Student, teacher and parent perspectives of the effectiveness of a developing new high school with a middle school program

Abstract

This study looks at the developing culture in a brand new high school set up using middle schooling strategies and structures. The study takes place during the second year of the school's existence focusing on parents and students who made up the fist intake, and the full complement of staff. The literature review was bifold examining writing about middle schooling and about culture. The review of middle schooling looks at some major studies of education for young adolescents and then at various structural and strategic initiatives to better cater for the needs of those young people. The view of writings about culture looks at defining culture then organisational and corporate culture and the process of creating culture in a new school. The three groups mentioned~ parents, students and teachers were given questionnaires to complete and then a follow up questionnaire was completed by some. The first of these questionnaires asked about respondents' ideal school and then their perceptions of the reality at Lanyon High School using a Likert scale with directed response questions. Some open questions about values at the school were also included. The second questionnaire looked at the school culture with a series of open questions focusing on ceremonies, rituals, celebrations and metaphors about the school, the staff and the students. Questions about the ideal school and perceptions at Lanyon focused around twenty themes relating to culture and to middle schooling. Percentage responses to these twenty sets of questions were calculated and then results tabulated and graphed. Appropriate responses from the open ended questions was also included under each of the twenty themes. These results were interpreted with reference to the literature review again focusing around the twenty themes. The findings have implications for those establishing new schools to cater for the 9-13 age range and for those in existing schools who wish to better cater for this age of students and reduce the trauma of the primary to secondary school transition.

Date of Award	1998
Original language	English