Making Sense of Large Scale Educational Reform

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Making Sense of Large Scale Educational Reform

• Amanda Datnow
• USC Rossier School of Education

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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

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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

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Purpose of the paper Im discussing today

• To explore how teachers make sense of
  comprehensive school reform (CSR)

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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

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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

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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Teacher Meaning-MakingShared, Consistent
Definitions of Reform

• About Success for All
• Lets see, its scripted. You follow a certain
  plan every day.on day one you follow exactly
  what they tell you to do.
• I would say its a program. Its extremely
  structured. To the minute.
• In general, the space negotiating a personal
  meaning of the reform is much smaller when
  implementing a specified reform

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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 helpdeduce 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

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Reform has little or no meaning

• About Comer
• Im trying to think what some of the philosophy
  is. Im not sure. Oh gosh. Here Ive sat
  through all of those meetings, and Im trying to
  think. What would be some of the? I dont know
  off hand.

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How reforms were defined in the context of
teacher practice

• For some, reform was an imposition
• Im not good with scriptedbecause we dont all
  fit into molds
• For others, it was a relief
• Its 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 thats what teaching was all
  about
• For others, it caused confusion
• I really wouldnt know how to apply it to my
  teaching

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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

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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

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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?