A Handy List for Evaluating Your Shool's Culture
When teaching in the Communications & Culture department at Hannam Univeristy’s Linton School of Global Business, my primary focus was teaching media creation courses and courses analyzing the effects of new media and traditional media. One course that I taught outside of my core focus was Organizational Communications. One of my favorite long-term assignments of tat course was when students were tasked with working as ethnographers to try to analyze the culture of an organization which they either currently belonged or aspired to join. For the class, we used Kathrine Miller’s 5th edition of “Organizational Communication: Approaches and Processes”.
This book will help you rethink how you look at the culture of any organization.
It is sadly priced for it's primary audience of university students. If you can find an older edition of the book or if you can afford a current version, I highly recommend it!
One of the side books that I have had around during this busy semester but haven’t opened much, Is “School Culture Rewired: How to Define, Assess, and Transform it” by Steve Gruenert & Todd Whitaker. I have found value in Whitaker’s other works and I have recently been intrigued at just how different two schools with the same mission can be. I will do a full review later of this book, but here is Witaker's quick preview. For now, I want to share this very practical list as an excellent starter of how to analyze the culture of a school which you belong or aspire to join. Note: This list is from page 28 of their excellent book. Of course they expand with more details on how to study each item on this list. -Climate
-Mission and Vision
-Language
-Humor
-routines, Rituals, and Ceremonies
-Norms
-Roles
-Symbols
-Stories
-Heroes
-Values and Beliefs
Defining School Culture
-Mission and Vision
-Language
-Humor
-routines, Rituals, and Ceremonies
-Norms
-Roles
-Symbols
-Stories
-Heroes
-Values and Beliefs
Note: This list is from page 28.
Take a screenshot and maybe print it out to remind you of the elements of a school culture.