culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

SIMONA ALECU
This is the reason why looking up to individuals and personal
standpoints is a source of permanent knowledge for the systems oriented towards
research and development. When the future is not known and the changes of the
environment are unpredictable, the sources of difference are as important as the
opportunities for convergence. Considering that conflict – if managed correctly –
is essential for productive change, that is, since problems are our friends, the
group perceiving conflict as an opportunity to learn, instead of avoiding the
conflict or taking advantage of it to strengthen its position, is the group to
prosper. M. Fullan (1993) claims that there is no learning in a system without
individual learning and there cannot be group learning, without conflict
management.
The educational system fully corresponds to these characteristics
especially since it is recommended that distinct work modalities should become
part of the systems because these modalities need to be up to the dynamic forces
of change. Developing multiple cultures and establishing flexible structures are
essential considering that the future is unpredictable. Likewise, getting to know
different types of cultures allows adapting the changes to the specificity of the
educational system, which prevents the failure of a forced takeover of different
models of educational models; hence, schools can generate either a culture of
development – dominated by an ethos of change and perfection – or a stagnant
culture – conservative, rigid, reproductive.
The school analysis from the perspective of its systemic culture offers a
way of understanding the role that the system of beliefs, values, ideologies,
norms, ceremonies, etc. has in the social construction of the systemic reality.
Such an approach has important implications for the management of an
educational system, as well as for the explanatory basis offered in the process of
influence and change produced at the level of the system. For instance, the
acknowledgement of the fact that the system of values, beliefs, interpretations
specific to a school group is not a fixed, unaltered ‘fact’, entails the necessity for
an increasing effort for identifying the elements to either maintain, or to change
the culture of the school system, elements to be found in the development
strategy as a reflection of the collective ethos.
References:
Bourdieu, P., J.C. Passeron 1970. La reproduction, elements pour une théorie du
sistème d’enseignement, Paris: Edition de Minuit
Fine, G. 1984. Negotiated Order and Systemic Cultures, Annual Review of
Sociology, 10
Fullan, M.G. 1993. Change Forces: Probing the Depths of Educational Reform,
London: Falmer Press
Handy, C. 1993. Understanding Systems, London: Penguin Books
Martin, J. 1992. Culture and Systems: Three Perspectives, Oxford: OUP
Morgan, G. 1986. Images of System, London: Sage
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