Module 10: Building an Effective Culture
“He waka eke noa.”
“A canoe we are all in together.”
Module Objectives:
Upon completion of this module, middle leaders will be able to:
- Define the characteristics of a positive, inclusive, and high-performing school culture in the New Zealand context.
- Identify their role in shaping and maintaining school culture within their team and across the kura.
- Apply strategies to foster psychological safety and open communication, encouraging collaboration and innovation.
- Promote culturally responsive practices that ensure all learners and staff feel valued, included, and empowered.
- Contribute to a culture that champions continuous improvement and professional growth.
- Evaluate current team or departmental culture and propose practical steps for enhancement.
School culture is often described as “the way we do things around here.” It’s the unwritten rules, shared values, beliefs, and practices that shape daily interactions and the overall feel of a school. As a middle leader, you are a crucial architect of this culture within your teams, influencing everything from staff well-being to student outcomes. A positive, inclusive, and high-performing culture is foundational to a thriving learning environment.
Understanding School Culture:
School culture impacts every aspect of school life, from how decisions are made, to how conflicts are resolved, and how success is celebrated. It influences staff morale, student engagement, and ultimately, learning outcomes. A truly effective culture fosters a sense of belonging for everyone, encourages risk-taking and innovation, and prioritises continuous improvement.
Key Elements of an Effective School Culture:
- Positive Relationships: Building strong, respectful, and trusting relationships among staff, students, and whānau is the bedrock. This involves genuine care, empathy, and effective communication.
- Inclusivity and Equity: Ensuring that every individual feels valued, respected, and has a sense of belonging, regardless of their background, identity, or needs. This includes actively embedding Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles and culturally responsive practices.
- Collaboration and Teamwork: Encouraging staff to work together, share ideas, support each other, and collectively solve problems. This breaks down silos and strengthens collective efficacy.
- Innovation and Growth Mindset: Fostering an environment where experimentation is encouraged, learning from mistakes is embraced, and there’s a collective commitment to continuous improvement and new approaches to teaching and learning.
- High Expectations and High Support: Setting ambitious goals for both student achievement and professional practice, while providing the necessary support, feedback, and resources for individuals to meet those expectations.
- Psychological Safety: Creating an environment where individuals feel safe to speak up, ask questions, admit mistakes, and offer ideas without fear of negative consequences. This is crucial for innovation and honest feedback.
Your Role as an AP or DP in Shaping Culture:
As a school leader, you have significant influence over the micro-cultures within your team or part of the school you have responsibility for. Your actions, decisions, and communication style contribute directly to the “way things are done.” You can foster an effective culture by:
- Modelling desired behaviours and values.
- Actively listening to your team members and addressing their concerns.
- Creating opportunities for collaborative decision-making and problem-solving.
- Championing inclusivity and celebrating diversity.
- Providing constructive feedback and opportunities for professional development.
- Recognising and celebrating efforts and successes.
Task:
Cultivating Culture in Your Kura:Reflection on the forum: describe one aspect of your current school’s culture that you believe is particularly strong or effective. How does it contribute to collaboration, innovation, or performance. Also identify a specific area within your school’s culture that you would like to enhance to promote greater collaboration, innovation, or inclusivity. Identify one concrete strategy you could implement to begin fostering this change.
Post your collaborative response on the forum (max. 150 words).
Assessment:
- Forum Post: Your response outlining a positive aspect of your school’s culture and a strategy for culture enhancement and its rationale.
Resources:
- Understanding School Culture:
- Educational Leaders – School Culture: https://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/ (explore sub-sections like “Leading cultural change” and “School culture”)
- Fostering Inclusive Culture:
- Inclusive Education (TKI): https://inclusive.tki.org.nz/ (explore sections like “Developing an inclusive classroom culture” and “Inclusive teaching practice guidance”)
- Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand – Tātaiako: https://teachingcouncil.nz/content/tataiako
- https://www.edutopia.org/article/creating-positive-school-culture/
5 Responses
Cultivating Culture in our Kura
A real strength of our school culture is collaboration. Our CRT structure releases year-level teams together, giving teachers regular, protected time to plan, reflect, and problem-solve collectively. This intentional approach has strengthened collegial relationships and built consistency across teams. Staff value the opportunity to learn from one another, share effective practice, and celebrate success together. This sense of mahi tahi—working as one—has created strong alignment in teaching approaches and a shared sense of responsibility for student outcomes.
An area I would like to develop further is our ability to have courageous and professional conversations. Sometimes, small issues or misunderstandings are left unspoken, which can quietly grow and affect wider staff morale. To foster more open and trusting communication, I plan to introduce kōrero pono (honest, respectful conversations) through structured “learning conversations” and coaching circles. These provide safe frameworks for feedback and problem-solving while maintaining mana for all involved. Over time, this would normalise open dialogue, strengthen trust, and support a culture of continuous improvement across our kura.
One aspect of our school’s culture that is very strong is the atmosphere within the staffroom. This has been commented on by visiting guests and groups. We have a strong social connection amongst our staff, but not so much that it pushes aside the professional expectations. Our teams plan collaboratively and we have seen great progress through the work completed in the last two years, particularly in Maths. Our current PGC operates through a Tuakana-Teina model, giving all staff responsibility in pushing professional development and observing each other on a reasonably regular basis.
The aspect that we might fall down on, based on reading the interview with Ryan Daniel, is how the students might feel about current school culture. As a Senior Leadership Team, we have collected student voices on a few different aspects of the school. However, not many of our staff have done this for themselves and their classroom environments. Completing surveys and collecting voices from individual classes might give us a better sense of how the wider student cohort feels, rather than always hearing from those individuals who speak to SLT quite openly.
Reflection on the forum: describe one aspect of your current school’s culture that you believe is particularly strong or effective.
Our school culture I would describe as supportive, friendly, welcoming and diverse. Our students are at the heart of our school and this is evident when you are working or visiting our school. We meet the need and wants of our community by having muslim and bible classes (optional) and extension classes, alongside a music programme as well. For our teachers we prioritise team collaboration and give time to team planning, team inquiry and limited whole staff meetings as PD is target to the needs of teams. Due to this being very team focused though it can at times make a disconnect across teams.
One area I would like to work on is having more across school collaboration so our teams don’t feel as stand alone. Every year we still get comments made about students data coming through or certain teams thinking they will be the ones to “fix” students behaviour. If we do more across team moderation and wider cross team behaviour support I am hoping this will help mitigate some of the teacher comments. I also think having people be more flexible about moving around teams would help develop teachers knowledge of what comes before and after certain year levels and develop their own understanding of the curriculum.
One element of our school’s culture that is particularly strong is its high expectations and high support. Our school sets high standards for both students and staff so as to build on the traditional success of our learners and our staff members. The school has considerable professional development on a regular basis, is always ahead of the PD curve in terms of Structured Maths/Literacy approaches, Curriculum changes, Reporting changes and this is great to be part of.
Our school runs a number of intervention programmes for students that need either support or enhancement and does this very well with highly resourced programmes and well trained teacher aides. Our teachers collaborate well in collaborative spaces (2 classrooms max) and support each other in planning and pastoral care of the children.
The challenge with these high expectations is ensuring the psychological safety of our staff and their wellbeing. There is a slight underlying theme across the staff of exhaustion, safety to speak out, allow vulnerability and admit mistakes. Honest feedback is also missing. Being new it has been an interesting year to sit back and observe how our staff relate (or don’t relate) and how they experience our school on a daily basis – highly differing points of view. I believe our staff culture lacks a lot in terms of inclusivity/equity for both students and staff and it is an area where we can develop further.
My intention is to champion inclusivity and celebrate diversity/neurodiversity, model expected behaviours/values and actively address the team’s concerns.
Cultivating Culture in Our Kura: One strong aspect of our school’s culture is our celebration of diversity. As a Catholic and highly multicultural school, we honour all languages and cultures—recently expanding to include Filipino Language Weeks and, for the first time this year, a South East Asian Language Week. This shift reflects the evolving makeup of our school community. Our inclusive approach fosters collaboration and pride among students, staff, and whānau, strengthening relationships and engagement across the kura.
An area we could enhance is staff collaboration across cultural initiatives. While celebrations are rich, deeper cross-team planning could amplify their impact. A concrete strategy to foster this is establishing a “Cultural Champions” group—representatives from each team who co-design inclusive events and share cultural insights. This would promote innovation, shared leadership, and a stronger sense of unity.