More in Leadership Support Resources & Trainings
The School Culture Typology is a self-reflective tool and related activity designed to identify a school-wide perspective of the “type” of culture that exists in a school. The typology tool was first developed in 1997 as a hands-on, practical method of defining for discussion purposes a school’s stage or type of culture. To complete the activity, teachers assign point values to statements that are “most descriptive” of their school from a series of statements representing twelve elements of school culture.
Those elements are:
- Student Achievement
- Collegial Awareness
- Shared Values
- Decision Making
- Risk-taking
- Trust
- Openness
- Parent Relations
- Leadership
- Communication
- Socialization
- Organization History.
Once the members of a leadership or school improvement team, or the whole faculty have completed individual worksheets, the facilitators of the activity lead the group in a consensus discussion.
This process creates a composite picture of the school’s “predominant” type of culture:
- Toxic
- Fragmented
- Balkanized
- Contrived Collegiality
- Comfortable Collaboration
- Collaborative.
As a school strives to develop a truly collaborative culture, the school’s leadership and/or improvement teams can monitor the cultural change with this typology tool and/or the School Culture Survey.