Understanding Educational Affairs: Dilemmas of Organization Culture and Decentralization

This study explores the work culture of local level government educational organizations (District Education Offices) through the perspective of decentralization. The study uses fused PS-HR theory to gather the detailed information on these organizations. The study researches the gap between the expected environment of decentralization and the real environment. In order to understand the gap four positive and four negative factors has been identified. The study has drawn some implications, that DE office could use, such as the working environment of local offices needs to be contextualized to the changing nature of educational affairs by developing the ability to understand how certain events affected the teaching and learning situations in schools; giving value even to the smallest efforts will address the local level educational affairs problems more efficiently. Continuous reading and refined learning culture could also play a crucial role in the realization of local level educational improvement in different areas. Such reading and learning culture could also contribute to changing the attitude of the people to endure coordinated decentralization.