Arif Rohman, Farida Hanum, Dwi Siswoyo Yogyakarta State University
Abstract
This research study aims at describing: (1) the values of the academic culture possessed by the students, (2) the attempts made by the students at producing scientific work, (3) the attempts made by the teachers at developing the academic culture of the students in order to make it developed positively.
This research study was done using phenomenological qualitative, taking place in State Junior High School 3 Jetis, Bantul Regency, Yogyakarta Special Province. The subjects of this research study were chosen purposively including a principal, 20 teachers, and 30 students who managed the Student Association. The data collection technique used was Focus Group Discussion, observation, and document study. The whole data collected were then analyzed through the steps of phenomenological qualitative analysis suggested by John W. Cresswell.
The results of this study are: (1) that the academic culture possessed by the students of Junior High School 3 Jetis Bantul was processing in line with the dynamic of the daily life. This was shown by the observable artefact.
The figure of the academic culture of the students of Junior High School 3 Jetis Bantul was created by their inventions which were transformed into their code of conduct at school. There were 10 basic cultural values belonged to the code of conduct at school. The three most crucial ones of them were honesty, discipline, and politeness. They were less valued by the students but they had important role to lead them to success. (2) Regarding the attempts at producing scientific work, the students of Junior High School 3 Jetis Bantul possessed wall magazine installed in their classes. However, they had not optimized the use of it. (3) The attempts of the teachers at guiding the students’ academic cultural activities had been settled as school policies namely: (a) Program of extra hours for preparing the National Examination, (b) Assistance program of Karya Ilmiah Remaja, (c) Remedial program for the students who had not reached the minimum required score, (d) Assistance program of Student Association activities, (e) Program of senyum, sapa, salam, (f) Counseling program of behavioural mental and academic, (g) Program of developing the class wall magazine, and (h) Pilot program of student bulletin and magazine.
Key words: Academic culture, Junior High School students, Attempt at developing
1. Introduction
Developing the quality of schools in Indonesia is one of the priorities of the national policy.
Numerous efforts have been done by the government together with the related parties, by developing the facilitation- and competition-based programs, deciding the standard of academic quality and school academic service through accreditation, developing the institution dealing with keeping the quality of the academic quality, restoring the school curriculum, increasing the teacher’s qualification and competency, and other things such as increasing the funding from the central and regional government. However, the increasing school quality as it is planned is believed to not so successful.
In general, the development of school quality includes two main strategies namely (1) focusing on structural dimension and (2) focusing on cultural dimension. The structural strategy is done through the arrangement of the effectiveness and efficiency of the bureau organisation mechanism of the office of ministry of education, education agency, and school institutions. Meanwhile, cultural strategy is
done through the development of cultural behaviour of the whole members of education community especially the school community of scholars continuously. However, those two strategies were not done in balance; the development strategy of the cultural dimension is believed to be done in less optimum way. The structural strategy has been dominated the way of thinking and school’s development and restoration working system, such as numerous structural interventions done by the ministry of national education and the related institution. The examples of the interventions are the rearrangement of the structure of bureau component, diversification of institution’s responsibility and main duty, decision of various curricular reorientation setting, manipulation of information delivery system, and the like.
It is known from experience that structurally, the strategy of quality development is said to be less effective, especially when it deals with long- term working needs. In contrary, experiences and research studies in business and education fields give sign that cultural dimension of activities’
executor units is the best predictor to see the difference of the quality of those units.
Developing or increasing the quality of school can be illustrated by analogy with a team doing mount climbing. Stepping forward and up is the guidance to make the climbing successful. The route to be taken is unclear and must be found;
otherwise it has been used by the previous climbers.
Periodically, the climbing needs to be evaluated to know the achieved progress level and experiences had by the climbers during the climbing can be taken as lesson for the next climbing. Misleading impression often happens when the climbers felt they have climbed higher while in fact, they are going around in the same height. The understanding of the condition of the route from time to time and its difficulties, risks, way to deal with, the weakness and strength is very crucial to determine the next steps of climbing.
Numerous research studies proved that school culture does influence the students’
academic achievement. The quality determining factors of school are not only those physically observable such as qualified educators, completion of facilities including laboratory and library equipment; but also those in the form of non-physic namely academic culture. Research study on academic culture in higher education by Rohman et all. (2014: 21) recommended the importance of the development of academic climate to shape those of the lecturers and students. The development includes developing positive values, productive behaviour pattern, and its supporting artefacts.
Research study done by Cunningham and Gresso (1993: 132) showed that structural restoration on education failed in changing the situation. According to Kotter (1996: 29), the success of structural restoration through restructuring lasted for short-term. In contrary, restoration through cultural dimension is considered as differentiating predictor of intereducation institution and interschool academic quality. School academic culture gives guidance to value what is important, what is good, what is right, and how to reach them.
Wayne K. Hoy and Cegi G. Miskel, as it is cited in Darminta (1993) claim that school culture includes collection of values or whole system, values, philosophy, idealism, belief, way of thinking, and behaviour shown consistently, appeared and developed by organisation from habit pattern becoming the norm or regulation used as the guidance to think and act, which direct or indirectly affect the working or management pattern of school organisation.
Based on the above explanation, some question rise; how is the development of school academic culture especially in junior high school?
How are the academic culture values of the students of junior high school? How is the development of the production of scientific work of junior high school students? How is the junior high school
teacher’s attempt to influence the students’
academic culture in order to make it develop positively?
Theoretically, Deal and Peterson (Mardapi, 2004) propose the concept of school culture as the pattern of values, beliefs, and traditions created through school’s history.
Meanwhile, Stolp and Smith (Mardapi, 2004) claim that school culture is the pattern of meaning reflected historically, including norms, values, beliefs, ceremonial, rituals, traditions, and myths in various degrees by the members of school. School culture includes academic culture existed and developed in school. Therefore, academic culture is described as the pattern of values, norms, behaviour, ritual, myths, and habits created during the school’s long journey in the academic field.
Based on the empiric research, the
‘healthy’ culture is a highly correlated with (1) students’ achievement and their motivation to achieve it, (2) teacher’s behaviour and motivation to work, and (3) the teacher’s productivity and working satisfaction. However, the analysis of school culture should be treated as a whole. In other word, anything included in school culture can only be seen and should be explained in correlation with other aspects namely (1) high stimulus to achievement, (2) high appreciation toward achievement, (3) organized school community, (4) understanding of school goal, (5) strong organization idealism, (6) participation of students’
parents and community towards the school’s development, (7) the lead of the principal, homeroom teacher, and teachers, (8) good rapport of the teacher and the students. It means that the effect of the academic culture towards the students’
achievement, although it is very strong, is not direct but through many variable such as spirit to work hard and commitment to achieve.
The expectation of ability of school culture to restore the school performance will happen when the culture qualification is healthy, solid, strong, positive, and professional. It means that the school’s academic culture must become the commitment of the school. The school’s academic culture is the identity of the school. A good academic culture will effectively produce academic performance of every individual, working group or unit, school as an institution, and a synergy among these three working levels.
In general, the attempt to restore the school’s academic quality needs to consider its academic culture as the basis. Through the understanding of school’s academic culture, we are able to understand the functioning of the school and its various problems. Besides, we can also reflect the experiments had by the school. Each school is unique based on its internal and external component interaction. Therefore, by understanding the characteristics of the school’s academic culture, we
can do concrete actions to restore the school’s academic quality. The values, beliefs, and life assumptions is so strong, hard to observe, and hard to change. If the achievement of school-level education institution quality needs attempts to
change the condition and behaviour of the school, school members, and school’s supporters, the cultural dimensions becomes central. Change on values is believed to be able to move the attempts on long-term restoration.
Figure 1. Diagram of School Restoration with Culture Dimension
School culture is expected to restore the school’s academic quality, performance, and life quality of which characteristics are healthy, dynamic or active, positive, and professional. The school needs to narrow down the characteristics of the absence of culture, anarchy, negative, poisoning, bias, and dominative. A healthy school culture gives the change to the school and its members to work in optimum function, efficiently, energetic, full of vitality, highly motivated, and is able to develop continuously. Therefore, this school culture needs to be developed.
A strong culture indicates that it has passed the three levels of life namely buried in the basic assumption, included in values and beliefs, and fixed in actions and other artefacts. School culture must be continuously inherited from senior students to their juniors and from one group to the others. A strong school culture succeeds in building broad consensus against broad problems. Strong culture possesses strength and is a basis for change for restoration.
The characteristic of dynamic school culture is not only resulted from the relation between the school culture and the culture surrounding, but also among the layers of the culture itself. The changing behaviour pattern can change the value system and the actor’s belief and even the assumption system, although it is very difficult to do so. Certainly, the dynamic faculty culture is possible to create conflict which is treated wisely and healthily will bring positive change.
School culture is a collective thing and is the result of the history of the school, the product of the interactions among powers existed in it. School need to realize the existence of school culture whether it is healthy or unhealthy, strong or weak, positive or negative, steady or unsteady, and its consequence towards the restoration of the faculty.
It takes time to create values and beliefs.
Considering the importance of the wanted value
system to restore the school, the school need to take the clear steps to shape its culture.
In short, the steps to create positive school culture are as the following: (1) observing and reading the existing school culture, tracing its historical story and problems resulted by it; (2) developing system of school culture assessment which is in line with the purpose of the restoration of the school; (3) doing the school assessment to diagnose the problems and find the cultural actions to overcome them; (4) developing visions, strategies, and missions of the school restoration;
(5) redefining various roles namely: school leader, teachers, students, parents, and its stakeholders; (6) watching out the negative behaviour, poisoning values, and their coalitions; (7) designing the pattern of the development of the school culture and develop new practices and artefacts in relation with the relevant old values and the expected new values; and (8) supervising and evaluating the development of school culture and effect dynamically.
Kotter explained culture by looking at two layers. The first one is observable layer including architecture, decoration, exterior and interior, habits and routines, laws, stories, ceremonies, rites, symbols, logos, flags, pictures, signs, politeness, way of dressing, any other observable things and also unobservable ones behind them which cannot be seen and those it is not easy to make meaning of them. The point of this first layer is the behaviour norms of the members of an organization. The first layer of culture is the group’s norms or traditional ways of behaving possessed by the group since long time. These behaviour norms are hard to change in general. This first layer is usually called as artefacts.
The second layer includes the values kept by the group which is related to what is important, good, and right. The whole components of the second layer cannot be observed because it is Numerous
Structural Interventions
School Culture
Teacher and Students
Teaching and Learning Process
Result of the Students’
Learning
Cultural Intervention
located in living together. If it is hard to change the first layer of which main component is behaviour norms, it is even harder and takes time to change the second layer of which core consists of values and beliefs.
The culture operates in a way that is unrealized by its supporters and has been inherited among generations. Because of this unseen culture core and way of operating, people will start tasting the problems when the deviate behaviour, manners, and way of thinking rise. Culture regulates internal and external behaviour and relationship. This point should be understood in attempting to develop school culture. New values cannot immediately works against the old ones. It is common that new introduced behaviour hinder the newer behaviour or school practices when it meets the older values.
Stolp and Smith (1995) differentiate school culture and school climate. School climate is on surface and consists of the perception of the school members towards the existing relationship.
Meanwhile, school culture refers to historical things of those relationships and is internalized by the school members. Stolp and Smith categorized the culture layers into three: artefacts on the surface, values and beliefs in the middle, and assumptions on the bottom of the layer.
Artefacts are the easiest to observe layer including daily rites at school, ceremonies, symbolic things, and habits happen at school. The existence of this culture is easy to experience when someone contact a school. The deeper layer of the school culture is in the forms of values and beliefs of the school. It becomes the main characteristic of a school. Some of them are the behavioural norms expected by the school which are reflected in idioms such as diligence is the mother of good luck, shallow water has ripples, and so on. The deepest layer of school culture is assumption: symbols, values, and beliefs which are unobservable but influence the behaviour of the members of school.
New culture can only be presented through its reflection in behaviour and life arrangement in a group. Kotter claimed that developing organization’s culture requires responsive and positive lead towards changes. By the existing lead, the internal and external dimensions of organization can be developed. Internally, an organization needs to be solid and stable, and externally it should be adaptive accommodative.
In attempting to develop the pro quality new school culture, school leaders need to do the following actions: (1) understand which culture is supportive to restore the quality and which one is not and (2) building new culture by: (a) cutting the old culture values by stopping their practices, (b) introducing new practices and relate it to the relevant element of the culture, (c) introducing new practices and the principles of the intended values, (d) relating the new practices and the real results,
and (e) discussing the relation of the new practices and the expected values.
2. Research Method
This research was done using phenomenological qualitative approach, with the intention of digging as deep as possible and making meaning of the school’s academic culture including its values and belief, school members’ academic behaviour pattern, and the school’s observable and unobservable artefacts. The school chosen was State Junior High School 3 Jetis, Bantul, Yogyakarta Special Province considering that it was a little bit left behind compared to the other schools’.
The subjects of this research study were chosen purposively including a principal, 20 teachers, and 30 students who managed the Student Association. The data collection technique used was document study, interview, and observation.
Document study was done to figure out the school’s artefacts and to study various documents of the school. Interview was done to dig the students’
wants, motivation, hopes, and any other unobservable things yet affected the students’
academic culture. Meanwhile, observation was used to observing the members of the school’s academic activity which can be an addition to the other two techniques mentioned.
The analysis of the data was done through qualitative data analysis steps namely (1) data reduction or categorisation, (2) interpretation, (3) conclusion. The observable artefacts were shot and edited and were given narration so they became the documents reflecting the profile of the students’
academic culture in school.
Numerous research studies on the factors influencing the school culture have been conducted in the United States of America. Ann Bradley (Sumarni, 2005) in ‘Hardly Working’ showed the results of the studies. They are as follows: (1) the students did not work hard and if only they did so, they would get better score; (2) they did not want a test because it made them study harder; (3) they did not worry about their poor academic score; and (4) only of them always did the tasks given.
The result of the research conducted by Ann Bradley (Sumarni, 2005) stated that the most respondents of the research claimed that schools did not perform discipline teaching and learning; about 80% explained that they agree to study hard if the school conduct the discipline teaching and learning, exactly as it is scheduled. Some students complained that their teachers treated them as child instead of treating them as adults. As a result, they did not respect the teachers. Another remarkable invention is it turned out that the students were confident that by performing the study as they were, they would be able to get a diploma; and that a diploma was important but it was not treated as