Metaphors and meaning: teachers' perceptions of organizational culture in secondary schools

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate the perceptions of a group of secondary school teachers concerning their schools’ organizational cultures, and also to examine the degree to which perceptions were common amongst teachers in a school, and whether these perceptions are related to levels of job satisfaction.
The setting for this research involves five secondary schools in the wider Auckland metropolitan district, in New Zealand. These schools were a mixture of state and private, coeducational and single sex, and were selected from different socio-economic locations.
The perceptions of the teachers were examined from the perspective of the conceptualization of the early sociologist, Ferdinand Tonnies, and the study utilizes the antithetical model of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft characteristics of an organization. The methodological strategy includes a Questionnaire and Interview, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. Metaphorical descriptors were used as the methodological tools for determining the balance of gemeinschaft to gesellschaft in each school. Overall trends were noted and correlation between particular perceptions and job satisfaction levels were examined. An analysis of the degree to which perceptions were shared in common was also an important consideration.
In both the Interview and the Questionnaire the participants were given the opportunity to develop their own metaphors that were applicable to their school cultures, as well as summarizing their ideals for the educational context.
The findings revealed five major observations.
The first is that gemeinschaft (community human relational) characteristics were both more prevalent in schools, and were considered to be more desirable by teachers.
Secondly, there appeared to be a mixture of both gemeinschaft and gesellschaft characteristics in each school, according to the perceptions of the teachers studied. Both of these characteristics existed side by side, they were not mutually exclusive. The balances, however, were idiosyncratic to each school.
Thirdly, there was a strong positive correlation between high gemeinschaft perceptions and job satisfaction levels. Conversely, there was a negative correlation between gesellschaft perceptions and job satisfaction levels.
Fourthly, the study indicated that metaphors were a useful research tool, and that teachers respond well to them as enabling devices for reflecting on the nature of school organizational culture.
Finally, this research revealed a strong tendency for teachers to hold similar perceptions of their schools organizational culture. There existed clear patterns of commonality.

Date of Award	1996
Original language	English
Supervisor	Geoff Burkhardt (Supervisor)