School Culture Typology and Leadership in Ateneo De Iloilo

ABSTRACT


INTRODUCTION
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASDC) strongly encourages schools to have an outstanding culture that resonates its vision, mission, and goals. Scores of books on school leadership, like the St. Ignatius-inspired Heroic Leadership (Lowney, 2003), affirm this educational principle that even the Department of Education (DepEd) had to structurally respond by establishing the National Educators Academy of the Philippines (NEAP) to train administrative culture bearers of educational excellence. In the same note, Ateneo de Iloilo-Santa Maria Catholic School-a Jesuit, Chinese-Filipino educational institution in Western Visayas, Philippines-believes that a strong, positive, and communal "way of life" must be distinct, explicit, and apparent in schools not just in its manuals or posters, but more importantly in its structures, people, and "ways of proceeding." In effect, it must be imbibed by all stakeholders-most especially teachers-with a conscious sense of school leadership so much so that it shapes everyone's disposition academically, professionally, socially, emotionally, and even spiritually. Thus, this study was conceptualized.

LITERATURE REVIEW School Culture
For Edgar Schein (1992) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management, school culture is a relatively stable pattern of organizational behavior that lies outside the immediate awareness of the organization's members and reflects the shared behavioral, emotional, and cognitive learning the group has undergone over time. As an organization evolves, the behaviors of the organization develop a consistent pattern based upon its shared assumptions. Schein believes that espoused values, group norms, habits of thinking and acting, and personnel behavior, are among the more readily understood elements that represent the organization's culture. For his part, educational expert Ron Ritchhart, author of the book Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Fully Transform the School (2015), affirms the importance of having a strong and positive school culture, especially in the area of creating "cultures of learning." He builds the case for "enculturation" as the key to deep learning and the development of the habits of the mind and dispositions needed in a changing world. He advocates that way of school life that "enables teachers and administrators-as well as anyone interested in fostering group learning-to understand and shape powerful and efficient communities. "Let us build dynamic learning communities that engage students, promote deep understanding, and sustain a lifetime of inquiry," Ritchhart suggested. In a national seminar for administrators sponsored by Phoenix Publishing House in November, 2015, and followed up in September, 2016, leading school leadership expert Dr. Cynthia Arcadio opined that a school with an outstanding culture begets outstanding students and teachers. "And it requires an outstanding leadership to start with." Dr. Arcadio, who is also a senior accreditor of the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges, and Universities (PAASCU), further advocated that in order to achieve this, schools must have: unified vision, collaborative decisions, guaranteed curriculum, true collaboration, rigorous instruction, data-driven analyses, caring attitudes, responsive leaders, ongoing support, and fierce resolve. American school leadership expert Jerry Valentine (2006), citing different research studies, agrees with Dr. Arcadio, highlighting further that schools must put at premium its teachers in this respect since their roles are vital in the formation of a school culture, good or otherwise. In fact, he said a school with an effective learning culture: Maintains the image of a "professional community," similar to the fields of law or medicine. Teachers pursue a clear, shared purpose, engage in collaborative activity, and accept a collective responsibility for student learning (Newman & Wehlage, 1995); Has a clear mission. Teachers value the interchange of ideas with colleagues. Strong values exist that support a safe and secure environment. There are high expectations of everyone, including teachers. There is strong, not rigid, leadership (Deal & Peterson, 1990); Encourages teachers to work collaboratively with each other and with the administration to teach students so they can learn more with ease (Fullan, 1993); and Is a place where both teachers and students learn (Rosenholtz, 1989).

School Leadership
By extension, Valentine linked the positive correlation between school culture and school leadership. He said that the school leader is also very instrumental in shaping the school's culture and leading reform and the presence and sustainability of reform is highly associated with the school's culture. "In essence, the principal [and the associate principals and mid-level administrators by extension] is probably the most essential element in a highly successful school. The principal is necessary to set change into motion, to establish the culture of change and a learning organization, and to provide the support and energy to maintain the change over time until it becomes a way of life in the school. Over time, the principal's leadership will shape the school, positively or negatively. Without high-quality leadership, high-quality schools cannot exist." (Valentine et al., 2004) Corroborated by Marzano et al. (2005), as cited by Valentine (2006), the close link among school culture, leadership, and student achievement was described further. They stated: "Fostering school culture that indirectly affects student achievement is a strong theme within the literature on principal leadership." From their comprehensive meta-analysis of empirical studies of leadership and student achievement, they described the following key leadership behaviors: (a) promote cohesion and sense of well-being among all staff; (b) develop an understanding of purpose among all personnel, and (c) develop a shared vision of what school should be like. They concluded that each of these leader behaviors directly related to school culture and school culture related to student achievement. In another comprehensive synthesis of the leadership literature associated with student achievement, Cotton (2002) described 26 principal behaviors that contributed to student achievement. The behaviors fell into five categories, one of which was characterized as school culture. It is evident that from these two comprehensive studies of the literature (Marzano et al., 2005, andCotton, 2002) that educational leadership influences school culture and school culture influences student achievement. Therefore, school leaders, both formal and informal, help shape the nature of school culture (Leithwood, 2005, as cited by Valentine, 2006) and thus the nature of school improvement. Leadership and school culture go hand in hand, in both the development and the sustainability of school reform. No less than Dr. Roland Barth (2002), the founder of the Harvard School of Education, says it more succinctly. "When we come to believe that our schools should be providing a culture that creates and sustains a community of student and adult learning-that this is the trellis [backbone] of our profession-then we will organize our schools, classrooms, and learning experiences differently. Show me a school where instructional leaders constantly examine the school's culture and work to transform it into one hospitable to sustained human learning, and I'll show you students who do just fine on those standardized tests." This perception was also corroborated by about 70 school administrations from all the Visayas regions who gathered in the School Leadership seminar sponsored by Phoenix in SEDA Hotel in Iloilo last November 23, 2015. Collectively, the group strongly confirmed the value of having a strong school culture that is backed up and predicated by a strong school leadership. With all these in mind, it seems that all school leadershere and abroad-agree with these educational viewpoints and that they want this sense of strong school culture to be achieved. Many experts on curriculum, human psychology, educational management, and even business administration apparently agree that the road to success is to have an excellent school culture, and that both the teachers and school administrators play a vital role in this dynamics.

The Ateneo Context
In the case of Ateneo de Iloilo-Santa Maria Catholic School, having a school culture seems to be a given as explicitly stated in the school instruction bible, the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm-A Practical Approach. It proposes a "way of proceeding" that is unique to Jesuit schools. It also instills an Ignatian language that spells magis (more), cura personalis (care for others), non multum sed multa (not many things but much), tantum quantum (in so far as it leads you to the Truth) and ad majorem Dei gloriam (for the greater glory of God)-that every Atenean young and old, teacher or student, must live by like a code in a secret society. The 30-year-old Characteristics of Jesuit Education (CJE) document likewise reinforces this "Ateneo culture" principle. For one, it somehow alludes that the way Jesuit schools must be run must anchor on how the 450-yearold, "tested-and-proven" Order of the Society of Jesus is run. According to Lowney (2003), this includes attention to details, constant practice of self-awareness, allergy to mediocrity, discipline to the process of reflection, space for ingenuity, sense of community, purpose-driven processes, premium for institutional identity and "heroic" way of proceeding. Ideally, Ateneo education promotes collaboration among its leaders and teachers. It also encourages collegial support, learning partnership, professional development, and unity of purpose.

The Ateneo 'Dilemma'
Because of its Ateneo-Jesuit culture or brand, and probably highlighted by its products (students and alumni) and new physical structures, many brazenly think that the school, with its faculty in the frontline, is already "better than others" or assumed to be "among the best." Some may tenuously presuppose that its "school culture" is as strong as it shouts "One Big Fight" whenever there is a sports competition, or as it robotically answers "Person for Others" when asked about its societal responsibility. Others in the local teaching world (and even coming from some parents) may even exaggerate in saying that their impressions to the teachers of Ateneo include being "highly professional," "intellectual," "collective," and "solid" in their ways of doing things inside or outside the classroom. Such technically unsubstantiated "givens" as to the school culture, the investigators believe, might either be bordering on "hubris" or "misconception." Hence, it needs to be put on check as it might dangerously mislead the school to rest on its laurels that may possibly be founded on a soft ground. Because of the lack of backed up study, there is this hesitant perception to the socalled Ateneo culture in the school administrative realm. There might be an over-calculation or miscalculation in the general assessment of what the school culture and leadership really is, due to a biased, "blue-stained" pair of lens used by its stakeholders. Furthermore, with the understanding of the importance of school culture and the meaning of school culture, the need to once-and-for-all measure Ateneo's is vital. The school, to note, has not yet comprehensively evaluated its school culture and leadership since its foundation in 1958. What makes it dicey is the fact the Ateneo brand has been there for so long that it has apparently preceded any objective and scientific assessment of what it really meant as: "A Jesuit, Catholic, Chinese-Filipino Educational Institution in Western Visayas. A community committed to forming leaders who pursue excellence that is ignited by love and service." Meanwhile, the number of teaching personnel in school has ballooned for the past six years right after its expansion in terms of enrollment and learning space. From just less than 53, the plantilla is now 99 (43 in GS and 56 in HS) paid teaching faculty. The increase in the number of teachers apparently has taken its toll in terms of passing on the "culture" of the school to the younger ones. The stretching of personnel has also caused relational and transactional distance between and among teachers, supervisors, and administrators. And so, the dynamics of arriving at decisions or dissemination of informationor of passing on the "school culture"-may not anymore be that efficient, affecting the relational, managerial, formative, and administrative dynamics in school. Henceforth, the researchers proposed to answer the following essential questions: What is the school culture typology of Ateneo de Iloilo-SMCS? What school leadership category does Ateneo de Iloilo-SMCS perform well or need improvement?

METHODOLOGY
To answer the above questions, 76 of the 99 teachers of both grade school and high school departments of Ateneo de Iloilo-SMCS were given the following instruments to fill out: (a) School Culture Typology Through MLLC, the authors also gave permission for the use of their instrument for this purpose. The SCT instrument is a worksheet that aims to approximate the cultural typology of the school. It is a matrix that is comprised of 12 factors of school leadership namely student achievement, collegial awareness, shared values, decision making, risk-taking, trust, openness, parent relations, leadership, communication, socialization, and organizational history. These are classified into six columns representing a typology that describes the culture of the school i.e. toxic, fragmented, balkanized, contrived collegiality, and collaboration. Every cell in the 12 x 6 matrix has a statement that describes the factor vis-à-vis its corresponding typology. Using the Point Allocation Method, each respondent is then tasked to distribute 10 points per factor as appropriate in proportion to how each statement in the matrix best describes the school i.e. if one statement is exactly accurate, the respondent will assign 10 to that box, assign 5 each to two equal descriptors, or maybe 5, 3, 2 as appropriate, etc. All the points placed by all respondents in every "cell" and column are summed up as basis for the cultural typology of the school. School Culture a Survey (SCS), on the other hand, is a 35-item instrument that provides insight about school leadership-the shared values or beliefs, the patterns of behavior, organizational dynamics, and the relationships in the school. Each factor measures a unique aspect of the school's collaborative culture. The factor definitions-these are collaborative leadership, teacher collaboration, professional development, collegial support, unity of purpose, learning partnership-are underlined; the additional sentences provide more detail about the concepts associated with each factor. Each item can be answered "strongly agree," "agree'" "agree," "neutral," "disagree," or "strongly agree." The summary of responses are then analyzed using the scale shown in Table 1. These instruments (Appendices A and B), to note, were Note that the focus of the study is the responses of 76 Ateneo teachers (representing 76.77% of the population) from grade school and high school that aim to approximate the present "school culture" in the current educational management setting. Using the "fix mode" in the scientific calculator, their names were randomly selected and the number or respondents per department-following data privacy and ethical protocols of the school-was identified using stratified sampling method. The number of respondents and their departmental classification are shown in Table 2. Analysis of data was done using frequencies, ratios, percentages, and weighted means.

RESULTS AND ANALYSES
To answer the question: "What is the school culture typology of Ateneo de Iloilo-SMCS?" the SCT Survey of the Middle Level Leadership Center of Gruenert & Valentine (2006) showed that the school, through the eyes of its teachers, is fairly having a collaborative type of school culture (31.5% or 2873/9120 points). However, it also has a strong blend of comfortable (24.6% or 2239/9120 points) and contrived collegiality (23.3% or 2128/9120 points) type of school culture. It is worthy to note that the school does not significantly show a culture that is toxic, fragmented, or balkanized.
A school with collaborative culture, according to Gruenert & Velentine (2006), is that which teacher development is facilitated though interdependence and the majority agrees on educational values. Furthermore, there is a commitment among stakeholders to achieve the mission of the school under the environment of collaboration, trust, collective reflection, innovation, teamwork and continued self-development. Note that a collaborative, learning culture is essential ingredient in overall school success. Successful schools generally have strong set of commonly held norms and values, a primary focus upon teaching that supports student learning, open dialogue, and collaboration among all members of the organization (Louis et al., 1996). Meanwhile, comfortable collaboration is a culture that is nearing collaborative culture but is somehow less tolerant to criticisms and critical questions but are more concerned on giving advice or tips and offering comfortable support for each other. In the contrived culture, the forms of collaboration are determined and structures are created by the school leadership. The teachers may become regulated and predictable, but such contrivance is necessary for the development of a true collaborative culture. It was found further that the specific indicators of toxic or balkanized nature are when teachers start talking behind other teachers' backs or when trust is only given or shown arbitrarily to people. Another red flag would be when teachers and parents consider each other as enemies rather than partners to the development of their child/ward. Meanwhile, the results shown on Table 3 underscored that Ateneo de Iloilo-SMCS has prevailingly high expectation among teachers to participate in decisions concerning students with 326/760 or 42.3% rating under collaborative culture and a combined 38.6% or 293/760 rating under contrived collegiality and comfortable collaboration cultures. It also showed that there is a collective understanding among teachers that the school improvement is a continuous issue and that they are committed to celebrating the school's historical milestones and identity as noted by its 310/760 or 40.8% rating placed in the collaborative culture category alone and 360/760 or 47.4% more shared by categories of culture under contrived collegiality and comfortable collaboration. Meanwhile, as shown in Table 3 and Appendix C, it also appeared that most teachers assume responsibility in helping new teachers adjust in school while the latter are encouraged to share their experiences with other faculty members. Almost always, any teacher can talk to any teacher about their teaching practice with less or no hesitation at all as warm conversations among stakeholders permeates in school. It was also found out that teachers are dominantly open to and looking for new ideas, perhaps some occasionally like to experiment with new ideas, and are prevailingly interested in the opinions of their colleagues concerning instruction. This shows a satisfactory culture of trust where teacher development is facilitated through interdependence and the majority agree on Ateneo's educational values apparently inspired by the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP). There is also a commitment to change and improvement among teachers. Although not exactly perfect, help, support, trust, openness, collective reflection, and collective efficacy are found to be at the heart of and are well-defined in the Ateneo de lloilo culture. Furthermore, it was shown that teachers are aggressively curious about teaching and learning. If need arises, they also spend time observing each other (peer observation) or doing Professional Learning Community (PLC) conversations as a means of critically analyzing teaching methods. But the school is not exclusively the collaborative type one. As graphically shown in Figure 1, the school has somehow showed some blend of comfortable collaboration and contrived collegiality type of school culture. The dominating features suggest that teachers are given time to discuss student achievement but most of this time is spent on giving advice and tips. Most, but not all, teachers are comfortable when parents want to be involved with instructional practices; some also aggressively see the involvement of parents in classroom instruction. Likewise, school leaders encourage teachers to give each other advice without being too critical and school leaders monitor the meetings that are designed for teacher collaboration. It is worthy to note, however, that the SCT results showed that the school needs to work more on the issue of trust as some teacher-respondents still gave weight to it under the Toxic (117) and Balkanized (133)  Although in the factor of parent relations, there seems to be a spike in the points earned under contrived collegiality (253) as opposed to the low turnout in the collaborative (116) part, the disparity is quite reasonable since going into collaborative level may mean involvement of parents in classroom instruction which is a tall order to achieve as of the moment. Instead, the dominant culture is that the school leaders simply require teachers to be in contact with parents regularly through Parent-Teacher Conferences (PTC) or in other forms of communication such as direct phone call, short message service (SMS), email or social media network. Meanwhile, decision making and organizational history are two of the items in the survey that really showed overwhelmingly positive results in the contrived collegiality (149-decision making/128-organizational history), comfortable collaboration (145/232), and collaboration (326/310) culture columns with the least points given to toxic (27/35), fragmented (24/21), and balkanized (89/34) culture columns. This means that the teachers recognize that decisions in school follow a certain judicious protocol which they participate into, and that they not just care but also own the decision for they know that they are part of the process. Also, the results showed that it is not the culture of the Ateneo that its teachers are quick to share negative stories about school, instead teachers see themselves as ambassadors of the institution.
To answer the question: "What school leadership category does Ateneo de Iloilo-SMCS perform well or need improvement?" Results from the School Culture Survey (SCS) revealed that the respondents strongly agree in the level of professional development in Ateneo. This means that teachers highly value the continuous personal development and school-wide improvement in school as they seek ideas from seminars, colleagues, organizations, and other professional sources to maintain current knowledge, particularly current knowledge about instructional practices.
The survey also showed that the teachers strongly agree that there is this high sense of unity of purpose in school. Ateneo teachers believe that there seem to be a collective effort to work toward a common mission for the school as they understand, support, and perform in accordance with that mission. Here they also affirm that the school mission statement reflects the values of the community. As shown in Table 4 and graphically explained by Appendix D, the results also note that the teachers agree in the optimistic level of collegial support, learning partnership, teacher collaboration, and collaborative leadership is shared by the school's stakeholders. However, although all teachers agree on the items in the survey, the degree of agreement in some areas under the categories of collaborative development, teacher collaboration, learning partnership and collegial support are found to be areas for improvement. It was revealed (see Appendix E) that there is still a need for teachers to be more informed on current issues in school ( (4.461), are encouraged to share ideas (4.370), have opportunities for dialogue and planning across grades and subjects (4.403), support the mission of the school (4.462), and are very much willing to help out whenever there is a problem (4.492). The school vision also provides a clear sense of direction for teachers (4.314) and reflects the values of the community (4.340).

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
The result of the study necessitates a programmatic initiative that will cascade down to the teachers all the things to improve in the workplace. Perhaps, such can start with the presentation of the results this January, 2017 to the respective stakeholders for collective reflection and resolution. A more comprehensive form of sharing may be done during in-service training in May, 2016, this time revealing in detail the elements and items where the school fare well and must improve on. Meanwhile, the areas of concern such as trust (teacherteacher and teacher-administrator dynamics), parentteacher collaboration, and reward system for teachers (re: innovations and good performance) may already be shared to the specific individuals, subject areas coordinators, human resource officers, administrators, and heads of formation programs so they can be unpacked and studied upon in a more contextual manner. The same may be shared and done on areas that affirm positive school culture especially on matters pertaining areas under shared values, communication, decision making, and strong sense of organizational history, among others. From this sharing may arise some resolutions that will improve the school leadership, relational, and instructional dynamics. Further analysis on the data gathered may be done focusing more on the "culture" of the different departments and subject areas in school. This may lead to clinically identifying "lights," "shadows," "red," and "checkered" flags for immediate feedback, resolution, and action. A survey of the same nature may be conducted for the staff, administrators, and heads of offices, for triangulation. There may surface either a consistency or variation of perception to school culture vis-à-vis that of the faculty. Either way, such may be germane to the administrative dynamics of the school. Aside from the administrators and staff, this whole nature of investigation-perhaps using another contextualized instrument-may be extended to the other stakeholders i.e. alumni, parents, and benefactors if deemed necessary, especially if the inquiry will transcend from the realm of "school culture" to the question of "school spirit" which is another interesting universe in itself.