School Subcultures

9 Key excerpts on "School Subcultures"

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  Introduction to Educational Leadership & Organizational Behavior

  • Patti Chance(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Organizational structure ultimately impacts students. This is often apparent in areas of special programs and services. A most pertinent illustration is when teachers, legitimately concerned about the individual needs of a student, seek assistance from special education services. However, once the student is identified with a learning disability and begins receiving services, classroom teachers often distance themselves from the child and refer all concerns back to the special education department. This manifestation of “regular” versus “special” education subcultures is at the root of much of the controversy regarding inclusion and mainstreaming of special-needs children. Larger units of subcultures also exist within school communities based on a person’s role and identity within the organization, such as that of teacher, student, parent, or administrator. Educational leaders can influence the collaboration and ultimately the identification with various subcultures through conscious manipulation of the organizational structure, scheduling, room assignments, procedures, and opportunities for dialogue and problem solving among staff, students, parents, and other stakeholders in the school.

  School culture is also reflective of the larger societal culture in which it exists. John Goodlad (1984) and others (e. g., Cuban, 1984; Rowan, 1995) found that there is a routine and sameness in classrooms across the country. Additionally, social issues that impact the larger, national culture are mirrored within the school setting, such as divisions or subcultures that arise based on gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. Although schools naturally reflect the larger, national culture, educational leaders also have the opportunity to reinforce or influence change in the school’s culture through various mechanisms, such as organizational structure, decision-making processes, and inclusive dialogue among various subcultures and stakeholders.

  Researchers have used instruments that measure teachers’ perceptions of other teachers and administrators as a way to describe the climate of the school. Remember that climate is defined as the total environment of the school and reflects the totality and interdependence of the ecology, milieu, organizational structure, and culture of the school. Andrew Halpin’s and Don Croft’s (1962) Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire (OCDQ) was one of the pioneering and best known instruments to describe school climate. Several revisions and iterations of Halpin and Croft’s original instrument have been made by other researchers (e.g., Hoy, Tarter, & Kottkamp, 1991). In general, the OCDQ instruments measure climate along a continuum from open to closed. An open climate is characterized by free-flowing communication between and among teachers and administrators. Teachers are highly committed to their work and are not directed or restricted by the administration. Administrators are highly supportive of teachers and respect their professionalism and competence. A closed climate

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  Understanding Schooling

  An Introductory Sociology of Australian Education

  • Miriam Henry, John Knight, Robert Lingard, Sandra Taylor(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Recent research on sex differences in classroom interaction shows just how different are the classroom experiences of boys and girls. Research on primary school teachers shows that they demonstrate a preference for males, and that they interact more with boys and value male ideas more highly (Delamont, 1980; Evans, 1982; Spender, 1982). Work in secondary schools also shows that both male and female teachers give boys more attention than girls in the classroom and that they are quite unaware that they are doing this (Spender, 1982). Spender found that two-thirds of classroom time was spent with the boys, and that when she herself attempted to equalise the interaction in a classroom she managed in fact to spend only 42 per cent of her time with the girls. She comments that she felt she had neglected the boys, that the boys themselves felt neglected, and concluded that the male domination of classrooms is considered natural and feels fair. Similar evidence is reported in a study by Michelle Stanworth (1984) of senior-level classes in a British high school. Research in fourth, sixth and eighth grade classes in the USA (Sadker and Sadker, 1985) and also in Australia (Schools Commission, 1984a) supports Spender’s findings; Kelly (1985) has provided some detailed evidence of sex differences in student experiences in science classrooms which tend to advantage males and disadvantage females.

  Clearly these sex differences in interaction patterns are pervasive and likely to be extremely important. It is crucial therefore that teachers understand how a myriad of social expectations affects what goes on in mixed classrooms in subtle ways.

  Youth subcultures

  We have already seen in Chapter Three how outside groupings of students impinge on classroom events. These ‘youth subcultures’, as they are termed, are shaped by dimensions such as class, gender, and ethnicity which have been discussed in this chapter and which form a powerful part of the wider social milieu. Originally youth subcultures were studied in relation to deviance and delinquency, but more recently their importance in relation to education has been recognised and work on youth subcultures has made an increasing contribution to the sociology of education (Apple, 1982b). Connell et al. (1982), however, express reservations about talking of youth cultures or subcultures because this may exaggerate their ‘coherence and totality’. Instead they would focus on the way in which what they call ‘peer life’ interacts with family and schooling.

  However, we can say that youth subcultures generally arise from lived experience in response to common problems among groups, shaped as we have said by dimensions such as class, gender and ethnicity. Groups with different values from established middle-class values are more likely to experience problems in relation to mainstream society, and consequently youth sub-cultures tend to be more evident among working-class people and among minority groups. These are certainly the type of youth sub-cultures which will have implications for schools in the sense that they are morelikely to be visible and oppositional to school values.

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  Rules of Behavior and Interaction in German and Brazilian Classrooms

  (Inter)cultural Uses of the Word in Schools

  • Fernanda de Castro Modl(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang Group

    (Publisher)

  I, therefore, presume that the school has a culture, materialized in cultural symbols and artefacts to be parameterized: i) the action and reaction within the institutional space of the public domain of human relationships, as well as ii) the self- and alter-assessments that emerge within and of these actions and reactions. Hence, if, on the one hand, we speak of school culture or the culture of a school, intercultural research (such as that presented in this study) in classrooms from different countries make it clear that every classroom is the reflection of a greater society, nation, in which it is inserted, in the extent to which we can speak of the classroom as a microcosm of society. The societal culture (the social exterior of all societal practices) is presented in the modeling of forms and structures of action, as I will demonstrate later in the narrative vignettes (see section 2.3) and in Chapter 5. In the intercultural research, however, the idea of societal culture is relativized, as it treats the same shared culture – the national school culture. Thus, one should attempt to continue a sort of “slicing” process, if the state is not shared, we then come across a contrastive variable, by contrast, it will then pass on to the local arena, if this is still the same for the observed local realities, then the option is to highlight the most definitive and constitutive traits of the group, such as the school culture, the school’s clientele, etc. This means that there is the culture of the school (characteristic and constitu- tive of this social institution) and the culture within the school (resulting from the greater society that has there been allowed to be observed). “heroes”), visual symbols (equipment and school order, artefacts, logos, marketing objects), and behavioral symbols (rituals, ceremonies, processes of instruction, school rules, interaction with the micro-environment).

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  Managing School System Change

  • Serbrenia J. Sims(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  And scholars have argued about the meaning of culture for years as evidenced in the following views of school culture. For one scholar (Geertz, 1973) culture represents a “histor-ically transmitted pattern of meaning.” Those patterns of meaning are expressed both (explicitly) through symbols and (implicitly) in our taken-for-granted beliefs. Deal and Peterson (1990) note that the definition of culture includes “deep patterns of values, beliefs, and traditions that have been formed over the course of [the school’s] history” or they (Deal & Peterson, 1993) simply state it as an “inner reality.” Robbins and Alvy (1995, p. 23) expand the definition stating that “This inner reality reflects what organizational members care about, what they are willing to spend time doing, what and how they celebrate, and what they talk about. Heck-man (1993) suggests that school culture lies in “the commonly held beliefs of teachers, students, and principals.” These definitions go beyond the 142 Managing School System Change business of creating an efficient learning environment. They focus more on the core values necessary to teach and influence young minds. For Stolp and Smith (1994) school culture can be defined as the “histor-ically transmitted patterns of meaning that include the norms, values, beliefs, ceremonies, rituals, traditions, and myths understood, maybe in varying degrees, by members of the school community” (p. 1). This system of meaning often shapes what people think and how they act. Phillips (1993) characterizes school culture as the, “beliefs, attitudes, and behav-iors that characterize a school in terms of: how people treat and feel about each other; the extent to which people feel included and appreciated; and rituals and traditions reflecting collaboration and collegiality. Culture influences everything that happens in a school. Examples of culture in schools include how we celebrate Christmas, our leadership roles and how we treat people.

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  Sociology and the School (RLE Edu L)

  • Peter Woods(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 5

  Cultures of the school –pupils

  Pupil cultures have been studied largely in relation to three factors: (1) the degree to which certain pupil cultures are aided and fostered by school organization; and the extent to which they derive from, (2) social class, and (3) gender. I shall want to add a fourth, personal interests, which is more typical of the interactionist attention to process and the fine-grained detail of school life. Together, these provide a fairly comprehensive view of pupil cultures. Again, there is considerable overlap between these in practice, but each provides a useful primary focus. I shall therefore examine each in turn, concluding with a consideration of some common themes widespread among a variety of pupil cultures.

  School organization

  D.H. Hargreaves (1967) and Lacey (1970) identified two polarized subcultures in the boys’ secondary modern and grammar schools, respectively, of their research, which, they argued, owed a great deal to the rigid streaming of the day. There were four streams at Hargreaves's school (‘Lumley’), and he noted the following values in each:

  4A	For academic achievement, instrumentality, high attendance, punctuality, high standard of dress and hygiene.Against misbehaviour, physical aggression, copying.
  4B	For ‘messing’ and ‘having fun’. Non-academic rather than anti-academic (achievement not completely rejected). ‘Messing’ a relief from hard work, not a replacement.
  4C	Anti-academic (total abandonment of academic values). ‘Messing’ a replacement.
  4D	Active anti-academic. High rate of absenteeism.

  This shows a progressive dissociation from the official values of the school. The compartmentalization of views is not a device to categorize pupil views, but a product of the school's compartmentalization into streams, which ultimately, it was argued, fostered two subcultures, one pro-school and one anti-school. Those with positive orientations tended toward the top streams, those with negative, the lower. Over the years, schools with rigid streaming policies would further this process, weeding out the misplacements. The two subcultures became increasingly integrated within themselves (as the like-minded were herded together and reinforced their own outlooks) and differentiated from each other (each developing pride in their own group and dislike of the other). The two groups also pursued different paths and received different treatment, the anti-school group being deprived of status in the school's term, and being given the poorer teachers, poorer rooms, and so on. The differentiation may have something to do with initial like-mindedness, but as Lacey points out, the school's contribution is considerable, since the two groups are faced with fundamentally different problems posed by the school – the problems of success, and the problems of failure. Among the pro-school culture, there is continuous reinforcement, but the anti-schoolers solve their problem by rejecting ‘the pupil role and replacing it with an autonomous and independent peer culture’ (Hargreaves 1967, p. 172). This means a higher priority on collective behaviour and regard since the rewards of status can only come from the group, whereas in the pro-school culture, rewards come from individual

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  The Psychology of Education

  • Martyn Long, Clare Wood, Karen Littleton, Terri Passenger, Kieron Sheehy(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 7 Society and culture

  Chapter overview

  Society

  Culture and schools

  The functions of education

  Gender inequalities

  Learning in culturally diverse classrooms

  Practical scenario

  Alltown Primary School is concerned about gender issues, particularly the behaviour and achievements of boys. At playtimes there is often a lot of rough play, and football games can sometimes overwhelm the playground. In lessons, some of the boys are rather dominant and noisy, which can disrupt lessons. The school’s overall SAT scores are generally representative of the rest of the country, with most of the boys achieving at a level somewhat below the girls. All the teachers are female apart from the head, who teaches two mornings a week.

  What could the school do to enhance boys’ achievement and performance?

  Is there a danger that girls might be sidelined in these initiatives? How could this be prevented?

  Society

  Psychological perspectives can sometimes bring with them a tendency to neglect the wider social context. Much educational psychology focuses at the level of the individual and is concerned with how people make sense of and react to their environment. In reality, of course, the educational system is part of society and this relationship is implicated in what schooling can achieve. Also, as we have seen, theorists such as Vygotsky believe that the process of education is essentially the development of children’s knowledge and understanding of the social culture in which they live.

  Culture and schools

  According to Hutchins (1995), culture

  is a process and the things that appear on list-like definitions of culture are residua of the process. Culture is an adaptive process that accumulates the partial solutions to frequently encountered problems…. Culture is a human cognitive process that takes place both inside and outside the minds of people. It is the process in which our everyday cultural practices are enacted.

  (p. 354)

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  School Culture

  SAGE Publications

  • Jon Prosser(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Nevertheless, visual sociology is not merely a framework for reflecting on what is visually taken-for-granted since it also offers a range of useful strategies, methods and techniques for exploring institutional culture. Data collection Despite the taken-for-granted nature of school space we are often aware of its significance. How is it, for example, we can drive past a school, urban, 84 S C H O O L CULTURE suburban, new or old, and yet almost without a second thought know that the building is a school? If we go through the front entrance of a school we 'know' that within thirty metres there will be a secretaries' office, a headteacher's office, and a display of pupils' work. This begins to help us understand the meaning of history, territory and status for participants in a school. Similarly, a study of pupils' use of playground space or staffs' use of staffroom space will reveal consistent and ubiquitous features that constitute the taken-for-granted sub-cultures of school. These and other sub-cultures are unsurprising to pupils and teachers but difficult to change because: each social situation in which we find ourselves is not only defined by our contempo-raries but predefined by our predecessors. Since one cannot possibly talk back to one's ancestors, their ill-conceived constructions are more commonly difficult to get rid of than those built in our own lifetime. (Berger, 1963, p. 101) Amongst other things, visual sociology records visual elements that represent the underlying assumptions of participants. These underlying assumptions are the foundations of the culture of school. In raising questions about the signifi-cance of these images to participants, such as teachers and pupils, people are helped to confront their cultural assumptions which in turn and where necess-ary, allows them to begin to change the culture of a school.

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  Understanding Language Classroom Contexts

  The Starting Point for Change

  • Martin Wedell, Angi Malderez(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Our work has often taken us out of the United Kingdom to work with teachers in their own countries and we have been lucky enough to work in or visit schools in many different parts of the world. While there is much that is recognisable as a ‘school’ in all of these places, the design, layout and contents of these institutions vary considerably from one part of the world to another. In part, this has to do with geographical features such as climate, or available building materials, or with the influence of the wider socio-economic context. Some differences have clear links (to us) with the surrounding macro-culture, such as, for example, the presence of a Hindu shrine in a school compound. Other features however, such as how the available space is used, how accessible the school leaders’ offices are to members of staff or to learners, the choices made regarding the overall décor, the form and content of the notices that can be seen and where these are placed, may reflect more subtle differences between the particular micro-cultures of the individual schools.

  To put this (very/too) simply, while the physical structure of schools will often reflect the broader cultures of the place and the education system in which the school is situated, the way the spaces and buildings are used, decorated and kept will reflect the ‘unique culture’ of the particular institution.

  We have found it useful when thinking of school cultures to remember the words of the American cultural anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, whose work influenced early culture researchers:

  Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun; I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it therefore not to be an experimental science in search of law, but an interpretative one in search of meaning. (Geertz 1973:5)

  In other words, the interpretation of visible aspects of schools and what can be seen happening within them depends to a large extent on who is looking and interpreting. For example, Prosser (1999) talks about insider and outsider ‘perceived culture’. He suggests that what is ‘seen’ and how things are interpreted will be affected by whether the interpreter is a member of the school community or not. So if you are going to try to understand your own school culture it might be an idea to enlist the help of an ‘outsider’ to add to your own ‘insider’ interpretation. Or, if you are an ‘outsider’ trying to make sense of a particular school culture, it would be worth also getting an ‘insider’ perspective.

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  Foundations of Education

  • Allan Ornstein, Daniel U. Levine, Gerry Gutek, David Vocke(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 296 CHAPTER 10: Culture, Socialization, and Education most other students. For example, Robert Crosnoe has found that feelings of not fitting in among students who were bullied because they were obese or gay sometimes led not only to depression, drug use, or other dysfunctions, but also to increased risk of not obtaining postsecondary educations. Related research indicates that lack of popularity in adolescence is associated with the subsequent emergence of career and adjustment problems in young adulthood. 20 On the other hand, some analysts point out that many students who are excluded or are otherwise treated as outsiders in their high schools experience much success in col-lege and later life. For example, Alexandra Robbins has studied the culture in a large high school and found that many “geeks,” “nerds,” and other outsiders are not popular, and they are frequently ridiculed and even bullied. But later in life, her “quirk theory” speculates, many are successful, in part because they are viewed as refreshingly different and interest-ing. Thus, there is considerable uncertainty about possible effects of high school culture on subsequent careers, and much variation in how it may affect particular students. 10-1d School Culture Education in school, compared with learning experiences in family or peer-group contexts, occurs in relatively formal ways. Group membership is not voluntary but determined by age, aptitudes, and, frequently, gender. Students are tested and evaluated; they are told when to sit, when to stand, how to walk through hallways, and so on.

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