ABSTRACT
Without intentional leadership, the characteristics described in Chapter 2 tend not to flourish, and culture tends to be unhealthy.
“The negativity bias” – we have some predisposition to pay more attention to negative aspects of our experience, to feel anxious, defensive or frustrated as a default.
Complexity – education and schools are complex systems where factors across the system and across time influence each other, contributing to feedback loops, adapting their responses, and generally producing unpredictable outcomes. It is almost always impossible to identify straightforward cause-and-effect relationships in education and schools, and therefore taking action in order to achieve something, such as developing staff culture, is not straightforward.
Interpretations – while there may be an objective reality “out there” we have no way of agreeing what it is – we all experience the world through our own interpretations and our interpretations are as close to reality as it is possible for us to get – we might say “our interpretation is our reality.” Individuals bring different internal worlds to bear when forming their interpretations and we therefore have numerous different interpretations between individuals. These differences make it difficult to influence culture since we cannot be sure of what interpretations will arise.
Disincentives to act – there are many factors encouraging us not to take action to develop culture. It’s hard and we might fail. It’s hard to measure so it maybe doesn’t fit the development plan and evaluation model very well. It’s not a section on the Ofsted Inspection Framework and it doesn’t affect our position in league tables. A lot of time and energy is needed. We also need to do a lot of reflection and evaluation – what if we don’t like what we see?
Questions for personal reflection and/or group discussion.
