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This paper explores how teachers make sense of comprehensive school reform (CSR) and the consequences of their understandings for implementation. It presents qualitative case studies of eight schools that implemented various CSR models and highlights the shared definitions, ambiguous or confused definitions, and lack of meaning that teachers associated with these reforms. The findings emphasize the importance of teacher ownership of the change process and suggest that more open-ended and wide-ranging reforms may be more difficult to interpret consistently.
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Making Sense of Large Scale Educational Reform Amanda Datnow USC Rossier School of Education
Background on Large Scale Reform • Marks a shift away from the idea that change happens organically, one school at a time • Focus on creating a systemic infrastructure to support change • Goal is to achieve change across a large number of schools at the same time
Examples of Large Scale Reform in K-12 Education • No Child Left Behind Act • San Diego City Schools reform • Scale up of Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models in schools nationwide
Purpose of the paper I’m discussing today • To explore how teachers make sense of comprehensive school reform (CSR)
Key Ideas from Conceptual Framework • Need for teacher ownership of the change process • Current reforms vary in how much they value teacher knowledge • Important to find out how teachers understand policy and the consequences of their understandings for implementation
Key Ideas from Conceptual Framework • Meaning of events are influenced by individual experiences, social interaction, and structures and cultures in which people are situated. • Similar to cognitive framework of implementation proposed by Spillane et al. (2002) – agency, situation, and policy signals
Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) Study • Qualitative case studies of 8 schools in CA and FL • Schools implemented the following CSR models: • Edison, Accelerated Schools, Comer SDP, MicroSociety, Success for All, ATLAS, and Direct Instruction
Examples of Interview Questions • How would you describe the reform model? • If someone said, ‘what is an Accelerated School?’ what would you tell them? • What is the relationship between the reform and the state standards and accountability system? • How would I know this was a Comer school if I came into your classroom?
Organization of the Findings • Contexts for Meaning • Reform Models • State Accountability Systems • How teachers made meaning of reforms • Shared definitions • Ambiguous or confused definitions • Reform has no meaning • How reforms were defined in the context of teacher practice • Negotiating new meanings of reform
Contexts for Meaning • The Reform Models • Range of prescriptive to more organic models allow varied possibilities for meaning making • Strong State Accountability Systems • Main reason for reform adoption was need to raise test scores • Some reforms did not fit well with state standards • Teaching to state standards governed more of teacher practice than the CSR models
Teacher Meaning-Making:Shared, Consistent Definitions of Reform • About Success for All • “Let’s see, it’s scripted. You follow a certain plan every day….on day one …you follow exactly what they tell you to do. • “I would say it’s a program. It’s extremely structured. To the minute.” In general, the space negotiating a personal meaning of the reform is much smaller when implementing a specified reform
Ambiguous or confused definitions of reform • Describing the ATLAS model • “Generally looking at your own situation, doing some kind of surveying or otherwise collecting information, which could [help]…deduce where the problems were…” • “I know it has something to do with improving the students with their basics with reading and their math…” • “Almost like integrating the different disciplines together” Sometimes ambiguity was due to models themselves, but most often a lack of training
Reform has little or no meaning • About Comer • “I’m trying to think what some of the philosophy is. I’m not [sure]. Oh gosh. Here I’ve sat through all of those meetings, and I’m trying to think. What would be some of the…? I don’t know off hand.”
How reforms were defined in the context of teacher practice • For some, reform was an imposition • “I’m not good with scripted…because we don’t all fit into molds” • For others, it was a relief: • “It’s all broken down into each thing that I need” • For some, reform was nothing new • “I was surprised that it has a name to it because I just thought that’s what teaching was all about” • For others, it caused confusion • “I really wouldn’t know how to apply it to my teaching”
Conclusions • Teachers’ interpretations of reform were affected by • Their own ideologies • The conditions of the reforms themselves, the training and specifications that accompanied them • The environmental conditions (i.e., the state context) in which they were situated • The more open-ended and wide-ranging the reform was, the more difficult it was to gain a uniformity of meaning among the teachers
Conclusions • At the same time, very structured reforms left little opportunity for teachers to grapple with meanings • When teachers could not make sense of reforms, the reforms had little impact on their classroom practice
Possible Research Directions on Large Scale Reform • How is a reform adjusted to meet the needs of particular local contexts (e.g., ELL students, high poverty, high SES)? • What does large scale educational reform mean for the professional lives of teachers? • How does large scale reform affect classroom instruction? • How do leaders (principals, superintendents, teacher leaders) shape large scale reform – and how do reforms shape their leadership? • How do teachers’ beliefs and experiences influence the implementation of a mandated program? • How does a particular large scale reform contribute to the goal of equity in education? • What models of professional development change teachers practice most in large scale reform?
