To learn more about the dialogic process of policy appropriation surrounding literacy instruction at one elementary school, I conducted a 12-month qualitative study that asked: (a) How do six policy stakeholders at one elementary school—four classroom teachers, one administrator, and one reading teacher—make meaning of literacy policies? (b) How do these stakeholders’ understandings shape the appropriation of these policies in their day-to-day literacy practices? and (c) How does the meaning-making of other stakeholders—district, state, and federal policy-makers—intersect with and inform the appropriation of policy by the six focal stakeholders? In asking these questions I hoped to meet the goals of: (a) contextualizing my study within the larger, historical policy
environment; (b) understanding local policy stakeholders’ lived experience with policy at Maplewood; and (c) understanding the dialogic, co-constructed nature of policy among stakeholders at multiple levels in the policy process. I adopted a qualitative design to answer these questions and meet these goals.
In this chapter, I discuss the methods I used to explore my research questions. To do this, I begin by describing my adoption of basic tenets of ethnography and critical ethnography followed by a detailed articulation of the research design including discussions of the researcher/participant relationship and elements of methodological
ethics such as: building rapport, reciprocity, subjectivity, positionality, power, and consent.
Methodological Stance: Making a Case for Qualitative Methodology
To pursue my research goals, I designed a qualitative study that was multi-leveled in that it sought to gather data from multiple stakeholders (i.e., administrators, literacy consultants, teachers) at multiple levels in the policy process (e.g., national, state, and local levels) (Figure 3.1). Policy researchers have suggested that questions regarding policy should be explored through multi-sited ethnography to adequately describe the complexity of the process (Shore & Wright, 1997 & Sutton & Levinson, 2001). This multi-leveled approach to data collection and analysis allowed me to develop a thick description (Gertz, 1973) of the policy process—a description that is characteristic of qualitative studies.
I chose qualitative methodologies to construct and carry out this study because at the heart of qualitative research is a researcher’s desire to understand the “complexity of social interactions as expressed in daily life and the meanings the participants themselves attribute to these interactions” (Marshal & Rossman, p. 2, 1998) and it was just such complexities that I sought to understand. In recent decades, positivist approaches— defined by an assumption of researcher objectivity, pre-determined problems, controlled variables and experiences, ex post facto data analysis and writing—have dominated policy research. Largely tied to efforts to manage what some policy makers see as a linear policy process, these studies have failed to describe policy as a complex sociocultural practice in which policy is appropriated in various social settings for a variety of reasons (Sutton & Levinson, 2001).
A sociocultural approach to policy research is by definition post-positivist in that it cannot be linear or one-dimensional. It requires qualitative methods that are recursive and that support researchers in examining policy-in-practice as it is lived and experienced in day-to-day life (Sutton & Levinson, 2001). Using qualitative methods, researchers recognize their subjectivity and how it influences data collection and analysis. Qualitative researchers invite participants to help identify problems and questions. Researchers also analyze data frequently so that new questions can be identified and used to guide the researcher toward more accurate interpretations. Through the use of
respectful methods, qualitative researchers are responsible for upholding the dignity and humanity of participants (Marshall & Rossman, 2001). The use of multiple methods of data collection and analysis, along with member checking and negative case analysis, brings rigor to the research process and trustworthiness to the claims researchers make in
their studies (Marshall & Rossman, 1998). This study embraced those characteristics of qualitative research as I adopted naturalistic methods, collected data in the field rather than a laboratory, engaged in a recursive process of data collection and analysis, and used multiple methods (e.g., participant observation, interviews, fields notes, recordings, transcriptions etc.) to collect and analyze that data. I strived to be ethical in this study as I built rapport with participants and used triangulation and member checking to ensure the patterns I constructed from my data accurately represented the experiences of those participants.
Critical Ethnography
Within the broader range of qualitative methodologies, this study was grounded in basic tenets of critical ethnography. At its core, ethnography is the study of a culture— ways of thinking, believing and participating in particular communities, social groups and organization in acceptable ways (Gertz, 1973). Ethnographers work to interpret culture by understanding it from insiders’ points of views while recognizing that researchers’ subjectivities and biases effect their interpretations. The work is naturalistic in that ethnographers seek to understand the lived experiences of participants in settings such as homes, schools, and communities. Ethnography becomes critical when data are used to examine existing power structures and to give voice to those previously or traditionally silenced (Gertz, 1973). This study has those characteristics through its focus on
participants’ perspectives or interpretations and my focus on their participation and interactions across a range of communities. I committed myself to the tenets of critical ethnography by attending to the power structures that worked to order behavior through official policy. I also attended to the ways previously silenced stakeholders, namely
teachers, experienced policy environments as I worked to provide a platform for the official policy stakeholders and the larger community to hear their voices.
Contexts
As I developed this study, I acknowledged policy researchers’ call for multi- leveled and multi-sited policy ethnographies to describe the complex sociocultural nature of policy as it is lived and experienced in the world (Shore & Wright, 1997; Sutton & Levinson, 2001). Marcus (1995) and Candea (2007) point out that the world is
increasingly connected and seamless. In an effort to understand this world more fully, Marcus suggested a more compatible research approach through multi-sited ethnography. Candea shares the belief that any local context is always intrinsically multi-sited, but raises the question, “Is there not, lurking in the shadows of multi-sitedness, a strange hope that once we have burst out of our field-sites, we can conquer a seamless world?” (p.174). As I developed this study, I adopted the view that I could not know the world of literacy policy in its totality and that, in the context of a study such as this, it was not possible to study all levels of policy-making with the same intensity (Marcus, 1995). Even within multi-sited research there remains an unexamined site which is a cut from the larger seamless tapestry (Candea, 2007). In this study, my primary site was
Maplewood Elementary School. To understand literacy policy impacting Maplewood Elementary School, I collected data from other sites as necessary. In particular, I gathered data from federal level policy documents, state department professional development sessions, an interview with state department personnel, district level policy documents, and school and district level interviews.
Maplewood Elementary School
While I examined some aspects of policy-making across levels (district, state, and federal), I focused most of my data collection on meaning-making processes at the school level and cut from the larger tapestry one school in particular, Maplewood. At that
school, while I collected data in faculty meetings and other large group sessions, my focus was on the experiences of four teachers, one administrator, and a reading teacher. I examined policy-making at the district, state and federal levels to provide an essential backdrop, but I focused my research on this site, Maplewood Elementary School.
By following the relationships among policy stakeholders at Maplewood in relation to the moves and views of off-site policy stakeholders, I came to understand how participants dialogically co-constructed meaning of literacy policies. Through listening to dialogue of participants at Maplewood School, I learned about how they addressed issues of power that supported or constrained their ability to participate fully in policy decisions. For example, I learned about the extent to which stakeholders were able to exercise agency to make professional decisions when those decisions were contrary to official policies. I learned about processes used by stakeholders to change the direction policy flows and influence higher levels in the policy hierarchy. Spending extended time at Maplewood school allowed me to bring these voices into policy discussion.
Gaining access. My relationship with policy stakeholders at Maplewood began in the fall of 2007. At that time I began teaching an undergraduate literacy methods course on-site at the school. Over the course of a year at Maplewood, I developed an interest in the policy changes related to the literacy teaching I observed in this setting. As I
conduct my research at the school. The accessibility of Maplewood, and the rich policy processes related to literacy that were unfolding in the school and district in relation to federal and state literacy policy, made this a favorable site for my study. I continued to negotiate access with individual policy stakeholders as I conducted interviews, arranged classroom observations, and attended various meetings across policy levels. I believe that the relationship I developed with teachers and administrators supported my ability to gain access to many policy sites beyond Maplewood.
Site demographics. Maplewood is an urban school centrally located in a mid- sized southeastern city. The school’s 2008-2009 vital statistics report indicated the student body was made up of 287 students in pre-k through fifth grade. Of these 287 students, the school identified 84% as Black, 7% as White, and 8% as Other. The school identified 84.4 % of its students as above standard achievement on English Language Arts (ELA) and identified 77.8% of its students as above standard achievement on Mathematics on the end of the year state achievement test. Maplewood identified 87.5% of students as recipients of free or reduced lunches. This factor led many policy
stakeholders in this study to view Maplewood as a high-need school, and yet as
achievement data above shows, Maplewood challenged the national pattern of students of Color from low wealth neighborhoods performing poorly on standardized tests.
Maplewood actually made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the past two years and was among the highest performing elementary schools in the district, based on its
students’ performance on standardized tests, during this study. Nevertheless, Maplewood was the object of many policies mandated to improve academic achievement, particularly in the area of literacy. See Table 3.1 for an overview of Maplewood statistics.
Table 3.1: Overview of Maplewood Demographics, 2008-2009
District The Greenbrier School District
Number of students 287
Student race/ethnicity 84% Black
7% White 8% Other Percentage of students who qualify for free/
reduced price lunch 87.55%
Percentage Ranked at “Above Standard” on Achievement tests in:
English Language Arts Mathematics
84.4% 77.8%
Poverty Index 97.0%
(Below Average)
Current reform efforts Title I under NCLB
Books and Bites Literacy Intervention
Literature-based approach to reading Phonics Based Literacy Packs 2009-2010 Literacy Across the Curriculum
History of reform efforts NCLB since 2001
Off and on Title I status Literacy Intervention High Scope Canceled
Explicit Instruction Introduced in K Reading Recovery Terminated in District
Phonics Based Literacy Packs
Participants: Policy stakeholders
During the three years I worked with teachers and university students at Maplewood, I identified several potentially significant policy stakeholders within the school. These stakeholders were: the principal, Ms. Johnson; the reading teacher, Ms. Berling; and four classroom teachers, Ms. Herndon (kindergarten), Ms. Jefferson (kindergarten andfirst), Ms. Brooks (first) and Ms. Brown (second). A description of each participant and my rationale for her inclusion is explained in each section below. Additional participants from the state and district levels include Ms. Williams, the state early childhood literacy education associate, Dr. Bridges, the district Deputy
Superintendent of Education, and Ms. Lilley, the district early childhood education and Response to Intervention coordinator.
The Principal
Ms. Johnson was an African American female who, at the time of the study, had been principal of Maplewood Elementary six for years. Ms. Johnson was a graduate of Columbia University. As the primary gatekeeper in the Maplewood community, she exercised her right to restrict or grant access to outsiders who wanted to enter the school. I gained access to the school as an instructor for a university course I wanted to teach on- site at the school. Ms. Johnson granted me access to the school and its students while I taught courses there for three years. During that time, rapport seemed to be built with Ms. Johnson naturally as we often engaged in talks about literacy policy changes in the school. As we talked, Ms. Johnson shared concerns about teacher preparedness and student achievement, particularly maintaining the schools’/students’ ability to make AYP. Ms. Johnson worked to address these concerns in many ways, one of which was to
work to reclassify Maplewood as a Title I school to receive increased funding and literacy consultants. During one such conversation in Ms. Johnson’s office, I expressed a desire to study the dynamic policy environment at Maplewood and she welcomed me into the community explaining that Maplewood’s “doors are open” to me. She reassured me that she welcomed a study of policy to help her understand the ways stakeholders struggled to appropriate policy in the school.
From my initial observations, it seemed that Ms. Johnson made key policy decisions for the school (e.g., adopted and terminated policies and programs). As an important policy actor who initiated many of the policy shifts in the school, it was important to interview Ms. Johnson regarding her rationales for accepting and rejecting literacy policies at Maplewood and what these policies meant to her as a principal. Understanding the meaning of literacy policies from the principal’s perspective helped me identify and think about the possible significance of complementary or contrary meanings of literacy policies among other policy stakeholders. Understanding policy from Ms. Johnson’s perspective also informed my understanding of how stakeholders responded to one another dialogically to co-construct policy at Maplewood.
The Reading Teacher
The reading teacher at Maplewood, Ms. Berling, a White, Female, worked closely with Ms. Johnson to enact literacy policy at the school. Ms. Berling previously had worked with Ms. Johnson at another school within the district. Upon Ms. Johnson’s move to Maplewood, she invited Ms. Berling to join the staff. Ms. Berling’s job in the school was to attend monthly reading teacher meetings, provide reading interventions to
students at Maplewood Elementary School, and provide in-school professional development to teachers.
Ms. Berling and I first met at a Spring Conference for Literacy Leaders as she was assuming her role as the new reading teacher at Maplewood. Mrs. Berling attended district level reading teacher meetings and worked closely with teachers in kindergarten through second grades to support students’ literacy development. These factors made Mrs. Berling an important literacy policy stakeholder and participant in this study.
The Teachers
For this study, I focused on four particular classroom teachers and how they made meaning of literacy policies. I chose these teachers because I had already built strong relationships with them while teaching university courses onsite at Maplewood. I supervised student teachers and my university students partnered with students in their kindergarten through second grade classrooms. These relationships made them the best choices as participants in this study since I spent considerable time in their classrooms and knew their literacy routines and practices.
While I interviewed other teachers in the school to understand the literacy policies that impacted their practice and how they made sense of those policies, I spent a week in each focus teacher’s classroom to observe how they appropriated policy in their day-to- day routines. My observations allowed me to contextualize the experiences teachers shared during interviews and helped me better understand their contributions and reactions to literacy messages communicated through faculty, team, and professional development meetings. For example, classroom observations contextualized teachers’ descriptions of curriculum audits, or walk-throughs as teachers referred to them. District
administrators and literacy consultants often walked-through teachers’ classrooms to make sure there was a supportive literacy environment that met the district’s non-
negotiable literacy guidelines (e.g., Alphabet, weekly calendar, other print on walls). My observations in teachers’ classrooms allowed me to see the literacy environment each teacher created and how teachers perceived district policies such as walk-throughs or how they interpreted non-negotiable literacy practices. Teachers’ perspectives on literacy policies like walk-throughs in the school were especially important, as teachers were direct objects of literacy policy. Understanding the meaning of literacy policies from teachers’ perspectives set a foundation for understanding how that meaning influenced the ways teachers appropriated literacy policies in their day-to-day classroom practices. This weekly time in classrooms also gave me opportunities to follow-up with teachers through member checks during the time I was analyzing data.
Ms. Jefferson (kindergarten and first grade). I met Ms. Jefferson—an African American, female teacher—for the first time when I taught an undergraduate course on- site at Maplewood. Ms. Jefferson sat in on several classes I taught to observe literacy strategies I used with her children as they worked alongside their undergraduate literacy buddies. During the fall of 2009, I worked more closely with Ms. Jefferson when she assumed the role of a coaching teacher for an intern I supervised. Ms. Jefferson expressed that the school’s Title I status changed from year-to-year and this meant she frequently had to alter her practices as a teacher to keep up with those changes. The district required kindergarten teachers to use district pacing charts and commercial reading programs such as Breakthrough to Literacy. Shortly before the onset of this study, Maplewood moved from a learn-through-play model to a direct instruction model within the kindergarten
grades. On one visit, I noticed the classroom was stocked with Scott Foresman social studies workbooks. When I asked the principal about the workbooks she said they began using workbooks when the school’s policy mandated direct instruction to address
achievement issues in the lower grades. These shifts in policy in Ms. Jefferson’s kindergarten classroom, during the first six months of this study, led me to ask her to participate in this study. The last six months of the study, the principal moved Ms. Jefferson to first grade where she continued to negotiate her practice. She agreed to