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The Effect of School Culture on Student Achievement

• First Online: 16 May 2017

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• Mehmet Koçyiğit 2  

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This study examined the effect of school culture on student achievement . Firstly, a pool (303 studies) was formed of all studies which included the phrases “school culture ” and “student achievement/success ” in their titles. The abstracts of these studies were examined and 71 were found appropriate for the study. In the second phase, all 71 studies in the pool were examined in detail. As a result, 51 of the studies were found appropriate for inclusion, and the final sample included 66,391 subjects. The impact value of school culture on student achievement was found to be 0.49. This result shows that school culture has a medium level effect on student achievement. The moderators identified for the study were (i) type of publication , (ii) sample group , (iii) school subject or assessment type, (iv) tools of data collection, (v) the year of the studies, (vi) the country in which the research took place and (vii) sub-dimensions of school culture , of which data collection tools and the year of the studies are moderators for the positive effect of school culture on student achievement .

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Koçyiğit, M. (2017). The Effect of School Culture on Student Achievement. In: Karadag, E. (eds) The Factors Effecting Student Achievement. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56083-0_11

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What Makes a Good School Culture?

• Posted July 23, 2018
• By Leah Shafer

Most principals have an instinctive awareness that organizational culture is a key element of school success. They might say their school has a “good culture” when teachers are expressing a shared vision and students are succeeding — or that they need to “work on school culture” when several teachers resign or student discipline rates rise. 

But like many organizational leaders, principals may get stymied when they actually try to describe the elements that create a positive culture. It's tricky to define, and parsing its components can be challenging. Amid the push for tangible outcomes like higher test scores and graduation rates, it can be tempting to think that school culture is just too vague or “soft” to prioritize.

That would be a mistake, according to  Ebony Bridwell-Mitchell , an expert in education leadership and management. As she explains, researchers who have studied culture have tracked and demonstrated a strong and significant correlation between organizational culture and an organization’s performance. Once principals understand what constitutes culture — once they learn to see it not as a hazy mass of intangibles, but as something that can be pinpointed and designed — they can start to execute a cultural vision.

A culture will be strong or weak depending on the interactions between people in the organization. In a strong culture, there are many, overlapping, and cohesive interactions, so that knowledge about the organization’s distinctive character — and what it takes to thrive in it — is widely spread.

At a recent session of the  National Institute for Urban School Leaders  at the  Harvard Graduate School of Education , Bridwell-Mitchell took a deep dive into “culture,” describing the building blocks of an organization’s character and fundamentally how it feels to work there. 

Culture Is Connections

A culture will be strong or weak depending on the interactions between the people in the organization, she said.  In a strong culture, there are many, overlapping, and cohesive interactions among all members of the organization.   As a result, knowledge about the organization’s distinctive character — and what it takes to thrive in it — is widely spread and reinforced.  In a weak culture, sparse interactions make it difficult for people to learn the organization’s culture , so its character is barely noticeable and the commitment to it is scarce or sporadic.

• Beliefs, values, and actions will spread the farthest and be tightly reinforced when everyone is communicating with everyone else. In a strong school culture, leaders communicate directly with teachers, administrators, counselors, and families, who also all communicate directly with each other.
• A culture is weaker when communications are limited and there are fewer connections. For example, if certain teachers never hear directly from their principal, an administrator is continually excluded from communications, or any groups of staff members are operating in isolation from others, it will be difficult for messages about shared beliefs and commitments to spread. 

Culture Is Core Beliefs and Behaviors

Within that weak or strong structure, what exactly people believe and how they act depends on the messages — both direct and indirect — that the leaders and others in the organization send. A good culture arises from messages that promote traits like collaboration, honesty, and hard work.

Culture is shaped by five interwoven elements, each of which principals have the power to influence: 

• Fundamental beliefs and assumptions , or the things that people at your school consider to be true. For example: “All students have the potential to succeed,” or “Teaching is a team sport.”
• Shared values , or the judgments people at your school make about those belief and assumptions — whether they are right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust. For example: “It’s wrong that some of our kindergarteners may not receive the same opportunity to graduate from a four-year college,” or “The right thing is for our teachers to be collaborating with colleagues every step of the way.” 
• Norms , or how members believe they  should  act and behave, or what they think is expected of them. For example: “We should talk often and early to parents of young students about what it will take for their children to attend college.” “We all should be present and engaged at our weekly grade-level meetings.”
• Patterns and behaviors , or the way people  actually  act and behave in your school. For example: There are regularly-scheduled parent engagement nights around college; there is active participation at weekly team curriculum meetings. (But in a weak culture, these patterns and behaviors can be different than the norms.)
• Tangible evidence , or the physical, visual, auditory, or other sensory signs that demonstrate the behaviors of the people in your school. For example: Prominently displayed posters showcasing the district’s college enrollment, or a full parking lot an hour before school begins on the mornings when curriculum teams meet.

Each of these components influences and drives the others, forming a circle of reinforcing beliefs and actions, Bridwell-Mitchell says; strong connections among every member of the school community reinforce the circle at every point.

More on School Culture

• See Part II of our story, which moves from "what makes school culture" to "how to build it."

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The School Culture Descriptive Essay

The artifacts that define the culture of the organization.

In this paper, I will describe the culture of a school organization. Essentially, organizational culture of a school entails its personality, which includes the values, assumptions, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of the members and their behaviors. When walking across the compound of this particular school, though located in an economically depressed community, there are a well groomed green lawns and flowers that spread throughout.

The school appears clean and neat as you walk through the walkways. A school mission which is displayed on an expansive banner contains a symbolic message. As you take a trip down the hall, the kids together with the staff are taking care of actual live plants that decorate the hall. There are also some banners that contain words such as “hopefulness” perhaps to display the power of close bond between the staff and the kids, with the intention of improving the learning environment (Katz & Kahn, 1978).

What These Artifacts Reveal About the Shared Values and Basic Assumptions

The mottos that are displayed in banners are very critical as they reflect the shared values. The slogans also communicate the schools’ core values and the mission of the school organization. The artifacts also make it possible to comprehend the mission of the school.

Traversing across the school compound gives a person some positive feeling of what the school stands for. The symbols reflect the manner in which the kids and the members of the staff share close and positive relationships. It also reflects the relationships among the kids.

The traditions and the rituals of the school can also be drawn from the artifacts. They involve ceremonies of the positive aspects of the school, hence bringing the members of the community and the school together. This reinforces the school’s values and norms, as well as the school mission. Furthermore, no community can sustain itself without ceremonies (Katz & Kahn, 1978).

The Impact of Culture on Individuals Within the Organization

The impact of culture is strongly felt among the members of the school. For example, the staff and the teachers meeting reflects strong professional collaboration. The members of the school work together, to solve professional matters including organizational, instructional, and curricular among many other issues.

In addition, the collegial relationships can be seen from the way the students, teachers and other staff members work together, feel valued and involved and support each other. Finally, efficacy or self determination is impacted on the members of this school because they all feel as part of the school community as they want it, and work tirelessly to improve their professional skills (Bargh, 1990).

The Level and Type of Diversity Within the Organizational Culture

The school culture is made up of diversity of students, teachers and non teaching staff. The diversity of students includes both male and female students from different cultural backgrounds and age, and students with various ages, just to mention but a few. The diversity of teaching and non teaching staff is made up of males and females, different culture and race, and varied teaching and working experience among others.

How Organization’s Culture Can Facilitate or Hinder Change Efforts

The members of the school are encouraged to participate and get involved in problem-solving and decision-making processes hence promoting effective decisions and solutions. As such, the involvement increases the pledge towards plans. This enhances spontaneous work as the members possess common planning time and space. As such, planned change is highly enhanced (Cotton et al., 1988).

Bargh, J. (1990). Auto-motives: Preconscious determinants of social interaction, handbook of motivation and cognition. Foundations of Social Behavior , 2, 93- 130.

Cotton, J. L., Vollrath, D. A., Froggatt, K. L., Lengnick-Hall, M. L. & Jennings, K.R. (1988). Employee participation: Diverse forms and different outcomes. Academy of Management Review , 13, 8–22.

Katz, D. & Kahn, R.L. (1978). The social psychology of organizations. New York: Wiley.

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IvyPanda. (2018, October 31). The School Culture. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-school-culture/

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