ANALISIS DE MOVILIDAD EN LA VEREDA TROCHA GANADERA

reforms which are taking place at school in New Zealand such as the Tomorrow Schools reforms, the restructuring of the National Curriculum Framework and the National Qualification Framework and the effects of these on the work of teachers at school were also taken into account in the present study .

Besides the ethnographic studies on school culture reviewed above, quantitative survey studies on school culture are also located in the literature. Two examples of this kind of studies are reviewed and their significance to the present research is also discussed in the following section.

QUANTITATIVE SURVEY RESEARCH ON SCHOOL

CULTURE

Based on the review of literature in organizational culture (Smirchich,

1983 ; Schein, 1 985 ; M illikan, 1 985 ; Sergiovanni and Corbally, 1 984), Cheng (1993) assumed that:

(a) the stronger the school's organizational culture, the more satisfied, motivated, and committed the teachers and the higher the students' academic achievement; and

(b) strong schools' organizational culture is associated with strong principals' leadership, formalized and participative

organizational structure, and positive social interactions among teachers.

(Cheng, 1 993 : 88)

Based on these assumptions, Cheng ( 1 993) sought to investigate: how school organizational culture is related to important organizational characteristics and observe how the profiles of strong culture-effective schools are different from those of weak culture­ ineffective schools in terms of organizational variables (such as principal's leadership, organizational structure, and teachers' social interactions) , teachers' job attitudes, and school effectiveness criteria.

(Cheng, 1 993 : 85)

In order to do this, Cheng ( 1 993) conducted cross-sectional survey research

involving 54 randomly sampled Hong Kong secondary schools and 588 teachers .

Based on Price and Mueller (1986) , an index of organizational ideology was used to describe the strength of the school culture under study. Other survey instruments

were also adopted and developed to measure teachers' job attitudes and

commitment as well as school effectiveness (Cheng , 1993).

It was found that teachers' esprit and principal 's leadership contributed significantly to the prediction of school ' s strength of organizational culture and the

profile of strong culture-effective schools is contrastingly different from that of

weak culture-ineffective school (Cheng, 1993) .

The findings of the study resulted in Cheng's ( 1993) conclusion which stated that:

the differences in organizational culture [between strong culture­ effective schools and weak culture-ineffective schools] can be reflected at least in three overt levels :

1 . organizational level in terms of principal leadership behaviours (initiating structure, consideration, and

charisma) , organizational structure (formalization and participation) , and teachers' social norms (esprit, intimacy, and disengagement) ;

2. teachers' attitudinal level in terms of organizational

commitment, social job satisfaction, intrinsic job satisfaction, and influence job satisfaction; and

3 . school effectiveness level i n terms of perceived overall organizational effectiveness and even academic achievement in the public examinations.

(Cheng, 1993 : 1 03)

Although the ethnographic rather than the quantitative research approach

was preferred for the study of school culture, Cheng's ( 1 993) study is significant

to the present study in the way that it provided evidence for relating school culture to teachers' job satisfaction and organizational commitment which is the main aim

of the present study undertaken at Alice Girls' High School .

With the aim of examining school organization from a cultural perspective

which focuses on value orientation and commitment, Shaw and Reyes ( 1992) also conducted a survey research of teachers from 53 elementary schools and 5 1 high

schools. A cluster-sampling procedure first selected schools as the unit of analysis, and then randomly selected five teachers from each school to make up a sample of 265 elementary and 255 secondary teachers.

The two constructs, value orientation and organizational commitment, were

measured by a 30-item questionnaire developed from the Organizational Value Orientation Questionnaire (Reyes, 1 990a) and the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (Mowday et al . , 1 979) . Shaw and Reyes ( 1992) adopted a three-part

and acceptance of the organization's goals and values, a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization, and a strong desire to maintain

membership in the organization. This three-part definition of organizational commitment was also adopted for the present study and will be discussed in more details in the next chapter.

The findings of Shaw and Reyes' ( 1 992) study suggested that differences in organizational culture exist between elementary and high schools, and that such differences are not a function of demographic or organizational variables.

The second finding, which is of greater significance to the present research, indicates that the higher the level of normative value orientation, the higher the

level of teacher organizational commitment. Hence, as Shaw and Reyes ( 1992) put

it,

schools emphasizing normative, as opposed to utilitarian orientations (contract stipulations and monetary incentives), generate higher levels of teacher commitment.

(Shaw and Reyes, 1 992 : 30 1 )

Since the core values formed the basic foundation of the school culture, this research finding of Shaw and Reyes' ( 1 992) study demonstrated that these cultural

elements are related to teachers' organizational commitment. This relation was examined in the present study with the ethnographic research approach.

The significance of the two studies, reviewed in this section, to the present

research lies in the fact that they both sought to examine how school culture, in

different national contexts, is related to teachers' job attitudes such as job

present research. The two studies tried to identify the elements of school culture and to see the way in which these cultural variables affect teachers' job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Although the objectives are similar to that of the present research, the two studies reviewed in this section employed the quantitative survey techniques while

qualitative ethnographic approach is planned for the present study. The differences between these two kinds of approaches and their suitability and appropriateness for applying to studies of school culture will be discussed more details in the chapter

on methodology.