Abstract
Educational change scholarship has extensively examined reform in schools with established institutional histories, yet less attention has been given to how newly established schools construct the cultural foundations through which institutional values become recognizable in everyday life. This article examines how institutional values are translated into everyday organizational culture in a newly established Muhammadiyah primary school in Indonesia. Drawing on a qualitative case study at SD Muhammadiyah Plus Sibuluan, North Sumatra, the study uses multi-actor data from semi-structured interviews, field observations, and institutional artifacts involving the principal, teachers, staff, students, and parents. Using reflexive thematic analysis, the study develops making values ordinary as an analytical concept to explain how institutional values move from leadership intention into everyday organizational practice. The findings identify five interrelated translation mechanisms: visible adult modelling, routinized daily practices, professional space for teacher adaptation, relational legitimation with parents and students, and structural embedding through rules, documentation, schedules, and communication systems. The study contributes to educational change scholarship by shifting attention from reforming established school cultures to the formation of cultural foundations in a newly established school. It further reframes transformational leadership as cultural and institutional work through which multiple actors interpret, enact, negotiate, and stabilize organizational values. Educational change becomes culturally embedded when values are not only declared but gradually made ordinary in everyday school life.