Linking a Strong School Culture to (Sustainable) School Improvement

• In Event: Facing the Sustainability Challenge: Making Lasting, School-Wide Changes Through Professional Development

Abstract

Objectives
This paper aims to illuminate the key elements of a strong school culture that have been linked with (sustainable) school improvement. The policy and practice “turnaround literature” increasingly emphasizes the importance of creating supportive school environments for teachers as well as students (IES, 2008; Public Impact, 2008). The use of terms such as “collaborative environment” and “team leadership” in that literature suggest a willingness to examine the importance of school culture in sustainable school improvement. Within this context, three research questions are posed:
• What are the key elements of a strong school culture in conjunction with sustainable school improvement?
• What are the psychometric properties of the scales used for measuring strong school culture?
• What is the relationship between a strong school culture and school improvement as measured by student learning outcomes?

Theoretical Framework
We focus on two aspects of a strong culture that have been combined into initiatives that are called “professional learning communities” (PLCs) (Hord & Sommers, 2008). The first is the development of a culture of organizational learning, which includes, for example, searching for new information and processing that information with others (Honig, 2008; Schechter, 2008). The second is the professional community (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001), which is composed of three dimensions: shared responsibility, deprivatized practice, and reflective dialogue. These three dimensions of professional community, coupled with organizational learning, have been shown to be associated with various positive improvement outcomes (e.g., Lomos, Hofman, & Bosker, 2011; Louis & Marks, 1998). Finally, characteristics that have been shown to be related to student achievement (academic press, student support, trust and respect, and negativity) were included.

Method
This paper is a secondary analysis of data focusing on defining and measuring a strong school culture that is linked to student learning. Within each of 36 the sampled districts (from nine randomly sampled states), a secondary school and an elementary school were selected to collect survey data from teachers (N = 3.893). Data about the school’s achievement levels were obtained from public data sources. Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and latent mean analysis.

Results
The results indicate that the measures of the general cultural variables and those that more specifically reflect the PLC practices had solid psychometric properties such as reliability and construct validity. Moreover, both general cultural variables and those that more specifically reflect the practices that strengthen teacher collaboration and organizational learning are important predictors of school level achievement. The difference in effect sizes of those measures between low and high performing schools ranged from .47 to .62.

Significance
The results suggest that multiple dimensions of a school culture (i.e., academic press, academic support for students, and PLC practices) matter for student learning outcomes. The results also strengthen the growing arguments that PLC practices, when they are embedded in the “on-going” behavior of teachers, affect student learning outcomes. This paper contributes to policy conversations of school improvement by challenging externally-imposed accountability approaches and by reconfirming the importance of creating and sustaining supportive school environments (IES, 2008; PublicImpact, 2008).

Authors

• Moosung Lee, University of Canberra

• Karen Seashore Louis, University of Minnesota