Angelides y Ainscow SESI - 00 Making Sense of The Role of Culture in School Improvement

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Making Sense of the Role of Culture in School Improvement

Panayiotis Angelides; Mel Ainscow
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Making Sense of the Role of Culture in School

Improvement
Panayiotis Angelides and Mel Ainscow
University of Manchester, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT
Downloaded By: [Universidad de Sevilla] At: 09:25 16 January 2009
Addressing the need to find new ways for examining workplace cultures quickly and
effectively in order to facilitate school improvement efforts, this article proposes a tech-
nique for carrying out such enquiries. By exploring the nature of school cultures and how
they impact upon day-to-day encounters in classrooms, it illustrates how critical incidents
can be analysed so as to help those in schools to understand themselves better in terms of
those factors that shape their practice. It is argued that the proposed method has the
potential to go beyond systems of external monitoring in such a way as to enable schools
to develop procedures for self-review.
Recent years have seen considerable efforts in many countries to improve

the quality of schooling. Targets are set, new approaches to curricula,
assessment, teaching and management are introduced, but still there re-
mains widespread dissatisfaction with progress. Meanwhile researchers
continue to pursue better understandings of how school improvement can
be achieved in order to help foster these improvement efforts.
Reflecting on these international efforts, Fuller and Clarke (1994) ar-
gue that much of the research on how to improve schools has been mis-
leading because it has failed to take into account the ways in which local
cultures shape and influence processes of implementation. There is no
point in spending money on large-scale projects to improve national edu-
cational systems, they argue, unless we take account of cultural factors. In
a much quoted article, House (1979) arrives at similar conclusions. As a
result of a historical analysis of perspectives on curriculum innovation and
implementation, he shows how early attempts at curriculum change were
dominated by a largely technological perspective. Gradually, as the limita-
tions of this orientation became apparent, there was evidence of greater
Correspondence: Mel Ainscow, Professor of Special Needs and Educational Psychology,

School of Education, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
Tel.: + 44 161 275 3503. Fax: + 44 161 275 3548. E-mail: Mel.Ainscow@man.ac.uk
146 P. ANGELIDES AND M. AINSCOW
emphasis on looking at innovations from a political perspective, in the

belief that possible explanations of their lack of success were to be found
within the micropolitics of the school. And then later, attention was turned
to the potential advantages of adopting a cultural perspective as a means of
understanding the process of change.
Certainly there is strong evidence that working and social patterns with-
in a school do have a considerable influence on the quality of teaching
practice (e.g., Keddie, 1971; McLaughlin, 1993; Rosenholtz, 1989). Fur-
thermore, school improvement and effectiveness research has continued
to draw attention to the significance of school cultures in educational
reform (e.g., Fullan & Hargreaves, 1992; Hopkins, Ainscow, & West;
1994; Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, & Ouston,1979). This has led to sug-
gestions that consideration has to be given to the ways in which norms of
teaching in a school environment come to be created and how they influ-
ence those working within it (Fullan, 1991; Huberman, 1993). Thus, it can
be argued, if improvement is our business, schools will have to find ways
of understanding themselves better in terms of those factors that shape
their working practices. Given the complexities that this implies, it seems
unlikely that schools will be able to rely on external driven monitoring
arrangements for this purpose. Rather, they will need to develop proce-
dures for self-review. However, existing research strategies do not seem to
suggest practical approaches of exposing and analysing these often con-
cealed working patterns in ways that will be of direct relevance to the
improvement of practice in the field.
Traditionally workplace cultures have been investigated through ethno-
graphic research (e.g., Hammersley, 1990; Spradley, 1979) and partici-
pant observation (e.g., Ball, 1981; Woods, 1979). These existing methods
for studying cultures usually require long term research carried out by
outside observers, something which is often impractical in applied con-
texts. This suggests that there is a need to find ways of examining cultures
quickly that will assist those within schools to develop deeper understand-
ings of their own contexts in order to inform processes of school improve-
ment.
This article describes the outcomes of a study that has pointed to some
promising possibilities in this respect. Specifically, it addresses the fol-
lowing questions:
• What is the nature of school cultures?
• How do they impact upon practice?
• How might we scrutinise such cultures quickly and effectively in a way
that might help to support improvement efforts?
CULTURE IN SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT 147
Our concern, therefore, is with conceptual and methodological issues. We

set out to throw further light on notions of workplace cultures and how
these can be studied in order to support school improvement efforts. By
exploring the nature of school cultures and how they impact upon practice,
we illustrate the potential of critical incidents as a means of carrying out
such enquiries.
THE NATURE OF SCHOOL CULTURES
The literature on school effectiveness and improvement tends to deal with

notions of culture in a rather general way. There is also evidence of varied

definitions and different methods for determining what it involves.
In general, the word culture “has acquired a number of quite different,
often contradictory, meanings” (Hebdige, 1979, p. 5). Indeed, Williams
(1976) claims that culture is “one of the two or three most complicated
words in the English language” (p. 77), whilst, according to Berger (1995),
“it has been estimated that anthropologists have advanced more than a
hundred definitions of culture” (p. 136). There is also a noticeable distinc-
tion between the way the term is used generally and its use in the school
effectiveness and improvement literature, where it is often referred to in
the plural form. The assumption here is that even in a single context there
will be evidence of more than one culture.
Early references to the notion of culture in relation to organisations
tended to adopt a rather general definition, for example ‘a pervasive way
of life or set of norms’ (e.g., Handy, 1993, first published in 1976, p. 181).
Other authors have suggested more specific images, such as, ‘the way we
do things around here’ (Deal & Kennedy, 1983, p. 14). However, whilst
these ideas provide helpful insights into the concept of culture, its com-
plexity demands a more sensitive operational definition.
Schein (1985), who like Handy does not deal specifically with school
contexts but with organisations in general, defines culture in a much more
explicit way, suggesting that it is:
The deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by
members of an organisation, that operate unconsciously, and that de-
fine in a basic ‘taken-for-granted’ fashion an organisation’s view of
itself and its environment (p. 6).
In addition, he highlights six helpful dimensions of the concept, which

were later related to school contexts by Hopkins et al. (1994), as follows:
• observed behavioural regularities when teachers interact in a staff-

room – the language they use and the rituals they establish;
• the norms that evolve in working groups of teachers in terms of
lesson planning or monitoring the progress of students;
• the dominant values espoused by a school, its aims or ‘mission
statement’;
• the philosophy that, for example, guides the dominant approach to
teaching and learning of particular subjects in a school;
• the rules of the game that new teachers have to learn in order to get
along in the school or their department;
• the feeling or climate that is conveyed by the entrance hall to a
school, or the way in which students’ work is or is not displayed

(Hopkins et al., 1994, p. 88).
Very close to Schein’s definition is David Hargreaves’s (1995) analysis.

In an important paper about school cultures, he formulates two typologies
in order to explore their relevance to school effectiveness and improve-
ment. Specifically, he argues that:
Cultures have a reality-defining function ... [and] through culture peo-

ple define reality and so make sense of themselves, their actions and
their environment. A contemporary reality-defining function of culture
is often a problem solving function inherited from the past: today’s
cultural form created to solve an emergent problem often becomes
tomorrow’s taken-for-granted recipe for dealing with matters shorn of
the novelty (p. 25).
Combining this view with Schein’s definition, then, we begin to see the
concept of culture in terms of basic assumptions and beliefs that have been
shaped through earlier problem solutions and have a ‘reality-defining func-
tion’. Hargreaves (1995) concludes that ‘it should be possible to detect the
fundamental problems of that social institution, to which over time it has
developed the routinised solutions that become “the way we do things
round here”’(p. 25).
We can take this argument a little bit further, however. Robinson (1998)
proposes a problem-based methodology in order to match educational
research methodologies and the generic features of practice. For her, prac-
tices are treated as solutions to practical problems and explained by in-
quiry into the problem-solving processes that gave rise to them. Linking
this with Hargreaves’s definition of culture, we can begin to see that a
scrutiny of practices may enable us to uncover the hidden cultural assump-
tions that direct those practices. This reasoning reflects the theoretical
starting point and, indeed, the central framework around which this article
revolves. Our focus is on that what we refer to as ‘critical incidents’,
involving surprises followed by reflection or, even, problems followed by
solutions. We argue that their analysis can be used to disclose concealed
taken-for-granted assumptions and beliefs which constitute manifestations
of culture in a way that might help to support improvement efforts.
THE IMPACT OF CULTURES ON PRACTICE

Since the 1960s there has been evidence in the United Kingdom of an
increased emphasis on the use of sociological perspectives within the edu-
cational research community (Hammersley, 1990). A range of important
studies have helped to draw attention to the impact of culture on school
processes. These have included studies which have focused on different
aspects of school life, such as: children’s sub-cultures (e.g., Hargreaves,
1967; Lacey, 1970); the influence of social class (e.g., Hargreaves, 1967;
Willis, 1977); and the role of structures (e.g., Ball, 1981; Woods, 1979).
Keddie (1971) provides compelling evidence as to how specific cultural
factors influence teachers in their work. Having established the relation-
ship between the perceptions of teachers and the process of categorisation
of pupils in groups, she argues that:
Innovation in schools will not be of a very radical kind unless the

categories teachers use to organise what they know about pupils and to
determine what counts as knowledge undergo a fundamental change (p.
156).
This categorisation, she argues, is influenced by teachers’ expectations

and how they conceptualise ability in terms of whether pupils can manage
the knowledge offered to particular ability groups. She also makes an
important distinction between the ‘educationist’ and ‘teacher’ context. In
the former, what a teacher ‘knows’ about his or her pupils is influenced by
theory, and achievement is viewed as a result of motivation; whereas, in
the latter, what a teacher ‘knows’ about pupils is derived from the arrange-
ments used for grouping, and the characteristics of individual pupils are
those which are imputed to the group in which they have been placed.
As a result of studies such as these, subsequent researchers have paid
progressively greater attention to workplace cultures and how they influ-
ence the responses of stakeholders, particularly in the context of school
improvement (Fullan, 1991; Huberman, 1993). Linking this to House’s

(1979) typology of perspectives on curriculum innovation, as outlined
above, we can conclude that a cultural perspective is essential to an under-
standing of how educational change might be achieved.
During the 1980s and 1990s this perspective was further encouraged by
a number of studies that added to understandings of the cultural life on
schools. An example is Pollard’s (1985) study, which suggests that cul-
tures are products of people within schools and significantly influence the
classroom action of both teachers and children. In this sense, Rosenholtz
(1989) gives considerable attention to teacher relationships which, she
argues, are a major factor in the creation of different school cultures. Her
analysis points to a number of ways in which schools differ in culture as a

result of the influence of relationships amongst staff, emphasising two
extreme working cultures -the ‘moving’ and the ‘stuck’ school – which are
based on the prevailing staff relationships in those schools. Stuck schools
are ‘learning impoverished’ places where uncertainty, isolation and non-
support for change are the prevailing conditions; whereas, on the other
hand, moving schools are ‘learning enriched’ places where teachers work
and learn together.
In a similar way, Nias, Southworth, and Yeomans (1989) try to under-
stand the organisational culture of primary schools through staff relation-
ships. With this in mind, these researchers became participant observers in
six primary schools. As a result, they provide rich descriptions of collabo-
rative cultures and how they appear in practice. Their argument is that
collaborative cultures create a more productive school environment. They
also emphasise the importance of leadership for the creation, maintenance
and well functioning of such cultures.
Across these studies a major common theme relates to the ways in
which workplace cultures influence school practices and the fact that fail-
ure to recognise their existence will affect any improvement efforts. From
this perspective, Skrtic (1991) proposes initiatives for changes in school
organisational structure and professional culture because, as he argues, the
current bureaucratic school organisational structure and specialised pro-
fessional culture are not appropriate for achieving educational goals. Our
concern is with similar issues, as we focus on how local cultures might be
scrutinised quickly and effectively in a way that might be helpful for
school improvement efforts.
CRITICAL INCIDENTS
Within the school environment teachers and pupils come together and
attempt to coexist. During this coexistence a plethora of episodes occur,
some of which are insignificant and unimportant, whilst others are major
episodes which have significant influence on both teachers and pupils.
Such episodes, significant or insignificant, are sometimes called ‘critical
incidents’ (Tripp, 1993, 1994).
In the literature, the term critical incident has acquired a number of
slightly different definitions as researchers have approached the issue from
a variety of angles. In general, the term “comes from history where it
refers to some event or situation which marked a significant turning-point

or change in the life of a person or an institution ... or in some social
phenomenon” (Tripp, 1993, p. 24). These events “provoke the individual
into selecting particular kinds of actions, they in turn lead them in particu-
lar directions, and they end up having implications for identity” (Measor,
1985, p. 61). Now, within schools and from the literature dealing with
teachers’ careers, critical incidents are seen as “highly charged moments
and episodes that have enormous consequences for personal change and
development” (Sikes, Measor, & Woods, 1985, p. 230). Furthermore,
They are unplanned, unanticipated and uncontrolled. They are flash-

points that illuminate in an electrifying instant some key problematic
aspect of the teacher’s role and which contain, in the same instant, the
solution (Woods, 1993, p. 357).
Such major events occur very rarely in most teacher’s lifetimes and be-
come critical only afterwards. Indeed, it is worth remembering that the
criticality of an incident can be identified only after the consequences of
such an incident are known. Consequently, we can examine those major
incidents only later by interviewing the participants and those who were
involved in them.
An alternative formulation is provided by Tripp’s (1993) extension to
the definition of critical incidents in order to include the common-place
events that occur in the everyday life of the classroom. He argues that:
The vast majority of critical incidents ... are not all dramatic or obvi-
ous: they are mostly straightforward accounts of very commonplace
events that occur in routine professional practice which are critical in
the rather different sense that they are indicative of underlying trends,
motives and structures (pp. 24–25).
From this perspective, critical incidents
are not ‘things’ which exist independently of an observer and are wait-
ing discovery ... but like all data, critical incidents are created. Inci-
dents happen, but critical incidents are produced by the way we look at
a situation: a critical incident is an interpretation of the significance of
an event (Tripp, 1993, p. 8).
Critical incidents, therefore, are not necessarily sensational events in-

volving noticeable tensions. Rather they can be relatively minor inci-
dents, everyday events that happen in every school and in every class-
room. Their criticality is based on the justification, the significance, and

the meaning given to them. What we propose in this article, in relation
to the argument we have already developed, is that it is possible to scru-
tinise these incidents in a way that can be illustrative of the nature of
norms and cultures within a school. Thus, everything that happens in
classrooms is a potential critical incident, whilst criticality is dependent
on interpretation, which is in itself a complex process. Linking this pro-
posal with the ideas of Edgar Schein (1985) and Donald Schon (1995),
however, things become a little clearer. Both have used the word ‘sur-
prise’, which is the stimulus for reflection and for the creation of a crit-
ical incident. An observer (we explain the exact use of this term later)
enters the school as an ‘interested outsider’ (Schein, 1985), beginning
“to experience the culture, both actively through systematic observation
and passively through encountering ‘surprises’ – things that are differ-
ent from what the outsider expects” (Schein, p. 114). Thus, the outsider
is engaged
in systematic observation to calibrate the surprising experiences as best

he [or she] can and to verify that the ‘surprising’ events are indeed
repeatable experiences and thus likely to be a reflection of the culture,
not merely random or idiosyncratic events. (p. 114)
When an incident that surprises the observer occurs, it becomes the

stimulus for reflection (Schon, 1995), and this reflection, in turn, leads
to a decision about the incident’s criticality. This process and its poten-
tial implications will become much more concrete after we have dis-
cussed the issue of reflection in relation to critical incidents in the next
section.
CONNECTING CRITICAL INCIDENTS TO REFLECTION
Donald Schon has written extensively about the role of reflection in the
development of professional practice (Schon, 1987, 1991c, 1995). He in-
troduces the concept of ‘knowing-in-action’, which comprises knowledge
that can be articulated and which helps draw attention to knowledge that
exists but is not articulated (Schon, 1995). Behind this notion of ‘know-
ing-in-action’, he argues, lies ‘reflecting-in-action’, which is what the
practitioner embodies to his/her practice intuitively through feeling, see-
ing or noticing. In examining critical incidents we have found that this
notion of ‘reflection-in-action’ has opened up new possibilities for under-
standing. Specifically, it has made us realise the enormous impact of teach-

ers’ reflections upon a critical incident, not least in relation to the way in
which criticality comes to be recognised.
David Tripp (1993), in his book Critical incidents in teaching, refers to
some routines that often become well-established habits and notes that we
often cannot say why we did one thing rather than another, but tend to put
it down to “some kind of mystery such as ‘professional intuition’ or sim-
ply ‘knowing’” (p. 17). Concluding his book, he provides a hint about the
role of reflection in professional judgement, where, after the occurrence of
an incident, the teacher makes a professional judgement and then reflects
on the situation accordingly. This raises the question, ‘where does this
reflection come from?’
Looking to Donald Schon for assistance, we realised the tremendous
complexity of the issue. In his book Educating the reflective practitioner
(1987), he argues that we frame problematic situations in different ways
depending on our disciplinary backgrounds, organisational roles, past his-
tories, interests, and political/economic perspectives. In this sense, the
teacher frames the incident and reflects according to his/her background,
but without necessarily being aware where such a reflection comes from?
Schon argues that:
Although we sometimes think before acting, it is also true that in much

of the spontaneous behaviour of skilful practice we reveal a kind of
knowing which does not stem from a prior intellectual operation (p. 51)
… [and] when we try to describe it we find ourselves at a loss, or we
produce descriptions that are obviously inappropriate (Schon, 1995, p.
49).
Additionally, he believes that we behave or reflect according to implicit

rules and procedures. Let Schon explain further:
• There are actions, recognitions, and judgements which we know

how to carry out spontaneously; we do not have to think about them
prior to or during the performance.
• We are often unaware of having learned to do these things; we
simply find ourselves doing them.
• In some cases, we were once aware of the understandings which
were subsequently internalised in our feeling for the stuff of action.
In other cases, we may never have been aware of them. In both
cases, however, we are usually unable to describe the knowing which
our action reveals (Schon, 1995, p. 54).
Remembering Schein’s (1985) definition of culture, we can see that

Schon’s rules and procedures are perhaps cultural assumptions embedded
in our thinking and operating unconsciously. Therefore, we might pre-
sume that a teacher’s reflection, which immediately follows an incident
and is part of his/her practice, is possibly related to these cultural assump-
tions.
Furthermore, and perhaps more important for the development of this

discussion, Schon (1995) emphasises that
much reflection-in-action hinges on the experience of surprise, when

intuitive, spontaneous performance yields nothing more than the re-
sults expected for it, then we tend not to think about it. But when
intuitive performance leads to surprises, pleasing and promising or
unwanted, we may respond by reflection in action ... In such processes,
reflection tends to focus interactively on the outcomes of action, the
action itself, and the intuitive knowing implicit in the action. (p. 56)
Connecting this perspective with what was said earlier about ‘surprises’,
and Schein’s (1985) suggestions about how to collect critical incidents,
this theory of reflection has particular implications for observers who try
to use critical incidents as a basis for their investigations. Schon (1991b)
raises a number of questions on this issue. Among these are the following:
What is appropriate to reflect on? ... How should the researcher chose a
strategy of attention? How should one choose units of description and
analysis? ... What is an appropriate way of observing and reflecting on
practice? (p. 9)
And:
What does the reflective turn imply for the researcher’s stance toward
his enterprise – toward his ‘subjects’, his research activity, and him-
self? In what sense ... should the researcher ‘give reason’ to the practi-
tioner he or she studies? Does giving reason stop with the attempt to
discover how practitioner’s patterns of action make sense and reveal
tacit understandings, or should the researcher treat the practitioner as a
researcher in his own right, an actual or potential collaborator in the
process of reflection on practice? (p. 11)
He, then, reaches the conclusion that:

The researcher who would ‘give reason’ has an obligation to turn his
thought back on it self, to become aware of his own underlying stories,
to search out possible sources of blindness and bias in his own ways of
making sense of the reality he has observed. And he cannot do this
unless he is prepared to entertain and test other ways of seeing his
material. (Schon, 1991a, p. 357)
This statement has much to do with the ethics of collecting and analysing
critical incidents, something that we discuss in more detail later. Now, in
order to make the link between critical incidents, reflection and observa-
tion, we pay attention to the process of defining critical incidents.
When something happens in a classroom, an incident that surprises the
observer, it becomes the stimulus for reflection regarding its criticality.
The observer, sensing that the teacher was surprised by an incident and,
therefore, reflecting on it, records it as being critical and decides that it is
worthy of further analysis. Of course, sometimes incidents that the observ-
er considers as critical may not be recognised as such by teachers; there-
fore, they stay as just incidents and not critical incidents. It is also possible
for the observer to miss some incidents that have surprised the teacher.
ANALYSING CRITICAL INCIDENTS
So far we have explored definitions of critical incidents and their relation-

ship to theories of reflection. This has helped to explain the creation of
critical incidents and how they come to be defined for purposes of further
investigation. During this discussion we have made a number of referenc-
es to ‘observers’, without specifying who they might be. In this context the
term implies those ‘outsiders’ (e.g., inspectors, advisers or academics)
whose task it is to monitor practice in a school with a view to encouraging
improvements, rather than a person within the school. Within the research
that has informed this article, one of us worked as an outsider in such
situations and experienced many dilemmas (Angelides, 1999). For exam-
ple, when an incident happens that has moral dimensions, should the ob-
server intervene in some way? This draws attention to the potential ethical
difficulties that might occur should the observer be a teacher within a
school. Therefore, being consistent with our concern to find ways in which
schools might review themselves, we are proposing that ‘outsiders’ might
be involved in collecting and analysing data, but as part of a monitoring
system that is essentially devised and driven by ‘insiders’.
In such a context a critical incident is noted by the outside observer,
who immediately proceeds with its analysis. Where possible, the observer
informally interviews the teacher, and the child or children involved. For
this process no specific interview structure is needed, just knowledge of
the event that has occurred. For example, Schein (1985) suggests that the
‘outsider’ might help the ‘insider’ to:
search in his[/her] own mind for the deeper levels of explanation that
can help both persons [the observer as outsider and the teacher or
pupils] decipher the basic assumptions of the culture. Since the essen-
tial data are in the insider’s head, the process must be designed to bring
out these data, which the insider takes for granted. The outsider must be
sensitive to how best to probe without arousing defensiveness, includ-
ing superficial explanations, or exhausting the insider to the point of
wanting to terminate the relationship. ( p. 116)
Where possible the interviews with teachers should be tape-recorded. In-

terviewing children, however, this raises a number of methodological prob-
lems. Bearing these in mind, we need to take into account the advice of
other researchers who have conducted such interviews (e.g., Armstrong,
1995; Cooper, 1993; Davies, 1982; Hopkins, 1993; Pollard, 1985, 1996;
Tattum, 1982). Cooper (1993) emphasises the importance of the inter-
viewer’s role in helping the interviewees “to express their views as lucidly
as possible” (p. 253). For this purpose, techniques familiar to counsellors,
such as active listening, paraphrasing, and reflection can be employed.
Armstrong (1995), who is in broad agreement with Cooper, makes the
following suggestions:
Gaining access to children’s perspectives requires skill in communicat-

ing meanings embedded in children’s language and behaviour. It also
requires an understanding of the nature of interactions between adults
and children (p. 67).
With this in mind, the first priority for the ‘outsider observer’ is to gain
acceptance of children as someone to whom they can talk. When inter-
viewing children we have found that it is generally better to adopt a style
of informal ‘chats’, such as when walking and talking in the school play-
ground, rather than using tape-recorded private interviews where children
may become anxious, stressed or uncomfortable (Angelides, 1999). Notes
can be made immediately after the interview. Our experience has been that
under such conditions children generally feel much more comfortable,
express their thoughts more freely, and consider the experience simply as
a friendly talk. Of course, all such interviews are voluntary, and pupils
must have the right to conclude them at any time, or to refuse to answer
any of the questions that are put.

Having interviewed those involved in the critical incident, the observer
puts together a composite picture, using the different perceptions of the
different stakeholders. This takes account of Lincoln’s (1985) idea of
multiple realities that are constructed by different participants in the same
situation. In this way we deliberately set out to consider the various expla-
nations and interpretations of the actions of those involved in order to gain
a better understanding of their taken-for-granted assumptions. As a result,
we can go behind people’s actions in order to explore factors related to the
life of the school that might have shaped their behaviour and driven their
responses. To go deeper into these taken-for-granted assumptions, howev-
er, we need an interpretative tool that will enable us to look behind the
ideas of teachers and pupils.
So far, we have suggested a way of collecting evidence about critical
incidents in schools, how to analyse these by interviewing those involved,
and how to scrutinise this evidence by looking at alternative explanations.
Now, trying to move to a deeper level of interpretation in order to interro-
gate the school as a social institution and to look behind the assumptions
of those involved, we describe a device derived from a study that concen-
trated on an analysis of critical incidents in schools (Angelides, 1999). It
involves a series of questions adapted from the work of Smyth (1991).
These questions provide a guiding map; a way of probing into a critical
incident in order to find out what can be learnt from the accounts that are
collected (see Table 1). Here it is important to recognise that asking those
involved to analyse a critical incident can lead to a number of difficulties,
not least because of the emotional agendas that may well exist amongst the
stakeholders. Therefore, we need a way of working that minimises these
difficulties.
In what follows we provide an example, taken from Angelides (1999),
which illustrates the potential of what we have proposed for understanding
Table 1. Probing Questions for Interrogating Critical Indicents.
1. Whose interests are served or denied by the actions of these critical incidents?
2. What conditions sustain and preserve these actions?
3. What power relationships between the headteacher, teachers, pupils and parents are
expressed in them?
4. What structural, organisational, and cultural factors are likely to prevent teachers and
pupils from engaging in alternative ways?
school cultures, whilst, at the same time, demonstrating how the procedure
might be used. The particular incident occurred in a primary school in
Cyprus.
A CRITICAL INCIDENT: ‘BAD READING’
It was a fourth grade class with 24 children. Mrs Cleopatra, the 58 year old
deputy headteacher of the school, informed the observer, Panayiotis An-
gelides, that she had a ‘problematic’ boy, Pantelis, that she could not
handle. Pantelis was a tall boy with blond hair and blue eyes. During the
first 2 days of observation he did not display any significant problems of
behaviour. Occasionally he would raise his hand to give answers and he
always seemed willing to clean the blackboard. On the other hand, Mrs
Cleopatra seemed to be pre-occupied with Pantelis’s behaviour. For exam-
ple, after he scored 85 in a Maths test she came to the class and said aloud
to him:
You got 85, that’s very good. You see, you can do it if you want to, but
you don’t make enough effort.
The following day, during an art lesson, Pantelis took his painting and
went over to the teacher. He asked her for a new piece of paper because he
had destroyed his first one, having used too much black colour. At this
point Mrs Cleopatra turned to the observer and made the following com-
ment:
Look at him, the same again. The other day he made a good painting, a
nice portrait and I put it on the board, but now nothing, he’s just making
trouble again. I can’t stand this [and turning to Pantelis] No, go and
finish this painting.
Both incidents might well have been defined as being critical, but in fact
they were not, since the observer was conscious of feeling biased by Mrs
Cleopatra’s earlier comments about Pantelis. He wanted some more time
to get closer to the situation.
During the first session of the 3rd day of observation, Mrs Cleopatra
asked the children individually to read aloud, correcting their errors as
necessary. When Pantelis’s turn came, he made quite a few mistakes.
Eventually the teacher interrupted him, saying: You see, you have difficul-
ties in reading. Reread it! Pantelis immediately stopped reading, closed

his book, and banged it on the desk. Mrs Cleopatra turned to the observer
and said: Again he is angry, that’s what I was telling you about.
This incident was considered to be critical and, therefore, further analy-
sis was made. Interviewing Mrs Cleopatra and Pantelis revealed interest-
ing interpretations of what had occurred, including some relevant back-
ground information. For example:
• Mrs Cleopatra declared that she would not pay attention to Pantelis
unless he confessed he had made an error and re-read the sentence.
• At the beginning of the year Pantelis had been sent by Mrs Cleopatra to
a newly created additional fourth grade class because the numbers of
pupils in the two existing classes were over the legal limit, but his father
had threatened that if this happened he would complain directly to the
Ministry of Education. So Mrs Cleopatra had felt obliged to leave Pan-
telis in her class.
• Comparing the situation of Pantelis with another boy in the same class
(Soteris), who seemed to be allowed more chances by the teacher, Mrs
Cleopatra revealed that Soteris’s grandfather, who had formally been
the headteacher at the school, had helped her to get the class she wanted,
that is one with more ‘A’ grade pupils. All this was accomplished with
the help of the headteacher and without the knowledge of the teacher in
the parallel class, who had suggested that the classes be allocated by
drawing lots.
Now, using the probing questions (see Table 1), it was possible to move to
a deeper analysis, from which a number of further, more general issues
emerged that seemed to throw light on the situation in the school. Here it
must be noted that these issues were part of the overall case study of the
school and arose as a result of the analysis of a series of critical incidents,
observed in a number of different classrooms.
These issues were as follows:

• Teachers seemed to categorise pupils on the basis of perceptions of their
general ability to learn.
• The headteacher’s relationships with the teachers appeared to vary con-
siderably in relation to two sections of the staff, based largely on their
age, that is older staff (over 45), and younger staff (below 30).
• The older teachers tended to dominate the school decision-making and,
indeed, the overall school environment. They seemed to have ‘vested
interests’ within the school and attempted to protect these from any
proposed changes, not least from proposals made by their younger col-
leagues (e.g., to get an ‘easy’ fourth grade class and not a fifth or a sixth
grade class that would probably require far more lesson preparation).
• The older teachers appeared to use their powers of influence on the
headteacher in order to sustain their domination of the school environ-
ment and to advance their interests.
• Teachers’ actions appeared to be under very strong parental influence.
• Historical factors, related to past and recent events in the school, were
seen to influence the actions of teachers, pupils and parents.
• The headteacher’s managerial style seemed to have a significant influ-
ence on the overall culture of the school and the teachers’ actions in
particular.
• There was evidence of a sense of complex political allegiances within
the staff of that school that bears on the actions people take.
Once a series of critical incidents has been analysed and interpreted, lead-
ing to an overall description of the school’s practices, the next step is to
return this account back to the staff in a form that is intended to enable
them to think about their school. In this way, the analysis and interpreta-
tion of critical incidents becomes part of an intervention. Those within the
school can then be asked:
• What does this account tell us about ourselves?

• What can we learn from this analysis?
• What does it point to about the nature of the way in which we work
together?
• Does it help us to see things that we could change?
In this way the intervention becomes a participatory process that can help
to facilitate improvement efforts in general and developments in class-
room practice in particular.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
What we are recommending here is a technique that could be useful to

researchers who are interested in understanding the role of cultures in the
context of school improvement, not least since it offers an efficient means
of probing into the deeper working assumptions of stakeholders. Howev-
er, as we have seen, it could also be relevant to those within schools
wishing to develop a richer understanding of local factors that are likely to
bear on the success or otherwise of attempted innovations. In such con-
texts, however, it would seem sensible for schools to seek the help of
interested outsiders, perhaps inspectors or academics, who can assist in
observing classroom practice and analysing perceptions of critical inci-

dents that occur. They may also have an important role to play in acting as
critical friends to school staff as they consider the implications of the
information that is gathered. In such contexts it would be essential to agree
ethical groundrules with all stakeholders in order to protect their interests.
What we are suggesting, then, is a way of schools learning more about
themselves; a means of analysing taken-for-granted norms that are not
normally discussed, simply because there is no means by which such
discussions might be fostered. The technique we have outlined seems to
have a capacity for overcoming the difficulties involved by stimulating
constructive talk about real events. Rather than attempting to discuss the
‘culture of the school’, something which would likely lead to enormous
barriers to communication, the focus becomes: “Here is an incident that
has happened. Let’s collect some information about it”. And then: “What
does this incident tell us about ourselves? What does it tell us about the
incident itself and the way people reacted to it?”
The collected information, however, is almost always very sensitive.
So when these accounts are returned back to the staff the issue of sensitiv-
ity must be taken into account very seriously, since some teachers may
feel offended by the descriptions and interpretations. From our experi-
ence, and the critical incident described above in particular, some teachers
appeared to defend their practice by challenging the observer’s interpreta-
tions. These accounts, therefore, should be returned in a politically appro-
priate form so as to minimise possibilities for tension within the school.
Looking at critical incidents can help us to understand how existing
structures within a school operate in a way that also generates insights into
its cultural history. By using a research perspective on critical incidents
we have a means of looking at schools that leads to recommendations as to
how improvements can be encouraged.
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Angelides y Ainscow SESI - 00 Making Sense of The Role of Culture in School Improvement

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School Effectiveness and School Improvement

Making Sense of the Role of Culture in School Improvement

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Making Sense of the Role of Culture in School

Recent years have seen considerable efforts in many countries to improve

Correspondence: Mel Ainscow, Professor of Special Needs and Educational Psychology,

emphasis on looking at innovations from a political perspective, in the

Our concern, therefore, is with conceptual and methodological issues. We

THE NATURE OF SCHOOL CULTURES

The literature on school effectiveness and improvement tends to deal with

notions of culture in a rather general way. There is also evidence of varied

In addition, he highlights six helpful dimensions of the concept, which

• observed behavioural regularities when teachers interact in a staff-

school, or the way in which students’ work is or is not displayed

Very close to Schein’s definition is David Hargreaves’s (1995) analysis.

Cultures have a reality-defining function ... [and] through culture peo-

THE IMPACT OF CULTURES ON PRACTICE

Innovation in schools will not be of a very radical kind unless the

This categorisation, she argues, is influenced by teachers’ expectations

improvement (Fullan, 1991; Huberman, 1993). Linking this to House’s

analysis points to a number of ways in which schools differ in culture as a

refers to some event or situation which marked a significant turning-point

They are unplanned, unanticipated and uncontrolled. They are flash-

From this perspective, critical incidents

Critical incidents, therefore, are not necessarily sensational events in-

room. Their criticality is based on the justification, the significance, and

in systematic observation to calibrate the surprising experiences as best

When an incident that surprises the observer occurs, it becomes the

CONNECTING CRITICAL INCIDENTS TO REFLECTION

standing. Specifically, it has made us realise the enormous impact of teach-

Although we sometimes think before acting, it is also true that in much

Additionally, he believes that we behave or reflect according to implicit

• There are actions, recognitions, and judgements which we know

Remembering Schein’s (1985) definition of culture, we can see that

Furthermore, and perhaps more important for the development of this

much reflection-in-action hinges on the experience of surprise, when

He, then, reaches the conclusion that:

ANALYSING CRITICAL INCIDENTS

So far we have explored definitions of critical incidents and their relation-

Where possible the interviews with teachers should be tape-recorded. In-

Gaining access to children’s perspectives requires skill in communicat-

any of the questions that are put.

Table 1. Probing Questions for Interrogating Critical Indicents.

2. What conditions sustain and preserve these actions?

A CRITICAL INCIDENT: ‘BAD READING’

ties in reading. Reread it! Pantelis immediately stopped reading, closed

These issues were as follows:

• What does this account tell us about ourselves?

What we are recommending here is a technique that could be useful to

observing classroom practice and analysing perceptions of critical inci-

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