Raising educational achievement: What can instructional psychology contribute?

This chapter discusses the different ways of describing a school's ethos and culture and different ways of investigating them. It shows how the ethos of a school is expressed in its day-to-day life. The chapter examines an alternative approach to investigating the culture or ethos of a school and how educational psychologists can contribute when a school's ethos has many negative features. Within the framework of educational psychology, a school cannot be understood by focusing solely at a single level, whether that is the whole school or the communal context, group settings such as classrooms, the family or the individual. Schools exist for the sake of their pupils and to serve a community by preparing its youngest members for their roles in adult society. Students' identities are developed, not by adopting their school's ethos as it is presented to them, but by trying out various ways of positioning themselves in relation to it.