5.1.1 Organizational structure as resources
Each of my studies explored the organizational structure of schools and districts by attending to resources that are important for shaping teacher collaboration and by examining how they are distributed to do so. Organizational theorists have long elevated the importance of attending to school organizational structure for understanding how schools respond to policies and institutional pressures (e.g. Rowan, 1982; Weick, 1976). Examining organizational structure in terms of how resources are deployed and distributed provides a specific frame that can aid in comparison across studies. Resources including human capital, social capital, and organizational routines are especially salient for shaping teacher collaboration. When applied to study districts and schools, my studies examining school organizational structure in terms of the resources that are deployed for teacher collaboration provided insight into organizational priorities and the host of pressures that schools face.
For instance, Paper 1 revealed that pressure for students with disabilities to pass their general education classes was a strong and driving factor of school organizational routines. Paper 2 found that norms of teacher autonomy and pressure to perform on high stakes tests were prominent in shaping how resources were distributed to support special education. In both cases, the resulting distribution of resources detracted from teachers’ abilities to productively collaborate to plan for specialized instruction for SWD. These cases highlight the extent to which multiple other pressures and policies come together to structure school resources in ways that may detract from teachers’ ability to collaborate in ways that might improve instruction, and in turn, student learning opportunities. Overall, my research contributes to a body of research
exploring how schools navigate multiple and sometimes seemingly conflicted policy goals (Honig & Hatch, 2004; Russell & Bray, 2013). Findings from my studies add that the implications of schools navigating multiple policy pressures plays out in school organization of resources, which may facilitate teachers’ work toward certain policies while hindering their work toward others.
5.1.2 Practice as interaction
My studies also offer insight into the interactive nature of teachers’ practice for policy implementation. In particular, Papers 1 and 3 explored teachers’ organizational routines as a way to provide insight into their practice. In both policy contexts, including SWD and ambitious math instruction, it is important for teachers to change their practice not only in terms of what goes on inside their individual classrooms but also in terms of how they interact with others. In the face of these policy demands, interactions with others offer valuable resources for teachers’ practice.
These studies add nuance to the field’s understanding of how organizational routines can be employed in education settings. First, my studies show how routines can emerge (Paper 1) or be intentionally designed (Paper 3) in response to policy pressures. Other studies of organizational routines have demonstrated how they can be used to spread desired instructional changes aligned with instructional reforms (Coburn et al., 2013; Coburn & Russell, 2008; Spillane, Parise, & Sherer, 2011b). Intentionally designed routines can focus teacher collaboration on substantive issues of teaching and learning related to instructional reforms (Coburn et al., 2013; Coburn & Russell, 2008). At the same time, Paper 3 suggests that the roles of those who participate in routines and their expertise are important for shaping their influence. Specifically, teachers rarely viewed administrators as content or instructional experts.
Instructional routines provided opportunities for teachers to connect with administrators, but did not shape the resources that teachers drew upon for instructional support. While organizational routines was not the primary focus of Paper 3, this suggests that the design of organizational routines and the expertise of those involved matter for whether or not they will influence teachers’ practice.
Paper 1 provides a more in-depth explanation of teachers’ practice as constituted in emergent organizational routines. Few, if any studies have examined emergent organizational routines to understand how teachers respond to policy pressures. Emergent organizational routines provide a valuable lens into teachers practice that is collaborative in nature and stretched across different times and places. This may be an increasingly valuable perspective for exploring teachers’ practice in the face of modern policy demands. Teachers are faced with more rigorous standards of learning, and learners with diverse backgrounds and needs, and schools commonly employ collaborative approaches to help teachers meet these demands. Paper 1 shows how exploring teachers’ practice in terms of emergent organizational routines provides deeper insight than a more narrow lens on teachers’ instructional practice. As Paper 1 demonstrates, teachers’ collaborative routines shape what goes on inside of classrooms and specifically the extent to which teachers can be prepared to deliver individualized instruction to SWD. Taken together, my studies suggest that organizational routines can be an important context for understanding the extent to which/how teachers’ practice may be influenced by collaboration.
5.1.3 Connecting the macro and micro
Lastly, these studies all provide insight into the link between macro-level forces like local policies and school organizational structures and the micro-level dynamics of teacher
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collaboration. Connecting these macro and micro forces allows my work to contribute to a body of research examining how local policies may or may not change practice through school design (e.g. Coburn & Russell, 2008; Coburn et al., 2013; Hopkins & Spillane, 2015; Spillane, Shirrell, & Hopkins, 2016). Research has illustrated how school organizational routines can help to align teachers’ practice with instructional policies; more tightly coupling policy and practice (Spillane et al., 2011; 2016).
Attending to the link between macro-level policies and micro-level collaboration in my studies revealed examples of how school organization can both couple and de-couple policy and instruction. Papers 1 and 2 demonstrated how school organization for inclusion may function to decouple policy and practice by working to promote positive achievement outcomes for SWD without necessarily altering the traditional nature of teachers’ instruction to make it more targeted and individualized. On the other hand, Paper 3 shows how school organizational resources including PLCs and instructional coaches may help to couple policy and instruction if teachers “activate” their resources through high depth interactions. Still, not all resources were equally likely to couple policy and instruction. The design of these supports and the expertise that they provided to teachers mattered for shaping how teachers engaged with these supports and their likelihood for influencing their instruction.
My studies illustrate how school organization, and specifically the deployment of resources like PLCs, organizational routines, and coaches. can both couple as well as decouple policy and practice depending on their design and the context in which they are embedded. What factors seem to shape whether or not school organization will lead to instructional change as called for in policy? I theorize that special education policies require a bigger shift in the technical core of teaching, which may make the coupling of policy and practice more difficult to
achieve. For instance, inclusion challenges norms of teacher autonomy and requires major shifts in the way teacher roles and schedules are conceived, particularly in high schools where such norms are deeply embedded.