Creating a Culture of Change: Social Impact

The "Master Class Series has the following objectives:

• To give young people the keys and tools to understand the concepts and scientific evidence to decipher racist attitudes and behavior;

• To propose inspiring models to equip young people to take action at their level in the fight against racism and discriminations;

• To inspire policymakers, at the global, national, and local levels, to pursue collective efforts in the fight against racism and discriminations" ("UNESCO universal declaration on cultural diversity: UNESCO," 2001).

To understand this better, one must gain a sense of what influences affect people on personal and social levels each day. According to Dr. Bridwell-Mitchell in the video linked below, cultural norms, values and behaviours exist in the form of relationships between people and the ways in which they interact with each other (Public school culture and organizational theory, 2013). Changes to culture take place through these interactions between people. This means that institutional leaders and stakeholders can act intentionally to elicit positive cultural and social change within their networks and community.

How then do educational leaders influence their students and staff to move them collectively and individually in progressive, ethical, socially responsible ways? Bridwell-Mitchell says this is no easy task due to all the fundamental beliefs, assumptions, and values that people hold to be true. However, in many ways high schools and post-secondary institutions are situated perfectly in society as places for these changes to take place as they hold 'legitimate' rights to such work. In her work,Too Legit to Quit: Institutional Perspectives on the Study of Schools as Organizations, Dr. Bridwell-Mitchell says, "By way of definition,‘legitimacy is’, as explained by Suchman (1995, p. 574) . . . ‘a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity [such as an educational institution] are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions.’"(Bridwell-Mitchell, 2018).