Shaping School Culture, Third Edition

When Shaping School Culture was first published in 1999 it highlighted a new imperative for school leaders: playing an active role in influencing the subtle symbolic features of schools that provide meaning, belief, and faith. The book became a classic in the field of educational leadership and continues to receive noteworthy attention today. In recent years, the environment surrounding public schools and districts has experienced a number of jolting troubles with key implications for organizational culture and the role of school leaders. Among others:

• Test scores have become the primary means of measuring school effectiveness.
• Federal reforms such as ESEA/No Child Left Behind and the Common Core State Standards pose new challenges to administrators and teachers.
• State sponsored initiatives designed to help teachers such as mentoring programs and Professional Learning Communities often come with bureaucratic baggage that neutralizes the intended effects.
• Teachers have grown weary of one major reform after another.
• The American public has lost confidence in our nation’s schools.

What impact have these new developments had on the cultural tapestry of schools? Have they diminished the heart of what it means to be a teacher or a learner? What can school leaders do to recognize external pressures for reform while simultaneously tending to their vital leadership role of shaping culture?

This new updated edition of Shaping School Culture will provide concrete suggestion to help administrators foster passion, purpose, and meaning in their schools.

TERRENCE E. DEAL has been a professor at Stanford, Harvard, Vanderbilt and (as Irving R. Melbo Professor) the University of Southern California. He is the coauthor of Corporate Cultures, Leading with Soul, Reframing Organizations, and How Great Leaders Think.

KENT D. PETERSON is an emeritus professor in the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Deal and Peterson are also coauthors of The Leadership Paradox.