Current issues in my professional context
Socioeconomic status of the community, organisational culture and professional environmentsI teach at a decile 8 year 7 to 13 co-ed state school. The school is zoned and the roll is controlled by limiting the number of year 7 enrolments. There are always families that miss out. Funding based on decile is summarised below.
Targeted funding
|
Per pupil
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$46.86
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Careers information funding
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Year 9-13 pupils
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$16.82
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Special Education
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Per pupil
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$46.50
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The school is well resourced and supported by the community. Work days where students find paid work and then donate the money to the school are the main fundraiser at Year 9 to 13. This money has been used in the past to buy a school van, computers and furniture for the library. The organisational culture is influenced by the large number of teachers who have remained at the school for much of their teaching life, myself included! This has allowed leaders to develop a very efficient administration as they review and refine processes from year to year based on feedback and their own observations. An identified issue for our school is the current age of the leadership team and of a number of curriculum leaders, meaning that many teachers will retire at a similar time. This could lead to a loss of institutional knowledge as well as reculturing as described by Morgan (1997) as new leaders bring their own values and beliefs.
The current culture of the school is influenced by the age of the school, created as the amalgamation of a high school and two intermediates, 10 years ago and in the ‘founders’ stage as described by Schein (1985). The values are based on the person that the school was named after. These stories and the values they represent are shared through assemblies at year 7 and 8 level and reinforced as students move through the school. The values were co-constructed by staff and students and are part of the day to day life of the school.
The professional environment of the school has two foci which are closely related; Kia Eke Panuku and e-learning. The organisational structures within the school provide a spectrum of professional development opportunities, for example all curriculum meetings involve teachers sharing their practice and planning together, teachers provide after school PD sessions, individual teachers can apply for PD funding.
Issues around the socioeconomic status of the community, the school culture and professional environments
The socioeconomic status of the school has allowed us to ‘highly recommend’ devices for learning for students at year 7 to 9. The issue is that a decile rating of 8 does not ensure that all students can afford a device. At present an average of 26 students in a class bring a suitable device, leaving a shortfall of 3 or 4 devices per class. Equity devices are issued through the library and in year 7 and 8 classes there are also some classroom computers.
The professional environments in our school are complicated by having two separate campuses which are 1.5km apart. Year 7 and 8 on the primary campus with the focus on “care and control” and “being part of a family” Stoll (1988) while Year 9 to 13 could be described as more “fragmentised” due to department structure and teachers identifying as a ‘specialty’ teacher e.g Chemistry or Art. The physical separation combined with different foci results in a lack of understanding of what happens on the other campus and how the teaching is different. The issues have been addressed but not resolved by cross campus curriculum meetings and the ongoing opportunity to observe teachers at the other campus. The divide still exists as evidenced at social functions when teachers sit with who they know and work with. I don’t think this can ever be completely resolved as the relationship with teachers working together on a day to day basis will always be stronger.
References
Morgan, G. (1997). Images of organization. Thousand Oaks: Sage. p. 139.
Schein, E.H. (1985). Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. p. 6.
Stoll, L. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin, No. 9, Autumn 1998 Institute of Education, University of London
I agree with you Karen, that just being a high decile school does not eliminate equity issues. The different curricula for the junior and senior parts of the school will inevitably create a divide as the focus for each differs. I wonder if that will change if and when a STEAM style of teaching gets adopted at high school level. Personally I would be really excited to see STEAM, but a many changes are required before it will be implemented widely across all schools.
ReplyDeleteHi Sharon, thanks for your thoughts. I agree with you that many changes are required before STEAM could be successfully implemented across schools. I think there is a movement towards that with some of the vocational programmes which combine aspects of Science and Maths into one programme. Health Sciences was an earlier attempt to provide a school programme that prepared students for these by using the human body as a context for science rather than plants as is the focus in biology.
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