Practitioners Views on Changing School Culture: Leading Towards Quality in Education

Khairisho Shonusariev, AKES, Tajikistan
Rubina Qureshi, AKES, Tajikistan

School culture plays a powerful role in changing our schools. Deal and Kennedy (1983) put it more bluntly by stating that "when culture works against you, it's nearly impossible to get anything done".

Culture, in general, can be referred to the symbolic and learned aspects of human society. Though culture is difficult to define, this paper will unpack our understanding and share our interpretation of school culture as "the way we do things around here" (Fullan, 1988). The paper will further highlight different practices that have brought about 'cultural change' at AKES, Tajikistan. These practices will include the implicit, unconscious and unplanned changes that took place over a long period of time and had a remarkable impact on the overall culture of the school. It will also share the changes that occured, especially at the time when new initiatives were introduced, and led the school towards becoming a learning organization.

Moreover, this paper will discuss the changes that were brought into the school more explicitly and consciously with deliberate attention to change the normal practices. This will specifically highlight teachers' involvement in school decision-making, the process of designing a school development plan, teachers' empowerment in designing school-based professional development activities, and the way teachers were given a stake in conceptualizing the vision for the school.

All these conscious and unconscious changes in the school promoted a culture of continuous improvement. This paper shares the practitioners' views on this changing culture and the way it enables them to bring quality in education.

References

Deal, T.E. & Kennedy, A. (1983). Culture and school performance. Educational Leadership, 40 (5). 140-1
Scott, J. & Marshall, G. (Eds.). (2005). A dictionary of sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Fullan, M.G. (1988). What's worth fighting for in the principalship. Toronto: Public School Teachers' Federation.

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