2.5 How Everyday Interactions Shape School Culture

For teachers and school staff

Part of the Positive School Culture Guide for Teachers/School Staff: What students’ experiences of Year 7 can teach us

This series shares insights from research exploring how students experience the transition to secondary school, and what these experiences reveal about how Positive School Cultures are generated through relationships, expectations, and everyday classroom interactions.

Culture is generated in moments, not just systems

When we think about school culture, it is easy to focus on structures: behaviour policies, routines, schemes of learning, accountability pressures, or whole-school initiatives.

These matter. They shape what is possible.

But students rarely encounter culture at the level of policy. They experience it through how school systems respond to them and through everyday interactions with staff and peers.

• A teacher noticing them — or not (recognition)
• A response to a wrong answer (safety, trust)
• The tone used when giving instructions (relational climate)
• A moment of humour that includes — or excludes (belonging)
• A decision to follow up — or move on (relational continuity)

Across the Year 7 transition (the start of secondary school in England when students are aged 11-13), students repeatedly described these interactions as the places where culture becomes real.

These are not isolated moments. They are the sites through which school culture is generated, reinforced, and sometimes disrupted over time. They are also the points at which students learn whether participation feels possible, worthwhile, and safe.

A classroom vignette: the same moment, different experiences

In one Year 7 lesson, a teacher asks a question and a student gives an incorrect answer.

The teacher responds neutrally:

'Not quite — let's think about it again.'

From an adult perspective, this is a routine, low-stakes correction.

Yet students described how moments like this can be experienced very differently.

For one student, the teacher's response signals that it is safe to make mistakes and try again. Participation feels worthwhile and trust begins to develop.

For another, the same response reinforces uncertainty about whether they are 'good at this'. They become more cautious about contributing in future.

For a third, the interaction has little immediate impact because they are not yet fully engaged in the lesson or classroom community.

The interaction itself is unchanged.

What differs are the conditions students bring to the interaction: their previous experiences, existing relationships, confidence, sense of belonging, and expectations about how others will respond.

These moments are also shaped by peer responses. A classmate's reaction — whether supportive, dismissive, or indifferent — can influence whether participation feels safe, valued, or risky.

This is why culture cannot be reduced to individual actions alone.

It emerges through the interaction between what happens, the conditions under which it occurs, how it is interpreted, and how others respond.

Interactions connect structure and experience

These interactions are not separate from wider school structures.

Students bring ways of speaking, responding, and relating shaped through their experiences in primary school, peer groups, families, and communities. At the same time, schools organise interaction through timetables, grouping, routines, and expectations.

As a result, what 'counts' as participation, confidence, or appropriate behaviour is not neutral. It reflects an interaction between school expectations and the cultural resources students bring with them.

Sometimes these align; sometimes they sit in tension.

For some students, this alignment makes interaction feel relatively straightforward. For others, it can require more adjustment, uncertainty, or effort.

Why the same interaction can lead to different patterns of participation

One of the most consistent findings across the research is that interactions are not experienced equally.

The same classroom moment can lead to:

• confidence and participation for one student
• hesitation or self-protection for another
• indifference for a third

This depends on students' prior experiences, existing relationships, peer dynamics, and how secure they already feel within the classroom community.

In other words, recognition, belonging, and trust are not evenly experienced across students, even within the same lesson.

This helps explain why even well-intentioned practices can produce different outcomes.

It is not simply what teachers do, but how interactions are taken up under different conditions.

Students do not experience culture in isolated moments, but in the patterns those moments form over time.

Individual interactions matter, but their significance often lies in the patterns they form over time.Students are rarely responding to a single moment; they are are responding to what repeated moments come to signify. Through repeated encounters, students begin to develop expectations about whether participation is safe, whether their contributions are valued, and whether they are recognised within the classroom community.

Patterns of interaction shape participation over time

Across repeated interactions, small differences accumulate.

Students begin to learn:

• whether it is safe to contribute
• whether their effort is recognised
• whether they are noticed or overlooked
• whether their ideas and experiences are taken seriously
• whether participation feels worthwhile

Over time, these experiences can become patterned, shaping different pathways of participation:

• who participates regularly
• who participates cautiously
• and who withdraws or remains on the margins

These patterns are not fixed, but they can become established if they are not recognised and addressed.

In this way, everyday interactions play a central role in shaping participation, confidence, and belonging within the classroom.

Interactions extend beyond teacher-student relationships

Interactions that shape school culture do not occur only between teachers and students. They also take place between students, and these peer interactions can strongly influence how culture is experienced.

Students notice how their classmates respond to questions, mistakes, effort, and participation. A supportive comment, shared humour, or a peer building on an idea can encourage participation. Equally, being ignored, dismissed, or laughed at can make participation feel more difficult or risky.

During adolescence, peer responses often carry particular significance. As students develop a stronger sense of identity and belonging, how they are recognised by their peers can shape whether they feel able to take part in classroom and school life.

These peer dynamics do not operate separately from teacher–student interactions. They interact with them. Teachers can influence these patterns by modelling respectful responses, inviting students to listen to one another, and recognising collaborative contributions.

These interactional patterns are not limited to the classroom. They also develop in corridors, playgrounds, and other informal spaces, where students observe, respond to, and learn from one another in less structured ways. These moments can reinforce, reshape, or sometimes sit in tension with what happens in lessons, contributing to how school culture is experienced across the day.

In this way, school culture is generated not only through individual interactions, but through the wider patterns of response that develop across the group.

Trust develops through consistent interactional patterns

Students rarely described trust as the result of a single powerful moment.

Instead, it developed through repeated experiences where certain things happened reliably:

• being responded to respectfully (recognition)
• experiencing predictable and fair responses (fairness)
• seeing that mistakes are handled constructively (safety)
• noticing that teachers follow up and remember them (relational continuity)

Trust, in this sense, is not an isolated outcome, but the cumulative effect of consistent interactional experiences over time.

Where these patterns are present, students are more likely to:

• participate
• take risks in learning
• ask for help
• persist when learning becomes difficult

Where these patterns are inconsistent, students may withdraw — even when lessons are well designed.

Structures condition interaction—but do not fully determine experience

Timetables, class sizes, grouping practices, and workload shape the conditions under which interactions occur. These conditions influence not only the quality of interactions, but also how frequently students have opportunities to participate, build relationships, and be recognised by others.

They influence:

• how often students are seen (opportunities for recognition)
• whether relationships can stabilise (relational continuity)
• how safely students can participate (interactional predictability)

These structural and institutional conditions matter.

They shape the frequency, continuity, and depth of interaction, and therefore the likelihood that trust, belonging, and engagement develop across each term.

However, they do not fully determine how culture is experienced.

Students' responses also shape how interactions unfold across repeated encounters. Teachers adjust, consciously or unconsciously, to how students respond, which means that classroom culture is continually shaped through reciprocal interactions rather than one-way influence.

Even within the same structural conditions, students described very different experiences across classrooms — often shaped by subtle differences in how interactions unfold.

Early interactions during transition have heightened causal weight

The transition into Year 7 is a period of intensified uncertainty.

Students are actively working out:

• how to behave
• where they fit
• who recognises them
• whether it is safe to participate

During this time, early interaction patterns play a particularly important role in shaping expectations about how school 'works'.

These early experiences can:

• support the development of belonging, trust, and engagement
• or contribute to hesitation, withdrawal, or guarded participation

They do not fix trajectories permanently, but they can shape how students begin to engage with school over time.

What this means in practice

If school culture is generated through everyday interactions, then improving culture is not only about refining systems, but about understanding how interactions are experienced across different students.

This shifts the focus from asking:

• Are our systems in place?

to asking:

• How are interactions experienced across the classroom?

This is not about adding more to teachers’ workload. Rather, it is about recognising that everyday interactions help shape how students come to understand their place within the school community.

Small differences in tone, timing, follow-up, and attention can influence:

• who feels recognised
• who feels able to contribute
• who feels confident seeking support
• and who remains less visible

Over time, these interactions accumulate into wider patterns of participation, belonging, trust, and engagement.

School culture is often discussed as something large and abstract. Yet for students, it is frequently experienced through hundreds of small interactions that signal whether they are recognised, supported, and able to participate.

Key ideas

• School culture is generated through everyday interactions, not only through systems and policies
• Interactions are where recognition, belonging, trust, fairness, and engagement take shape
• The same interaction can be experienced differently by different students
• Across repeated interactions, these differences accumulate into patterns of participation
• Structures shape the conditions for interaction, but do not fully determine experience
• Early interactions during transition can influence how students begin to engage with school

Reflection questions for teachers

These questions are designed to help you notice how school culture is experienced in everyday interactions. They are not checklists or judgements, but prompts to explore what may be happening beneath the surface.

• Which students are most frequently recognised in my classroom? Who might be overlooked?
• How consistently are fairness and recognition experienced across different students?
• What patterns of trust or hesitation might be developing through repeated interactions?
• How do my tone, timing, and follow-up influence how interactions are experienced?
• Where might small changes increase the likelihood that more students experience recognition, trust, and engagement?

These questions are also part of an ongoing research conversation. If something here resonates — or doesn't quite fit your experience  — your perspective is valuable. Contributions in the comments help ensure this work remains grounded in the realities of school life.  

Next in the series

The final post [for now] explores the gradual development of belonging during secondary school transition.

This series explores what students’ experiences of starting secondary school can teach us about how Positive School Cultures (PoSCs) are created through everyday interactions, expectations, and relationships.

The Positive School Culture Guide for Teachers/School Staff: What Students’ Experiences of Year 7 Can Teach Us

Each piece focuses on a different aspect of how school culture is experienced and developed during the transition to secondary school.

1. Positive School Culture Is Not the Same as Being Happy

2. Why Recognising Students Matters More Than Praise

3. Why Clear Rules Do Not Always Feel Fair

4. Why School Culture Is Not Experienced Equally

5. How Everyday Interactions Shape School Culture

6. Belonging Takes Time: What Schools Can Learn from the Year 7 Transition