Establishing and maintaining sustainable levels of success within any school setting commences with a culture of connectedness between teachers, students and parents. This is an expression of their alignment and commitment to a shared set of core educational and community values. My research explored these relationships from the perspective of 'tribal' connectedness in three stages: 1) the formulation of the 'Schools as Contemporary Tribal Cultures' paradigm (SaCTC) -- a framework for analysing connectedness and school culture based on current organisational research and indigenous tribal philosophies; 2) the development of a suite of mixed-method instruments capable of assessing the level of connectedness within a school community; and 3) contextualisation of the model and the findings in a short case study. The study focused on a Queensland regional school observed to possess strong levels of connectedness between students, teachers and parents, and a history of sustained academic and co-curricular success. The findings from the study provided evidence supporting the validity of the SaCTC paradigm, and yielded insights concerning gender-role dynamics and the relationship between a period of cultural immersion and connectedness. The SaCTC paradigm and insights from the study will provide researchers and practitioners in the field with new perspectives on school culture.