ABSTRACT
Walking through the hallways at Xavier, St. Elizabeth’s, and Grove made us keenly aware of the contrasts among the three schools, each with its own characteristic aura. Along with the variations one would find within any American high school – variations in tone, energy, formality, and informality – palpable differences in the tenor of each school emerged as we talked with students and faculty and watched how students interacted in classrooms and in hallways. At each school we saw different norms for behavior, for dress, for formal and informal student exchanges, and for exchanges between students and their teachers and administrators. In short, these schools differed in characteristics typically referred to as manifestations of the “culture” of an organization (Morgan, 1986). Edgar Schein (1985) described the term culture in organizations as: observed behavioral regularities, norms, dominant values espoused, philosophy, rules of the game, and feeling or climate (p. 6).
