3.2 How might the school's culture(s) be contributing to the puzzling situation?

There are innumerable ways a school's culture(s) can influence student performance. It may be useful to think of the possible cultural influences as an interwoven "web" involving several components: (1) the structures and programs of the school; (2) the various cultural "clusters" of beliefs, attitudes and values present in the school and the community it serves; (3) the routine, day-to-day actions of educators that "construct" students' educational careers, and (4) "artifacts" that represent various cultures in and around a school.

School structures and programs

The existing structures and programs in a school create the (current) range of possibilities within which educators and students and their parents operate. For example, an ongoing and thriving structure for parental or community involvement of all groups within a school creates a very different set of "possibilities" than a structure that meets the needs and schedules and expectations of only one group within the school. The existence of a gifted program or of a gifted bilingual program creates different opportunities than exist without either program. A system of tracking or a structure of multiple ability groups create different opportunities. School-based structures and programs that promote respect for differences and appreciation of diversity contribute to a different school climate than when such programs are not present.

The links below provide more detailed discussions of selected examples of the influence of school structures and programs on students' performance:

3.2.1 How might competition be contributing to the puzzling situation?
3.2.2 How might tracking or ability-grouping be contributing to the puzzling situation?
3.2.3 How might instructional programs for English language learners be contributing to the puzzling situation?

Cultural "clusters" of beliefs, attitudes and values

There is not one culture in a school; there are many cultures, or "clusters" of shared knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and values. Some of these cultural clusters may be among educators (for example, the "culture" of special education teachers or the "culture" of counselors) or among different student peer groups. (Peer group influences are discussed further in CIP Step 3.4.) Other cultural "clusters" may exist across educators and students (for example, cultures based on social class, country of origin, or educational program). Eisenhart and Graue (1993) provided a useful overview of different kinds of cultural "clusters" that develop in and around schools and how these clusters can subdivide and cut across ethnic and race-based groups.

As an example of shared culture within educational programs, Borko and Eisenhart (1986) described how different reading groups defined what was involved in "reading" differently. In another study, Eisenhart and Finkel (1998) found that girls' and women's success in science was influenced by how programs were organized and how disciplines were defined. These researchers documented a high school science course and a college engineering internship where, in contrast to the broader trends, women were successful in science and engineering. They found that these programs were beneficial to women because "science was organized and defined in ways that encouraged participation in immediate, socially relevant and politically contingent activities and networks" (p. 229), i.e., the programs focused more on applied science than on elite, laboratory science.

Routine activities

Routine, day-to-day actions of educators that "construct" students' educational careers may be hard for educators to see at first. Mehan, Villanueva, Hubbard, and Lintz (1996) summarized these influences as follows:

Teachers, testers, assistant principals, counselors constantly interpret students' skills and abilities, their presentations of self and appearance, and judge whether tokens of their behavior count as instances of certain educational categories. This constitutive process unfolds in the flow of classroom lessons when teachers judge the correctness and appropriateness of students' answers (McDermott, Gospodinoff, & Aron, 1978; Mehan, 1979; Michaels, 1981; Eder, 1981; Wilcox, 1982; Collins, 1986). The accumulation of such judgments often results in the placement of students in ability groups or different educational tracks, including special education or gifted programs. When counselors meet with students to make curricular choices or design curricular programs, the possibility of entire educational career options is created or negated (Cicourel & Kitsuse, 1963; Rosenbaum, 1976; Erickson & Shultz, 1982). (p. 229)

In a compelling study of the special education placement process. Mehan, Hertweck and Meihls (1986) found that administrative procedures influenced whether students' were labeled as special education or regular students. In particular, they found that decisions about students' placements were influenced by federal guidelines for the percentage of students expected to be receiving special education, by psychologists' caseloads becoming "full," by the school calendar, and by the needs of a "competing" bilingual education program.

Artifacts

Artifacts (physical products that "embody" the structures or cultural knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and values of one or more cultures) are very powerful means of conveying explicit and tacit cultural messages. Writing from a biological point of view, Stephen Jay Gould (1995) argues that visual displays are central in the history of science because they channel and constrain thought. "Intellectual innovation often requires, above all else, a new image to embody a novel theory. Primates are visual animals, and we think best in pictorial or geometric terms. Words are an evolutionary afterthought" (p. 10).

Examples of cultural artifacts in schools include visual displays on bulletin boards and walls, images and words in texts used as part of curricula, and equipment (desks, computers, etc.). A considerable amount of research has documented race, class, gender, or disability bias in curriculum and text materials. See Grant and Tate (2001, pp. 148-149) for a review of this research. A poignant example of artifacts' influence on children, comes from Witi Ihimaera (1987/2003), the author of the novel The Whale Rider, which inspired the award-winning movie of the same name about a young Maori girl's struggle to be recognized by her grandfather as the next chief of their tribe. Ihimaera said in his Author's Note that he wrote the novel in response to his daughters asking him why boys are always the heroes in movies and girls are always the helpless victims needing to be saved.

A note on parental involvement

Success Stories & CIP Studies Related to School Culture

Consider next question: 3.2.1
Gather information on this question:  4.2