School Culture Educating People: Realization Path and Action Mechanism ()
1. Questions Raised
Culture is the blood of a nation and the spiritual home of the people. As an extremely important educational thought, cultural education has great significance and far-reaching influence in the past and the present [1] . The study found that school culture has a constructive effect on people. What kind of culture is used to educate students, what kind of values students will acquire, and how they will act according to corresponding concepts and principles [2] [3] [4] . Therefore, school culture affects the values, beliefs and individual growth of every teacher and student in the school, as well as the development path and ultimate pursuit of the school. It is an important cornerstone of cultural education. However, literature analysis found that the current research on cultural education is still relatively weak. On the one hand, research on cultural education started late and has achieved few results. On the other hand, the research on cultural education is too broad, and there is a gap in the discussion of core issues. The existing research results mainly involve conceptual analysis, concept interpretation, value meaning and the expression form of cultural education. However, no scholars have provided an in-depth discussion on the core issue of the mechanism of cultural education. This paper explains the origin of school culture educating people, tries to construct the mechanism model of school culture educating people, and explains the realization path of school culture educating people, with a view to providing inspiration for better promoting student growth and school development.
2. The Origin of School Culture and Education
Cultural education is put forward for knowledge-based education expressed by knowledge education and the education model that regards people as knowledge containers. It advocates the educational concept of comprehensive education. The ultimate goal of cultural education is to forge the virtues of human nature, let people do what they do and do not do in the choice of core values, and develop a value orientation of honor and shame [5] . In education and teaching, the often mentioned “teaching and educating people”, “management educating people”, “service educating people” and “environmental educating people” are in the final analysis “culture educating people”. In essence, school culture educating people means that in the process of cultural inheritance and innovation, schools guide teachers and students to make correct cultural choices so that school culture can be transformed into individual culture to realize the self-improvement and self-transcendence of teachers and students. Process [3] .
School culture is an important carrier of educating people, and all teachers and students are the object of educating people. The “carrier” acting on the “object” seems to be a microscopic process, but its action process is extremely complex and has its own unique mechanism of action. However, like any other scientific question, there are rules to follow. Bronfenbrenner’s Social Ecosystem Theory, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory, Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development and Kelmans Theory of Attitude Formation [6] [7] [8] , etc. The mechanism of school culture educating people brings enlightenment.
3. The Mechanism of School Culture Educating People
We believe that the mechanism of school culture educating people includes three fields, namely, the “cultural field” composed of spiritual culture, institutional culture, material culture and behavioral culture and the “cultivation field” formed in the process of school culture cultivation and management. Individuals are exposed to the “cultivation field” formed by “awareness-judgment-adaptation-identification-internalization-practice” in the cultural atmosphere of the school. The three fields are progressive from large to small, and finally, in the process of inheritance and innovation of school culture, we guide school teachers and students to make cultural choices, consciously transform school culture into personal culture, and achieve the purpose of school culture educating people, to achieve self-improvement and self-transcendence of teachers and students (Figure 1).
1) Cultural Field
Every school is intentionally or unintentionally creating its own unique school culture. Over time, school culture will form an atmosphere and form a “cultural field”. As long as individuals enter it, they can feel the existence of school culture, which includes four aspects: spiritual culture, institutional culture, material culture and behavioral culture.
Spiritual culture is the core component of school culture and the driving force for cultural education. It mainly includes school spirit, school-running philosophy, values, and ways of thinking. Among them, the school spirit is the cultural tradition created and accumulated by the school in long-term educational practice and recognized and followed by its teachers, students and staff. Its core content and specific manifestation are school spirit. The philosophy of running a school is the theory and belief of what kind of people the school cultivates and how to cultivate it.
Institutional culture is an important guarantee for school culture, including various rules and regulations established by the school, such as the school’s management system for people, money, materials, time, space, information, etc. Therefore, the main content of institutional culture is management system culture. The management system includes the teacher management system, student management system, work and rest management system, campus management system, financial management system, file management system, etc. The establishment of school rules and regulations should be subject to the spiritual and cultural construction of the school and must be combined with and guided by the school-running concept.
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Figure 1. The functional mechanism model of school culture educating people.
Material culture is the explicit culture of school culture and the foundation of cultural education. It includes the construction of school buildings, the design of the campus, the layout of the environment, etc. It is the guarantee of school education and teaching and reflects the spirit of a school.
Behavioral culture is the dynamic presentation of school culture and the expansion and extension of spiritual culture and institutional culture. When the school’s spiritual culture and institutional culture are internalized into the behavioral habits of teachers and students, teachers and students will automatically and without thinking follow the school’s thinking in classroom teaching, class management, interpersonal communication, and recreational and sports activities., to act.
2) Cultivation Farm
The formation of the “cultivation field” is the process of cultivating and managing school cultural education, which can be discussed from three aspects of nurturing, namely, diagnosis of the current situation of school cultural education, problem intervention and effect evaluation. The status quo diagnosis is the foundation, the problem intervention is the core, and the effect evaluation is the key. The three spiral and play a role together.
First, the status quo diagnosis. Whether the construction of school culture is complete and whether the unique educational effect of culture has achieved due results are the key points of the current situation assessment. Generally, the school’s spiritual culture should play a role in leading development and uniting people’s hearts, institutional culture should focus on regulating words and deeds and inspiring morale, material culture should focus on playing its role of edification and positive suggestion, and behavioral culture should pay attention to playing its role in observing and imitating, guiding words and deeds.
Second, problem intervention. To intervene in the diagnosed problems, such as further strengthening system construction, improving cultural signs, rectifying the phenomenon of campus bullying, strengthening the leadership and penetration of the school’s concept of running a school on classroom teaching and class management, and guiding and promoting all aspects of school culture educating people to play their due role.
Third, the effect evaluation. After a certain means of intervention for a period of time, whether the situation of school cultural education has been improved and whether it has played its due function requires a special evaluation of the current cultural education effect. If the evaluation effect is satisfactory, the school culture will gradually play the role of cultural education, and individuals in the school will gradually make cultural judgments and choices in the school culture, internalizing the school culture in the heart and externalizing it in practice; if the evaluation effect is not effective, Ideal will continue to follow the cultivation mechanism of “diagnosis of status quo—problem intervention—effect evaluation” to educate people until a good atmosphere of cultural education is formed, and finally, a long-term mechanism of school culture education is established.
3) Nursery Field
Each individual in the school has a strong initiative. They will consciously explore the school’s cultural identity (awareness), make value judgments (judgment), and actively or passively implement (adaptation) according to the school’s requirements. Students will gradually identify with all or part of the school’s culture (identification), internalize them in their hearts (internalization), and finally externalize them in their actions, forming students’ stable behavior habits (practice).
First, be aware. “Awareness” is the premise of cultural education and an individual’s preliminary observation of school culture. When an individual is in a school, first, he is aware of the cultural atmosphere, such as what the school’s educational philosophy is, how the school’s work and rest time is arranged, and what the campus environment is. It is the individual’s initial perception of the school’s external culture.
Second, judge. “Judgment” is the value judgment made by individuals on school culture and the process of individuals making cultural choices. When an individual perceives some of the cultural characteristics of the school, he or she will make a value judgment based on the cultural value of the individual, i.e., which ones he or she personally agrees with, which ones he or she does not quite agree with, and which ones are uncertain and need further consideration. This process is an individual’s self-recognition of the existence of school culture.
Third, adapt. “Adaptation” is the starting point of educating people, and it is the process in which individuals actively or passively carry out cultural inheritance. School rules and regulations, teaching methods, etc., are not transferable by the will of individual students, and even the rules and regulations have certain compulsion, and individual students can only conform to these norms, which is the initial inheritance of individual school culture.
Fourth, identify. “Identity” is the key to educating people. It is the process in which individuals take the initiative to identify all or part of the school culture and intentionally internalize it into individual culture. It is a turning point in the process of school culture educating people.
Fifth, internalization. “Internalization” is the core of educating people, and it is a process in which individuals take the initiative to organically unify school culture and individual culture and internalize them in their hearts. Individuals will actively integrate the school culture with their original value system, encode the school culture into their own value system, and form their own new intrinsic value guidelines.
Sixth, practice. “Practice” is the ultimate goal of educating people, and it is the behavioral habit that school culture can externalize to individuals anytime, anywhere. Whether it is in classroom teaching or in class management, interpersonal communication, entertainment and sports activities, individuals can automatically think and act according to the school’s thinking without thinking, which is a process for individuals to achieve self-improvement and self-transcendence.
4. Conclusion
Individuals in schools have gone through the six “progressive” mechanism processes of “awareness, judgment, adaptation, identification, internalization, and practice”. On the one hand, they will inherit the excellent culture of the school, and on the other hand, they will continue to innovate. The new school culture can realize the organic interaction between personal culture and school culture, truly internalize school culture into personal culture, and realize the purpose of school culture in educating people.
Fund Projects
The major subject of Sichuan Provincial Education and Scientific Research Project “Research on the Mental Health Monitoring System of Primary and Secondary School Students” (SCJG22A004-1) in 2022; the project leader: Chuanxing Liu.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the careful guidance of Ningbo Zeng, a researcher at Sichuan Institute of Education Sciences, for putting forward many constructive suggestions on this article.