Abstract:
Culture refers to the collective values, attitudes and beliefs within an organisation. A culture denotes how individuals relate to each other, ultimately driving a group’s actions and results. Schools with a culture of continuous improvements share a commitment to evaluating practice with the ultimate goal to enhance the educational outcomes of its students. Such schools focus on building the capacity of their teachers and ensure that the workplace is as much a site for teacher learning as it is for student learning. This paper draws on positioning theory as a discursive approach to better understanding social interactions within a school and the school culture within which they operate. To position – either intentionally or unintentionally – we make sense of the say and do and the power of interactions. Positioning theory allows for the exploration of the intricacies of social relationships - people being positioned and in turn being able to position themselves and others. As a theory it encompasses metaphoric, physical and role positioning – where and how we sit, stand, lean in and out, what we say and don’t say. How people position themselves in a school – from moment to moment - affords a greater sense of group dynamics. In this paper, positioning theory will be argued as a key approach to understanding social interactions and dialogical practices. The notion of position and positioning, as an alternative to the static concept of a role will be argued as the nexus of social and role influences and may be used to better understand the gap between the potential and reality of cultural change. Illustrating examples from the field and considerations for my own empirical work, this paper will illuminate the importance of positioning in understanding social interactions and cultures in schools.