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The power of culture

By Pat Roy

Results, April 2005

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2005. All rights reserved.

Learning Communities:   Staff development that improves the learning of all students organizes adults into learning communities whose goals are aligned with those of the school and district.

The first of NSDC's 12 Standards for Staff Development addresses the development of learning communities that support ongoing adult learning. Its position recognizes that most educators can tell a story of a school or district in which they have worked that either supported growth or dampened any effort toward change.

Sarason (1971) explained how school culture can thwart the implementation of any innovation. NSDC expresses the power of culture with this motto, "Place a good person in a bad system, and the system will win every time." This does not mean that an individual cannot be productive or successful. It does mean that a dysfunctional organization can slowly erode the strongest individual's motivation, drive, and enthusiasm. Erosion is a slow but steady and powerful force that changes landscapes as well as human incentive. A school's culture can dictate whether attempts at collaboration and continuous improvement will flourish or wither on the vine.

Shaping school culture is the heart of leadership, say Deal and Peterson. "[C]ulture provides a more accurate and intuitively appealing way to help school leaders better understand their school's own unwritten rules and traditions, norms, and expectations that seem to permeate everything: the way people act, how they dress, what they talk about or avoid talking about, whether they seek out colleagues for help or don't, and how teachers feel about their work and their students" (1999, p.3).

TWO EXAMPLES

Consider two very different schools. During the lunch hour at one school, I was talking about reform strategies with one of the school's veteran teachers. Suddenly, he looked at his watch and declared that my "five minutes" were up! He said everyone in the school was held to a rule: No one was allowed to talk about school business for more than five minutes. Colleagues were able to talk about sports, television, gossip - anything but school.

The other school was alive with conversations among colleagues regarding work. Teachers were sharing ideas, problem solving student learning issues, and learning together. Teachers had one period each day to work with their grade-level teams. They believed they could help all students learn by working together.

Reflect on the norms in both schools. In one, job-embedded professional learning flourishes while in the other it doesn't fit the way educators conceived of their work.

Culture and norms create an environment that nurtures new practices. A learning community values and stimulates collaboration among colleagues and structures time for daily team learning. A learning community supports changes in classroom practice and enables staff to be instructional leaders. Researchers have concluded that the workplace culture has enormous impact on teachers' commitment, effectiveness, and professional endeavors (Hall & Hord, 2001). Aligning an organization's context and culture to ensure it supports professional learning among colleagues is an important action for school leadership and faculty members.

REFERENCES

Deal, T. & Peterson, K. (1999). Shaping school culture: The heart of leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Hall, G. & Hord, S. (2001). Implementing change: Patterns, principles, and potholes. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Sarason, S. (1971). The culture of the school and the problem of change. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

About the author

Pat Roy is co-author of Moving NSDC's staff development standards into practice: Innovation configurations (NSDC, 2003).