Deconstructing the familiar: Making sense of the complexities of secondary schools as organisations

This paper outlines a conceptual framework for a school as an organisation. In this, there are three core elements: people (including students), power to energise or prevent action, and culture that is constructed by a community’s members to reflect its norms, values and beliefs. However in this construction some people are more influential than others. An organisation’s culture is sometimes called a micro-culture to distinguish it from national or local community cultures. The curriculum, at the core of a school’s purpose and process, is a cultural construction legitimated by the authority of those responsible for a school’s management.