An Empirical Study of Collaborative Culture as a Model of Organizational Behavior in Greek Primary Schools

Abstract

The investigation of the collaborative culture in Greek primary schools with an emphasis put on Small rural and Urban all-day primary schools was the basis for conducting the study. The main purpose of the study is to highlight the ways in which teachers in everyday school practice act and shape school collaborative culture, so that if a redefinition of their role is required, feedback to focus their interest on the effectiveness of their schools of responsibility. The scope of the survey was the total number of teachers (N=782) in randomly selected primary schools in the country. The research tool used was the School Culture Survey - Teacher Form (S.C.S.-T.F.) questionnaire which evaluates and records the teachers' views on the six dimensions (collaborative leadership, teacher collaboration, professional development, unity of purpose, collegial support and learning partnership) that shape the model of collaborative school culture. The findings demonstrate that teachers adopt the model of collaborative culture to a relatively satisfactory degree, applying several forms of collaborative behavior, as illustrated by the descriptive analysis. The analysis of One-way variance (ANOVA), between the factors of the collaborative school culture in relation to the variable “Position in the school unit” revealed the existence of a significant difference for the “collaborative leadership”, “professional development”, “unity of purpose”, “collegial support” and “learning partnership” factors, while, there was no significant differentiation for the “teacher collaboration” factor. In addition, the analysis of ANOVA between collaborative school culture in relation to the variable "geographical location of the school unit” revealed the existence of a significant difference only for the “collaborative leadership”, “teacher collaboration” and “collegial support” factors. Via Independent Samples T-test, the comparative study of relationships between the factors of the collaborative culture in the two types of schools revealed the existence of a significant differentiation for “collaborative leadership” and “collegial support”, while no significant difference was observed for the other factors of collaborative school culture. Of course, the observed forms of collaboration do not support the existence of a genuine collaborative culture, however, they lay the foundations for the development of more meaningful partnerships.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0005/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>