Example: biology

PATRICIA BURCH and JAMES P. SPILLANE - …

PATRICIA BURCH and JAMES P. SPILLANEHOW SUBJECTS MATTER IN DISTRICT OFFICE PRACTICE:INSTRUCTIONALLY RELEVANT POLICY IN URBANSCHOOL DISTRICT REDESIGNIn recent years, there has been a virtual explosion of research interestin the role of school districts in instructional change (Hightower,Knapp, Marsh & McLaughlin, 2002). The consensus building withinthe research is that district action is pivotal to whether and howreforms reach classrooms. While drawing attention to how districtsmediate instructional practice, most of the research to date tends tobe subject-neutral. Specifically, very little of the research considershow subject matter acts as a context for district decision-making andaction. Further, policy recommendations for strengthening districts roles tend to be instructionally generic, assuming for example thatteacher staff development needs are the same regardless of the subjectmatter focus of the reform.

patricia burch and james p. spillane how subjects matter in district office practice: instructionally relevant policy in urban school district redesign

Tags:

  James, Bruch, Patricia, Patricia burch and james p, Spillane

Information

Domain:

Source:

Link to this page:

Please notify us if you found a problem with this document:

Other abuse

Transcription of PATRICIA BURCH and JAMES P. SPILLANE - …

1 PATRICIA BURCH and JAMES P. SPILLANEHOW SUBJECTS MATTER IN DISTRICT OFFICE PRACTICE:INSTRUCTIONALLY RELEVANT POLICY IN URBANSCHOOL DISTRICT REDESIGNIn recent years, there has been a virtual explosion of research interestin the role of school districts in instructional change (Hightower,Knapp, Marsh & McLaughlin, 2002). The consensus building withinthe research is that district action is pivotal to whether and howreforms reach classrooms. While drawing attention to how districtsmediate instructional practice, most of the research to date tends tobe subject-neutral. Specifically, very little of the research considershow subject matter acts as a context for district decision-making andaction. Further, policy recommendations for strengthening districts roles tend to be instructionally generic, assuming for example thatteacher staff development needs are the same regardless of the subjectmatter focus of the reform.

2 In other words, the view is what works forlanguage arts will also work for mathematics ( Massell, 2000;Porter and Chester, 2002).The tendency of district policy research to overlook subject matterdifferences is problematic for several reasons. School leaders andteachers conceptualize instruction and efforts to improve it in strik-ingly different ways depending on the subject matter focus ( BURCH & SPILLANE , 2003; Little, 1993; Siskin, 1994). School leaders responses toreform reflect fundamental differences in their views about the subjectarea, not only what counts as knowledge in that subject area but alsoperceptions about the degree of definition within that subject research points to the importance of subject matter as a contextfor leadership practice across different levels of schooling.

3 While thereis some research on subject matter and leadership at the school level,there has been no attention to whether and how subject matter is animportant context for leadership at higher levels of school adminis-tration, for example, district, state and relations between subject matter and districtreform strategies has become urgent as state and federal agenciesattempt to play a more active role in influencing instruction in specificJournal of Educational Change6:51 76, Springer 2005subject areas. In particular, mathematics and language arts havereceived far more attention from state policymakers than othersubjects. Indeed, most states developed curricular standards andstudent assessments for mathematics and language arts well beforethey did so for science and social studies.

4 The federal government sattempts to influence instruction also have differed by subject area,with some federal programs ( , Title I, Eisenhower Mathematicsand Science Program,No Child Left Behind) requiring local responsesin particular subject areas and ignoring others. UnderNo Child LeftBehind, schools (and indeed districts) that fail to make measurableprogress in reading and mathematics on standardized tests face severesanctions and the possibility of school closure (see SPILLANE & BURCH ,in press). As a consequence, while districts face increasing pressurefrom many directions to take teaching and learning seriously, thesepressures differ depending on the subject matter. Paying attention tohow subject matter acts as a context for district policy allows for aricher and more nuanced understanding of the policy implementationprocess in the K-12 education sector.

5 A recent synthesis of imple-mentation literature suggests that patterns of coupling can vary bysubject matter. For example, in elementary schools, science teachingremained mostly decoupled from administration and the policyenvironment, while language arts and mathematics were more tightlycoupled ( SPILLANE & BURCH , in press). By situating district policy andpractice within the broader instructional environment, we canunderstand why systemic instructional reforms evolve the way thatthey do. Subject specific policy research also can inform strategies forestablishing tighter coupling in subject areas, for example, mathe-matics, where instructional improvements in some districts have re-mained more order to investigate how subject matter acts as a context fordistrict policy, we studied patterns in how district administratorsacross three medium to large urban school districts responded todistrict level mandates to improve instruction system-wide and holdschools more accountable for instructional improvements in readingand mathematics.

6 We begin by discussing the framework we devel-oped to guide our analysis and then describe our research that analyses of district policy implementation must takeaccount of subject matter, we identify several ways in which subjectmatter acted as a context for district policy design and implementa-tion. We conclude by considering the implications of this evidence forfuture research on systemic instructional BURCH AND JAMES P. SPILLANE52 THEORETICALFRAMEWORKThe framework we developed integrates concepts across two domainsof research: the influence of subject matter views on teachers work(Ball, 1981; Ball & Bowe, 1992; Ball & Flacy, 1984; Siskin 1991;Grossman & Stodolsky, 1994), and institutional analyses of organi-zational practice (Scott, 1995).

7 We used this framework to examinethe interface between district administrators views of subject matterand their leadership practices for improving instruction in specificcontent areas. The framework illuminated the ways in which normsof subject matter not only pervade schools but also work in andthrough policy making and governance at other and perceptions thereof vary in ways that are likely toresult in differences in leadership practice and its consequences. First,the value the school and broader community place on a disciplinevaries by subject (Siskin, 1991, 1994). For example, time allocations,staffing, and professional development (time and content) all dependon the value attached to each subject.

8 Second, there are epistemo-logical differences among subjects; that is, there are differences in thenature of the knowledge of a discipline including its structure, se-quence and desired and Stodolsky (1994) argued that school subjects varyon at least five dimensions: (1) the degree of definition: whether thereis agreement or not regarding the content of the subject ( , moredefined fields are characterized as emphasizing formal training as ameasure of expertise; (2) scope: the extent to which a subject ishomogenous or composed of multiple fields of study; (3) degree ofsequence: degree to which prior learning is perceived as a requisite tolater learning; (4) characterization of a subject as static or dynamic( , more dynamic fields are characterized by active production ofnew knowledge, changing theoretical positions and a continuing needto stay up to date, while the content of more static subjects changesless rapidly); and (5) the degree to which a subject is viewed as core orbasic.)

9 Variations in the ways that teachers perceive subjects are likelyto be important in understanding relations between reform andinstruction. For example, Ball (1981) found that English and Math-ematics departments at one school responded very differently to ef-forts to create multi-ability classrooms. English teachers supportedthe effort whereas foreign language teachers argued against the SUBJECTS MATTER IN DISTRICT OFFICE PRACTICE53 The idea that there are distinctive institutional environments builtup around different academic disciplines or subject areas has beenapplied primarily to investigations of teachers practice. Policyresearchers, on the other hand, have been slow to follow suit. Even asthey argue greater attention to the instructional core, policyresearchers have held tight to policy explanations rooted in organi-zational analyses and have paid scant attention to relations betweeninstructional theory and policy design (Stein & D Amico, 2000;Cobb, McLain, Lambers and Dean, 2003).

10 This omission likely reflects long-standing assumptions about thedividing lines in between the worlds of educational policy and prac-tice. The nuances of classroom practice have been viewed as theprimary domain of classroom researchers and therefore not anappropriate focus for policy studies. Our aim in this paper is to helpbridge the gap between policy research and instructional research byilluminating how subject matter acts as an important context forbroad-scale (in this instance, district-wide) instructional order to understand the relationship between administrators views of subject matter and how they implement systemic instruc-tional reform, we draw on ideas from the institutional analysis oforganizations (Meyer & Rowan, 1977, 1978; Meyer, Scott and Deal,1981) Like instructional researchers, institutional theorists viewbroader cultural norms as influences on educational policies andpractices.


Related search queries