition of skills and understanding. Professional development, with respect to diversity in subcultures, meant creation of an environment in which changed practices are part of the usual professional activity. Professional practice must be fundamentally related to and occurs within groups or organizational system, each with its own subculture.
Implications to teaching professions
These cultures and subcultures require a restructuring in the teaching population in Australia. Central to the restructuring is the empowerment of teachers within a school culture that is both shared and technical particularly because the cultures not only foster the types of outcomes for students but also stimulate continuous professional growth among teachers. Leithwood and Begley (2002, p. 129) asserted that norms of authority and discipline typically characterize teachers’ interactions with students while professional advice isolates teachers from their peers. Instructional decisions most importantly are adaptive wherein the professional culture now bends to cater for student-centered interactions. Norms inside Australian schools require supportive and positive teaching-learning environment. While discipline should be maintained, it is now more dictated to serve the interests of learning rather than an end on its own right.
As such, teachers are continuously asked to engage in a shared and technical culture that is embedded on norms of collegiality, collaborative and continuous improvement. Staff and the student body are cohesive and to have a strong sense of community, teachers are asked to do as well especially that they have the capability, motivations and resources to do so. To make the schema whole, administrators should live with the expectations to provide effective instructional leadership and parents should act as co-partners in meeting the needs of the students. Reciprocity would be then evident in the culture not just among teachers and their students but also among staff, the schools as institutions and the essential component which is the parents. These changes in the professional culture would be a valuable response to new and more complex expectations for student outcomes, high expectations of the public from schools, changing family environment and expanding body of technical know-how which concerns instruction (Leithwood and Begley, 2002, p. 129).
Despite the necessity to build collaborative teaching environment, there is also a requirement to value teacher’s individuality at the same time. The ethic of care is the most important aspect of such because teachers spend as much time as possible in contact with their students. School cultures and subcultures strongly support creative and efficient problem-solving from the perspectives of the teachers, solitude will be as important wherein autonomy over the teaching practice is apparent. The goal is not to mandate collaborative culture that jeopardizes isolated cultures but to cultivate a collaborative professional situation that also hones effective isolation among teachers (Leithwood and Begley, 2002, p. 130). In this way, shared problem-solving could be promoted like engaging in dialogue concerning teaching practices and evaluating such practices in a shared manner. This is also critical in improving school performance where teachers can align their professional and personal goals on collaborative goals of the institution as an organization.
The uniqueness of learning classroom environment also requires teachers to develop their communication behaviors because teachers also come from a specific culture and/or subculture and involved teaching students from other cultures and subcultures. Dimensions of teach communication behavior that directly influences attitudes and learning outcomes include questioning, wait time, communication rate, helping, friendly and understanding teacher behavior, verbal reinforcement and non-verbal reinforcement (Klein, 2006, p. 116). All of these inhibit students’ capacity to learn. Teachers must be also equipped with the knowledge on learner’s self-image which is greatly influenced by their level of acceptance within their own culture of subculture to make communications more effective. As learners, students also seek acceptance from teachers and prefer to negotiate learning with teachers. It would be critical then for teachers to create a cooperative culture within the classroom (Kiddey and Robson, 2001, p. 21).
Conclusion
In sum, school cultures in Australia are ones that develop not only the well-being of students but also of the professional (both teachers and staff). Backward mapping process is a critical endeavor. School culture is either professional or bureaucratic or the combination of the two. Further, it is currently changing into a more collaborative culture. Subcultures, on the other hand, vary according to ethnicity, religion, gender and class. Apparently, subcultures could be also created through the educational system and as outgrowth of most dominant cultures in the domestic society. Further and deepening collaboration among teachers could be an important implication of emergence of different cultures and subcultures.
References
Bahr, N. & Pendergast, D. (2007). The Millennial Adolescent. Australian Council for Education Research.
Dimmock, C. A. J. (1993). School-based management and school effectiveness. Routledge.
Henry, M. (1988). Understanding schooling: an introductory sociology of Australian education. Routledge.
Kiddey, P. & Robson, G. (2001). Make Their Heads Spin! Improving Learning in the Middle Years. Western Australia: Department of Education, Curriculum Corporation.
Klein, M. B. (2006). New Teaching and Teacher Issues. Nova Publishers.
Leithwood, K. A. & Begley, P. T. (2002). Developing expert leadership for future schools. Routledge.
MacBeath, J., Dempster, N., Frost, D., Waterhouse, J. & Swaffield, S. (2008). Connecting Leadership and Learning: Principles for Practice. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Marginson, S. (1997). Educating Australia: government, economy, and citizen since 1960. Cambridge University Press.
Moss, J. (2006). How to Succeed in Making Schools Inclusive. Australia: Curriculum Corporation.
Spoehr, J. (1999). Beyond the Contract State: Ideas for Social and Economic Renewal in South Australia. Wakefield Press.
Verma, G. K. (1989). Education for All: A Landmark in Pluralism. Routledge.
Vrasidas, C. & Glass, G. V. (2004). Online professional development for teachers. Center for the Application of Information Technologies, IAP.
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