Getting Started

A. Exploring the Culture of the School

What is school culture and how does it relate to the promotion of a positive school climate where students feel safe, cared for, included and accepted?

The “culture” of a school encompasses all conditions, expectations, beliefs and behaviours prevalent within that school community. A school’s culture reflects values and attitudes of its members and the nature of relationships within that environment. Values and attitudes are more significant for a school culture if they are shared.

Although individual members of the school community construct their own meaning for core values, the act of sharing gives these values significance in the school culture. Although the two terms “school culture” and “school climate” are often used interchangeably, school climate refers mostly to the school’s effect on students, and the feelings and opinions about the various aspects of the school and how it operates, as perceived by students, teachers and administrators. School culture, on the other hand, refers more to ways members of the school community work together. Research consistently shows that making changes to an organizational culture is about a seven year process.

The Waterloo Region District School Board defines a safe, caring and inclusive school culture as “one that is physically, emotionally and psychologically safe and is characterized by:

  • caring
  • common values and beliefs
  • respect for democratic values, rights and responsibilities
  • respect for cultural diversity
  • respect for law and order
  • common social expectations
  • clear and consistent behavioural expectations
  • appropriate and positive role modelling by staff and students
  • respect for individual differences
  • effective anger-management strategies
  • community, family, student and staff engagement

Before schools begin to make changes to strengthen culture, they need a complete and realistic picture of existing school culture. Assessment can help schools understand and describe current culture while identifying desired changes and results. Assessment needs to be a collaborative process centred in the school environment. It may begin with students, parents, staff and community members identifying values that they believe are inherent to a positive school culture.

B. Conducting Assessments of School Culture

Before schools can build and/or strengthen a safe, caring and inclusive school culture, they need to get greater insight to the existing culture. Safe, Caring and Inclusive Schools surveys will assist schools in understanding and describing the current school culture while identifying areas for improvement. It is important to ensure that representatives from all sectors of the school and its community participate in any type of survey or assessment. To get an accurate picture of the school culture, it is essential to gather data from students, since research about bullying suggests that adults in a school may not witness the majority of this student behaviour.

The school climate surveys and report templates are intended to provide a general understanding of school climate. The results should assist in identifying the strengths and challenges of the school’s climate and allow resources to be focused on areas that may need improvement.

Several sources were reviewed in the development of these surveys, including the school climate surveys distributed by Ontario’s Ministry of Education, the Tell Them from Me commercially available surveys, and several surveys developed by universities for use with school-aged students in the United States (e.g., Virginia High School Safety Study, Bandyopadhyay, Cornell & Konold, 2009; California School Climate and Safety Survey, Furlong, Grief, Bates et al, 2005).

The generally accepted factors that comprise school climate include: relationships between students, and between students and faculty; teaching and learning environment; school safety and the physical school environment.

Four surveys are made available annually:

  • one for students in grades 5, 7, 9 and 11
  • one for school staff
  • one for parents and guardians.
  • one for parents and guardians with more than one student

C. Collaborative Problem Solving

A collaborative problem-solving process extends initial exploration of school culture and leads the way for developing an action plan. This process helps staff, administrators, parents, students and community members explore differences and search for solutions to support individual and group needs. Collaborative problem solving focuses on mutual gains and increases likelihood of reaching agreement on potentially divisive issues. Commitment to collaborative problem solving encourages collective action. Although problem-solving models vary, all are built on a collaborative process that includes the following basic stages:

Preparation: identify key individuals or groups to participate, establish commitment to collaborative process and make necessary arrangements with representative members.

Direction setting: establish expectations, determine guidelines and communicate ground rules for process, build support for shared planning, decision making, leadership, and identification and discussion of shared problems, issues and concerns.

Generating and analyzing options: generate and analyze options, and gain consensus on plan of action.

Implementation: outline and clarify action plan, anticipate potential problems and methods of handling them, establish monitoring and evaluation plan.

Monitoring and refining: monitor what has worked, and adjust parts of the action plan that are not successful. Collaborative problem solving emphasizes group leadership and requires participants to demonstrate strong interpersonal communication skills.

D. Leading for Change

The development of a strong school culture begins with the school principal. The principal “sets the tone for the entire school, models behaviours that encourage and support other staff members, and helps them develop positive interactions with students” (Alberta Learning 1999, p. 53). The principal is more than just an instructional leader. They also a change leader who focuses on improvement of school culture. Change leaders share five characteristics:

  •  moral purpose
  • an understanding of the change process
  • the ability to improve relationships
  • a desire to create and share knowledge throughout an organization
  • the ability to generate coherent reform

As principals and other school leaders develop plans to change school culture, they consider the following principles of effective leadership:

Take responsibility for Student Learning

  1. Challenge assumptions
    School leaders help staff members question assumptions about how much they ca affect student learning. Volumes of research demonstrate that what happens in school makes a difference in student achievement. Leaders share findings and talk with staff about these studies.
  2. Create small victories
    Leaders demonstrate patience and take a long-range view. They also identify, achieve and celebrate smaller objectives that provide evidence of growth along the way.
  3. Celebrate success
    Leaders find ways to recognize individual teachers for students’ accomplishments, teaching teams for reaching student achievement goals, and the whole staff for evidence of improving student performance.

Create a Collaborative Culture

  1. Cultivate effective teams.
    Schools plant seeds of collaborative culture when they develop capacity of teachers to work together. All teachers are assigned to teams focused on student learning. Team structure (e.g., course, grade level, interdepartmental, vertical) is less important than having all staff participate as a part of teams with student learning as the focus.
  2. Provide time for collaboration.
    A school is more likely to have a collaborative culture if there is a master schedule with a consistent time each week for teams to work together during the school day. Principals need to protect collaborative time for teamwork just as teachers protect instructional time for students.
  3. Ask each team to develop operational protocols.
    Teachers may benefit from establishing protocols to guide their work. Team protocols outline commitment of members to one another in carrying out their work.
  4. Monitor and celebrate the work of teams.
    School leaders do more than provide teachers with time to meet in their teams; they monitor the work of teams, collect and review documents and artifacts produced, and celebrate successful completion of group tasks.

3. Emphasize Common Goals

  1. Find common ground.
    School leaders acknowledge differences but concentrate on identifying a few “big ideas” for others to rally around. They generate support for big ideas by helping everyone understand best practices and presenting information that allows staff and community to assess how the school measures up to those practices.
  2.  Ask for commitments.
    A school community that identifies specific actions and behaviours expected of members is more likely to create a healthy culture than one that focuses on failures. School leaders help groups shift the focus from shortcomings of others to their own sphere of influence, asking each group’s members to share what they are prepared to do to bring critical concepts to life.

4. Focus on Results

  1. Develop targets and timelines.
    When schools focus on a few critical goals and establish benchmarks to monitor progress toward those goals, they are more likely to focus energies on well-researched innovations aligned with their goals.
  2. Be selective.
    Effective school leaders are a buffer between staff and well-intentioned groups or individuals (e.g., lobby groups, media, etc.) who want to press agendas on schools. School leaders understand that not all ideas for school improvement are practical or desirable, and recognize limits to a staff ’s capacity to implement meaningful change.

E) Safe Caring Inclusive School Teams

F) Students’ Role in supporting a Safe, Caring and Inclusive Community

School staff and parents play important roles in shaping school culture, but for meaningful change to occur, students must be an integral part of the process. The best way to do this is to create a caring, supportive community in the classroom and school, so that students feel a sense of acceptance and belonging.

There are many reasons why students should be meaningfully involved in their schools, including the following.

  • Students can be a part of preventing as well as solving problems.
  • Students can learn to tackle real-world problems and establish relationships with others through their involvement and participation in school leadership activity.
  • Giving back to a community helps students develop empathy and tolerance for other points of view.
  • Students have valuable ideas regarding school safety, leadership and responsible citizenship.
  • Student involvement creates a sense of ownership for the well-being of the school community.
  • Confident and connected students have fewer problems with drugs, alcohol, eating disorders and smoking.
  • Student involvement encourages students to advocate for themselves, personally and collectively.

From the moment students come together in a school or a classroom, they begin to form a community. They work together on projects, spend time together at recess or during lunch, and begin to establish beliefs about each other based on their initial perceptions and ongoing interactions. Promoting a caring and supportive community is an ongoing process that takes time, energy and commitment. It not only involves daily modelling of positive character traits and exemplary behaviour but also requires a solid commitment to establishing meaningful relationships with others (both in the classroom and in the larger school community), encouraging dialogue between all involved (students, teachers, support staff, parents, board members), and making a genuine effort to listen to and understand others.