The effective functioning of a modern school in an Age of Uncertainty requires conscious creation of its culture, which, when shaped, ensures the school's implementation of its mission in a dynamically changing social, economic and cultural reality. Recognizing the possibility of influencing culture and shaping it in accordance with a given direction means focusing on identifying its elements subject to modification, learning about the factors conducive to cultural change and the possibilities and ways of carrying it out. School culture highlights specific aspects of school life and brings out the importance of "who we are" and " the way we do things around here" (Deal & Peterson, 2010). Research on school culture is one of the most interesting directions in the search for factors in the development and improvement of school organization (Hoy, 1990).

Many researchers agree that school culture is a crucial variable in school improvement (Deal & Peterson, 1999; Stoll & Fink, 1996).

Scientific analyzes regarding intra-school processes, referred to as "school culture", come from various disciplines and were initially associated with the concept of school life by Waller (1932), who noted that schools have an identity of their own, with complex rituals of personal relationships, a set of folkways, mores, irrational sanctions, and moral codes (see also: Maslowski, 2006; Schoen & Teddlie, 2008). The concept of organizational culture began to receive attention in the research communities (e.g., Deal & Kennedy, 1982; Ouchi, 1981) as a factor associated with organizational performance in the 1980s. Lack of early attention by researchers may be because culture is associated with taken-for-granted values, underlying assumptions, expectations, collective memories, and definitions in an organization (Cameron & Quinn, 1999, p. 14). Over the last few decades, the discussion on the concept of school culture has become an integral part of both the educational discourse ongoing in various circles and empirical studies devoted to school. Despite different interpretations of the category of school culture itself (see e.g. Deal & Peterson, 1999; Schoen & Teddlie, 2008; ), there is consensus among researchers that its cognitive value results from a comprehensive understanding of various aspects of everyday school life and is therefore helpful in learning and understanding the nature of school life and institutionalized education.

The aim of the poster presentation will be to present a research project on the cultures of alternative education schools, to discuss its conceptual assumptions and planned methodological solutions. The project is a team effort, prepared with the intention of identifying the cultures of selected institutions, defining their specificity and analyzing the interactions between individual dimensions and cultural elements. An equally important goal of research activities will be to compare the cultures of the studied institutions - to determine whether the teaching-learning environments, which are unique examples of innovative educational ventures, are clearly different and how this is expressed.

                Learning about different educational proposals is cognitively fascinating, but also in the social interest. Typical human characteristics are activity, searching for new solutions, improving the existing reality, and this, in relation to the school reality, becomes particularly important due to the need to provide high-quality modern educational services. The planned research will primarily provide new knowledge and is therefore significant for building and developing school culture theory.

A comprehensive and accurate description and analysis of the selected schools’ cultures will be possible thanks to the case study research procedure, more precisely, multiple case study. The research will be carried out in deliberately selected schools exemplifying alternative educational proposals in Poland. The researchers want to select general education schools that represent differences in organizing educational processes and everyday practices related to teaching, including original curricula. In the designed study, Schoen and Teddlie’s (2008) school culture model will be used to structure the analyses. This model describes school culture as being comprised of four different dimensions: (I) Professional Orientation, (II) Organizational Structure, (III) Quality of the Learning Environment, and (IV) Student-Centered Focus that exist at three different levels of abstraction: artifacts, espoused beliefs, and basic assumptions (Schein, 1985). Therefore, the model offers a framework for describing, discussing, and comparing school functions across four dimensions of school culture and also allows culture to be examined across three levels at which culture is manifested (Schein, 1985). The above-mentioned model of school culture entails the need to design research that takes into account various data sources and methods, taking into account data on all dimensions and levels of culture, therefore various quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques and tools will be used in the own research. Maslowski (2006) also suggests triangulating a variety of qualitative and quantitative data sources to study culture, because the weaknesses of one method are compensated by similar findings with other methods. Moreover, all members of a given school community will participate in the study, i.e. students, teachers, principals, administration, and parents. A separate research strategy will be developed for each educational institution, established in consultation with the management and after becoming familiar with the organization of the school year in a given institution. Research activities in each educational institution will be carried out concurrently. The adopted solutions are intended to ensure mutual complementation of the results obtained at individual stages of the research process and to eliminate possible errors in the methods used. Moreover, the examined reality is complex and multi-aspect, therefore the use of different methods ensures obtaining different types of data. The approach used is an exemplification of the plural heterogeneous approach to the research process.

The researchers’ intention is to provide a comprehensive, coherent picture of the cultures of institutions that constitute alternative educational proposals. The aim is, first of all, to conduct an in-depth examination of the cultures of selected institutions, present their specificity, recognize dimensions and analyze the interactions between individual cultural elements. Secondly, a comparison of the cultures of the surveyed institutions will be made. It is cognitively interesting to determine whether the teaching-learning environments in various and unique examples of innovative educational projects are clearly different. The use of a wide range of methods and the data collected thanks to them, which will then be triangulated, is intended to provide a multidimensional picture of schools. In our opinion, this procedure will not only enable the search for universality, indicating the repeatability of specific elements (phenomena, behavior, situations), documenting the relationships between the overall life and functioning of the school and its effects, but will also result in rich, "dense" descriptions of everyday life in schools, understanding of individual elements or aspects of this life by people immersed in it. Research based on the school culture model used may be useful in obtaining a more complete understanding of the socio-cultural and organizational factors at the school level that facilitate school improvement, a school that functions effectively in such a difficult contemporary reality. This knowledge is a logical precursor to the reculturation of schools in order to achieve and sustain the changes currently desired.

Cameron, K.S., & Quinn, R.E. (1999). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture based on the competing values framework. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Deal, T.E., & Kennedy, A. (1982). Corporate cultures: The rites and rituals of corporate life. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Deal, T.E., & Peterson, K. (1999). Shaping school culture: The heart of leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Deal, T. E., & Peterson, K. D. (2010). Shaping school culture: Pitfalls, paradoxes, and promises. John Wiley & Sons. Hoy, W. K. (1990). Organizational climate and culture: A conceptual analysis of the school workplace. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 1(2), 149–168. Maslowski, R. (2006). A review of inventories diagnosing school culture. Journal of Educational Administration, 44(1), 6–35. Ouchi, W.G. (1981). Theory Z: How American business can meet the Japanese challenge. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Schein E. (1985). Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. Schoen L.T., Teddlie, Ch. (2008). A new model of school culture. A response to a call for conceptual clarity. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 19(2), 129-153. Stoll, L., & Fink, D. (1996). Changing our schools. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Waller W. (1932). The sociology of teaching. New York: Russell & Russell.