The Culture of the Russian School and the Teaching Profession

Abstract

Before we attempt an assessment of the process of implementation of reform in Chapter 6, it would be helpful to consider the nature of the organisation of the Russian school, to examine the extent to which the school culture can be said to be suited to the task of introducing and developing change. The considerable resources that have been employed in the West to study the culture of the school have produced evidence of the important rdle that such factors as the nature of professional relations within the school play in the process of reform, by shaping the nature of the school’s response, denning its capacity to engage in change.¹ An ideal type of establishment to have emerged from the debate in the West on the culture of the school and the quest for school improvement is that of the ‘learning organisation,’ in which, as Dalin and Rolff explain: