School culture at risk of political and methodological expropriation

• Authors: Ondrej Kaščák , Branislav Pupala , Ivan Lukšík , Miroslava Lemešová
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The aim of this article is to problematize the concept of school culture both as a concept and as a subject of investigation. It deals with the historical roots of this concept and the fact that it is shrinking-a consequence of the managerial imperatives of effectiveness and accountability in education. School culture, in relation to the quality of schools and the quality of education, has become the subject of audits, arrived at through a developed network of standardisation in education, testing and evaluation. The methodology of evaluation currently lending particular substance to school culture, however, generates different methodological perspectives on investigating school culture and thus research is becoming an instrument of political power. In the research it is then necessary to either abandon the concept of school culture or to free it from spinning round the cycle of evaluation/self-evaluation-a change in school culture-improving the “quality of the school”-a new evaluation/self-evaluation. One way to do this is to employ ethnographic approaches in research into schools and to understand school culture as a system of texts.

Keywords

EN

school culture; school quality; managerial accountability; research and evaluation; textuality of school culture; singular and plural interpretations of school culture

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 524-538

Dates

published

2012-10-01

online

2012-09-29

Contributors

author

Ondrej Kaščák

author

Branislav Pupala

author

Ivan Lukšík

author

Miroslava Lemešová

• Comenius University in Bratislava

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/s13374-012-0042-z