DEVELOPING SCHOOL CULTURE THAT PROMOTES LEARNING Execellence Schools, like any other organization, are the collectives

of people with varied views of reality. What the school is and what it becomes is determined by the people within it. Its real existence lies not in the physical facilities but in the hearts and minds of the people who define policies and engage in educational activities in the pursuit of its organizational ends. When these people share the same world view about what education is, when their educational paradigms are generally consistent with each other, or when their core assumption about education become sufficiently homogeneous, a school culture has emerged. The emergence of this culture is dependent to a large extent upon the ability of people to identify with and live the beliefs and values embodied in the school mission statement. Building or shaping of a school culture conducive to teaching-learning therefore is not only a task but a challenge to Principals requiring educational leadership strategies which will eventually bring about the desired excellent or quality learning results in his/her school of assignment. Shaping a school culture that will produce the desired quality results, the principal must realize that his or her primary task is to design the governing ideas of purpose, vision, and core values by which teachers in the school are to live by, and to translate these core values into policies, strategies, structures and organizational decisions. The task of the Principal leader is not limited in produce documents and memos that contain lines and boxes defining roles of teachers in the organization. More importantly, it entails ensuring that people have a clear concept of what their roles in the organization are, and putting in place processes for the continuous improvement of strategies and policies. In addition to organizational design, principal leaders must also perform the role of teacher. As a teacher, the leader helps everyone in the organization gain more insightful views of current reality. He or she helps people restructure their views of reality to enable them to see beyond the superficial conditions and events into the underlying causes of problems and thereby see new possibilities for shaping the future. An educational leader performs the role of a teacher where he or she helps teachers identify long term trends, assess their implications and define the causes of certain patterns of behavior. For Example, teachers may be helped in viewing absenteeism not only in terms of substitution and salary deductions but in terms of its causes and impact on student learning. The core values embodied in the vision/mission statement must galvanize the various groups in the institution that they become one in purpose and in action. To achieve this, the principal leader must shift in leadership style of management, from transactional to transformational leadership. As defined by some known education researchers transactional leaders assume that leaders and subordinates do not share a common stake in the organization. They must therefore exchange needs and services in order to achieve an independent objectives. Transformational leaders on the other hand, help people to move from being mere subordinate into followers. Subordinates do what they are supposed to do, while good followers are self-motivated, they think for themselves, and are committed to a vision of what the school can become and to what teaching and learning should be. In schools with

transformational leaders, leaders and followers are united in the pursuit of the institutions vision/mission.