There are many countries within Europe, which experienced a transformation from a communist system towards a more open one. Such a turbulent process requires a combination of changing political and societal structures but also changing cultures. Citizens of these countries had to become democratic citizens creating a new world and participating in its new structures. In the context of transformation many authors mention serious problems in changing culture in post-socialist world, which makes also economic and societal transformation more difficult. In their eyes, culture was not changed quickly enough and so inhabitants react on new circumstances by means of their “old culture” (Berend, 2009; Sztomka, 1993). Kennedy (2002) even talks about transformation culture, which is specifically created by process of transformation. The question is then, where and how can people learn to become democratic citizens? According to Kymlicka (2001), there are several environments, where it can happen. Organisations of civil society are one possibility. But not all of them are democratic and not all citizens participate in their activities. According to him the school system should be the place then, where children become citizens. At the same time though, schools were strongly linked to communist regime, because before 1989 their main task was to educate proper socialist citizens (Johnson, 2010; Moree, 2008). The question is then if schools managed to change from communist system agents into places which can help to prepare democratic citizens.

The educational system in post-totalitarian countries had to react on changing requirements of outside world (Bahry, 2005; Jones, 2006; Silova, 2004; Seddon, 2005) and also had to change itself. Fullan (2000) mentions two processes inevitably linked to educational change as restructuring and reculturing. Restructuring was very often given by process of school reform, which had different pace in different post-communistic countries. But at the same time reculturing had to take place, which is crucial for citizenship formation and for changing value system (Higgins, 1998; Kymlicka, 2001).

For the implementation of any change within the education system, school culture is crucial (Veugelers & Bosman, 2005). This can be defined in different ways – in every case dimensions of symbols, rituals, value system, history and its reflection, relationships and perceived expectations are seen as crucial (Petterson & Deal, 2009; Higgins- & Sadh, 1998; Veugelers & Bosman, 2005; Veugelers & Klaassen, 2007).

In the Czech Republic, the restructuring started 15 years after the political changes by a new school act of 2004. But as we know from previous research, teachers are not very satisfied with the design of the reform and it seems that they do not see themselves as its active players (Moree, 2008). Up to now there were several researches in the Czech Republic conducted on the school under communism (Vaněk, et al., 2011). But we still do not know anything about quality and parameters of changing school culture, which is crucial for creating a democratic environment. That is why the research question was formulated as follows: “What kind of changes of school culture the transformation brought in the Czech school culture and how do teachers experience this process?”

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