Research About The Theory And Practice Of School Culture Management

It is generally believed that culture is "the sum of material and spiritual production capacities obtained by human beings in the course of social practice and the material and spiritual wealth created". Thus, many natural substances that already exist should not be attributed to the category of culture. However, if people bestow certain significance upon such a kind of natural substance, such as a legend, it becomes culture or contains the cultural connotation. Therefore, the writer thinks that the essence of "culture" is "significance". Thus, he puts forward the idea that "the so-called culture is the combination of human beings’ bestowing certain significance upon their own practice (or existence) and awareness (or thinking) and the whole process of its transmission in a certain social context.Culture can guide, regulate, constrain and motivate people. So it has a real management function. It is just because of this inherent and internal logical link between culture and management that "cultural management" possibly becomes and is known as a management concept, or a method, or a model.The major purpose of management is to coordinate and unify the ideas and actions of the organization’s members. The process of coordinating the organization’s members to think, to act and strive for the common goals of the organization, based on the interpretation and transmission of significance, is called the cultural management. When the process occurs in schools and works on the activities of all the students and faculties, it is called the school cultural management. As all the thinking and practical activities of human beings are carried out according to certain significance, it is justifiable to hold that human beings are creatures going after significance and living in significance. It is also true for what people usually regard as unconscious activities. As a result, in the activities of school management, the significance of meaningful activities among students and faculties needs to be strengthened and the significance of unconscious activities needs to be clarified. In this way, all of students and faculties of the school will be urged to think, to act and strive in one direction. This kind of coordination of students and faculties’ thoughts and actions can be seen as the realization of corresponding school management. Because of this, the essence of cultural management is to manage according to human beings’ nature of thinking and acting for the pursuit of significance. Cultural management is the most proper management for people’s needs, thus, the most effective. This is also the root cause why the writer thinks cultural management excels or should replace the traditional experience management and scientific management and other various management styles in modern enterprises. Because of the pursuit of significance, each student and teacher living in the school will have an agreement on his or her own "Identity" or disagreement.The collective identity of the significance of the school’s development forms the "Shared Vision" of the students and teachers; with a shared vision and a strong desire to achieve it, students and teachers will take the initiative in "Fitting the Organization"; working, learning and living in a particular school for a long period, students and teachers will be gradually influenced by its culture. Thus, the cultural qualities of the students and teachers are fixed that no changes are easy to make. This is the realization of "Fixing the Cultural Qualities". These are the four levels of the implementation of school cultural management. If a school has a fine culture, the powerful driving force of its development will thereby be forged by the fixed cultural qualities of teachers and students. Thanks to every student and teacher, especially to the efforts of the teachers, a school like this will thrive and become vibrant. And with the mobility of students and teachers of a school, their fixed cultural qualities will in turn exert influence on people of a new school or organization, that is, to assimilate others. Or probably it will be changed by the new environment gradually, that is, to be assimilated by another culture. This is called the cultural conflict or the transmission of culture. Without a doubt, the above processes are bound to happen in every school or every organization. If school administrators can manage and grasp the trend of the school’s cultural development with consciousness, the school will develop faster and better accordingly, thus, the effects of cultural management will be better.For the sake of effective implementation of the cultural management, schools need to make sure the following tasks are fulfilled. They need to construct the basic framework of the school culture, among which the most important are the condensation of school spirits, the discovery of the cultural kernel, the clarity of education philosophy, the construction of course culture, the creation of excellent discipline of study, the building of basic management systems and so on. Cultural management is to direct and to lead, it is not mandatory. Therefore, only by stimulating can the culture of make teachers and students embody the cultural kernel of the school be strengthened, and the significance awareness of students and faculties be realized, and the cultural qualities be fixed. Consequently, the implementation of cultural management needs the administrators to be fully aware of the important values and functions of stimulation, to establish the basic principles of stimulation, to find the basic strategies for stimulation so that effective incentive mechanisms can be achieved. Team construction is the most crucial content as well as the most important foundation of the implementation of school cultural management. It can be agreed that the team construction of a school serves as both the "means" and "ends" of the school cultural management. Team construction needs to work on the following tasks simultaneously:to lay a solid foundation of the team’s cultural background, to concentrate on the construction of teachers’ professional ethics, to help teachers with professional development, to pay due attention to cadres, to promote the President’s own qualities and the like.