Teachers' Images of their Schools and Perceptions of their Work Environments

The Images of Schools through Metaphor (ISM) was developed as a simple, economical questionnaire to allow school leaders and researchers to survey teachers' images of their school. The article describes briefly aspects of the development and validation of this questionnaire and its application in an investigation of relationships between teachers' images of their schools and their perceptions of its work environment as assessed by the School Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ). The sample used consisted of 162 teachers in 48 schools in Tasmania, Australia, each of whom completed both the ISM and the SLEQ. The various results revealed were generally of considerable statistical significance indicating a strong relationship between the images teachers have of their school and the perceptions they have of its work environment.