Cultural analysis of the folkeskole

Module 2: Project 2 Cultural analysis of the Folkeskole

4th of November 2011 Nicole Wischner Stefanie Jacobs Ruben Garcia Anil Diren Öz Teacher: Jens Peter Christiansen

1. Methodological design and data
1.1 The Pentagon model

1.2 Organizational Culture and description

Artifacts: What do you see? When it is time, the students go to the changing rooms of the gym and change theirclothes. If they are ready, they go to the sports hall and do what they want until the teacher enters the gym. Some of them sit against the wall, some sit on the mats, some climb on the wall bars (the bars that protect the music installation) and a few are sitting in the center of the gym. When the teacher enters the room, the students don’t pay attention to them and continue what they are doing. Theteacher uses the whistle to get their attention and ask them all to come to the center of the gym. When they all (except the students who are not able to participate or the student who don’t want to participate) sit in the center, the teacher start with the explanation of the lesson. But while the teacher explain the lesson plan, the ‘not participating’ students keeps sitting on the mats and on thefloor against the wall (with shoes and normal clothes, mobile phones and iPods or computers) and they keep talking, listening to music or playing some games. They don’t pay attention at all. The teachers don’t seem to notice them and let them do their own thing. For example: they fold the mat double and jump on it with shoes. The teachers look at them from time to time, but they don’t sayanything and look neutral. The students and teachers have the same behavior during the lesson. At the end of the class, the teacher indicates that they can go to the changing rooms. All the students go to the changing rooms and after that, they go home.

Espoused values: What did we want of them? What are the expected values during this lesson? We want that all the students participate during thelesson and that they enjoy the class. We also want that they show some interest in sport and that they try to do the exercises that we prepared. These are the values, which we expect from the students. But we also thought about the values for the teachers. We want the teacher to say something to the students who were jumping on the mat with the shoes and to be stricter with them. Basic assumptions: Inour opinion, it is not usual that the students who don’t want to participate just do what they want and that, the teacher don’t say anything to those students. We think that it is important to take care of the school materials and not to break them. When the students don’t join the lesson, they have to watch the others or they get a kind of task during this lesson. We don’t want them to wastetheir time. I think this is the reason why we noticed what we described before. 1.3 Relationship The ‘not participation’ students and the teachers don’t pay attention to each other. We never saw them talking to each other. The teachers pay attention to the students who are joining the lesson and who try to do the exercises. The teacher is friendly and close with ‘participating’ students and thestudents trust her and tell her sometimes secrets and personal belongings. Maybe the reason therefore is that she is the contact person, for the 7th till 9th, grade to talk with when there are some problems. 1.4 Interviews 1.4.1 Student 1 He doesn’t like school because he thinks that school boring. His favorite subject is English and he participates in this class. In his spare time, he plays handball,but he doesn’t like the sports at school, because he finds this sports boring. He says that they always practice the same sports and he want to experience something new. He says that he doesn’t want to try to do anything, because everything is boring during the lesson. We just can use our mobile phones or iPods and the teacher don’t say anything. He tells us that his parents don’t know anything...