School Culture and its relationship to School Performance

Prepared by Roselle A. Castillo Reniel P.Blanca

The field of education lacks a clear and consistent definition of school culture. The term has been used synonymously with variety of concepts including climate, ethos, and saga (Deal 1999). According to Abu bakar and Ikhsam (2003), school is one small society with very own culture. School culture defines as the basic assumption, norms, values, cultural artifacts that are shared by school members which influence their functioning at school. (Maslowski, 2001).

Johnson and Johnson (1995) believed that there was a relationship between school culture and school performance, the culture of the school explain good and bad school performance. There for Van Houtte (2005) conclude that school culture was a better frame from which to study school effectiveness and school improvement.

There is substantial evidence in the literature to suggest that a school principal must first understand the schools culture before implementing change (Leithwood et al. 2001). Bulach (1999) stated that a leader must identify a schools existing culture before attempting to change it. This study covers about evaluating school culture if it is healthy or unhealthy and how it affects school performance.

There is a need in this research because it is very important for the school to know their culture before they attempt to change and implement it. According to Dr Christopher Wagner (2005) said that A school performance will never improve until the school culture is one where people feel valued, safe and share the goal of self-improvement.

1. To be able to identify what kind of school culture do students of Emilio Aguinaldo College have in terms of: Ceremonies/rituals Beliefs Values Perception Attitude

2. To determine the type of school culture of EAC 3. To be able to know the effect of school culture to the school performance in terms of: Curricular Extra-curricular 4. To be able to discuss the relationship of school culture and school performance

1. What kind of school culture do students of Emilio Aguinaldo College have in terms of: Ceremonies/rituals Beliefs Values Perception Attitude

2. What are the effects of school culture to the school performance in terms of: Curricular Extra-curricular 3. Is there a relationship of school culture and school performance?

Healthy

Students Performance Curricular extracurricular

School Culture

familial situations, medical issues, and non-school related extracurricular activities

Students performance Unhealthy Curricular extracurricular

Independent Variable School Culture (square 1) Dependent Variable Student Performance (square 2) Intervening Variable Student Profile/unexpected circumstances***

Hypothesis H0: A healthy School Culture leads to excellent Student Performance. H0: An unhealthy School Culture leads to Poor Student Performance. H0: The value of School Culture has no relation to Student Performance.

The dynamics by which this research will proceed is shown in Figure 1. The left box stands for the independent variable, the culture prevalent within the school of Emilio Aguinaldo college which is made up from such indicators as: (1)Ceremonies/Rituals, (2)Beliefs, (3)Values, (4)Perception and (5)Attitudes within the school environment as practiced(?) by administration members, academic faculty and the student body.

Data was then taken to establish relevance to the dependent variable. The right box stands for the performance of the students with the academic institution. This variable was categorized to either pass curricular and extracurricular activities, just one of the two, or neither in both.

The profile of the students in terms of familial situations, medical issues, and nonschool related extracurricular activities were also considered to have bearing on students performance. As indicated in the center middle sphere in Figure 1, the profile indicators stand for the intervening variable.

With the conceptual framework, hypotheses were formulated as follows:

(1) H0: An unhealthy School Culture leads to Poor Student Performance;

(2)H0: The value of School Culture has no relation to Student Performance.

Research design The researchers will use a descriptive research design. Descriptive design is used to obtain information concerning the current status of the phenomena to describe "what exists" with respect to variables or conditions in a situation. The methods involved range from the survey which describes the status quo, to developmental studies which seek to determine changes over time.

Qualitative research method will be used to gather and interpret the data. It is the most extensively used by researchers and scientists for cultural research due to its ability to fill in areas that quantitative research design cannot. It is a research method used to study human behaviour and habit; and is often regarded as a precursor of quantitative research, in that,

it is used to generate leads and idea which can be used to formulate a realistic and testable hypothesis. Population and Sampling The respondents for this study would be 10% of the population of Emilio Aguinaldo College Administration, Faculty and Students (Data on the exact number will be established at a later date, wherein, this area of the chapter shall be revised).

Source of data/Locale of the study The locale of the study is at Emilio Aguinaldo College administration staff, academic faculty and student body. Instruments of the Study The researchers intend to develop a self-made questionnaire which may be used to determine and gather the data needed for this study (This area of the chapter will be revised at a later date).

Data Gathering Procedure The respondents, ranging from admin staff, faculty staff and students from different courses, will all be well informed and assured that this study will not cause them any harm by assuring that all gathered information and data are to be kept confidential and will not be exposed in any form aside from the purpose of this research.

To ensure the validity of the self made questionnaire professionals in the field of psychology and advisers will be consulted before the questionnaire will be reproduced and distributed to the respondents of the study.

After that, the self made questionnaire will be administered to the respondents. They will be given enough time to answer the questionnaire. Only one answer will be allowed for every item. After finishing the test written by hand, all test questionnaires will be returned before the end of the testing period.

Data Analysis Procedure The data that generated by the self made questionnaire will be tabulated, analysed and interpreted at a later date.