Conversation 2

Looking at the different cultures that exist within an organisation I am able to relate some of them to a story in my own school.

A recent change in the way we implement maths in school has highlighted various leadership behaviours and organisation cultures within my school.
A change from the National Numeracy Strategy is always going to be a challenge, which requires great coordination through the school hierarchy. Originally, the idea originated through the school headship team. Whether this initial idea originated through a decision, which used a subjectivist, authoritarian, or micro-political influence is to be considered.
After the initial idea, the task culture within my school became prevalent. The different layers of management in the school were informed to research, consult and learn about the new maths approach. The findings were later relayed back to the different teams in the school. The emphasis soon became on implementing the change. Individual strengths were utilised in the school – middle managers were assigned to liaise with teachers, support staff and parents. The idea involved fine cohesion in teams and operating systematically to implement the initial curricular changes.
Therefore, the task culture in this instance changed the initial bureaucratic approach of leadership to a more varied collegial approach.

Thanks Sanjay. It's interesting that cultural approaches changed over the time that the initiative was being implemented. Is this going to be true with all initiatives in all settings, or is there such as thing as a "meta-culture" which will influence how "micro-cultures" are developed and sustained?

Hi Sanjay,
Great reading how the collegial approach has been applied and seems to be working very well in your organization.Thorough consultations well done- all the way down. It seems the school has clearly moved away from the traditional bereaucratic culture. My question is did the school do a reasearch to find out if the scheme has been a success any other school or are you a pilot school?The reason I am asking this is because,teachers from your school did an inset for us for the creaticve curricullum due to the fact that it ws agreat success in your school.So does your school take in any new schemes,consult those involved and apply it without any external research on the success or failure?
Sorry sanjay,just asking.
My conversation is long as posted and I have taken a different perspective on what I have written.


From Emily.

Hi Sanjay,

I think your school is making everyone feel that the changes is inevitable and want all staff to get involved in this process by consulting you all.

I personally support their collegial approach and believe think your school will see the positive changes by time.

Conversation 2. "We discussed the things which go to make up the culture of an organisation. Tell us about a 'story' that exists within your school that contributes to the culture.

Definitions of culture.
 ‘Culture is the deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously and define in a basic ‘taken for granted’ fashion an organization's view of its self and its environment.” -- Edgar Schein
A pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way you perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems"(Schein, 2004, p. 17).
Other definitions include- particular society at a particular time and place.
• The tastes in art and manners that are favoured by a social group.
• The knowledge and values shared by a society.
According to Charles Handy, organizational culture has been given a lot of attention in the recent years. Culture consists of the shared values of an organization-the believes and norms that affect every aspect of the work life; from how people greet each other to how major decisions are made. The strength of the culture in an organization determines how difficult or easy it is to behave in an organization.
Charles Hardy has identified four main types of organizational cultures in his books- Understanding Organizations and Gods of Management. These are:
1. Role culture
2. Power culture
3. Task culture
4. Person culture.

From the four I will tell a 'story' that exists within my school that contributes to the culture. I have picked Role culture and my story is bases on the school choice to implement the RML(Ruth Miskin - Literacy scheme led by a deputy head teacher.(By the way she left to be a Head teacher.)
Role culture.
According to Handy, Role culture is often stereotype as bureaucratic but bureaucracy has come to acquire pejorative note in a common parlance the term Role is used instead.
The structure of Role culture is pictured as a Greek Temple .The Temple of purest form with the apex of the temple being where decisions are made while the pillars of the temple reflect the functional units of the organisation. These implement decisions made from the apex; the strength of the culture is within its pillars with functional specialism by job descriptions, procedures rules andsystems. The system is basically run by paper: authority is not dictated by personal initiative but by job descriptions. Coordination is by a narrow band of senior staff thus their job description is more important than the skills and abilities of those who people the culture.

As the Job of a deputy head requires them to support the school policies on the curriculum and make positive contributions in leading and developing the school. We have a case where a decision was made by and within the apex. The pillars-Teachers, teaching assistants and other support teaching staff were not consulted as such: they are expected to their job and they do their jobs based on their job descriptions.
With no evidence of the success and failure from National statistics or survey from different schools that share the same background as our school; to prove that RML was a great success, our school was on board the new amazing reading scheme. As much as the school attainment in reading might have been below the Borough and National expectations, I believe the writing should have been considered when making this decision-to implement RML. Other support staff such as the TA were given a 2 day training on how to implement the scheme while teachers were not; presumably because it is an easy scheme to teach reading by sounding out phonemes.

According to Ruth Miskin the founder of the scheme, I quote “it was obvious to me that children were only successful at school if they learnt to read well.”
 Of course I totally agree with this because reading encompasses every other subject and areas of life to a great degree.

The RML scheme was then implemented in the whole school from reception class to pupils already in yrs 5 or 6 classified as under- achieving in literacy or were on the EAL or SEN register.
   While the RML scheme worked well in (KS1)children in year 3,4 5 and 6 who were taken to do the scheme during the literacy lessons missed out a whole Literacy hour. That meant they had no clue of different genres and their features, writing and punctuation. According to the National Attainment in writing, children are expected to achieve a level 4 by the end of year 5.
A level 4 by the end of year 5 should be:
  Pupils' writing in a range of forms is lively and thoughtful. Ideas are often sustained and developed in interesting ways and organised appropriately for the purpose of the reader. Vocabulary choices are often adventurous and words are used for effect. Pupils are beginning to use grammatically complex sentences, extending meaning. Spelling, including that of polysyllabic words that conform to regular patterns, is generally accurate. Full stops, capital letters and question marks are used correctly, and pupils are beginning to use punctuation within the sentence. Handwriting style is fluent, joined and legible.
Children doing the RML lessons became very good readers and had great phonetic skills. Due to the fact that they worked in small reading groups- writing short sentences I observed that their handwritings improved tremendously as well.
shockingly children who had missed literacy hrs in class but had been attending RML Lessons were expected to sit for the National assessment SATs test of which it was also upon teachers professional judgement and assessment to decide whether they should sit for the test or not. Basically most pieces of the SATS writing test or QCA tests are a combination of 2-3 genres in one. For instance it can be set as a play- script inform of an argument. That means the candidate needs to know both features of a play script and an argument as well as incorporating all other features of writing-with refence to the elements that make up each level from the National standards.
As mentioned earlier children who attended the RML scheme despite gaining excellent reading skills they became poor writers. No clue of any genre features, no creativity, nor did they write using of adventurous choice of words.
Due to this Role culture -as a result of this great change made by those at the Top of the Greek Temple-generally writing in the school went down. The pupils scored/ attained below their expected level at the end of each academic year after sitting the QCA tests.
  The current situation at school is that literacy was rippled especially the writing. Now, raising attainment in writing in the whole Writing has been identified as one of the main priorities in the SDP.The Borough has clearly outlined the expectations that children who had attained a L2 in ks1 SATS and are still a level two or 3 in year 6 must/should attain a l 4.
The current SAT predictions is scoring a lower percentage compared to last year.
Now RML is out of the window with only a small group of children doing it because they come to school not able to read /read well either because English is their second language or other reasons.
Rules and procedures was the main method of influence here. The people /person who made that decision- this offered security and predictability to the individuals which offered them a predictable rate to climb the ladder. Role culture/bureaucracy has affected the whole school negatively.
Now they have left for higher positions in different schools.
Now the school is back to the New National Literacy strategy.

I hope from this six year RML experience, we learnt one of the disadvantages of Role cultures. According to Hardy Role culture is not appropriate to organisations which are subject to change. The culture functions well in a steady state environment but it is insecure in times of change.
However, having said that ,I am not criticising the role culture existing in my school. It works well in some or most areas anyway and integrates well with other organisational culture too such as Task culture and person culture.


END OF MY STORY.

Hi Emily,

I think it is a great detailed work and I must congratulate you on that. You always found so much to write about.

I notice that you wrote 'The pillars-Teachers, teaching assistants and other support teaching staff were not consulted as such: they are expected to their job and they do their jobs based on their job descriptions.' I actually see this as a weakness of the leadership in your work place because, the staff must be felt they are part of the changes and the more you involve your most valuable thing the better the outcomes (greater achievement of results) due to effort staff will be putting in as they will feel it is their hard work paying off.
 

Thank you Ilhan
Yes there might be weaknesses as you have read.That is why we need to develop effective leadership skills to bridge the gaps.
Regards Emily.

Hi Emily, a very full and descriptive account. It is unfortunately a fact of school life (and the same applies in other organisations, government education departments included) that people use initiatives for change as a stepping stone to promotion. An initiative is rushed through and then the initiator leaves fairly soon after. With the main proponent gone, the initiative then flounders. It is reminiscent of the children's song about the wise man who builds his house upon the rock while the foolish man builds his house upon the sand!

Hi peter,
Yes,very intereting,simple christian song but very meaningful to the wise.Good learning point for me as an aspiring leader.We are now picking up and finding our way back to be on track with writing.This is where my part of my leadeship skills will be highly tested.
Thank you.
Emily.

Cultures of an organisation
Having been discussed the Role Culture, Power Culture, Task Culture, and Person Culture in a work place in our last session. I can reflect on the existence and effects of these cultures in my workplace.

I believe to an extent all these cultures do exist in many work places and can say that we have it in our work place as well, some heavily some lightly.

For example, I notice the club cultures exist between the staff members of a department or faculty again to an extent, because not every member is in it.

When it comes to role culture this is always presents because, there are certain individuals who always do things by rules and talk by the rules. For example sending information by emails as a way of contacting as well as writing post it notes or sending messages and mentioning in meetings. Also to cover them that they have informed relevant people about certain things that is taking place or happening around.
Task culture is also seen and exists in my work place. There are certain individuals who do only certain things to make sure that some jobs are done accordingly and by the rule.

Person culture is the one that exist in all schools, where people are trained in one school and carry their expertise to another school or employment. Like any other schools this is common in my work place as well.
In terms of leadership perspective the school follows the collegial leadership style where everyone is made to feel they are working together and the school achieved its results from the collective work of everyone. In fact this is the case, as all the staff including kitchen staff, care takers, teaching assistants, office staff, teachers as well as the leadership team always appreciates each other and work within the family atmosphere to make possible for the children to achieve their best potential.

The leadership uses remunerative to reward children. Rewarding children with stickers and vouchers are a common thing in school for getting the best out of children and also having one head teacher, one associate head, five deputy heads, five assistant heads, numerous advance skills teachers as well as various responsibilities within each department is a clear sign of normative powers at school. The school is achieving the best ever results and every year the achievement results are rising year in year out for the last a few years, which is the fruit of the hard work that everyone puts in as a team at school as well as the leadership styles that is in place.

Thanks Ilhan for this assessment of cultures within your school. Schools are very complex organisations. From what you say, the children at your school are achieving better each year. So what is causing this? Which aspects of the cultures is the most effective at contributing to this? Which aspects could be holding back even better performance? Is it possible to say? How is the effectiveness of all this evaluated?

I believe the one of the main reason for the better results here at Gladesmore is the effort and hard work that is been put both by the students and teachers. As teachers we are continuously monitoring and acting on any negatives before it has effects on the achievements of students.

There are also after school clubs, lunch time clubs and Saturday school as well as regular assemblies to celebrate good things and advising how to achieve good results, bring in role models and promote good things by giving relevant certificates or vouchers (recently) to get students to put more efforts in their work are just some of things that may have had positive effect on our students doing well recently.

One other reason for better results are getting parents/carers involve more and more in their children education by regular meetings and informing them about the way things are run at school and what school expect from students and their parents/carers in supporting the school initiatives to achieve better results.

In terms of leadership it very clear that we have collegial leadership style we have. This is due to making all the staff to feel that the good results are the fruits of everyone’s hard work and effort and not just some departments. Also the task and role cultures have the positive effect on the achievement since everyone feels their own responsibility, role and put their own 100% in their work.

Hi Ilhan,
Your school is richlu using all cultures.That sounds great.I wonder if you had new leaders or management who do not agree with the remunerative reward for children,would the children attainment be affected?
Do the pupils work hard to get a JD voucher at the end or is it working hard to achieve for their own good.Do they understand that they need to be self motivativated to attain the best for their future?What if that reward is taken away?What would be the consequences?
Sorry Ilhan just asking?
Emily

The remunerative power is used for the last couple of years and is getting more and more visible and it is working here. The students are working hard and earning vouchers by putting in more efforts in their daily class work by getting something called ‘mystickers’ and converting it into vouchers of their choice (Argos, JD, etc..).

After reading your conversations and reading over the various cultures that Handy describes I feel that my school does have a mixture of cultures but closest to the task culture where everyone has their own roles and department areas and they can take ownership of their area and as we spoke about: life happens in little bits and we respond to these as and when it happens. So the situation can dictate the type of leadership that is required/used.

I think a combination of Harrison and Myers style theories paternalistic and consultative would best describe the type of leadership within the school I work. We have a small group of staff where the use of a combination of paternalistic and consultative work well within the school. The leadership is informal and most is inclusive of all teaching staff then implemented.

Because we are a smaller school the line managers are sometimes overlooked and staff will go straight to the Head with issues. Although we try to stick to the hierarchy within the school the boundaries are blurred between staff and line managers, resulting in the line managers being overlooked which can cause friction and undermining.

 Hi Flavia,
Ithink that is why we also need to refer to NASCENT Behaviours in order to develop us as leaders and may be impact change in our institutions.Also as aspiring leaders we need to acquire excellent skills and know when to get involved or change micro-political cultures in our institutions.
Emily.