Excavating Organizational Assumptions about Cultural Change: The Unintended Consequences of Safety Committee Initiatives

Purpose Historically, the school effectiveness and improvement movement has focussed its attention on “within school” factors associated with effectiveness and improvement and on the individual school as the primary unit of analysis for improvement and scrutiny purposes. More recently, research has focussed on school-to-school collaboration and engagement with a broader range of services and providers has highlighted the need for more adaptive and nuanced forms of collaboration and partnership. The purpose of this paper is to explore this complex landscape from the perspective of educational reform of the middle tier in Scotland. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on perspectives associated with socio-cultural theory, its application to public service settings and insights gained from research and evaluation outcomes over a five-year period. Findings This paper focusses on the establishment of Regional Improvement Collaboratives in Scotland; an example of an attempt to generate system-wide change and a shift from the hierarchical cultures characterised by bureaucratic organisations to more egalitarian cultures characterised by mutualistic, laterally networked organisations. It highlights the importance of structure and cultural change, identity and agency, leadership capacity, outward perspectives, primacy of learning and teaching and variations and complexities in creating a more networked and collaborative education system. It offers cautions concerning potential unintended consequences in the quest to develop a “self-improving” or “learning system”. Practical implications This paper highlights the importance of maintaining and building social cohesion between different stakeholders within educational systems in order to support the implementation of educational reform. Originality/value This is the first documentation and reflective analysis for an ambitious reform agenda for the middle tier in Scotland. Its value lies in the lessons and considerations it offers to other systems embarking on reforms that endeavour to build more cohesive and agile education systems, without opening them up to neo-liberal approaches to education.

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Roman Artefacts and Society

10.1093/oso/9780198785262.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ellen Swift

Keyword(s):

Material Culture ◽

Social History ◽

Cultural Change ◽

Social Practice ◽

Design Theory ◽

Daily Practice ◽

Unintended Consequences ◽

Social Convention ◽

The North ◽

The Relationship

In this book, Ellen Swift uses design theory, previously neglected in Roman archaeology, to investigate Roman artifacts in a new way, making a significant contribution to both Roman social history and our understanding of the relationships that exist between artefacts and people. Based on extensive data collection and the close study of artefacts from museum collections and archives, the book examines the relationship between artefacts, everyday behavior, and experience. The concept of "affordances"--features of an artefact that make possible, and incline users towards, particular uses for functional artifacts--is an important one for the approach taken. This concept is carefully evaluated by considering affordances in relation to other sources of evidence, such as use--wear, archaeological context, the end--products resulting from artifact use, and experimental reconstruction. Artifact types explored in the case studies include locks and keys, pens, shears, glass vessels, dice, boxes, and finger-rings, using material mainly drawn from the north-western Roman provinces, with some material also from Roman Egypt. The book then considers how we can use artefacts to understand particular aspects of Roman behavior and experience, including discrepant experiences according to factors such as age, social position, and left- or right-handedness, which are fostered through artifact design. The relationship between production and users of artifacts is also explored, investigating what particular production methods make possible in terms of user experience, and also examining production constraints that have unintended consequences for users. The book examines topics such as the perceived agency of objects, differences in social practice across the provinces, cultural change and development in daily practice, and the persistence of tradition and social convention. It shows that design intentions, everyday habits of use, and the constraints of production processes each contribute to the reproduction and transformation of material culture.

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Information and Communication Technology and Cultural Change

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000123 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 43 (4) ◽

pp. 222-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Nina Hansen ◽

Tom Postmes ◽

Nikita van der Vinne ◽

Wendy van Thiel

Keyword(s):

Cultural Values ◽

Information And Communication Technology ◽

Communication Technology ◽

Cultural Change ◽

Control Group ◽

Self Construal ◽

Information And Communication ◽

The Impact ◽

Ict For Development ◽

Practical Implications

This paper studies whether and how information and communication technology (ICT) changes self-construal and cultural values in a developing country. Ethiopian children were given laptops in the context of an ICT for development scheme. We compared children who used laptops (n = 69) with a control group without laptops (n = 76) and a second control group of children whose laptop had broken down (n = 24). Results confirmed that after 1 year of laptop usage, the children’s self-concept had become more independent and children endorsed individualist values more strongly. Interestingly, the impact of laptop usage on cultural values was mediated by self-construal (moderated mediation). Importantly, modernization did not “crowd out” traditional culture: ICT usage was not associated with a reduction in traditional expressions (interdependent self-construal, collectivist values). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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