Organisasieklimaat in sekondêre skole
Abstract
The school is a societal relationship which reveals characteristics of an
organization. The nature and essence of the school can be determined
through the making of a structural analysis of the school in terms of the
fundamental traits of reality. The school is a creational given, which
has a particular structure of authority. On the basis of the foregoing
it becomes clear that the societal/relational life in the school is ordered
according to its own nature. When the school is studied as an
organization, it strikes one that there are divergent views with regard
to the school as organization. Approaches to the school include the social
approach, the bureaucratic approach and the anthropological, or man-directed
approach.
Organizational climate is often described as the atmosphere prevailing in
or the personality of an organization (in this case, the school).
Organizational climate cannot be studied as a concept in isolation from
related concepts such as organizational culture, quality of working life,
work achievement, work satisfaction, work motivation and general
organizational health. Organizational climate in the school is a component
of the quality of the working life of the teacher. Approaches towards
organizational climate, however, differ and these differences in
approaches are the result of the paradigms from which different authors
argue their cases.
In order to determine the openness of the organizational climate, use was
made of a measuring instrument, viz. the Organizational Climate
Description Questionnaire - Rutgers Secondary. This measuring instrument
consists of thirty-four questions, which measure five factors in
terms of the teacher's experience of the organizational climate in his/her
school.
The questionnaire was implemented in all secondary schools under the
control of the Orange Free State Education Department, and teachers at
post levels 1 and 2 participated in the study. Seventy-eight of the
eighty-six schools participated in the study.
With the aid of a number of statistical techniques and procedures, analyses
were made of the differences in the openness of organizational
climate between different schools. A factorial analysis pointed out the
construct validity of the questionnaire within the relevant South African
population, while the reliability of the questionnaire was also indicated.
It was found, amongst others, that principals are involved in the
professional and personal welfare of their teachers, but that principals
also tend to exert strict control over the teachers.
experienced administrative work as a great burden.
Teachers also
As regards the differences in experience of the openness of the
organizational climate, it was determined that there were significant
differences in the openness of organizational climate among CS, 51 and
52 schools. In 51 schools the organizational climate is experienced in a
primarily negative fashion. In schools with a technical bias organizational
climate is also experienced more negatively than in the other categories
of schools, viz. academic and agricultural schools. As regards
geographical situation, teachers in semi-urban areas experienced the
organizational climate in their schools in a significantly negative manner
in comparison with teachers in rural and urban areas.
Guidelines for the improvement of the organizational climate were provided
by way of a model. In the model stress is laid on the mission and
objectives of the school, the creation of good relations between the
principal and the staff, and among staff mutually, as well as on other
contributing factors leading to the creation of a positive (open)
organizational climate.
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