The Audacity to Teach

Abstract

The state of educational effectiveness and student success are of paramount concern in the United States. Concerted efforts have been made to close the achievement gap among White and Black groups. These efforts have occurred both nationally and locally as exemplified by attention to school turnaround and teacher quality. Reform, particularly for urban schools, seems to be the order of the day. Yet, the efficacy of reform is directly measured by change within the core technology of education—teaching and learning. This study reveals that district policy and school leadership are two variables that inform capacity for teaching and learning innovations.

Keywords

comprehensive school reform policy leadership teaching and learning innovations

Introduction

Today’s schools face unprecedented pressures for increasing student achievement. Efforts to close the achievement gap between non-Asian racial minority and White students have taken center stage. In fact, some advocates have named this agenda the new civil rights of public policy. As such, educational reform has become the new normal of educational policy, particularly targeted at schools identified as chronically low performing. Given that the aims of reform to close the achievement gap have failed to yield the desired large-scale results, it is important that educational research examine the role and function of reform initiatives. In addition, an examination of the influence of reform policy on teaching and learning is in order.

This article addresses the findings from longitudinal research on the effect of reform in an urban elementary school serving a 99.9% African American, low socioeconomic student population. Initial research (Easley, 2005) revealed that serial, policy-driven, comprehensive reforms in this school directly impacted teachers’ abilities to engage in teaching and learning innovations for the advancement of student success. With each reform, greater centralization followed. Easley and Tulowitzki (2013) contend that the expanding centralization within the profession, “has led to certain government based accountability mechanisms aimed at holding school employees responsible for declining effectiveness [see also Møller & Schratz, 2008], namely student achievement” (p. 247). Within the U.S. context, the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act is largely to blame for the growing centralization of reform policy across districts and has notably aimed to leverage school reform by the coupling of budget and performance. As such, outcomes based on standardized test scores are used to exert financially based punishments and rewards upon schools.

The construct of teaching and learning innovations (TLIs), as defined by the teachers in this research, is the targeted calibration of their instructional and classroom practices aimed to meet the diverse learning needs of students. Their concept of TLIs directly relates to the notion of teacher efficacy (Bandura, 1993) and teacher quality, both of which have been found to influence student achievement (Ashton & Webb, 1986). Their concept of TLIs is simultaneously in alignment with a shared understanding of innovation among other theorists. Scott Anthony (2012), for example, defines innovation as doing “something different that has impact” (p. 16). Decades earlier, Miles (1964) established similar parameters, citing innovation as a deliberate and intentional act used for [a] particular purpose[s], with anticipated consequences. Anthony (2012), however, cautions that the notions of “[doing something] different[ly]” and “impact” may mean different things to different persons.

Foundational outcomes within this longitudinal investigation identified TLIs as highly contextual and varied according to individual teachers’ interpretation of reform policy, their internalized instructional fortitude, community-based opportunities and limitations that shape students’ learning, and so on (Easley, 2005). Whether considered cutting edge or common sense practices, teachers established their TLIs as deliberate and impact oriented. Their TLIs spanned the social, emotional, and academic domains of support for individual, subgroups, and whole groups of learners. In this regard, innovation is not limited to novel, electronic-based resources, but rather, refers to the broadest concept of technology that encompasses the making, modification and use of tools, systems, and practices to solve problems and to improve mankind (i.e., student success). In this regard, Anthony’s (2012) cautionary advisement is appropriately situated for the exploration of teachers’ capacity to innovate instructional and classroom practices to meet the varied needs of students.

In addition, findings from the study shine a spotlight on the complexities of school reform to raise student achievement, though student learning outcomes are not directly measured here. These complexities contextualize the challenging interplay among teachers’ capacity for engagement in TLIs and the broader social-political conditions (Easley, 2011) of urban schooling and school reform. In an Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) volume focusing on the nature of learning, authors Dumont and Istance (2010, p. 28) contend, “learning scientists know a lot about the nature of learning and instruction but tend to know less about the organizations and cultures in which they routinely play out.”

Researchers (Gardner, 1983; Schön, 1987; OECD, 2007; de Corte, 2010) readily believe that leaning is dynamic and individually different for each student in such a way that the processes and outcomes of learning are developed and manifested at different rates for each learner and are directly responsive to a host of variables, such as, teaching approaches (Beausaert, Segers, & Wiltink, 2013; Fang, 1996; Trigwell, Prosser, & Waterhouse, 1999), stress and its effects on neurological and cognitive functions (Tough, 2012), and the situated context in which learning is to occur (see Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).

Needless to say, the complexity of learning is context sensitive and places great demands on teachers and schools to not only understand the science of learning but also employ artistic flexibility to meet the vicissitudes of learner diversity. Yet, related research (Glass, 2004; OECD, 2005) on the connections between teacher characteristics and student achievement poses that one of the weaknesses of contemporary research rests with the fact that the interdependence between teaching and the school context is often ignored. Findings from a recent study of urban school reform corroborate the supposition that more attention to the context of teaching and learning is needed. The study of multicity case studies (Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, 2005) showed that despite sweeping initiatives to improve student achievement, few district polices improved teacher practice, due largely to the incongruence between policy design and implementation and the cultures of the schools they sought to change. In short, others contend that urban school reform is often superficial (Warren, 2011) and that change typically occurs on the surface with little attention to the core processes of teaching and learning (Elmore, 2000).

The objective of this article is to examine how, if at all, and to what extent, the contextual attributes of serial school reform influence teachers’ pedagogical capacity for engagement in TLIs. The major assumptions applied are as such: These forces are primarily social in nature, are interactive, and while they need not be in conflict with identified TLIs, their congruence in not a given. Also assumed is that all social relations occurring within reform are political, whether overt, covert, or benign. Moreover, and because not all contextual factors can be thoroughly addressed, the primary focus attends to patterns that most directly influence teachers’ practice, longitudinally and only when occurring across teachers’ lived experiences of serial, comprehensive school reforms (CSRs). In turn, teachers’ capacity for innovation may very well impact the effectiveness of school reform in a reciprocal manner. The results inform implications for understanding and managing school improvement.

Situating Capacity for TLIs

The endeavor to reform chronically, low-performing schools is by no means an easy task. Researchers who seek to understand school improvement have also sought to build logic models or theories-of-action to guide reform. In no small way, these theories-of-action seek to rationalize and shape the context of school reform and subsequently, schools themselves. Rowan, Correnti, Miller, and Camburn (2009) propose that program designs tend to comprise two dimensions: “(a) an instructional design, and (b) a design for school organizational practices that encourage faithful implementation and productive use of that instructional design” (p. 23). Applying this logic model, the epicenter of educational reform and improvement, particularly when student learning is the aim, rests with the teaching and learning interplay that occurs at the classroom level. Yet, Duke et al. (2008) summate that research on multiple districts’ policies to improve teaching and learning revealed little relationship to classroom practice, in part because “their [i.e., the districts’] tools and mandates were not informed by school level expertise and were not accompanied by the kind of support and capacity building necessary to change instruction” (p. 3). However, looking beyond the specific effects of policy itself and inward toward the classroom context, Easley (2011) explains that the learning needs of students lie at the core of pedagogical capacity for teachers’ to engage in TLIs. The well-being and academic growth of students underscore the primary motivation for teachers’ purposeful engagement in TLIs. In similar fashion, McLauglin’s (1993) research details that “students were the basic referents as teachers talked about their schools, colleagues, classrooms, and commitment to teaching” (p. 81).

Pedagogical capacity, as situated within this article, is defined as the full range of conditions that grant or impede teachers’ participation in the formal processes of schooling. Pedagogical capacity, like school reform, is multidimensional and is mediated by the interrelated social relations that define schooling, those existing both within and outside the school itself.

One means for understanding the multidimensionality of pedagogical capacity is to examine the sociopolitical conditions of school reform and the contextualized function of these conditions as espoused by those who work in and with schools facing reform. Power relations, for example, serve as one commonly recognized indicator of social-political conditions. Collins (2009) offers an explanation of power relations as functioning systemically and in a synergistic fashion. She explains the system of power as existing within and among four domains. These are (a) the structural domain that shows how practices are organized through social institutions, (b) the disciplinary domain where people use rules and regulations of everyday life, (c) the cultural that manufactures the ideas that justify social order, (d) and the interpersonal domain that shapes social interaction in everyday life. This perspective is steeped in the tradition of critical theory that examines, critiques, and problematizes the notions of power, ideology, culture, and social relations. To better understand these notions as forces that influence school reform, instructional design, and the practices of teachers as measured against the logic of reform, Giroux (1983) calls for an examination, reconsideration, and reformulation of “how human beings come together within specific social practices and historical contexts to make and reproduce the conditions of their existence [in schools]” (p. 120). As such, pedagogical capacity for TLIs is generative, context specific, and is mediated by the associated power relations of social interaction.

This proposed framework is useful for unearthing how the dynamics of culture, power, ideology, structure, and agency are manifested in urban school reform as a means for shaping teachers’ pedagogical capacity to engage in TLIs, in general. This framework is useful for understanding how school reform, the interplay among stakeholders, and the ensuing context of schooling intersect and impact teachers’ capacity to engage in TLIs. Furthermore, this framework is useful for uncovering the convergence between contextualized pedagogical capacity and teachers’ engagement in TLIs and how these intersections determine the success of reform implementation and management.

Theoretical Framework

This framework necessitates the examination of the context of educational reform, in particular, the tensions that arise from the enactment of centralized policies and the expectations that they hold for implementation and outcomes at the school level. Because school reform simultaneously engenders and affects social interaction among stakeholders, the logic of reform, the historical cultures and practices within the enterprise, and the resulting actions or inactions among members must be acutely attended to. One’s interpretation of the reform, one’s cognitive and emotional readiness for change, the resources available to support change, as well as one’s theories of teaching and education are just a few compounding factors that are likely to overtly influence teachers’ response to reform as well as their capacity to engagement in TLIs.

Because the capacity for school reform is context sensitive and is contingent upon both individual and collective efforts, it is appropriate to draw on the study of Roellke and Rice (2008) who argue, “ . . . , it is important that policymakers at more centralized levels of the system be attentive to varying local capacities” (p. 290). Yet, other research, Easley (2011), theorizes that the actions of educational officials may be informed by one’s realm of concern. Each role that one holds shapes her or his perspectives and attention to a position of influence within the system. Each station impacts on the individual or collective realms of concern held among members. For example, while principals’ realm of concern may rest with school-wide functions such as budgeting, community relations, and management, teachers’ realm of concern is likely to lie at the classroom level. Due to these varied realms of concern, the actions of stakeholders at different stations are likely to be incongruent in the absence of deliberate attempts for cohesion. The intense authority that one’s realm of concern has on her or his work may very well blind one’s attention to the varied contextual work realities of others. Similarly, reform may be adversely influenced by siloed realms of concern to the extent that:

Change is further challenged when reform developers [and policy makers] are insensitive to the culture (daily work and struggles) of school-based persons and focus only on implementation purity. In this way, the program runs the risk of becoming an end unto itself. In this way, the program suffers from hyperrationality (Fullan, as cited in Easley, 2011) in which vision by itself is insufficient in the face of impatient implementation and the failure of designers [and policy makers] to listen to feedback from the field. (Easley, 2011, p. 89)

Hyperrationality is, more often than not, part and parcel of the sociopolitical influences on educational reform. For example, even in the event that the hyperrationality of centralized policies and practices may undermine the capacity of local schools to implement top-down mandates in contextually sensitive ways, as has been suggested by previously alluded to research on the failure of school reform, power relations mire the relationships among the stakeholders at various stations within the system. To understand this dynamic, several key concepts are useful for examination: habitus and hegemony.

While often couched in the vein of social class and the resulting internalized social knowledge, Bourdieu’s (1984) notion of habitus holds relevancy as pertaining to the constructed social dispositions and norms of groups developed from past experiences. In the case of school reform, the varied realms of concern are often recapitulated at each station. And while the purposes and politics of education have altered through the generations in response to societal paradigm shifts (i.e., agrarian, industrial, and the techno-informational age), the structural and cultural core of schooling has remained virtually unchanged and is still largely defined by a division of labor and power among district personnel. Accordingly, habitus “could be considered a subjective but not individual system of internalized structures, schemes of perceptions, conception, and action common to all members of the same group . . . ” (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 86). As such, the realms of concern among school personnel within their stratified stations, their decisions, and their actions are often unaltered, thereby yielding hyperrationalities.

In related fashion, the hierarchical structure of schooling and the social relations they produce are informed by, as well as sustain, certain hegemonic functions of power and order. Apple (1996) explains the concept of hegemony as the “process in which dominant groups in society come together to form a bloc and sustain leadership over subordinate groups” (p. 14). According to Gramsci’s (1971) theory of hegemony, dominant groups use ideology more so than brute force and violence to squelch subordinate groups’ resistance to the status quo. Similarly, Woodson (1933) explains the process of cultural indoctrination for African Americans within the postcolonial body politic, “While being a good American, he must above all things be a good Negro; and to perform this definite function he must learn to stay in a Negro’s place” (p. 6). With regard to members of a subordinate class, Gramsci’s hegemony functions to legitimate their position in society and to keep them in their place.

The intentionality of hegemony is coercive and is often played out dually. It requires the participation of both the agent and the subject. It is likely to manifest overtly and covertly at the same time. While the power domains laid out by Collins (2009) represent broad categorical mechanisms by which hegemony is exercised, dominate groups navigate the political, social, and moral capital, and intellectual leadership in order to shape the perspectives, needs, and concerns of subordinate groups (Anyon, 1979; Friere, 1970; Giroux, 1981). The greater aim of hegemony is the sustainability of existing power relations. This faculty of hegemony raises power to a moral level that places the responsibility of those “in power” to navigate power positions and the varied realms of concern in ethical ways. For example, while district officials may seek school improvement, they may not engage teachers in the decision-making processes of reform, thereby maintaining control over the function and structure of reform. Though the force of hegemony functions best when subordinates acquiesce, their docile complicity is never guaranteed; its permanence is uncertain; nor does such compliance necessarily represent inherent consent. As such, the dynamism of hegemony is continually political and amorphous.

Donaldson (2001) extends this line of thinking to suggest, “Principals and other appointed leaders [like those at the central office level] come to be seen as people with position power whose job it is to direct, confine, and monitor rather than to support, entrust, and collaborate” (p. 21). As such, habitus—the rationalized power relations informed by the structural hierarchy of schooling—suggests that those at higher ranks know what is best for those working in classrooms with children (Easley, 2011). Simultaneously, the hegemonic culture of schooling makes all decisions among stakeholders political. All decisions regarding policy enactment and implementation are pedagogical. The politics of centralized policy-making and localized implementation reflect the multidimensionality of pedagogical capacity for teachers to engage in the formal processes of schooling, let alone TLIs.

Background

Hillside Elementary School has continually undergone CSR since the late 1990s, beginning with the district’s decree to reconstitute the school due to chronically low levels of student achievement. A subsequent, deliberate reconstitution occurred in 2006 as the district restructured 22 schools. In 2009, an ad hoc reconstitution occurred as a result of district policy that restricted the option for those teachers working in certain reform schools to transfer to other schools for a minimum of 3 years. Each initiative reflected the unique logic of its design associated with the aim to turnaround the persistent pattern of low student achievement on standardized tests. CSR programs are guided by the aim to “bring together unified, coherent, and integrated strategies for school improvement in a way in which strategies are not isolated, are comprehensive, and are complimentary” (Easley, 2011, p. 6). Research has found that “while the adoption of CSR programs [by districts] was seemingly quick and easy, implementation at local sites turned out to be difficult” (Rowan et al., 2009, p. 19).

Though Hillside faced various attempts at comprehensive reform including curricular and operational overhauls, reconstitution remained a primary strategy employed by the district to turn the school around. According to NCLB, reconstitution is understood as a policy-driven CSR option for school improvement available to states and school districts. Reconstitution shapes the context of schools by seeking to remove incumbent teaching, administrative, and support staff for the purpose of starting the next school year with a new personnel composition, in whole or in part. The student population, however, is typically left intact. School reconstitution is considered by some to be the most drastic form of CSR, and has historically occurred only in urban—low income and minority populated—schools (National Education Association, 1998) beginning with the San Francisco Unified School District in 1983 (Goldstein, Kelemen, & Koski, 1998). The aim of reconstitution is to increase a school’s capacity for quality teaching and learning by re-staffing the school with more committed educators (Jones & Malen, 2002; Malen, Croninger, Muncey, & Redmond-Jones, 2002; Malen, Croninger, Redmond, & Muncey, 1999).

Method

The initial design of this study began as a longitudinal case study of a particular elementary school that had undergone serial, CSR, consisting of interviews with teachers and other school personnel. This design was augmented due to changes among the teaching staff. Because of the continual turnover in personnel, two independent cases emerged. A cross-case comparative design utilizing a single semi-structured interview guide resulted. Each case study occurred following the initial (1990s) and ad hoc (2009) reconstitutions, respectively. Due to multiple reconstitutions, no members from the 1990s staff were still employed in the school, thereby yielding two separate cases with independently diverse faculty. While location and the policy implementation of reconstitution bind the cases, each reflects a uniquely different culture.

A single researcher spent one academic year on site followed by a second, 1-week visit 7 years apart. During this sabbatical, the school experienced several contextual changes including reconstitution. In total, the school has been reconstituted three times, either intentionally or inadvertently as a result of district-level policies for school reform. The initial case produced thick, descriptive data characterizing the context of serial CSR, including curricular reforms embedded within reconstitution and their impact on teachers’ capacity to engage in TLIs.

Thirty participants (n = 30) engaged in a series of both formal/structured and informal/semi-structured interviews that focused on teachers’ contextualized capacity to engage in TLIs. Participation was voluntary. The sampling of teachers, however, was purposeful with the principals identifying potential participants based on the range of their potential for instructional innovation.

The full data sets from both cases were individually revisited in accordance with the research question, focusing only on the relationships among the construct of capacity for engagement in TLIs and the conditions of school reform. The subsets of data do not focus on the measurement of innovation nor the delineation of particular types of TLIs as those are articulated and explored elsewhere.

For each case, open and axial coding was used to ascertain patterns from interview data (Corbin & Strauss, 1990; Creswell, 1998) germane to each case. First, open coding was conducted to capture general and an etic sense of participants’ responses. At this level, a constant comparative approach was simultaneously used to ascertain saturation for fine tuning general codes. Second, axial coding was conducted to formulate categories as relationships among the codes. This level of analysis was informed by the coding paradigm of Morrow and Smith (1995), attending to the relationship between context, or conditions of reform (as cause) and the phenomena, that is, perceived capacity (as response).

To ensure the fidelity of the data interpretation and categories, member checking was used to guarantee the accurate representation of participants’ perceptions for both context and phenomena. This step served as a second level of assurance along side bracketing, particularly during the first case in which the researcher served as a participant observer. The analysis for each case was conducted observing Merriam’s (1998) guidelines for determining the efficacy of categories to include:

(1) Categories should reflect the purpose of the research. (2) Categories should be exhaustive. (3) Categories should be mutually exclusive. (4) Categories should be sensitizing. And, (5) categories should be conceptually congruent. (pp. 183-184)

Afterwards, a cross-case comparison of categories was conducted, using features of grounded theory and informed by the theoretical framework. This last level of coding employed selective coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), establishing the central themes when cases were juxtaposed. This was particularly important given the rich data collected during the first case, which provided a measure of comparison important for examining contextual changes over time and the generation of new cultural spaces in response to serial school reform.

While interview guides were administered across all key participants, individually, or across a select group of participants in the form of focus groups, data from key participants were gathered by 26 formal interviews and 65 informal interviews across both cases.

Findings

The findings from this cross-case, comparative study reveal three significant themes related to the multidimensionality of teachers’ pedagogical capacity to engage in TLIs, each epitomizing the changing contexts of reform that define the two cases: (a) teachers’ commitment to students compared to a commitment to employment rewards, (b) flexibility for instructional innovations compared to managed instruction, and (c) calibrated leadership for teacher accountability compared to centralized leadership. These themes appear as dichotomies due to the differing contexts across cases brought on by the conditions that defined each reconstitution. Yet, dichotomies are not always contradictions, but may also represent cleaved divisions of a system or whole, each with distinguishing properties. This perspective is applicable to a single site, like Hillside, that has produced individual cases. While each of these themes and their parts are unique, they are interrelated; in addition, they share central, context-based influences, chief among them, district-level policies for leveraging school turnaround. Each theme shines a light on reforms’ impact on instructional capacity and, to a lesser extent, the effectiveness of reforms. They are illustrated by the voices of teachers. The sample inserts are representative of contemplations shared among teachers, except when otherwise noted. Pseudonyms are used to maintain participants’ confidentiality.

Each theme is developed separately, deserving of its own level of analysis, as informed by the theoretical framework. Together they illustrate the complexities of managing school turnaround. The discussion section of this article addresses the interconnectivity among these themes for the purpose of proposing implications for educational improvements.

Teachers’ Commitment to Students Compared to Employment

Between Cases 1 and 2, teachers reported varied motives for selecting the school as their site of employment. During the initial visit, teachers collectively reported wanting to work with the particular (African American, low income) student population. Some even expressed excitement about the vision of the school and the opportunity to work in a reconstituted environment, which for them represented a new start. Seven years later, district policy restricted teachers’ ability to transfer from turnaround schools, requiring that they serve a minimum of 3 years in a single site. The result has been an egress of teachers hired to work in the school 3 years prior. New teachers (those represented in case number two) consistently explained their first priority was to work in the school district and reported that upon being offered the single option to work in this school, they accepted the challenge.

The early school reform represented a “grassroots” CSR in which the principal was hired to bring about change (Easley, 2011). In this case, Mr. Thachery was given considerable leeway in the selection of staff as well as the instructional design of the school. As such, reconstitution rolled out with an embedded, small, top-down articulation residing within the institution. Like most reconstitutions that are implemented within a few months, Mr. Thachery was expected to design the school’s vision, both for student learning and the instructional operations, and to staff the organization over the summer for a fall opening.

The teachers hired by Mr. Thachery expressed a particular interest in working with the students of Hillside. Their commitment seemed to buttress the theory of action of reconstitution to restaff a school with “more” committed teachers. Their commitment counters research suggesting that many African American students receive instruction from teachers who are unmotivated or lack the enthusiasm to engage them in the teaching and learning process (Cooper & Jordan, 2003; Kozol, 1991). Their commitment to students is described elsewhere (Easley, 2011) as sustained through nurturant relationships that recognize both the academic and personal well-being of learners. Other research (Caton, 2012) bolsters such relationships as important for fostering students’ sense of belonging to a school and, in turn, positive outcomes (Becker & Luther, 2002; Mchon, Wernsman, & Rose, 2009; Roeser, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2000). Resulting innovations included deliberate decisions to depart from the curriculum’s design for homework in response to those students who lacked particular resources to complete assignments away from school in their home environments and the reallocation of personal time to counsel individual students who exhibited emotional and behavioral tendencies for academic failure.

During the first case, a commitment to students, together with nurturant relationships, established the primary anchors of teachers’ internal capacity to engage in TLIs. The association between their commitment and nurturant relationships were sustained through a constitution of care and trust. Accordingly, “In an effort to demonstrate that they care for children and in order to build the trust necessary for nurturant relationships, teachers often have to make ethical/moral decisions about their use of time” (Easley, 2011, p. 33) yielding a particular TLI. Similar to the teachers of McLauglin’s (1993) study, students were the core referents of Hillside teachers’ practice and commitment. Their commitment to students is historical, referent of their ontological core and reverence, placing students’ learning needs at the center of their instructional practices. Teachers explained,

I knew that I wanted to work with African American children, and, in particular, African American children who are described as high risk. During my college years, I decided to become a teacher because I had part time jobs working with children, and I discovered that I loved it. My undergraduate degree was in business. I worked in the industry for three or four years, and I hated it. But, I always went back to the part time jobs working with young people, elementary-age children, and I also worked with this age group in my church. That all played a part in my becoming a teacher. (Ms. Campbell)

I didn’t come into teaching until after I had been a stay-at-home mother for a while. So later in my life I came into teaching, and this is the kind of place where I wanted to teach, with this student population. (Ms. Adele)

Seven years later, teachers’ commitment reflected a shift in tone. Mr. Pressman, the current principal, explained that the district’s 3-year, non-transfer policy for teachers working in the reformed schools of 2006 resulted in an exodus of teachers at the end of the obligatory term. Upon taking the helm as the school’s executor, less than one half of the teachers hired in 2006 remained, resulting in an ad hoc reconstitution. In fact, during the time of the second case study, only four teachers from 2006 had been retained. None of the teachers from the 1990s remained in the school.

District policy designed to establish sustainability among personnel hired in 2006 led to unexpected consequences. Such is the case of hyperrationality (Fullan, 2001b) in which the architects and managers of reform fail to attend to the contextualized variables of implementation. A myriad of factors (beyond the scope of this study) may have contributed to the flight of teaches; yet, Mr. Pressman confided that many of the teachers hired in 2006 attributed the district’s failed promises of additional instructional resources and smaller class sizes as reasons for their departure. Perhaps the constraints of the non-transfer policy itself may be to blame. It is clear, however, that while this earlier brigade of teachers may have agreed to comply with a policy impeding their voluntary transfer for up to 3 years, their consent was in no way an assurance that they agreed with its authoritative imposition.

Not unlike the start-up conditions of the original reconstitution, the high rate of turnover among incumbent teachers, due largely to the exodus, caused a summer rush to hire new faculty. Among the new teachers interviewed, a clear shift within the theme arose. Their primary reason for joining the Hillside faculty was significantly influenced by two factors: (a) a desire to work in the district and (b) the first and only position offered for district employment was with Hillside. A comparison among cases reveals that policy-driven school reform, that is, reconstitution, represented uniquely different opportunities for teachers across time. Contrary to the teachers interviewed during the first case, recent teachers’ commitment rested with employment aims rather than a high regard for the particular student body of the school and the instructional practices associated with supporting their success, thereby contradicting the employment theory of reconstitution. While there resonated a regard for the profession in general, the sentiment was shared by all but two teachers interviewed. Teachers explained,

One of the factors is that I went to school in this district, [attending] elementary, middle and high school, and when I decided to become a teacher, I really enjoyed the city and wanted to stay here. When I initially graduated, I was offered a job elsewhere and I took it. I really enjoyed it the first few years that I was there because the principal I worked with happens to be the current principal here [at Hillside] and when a position opened he called me and asked if I would be interested. Of course I knew that I eventually wanted to work in the city, which led me to taking the opportunity. (Mr. Lennox)

I actually received a phone call in December that this position was open. In my other school there was talk of teacher layoffs. So, I applied for a job in the district in April and did not hear back until December. Once I was offered the position, obviously, it was more money, there are more professional development opportunities here, and I would eventually like to become a principal. Those were the major decisions for me coming to the district. In terms of Hillside, it was just the position open, so I took it. (Ms. Kristen)

Culture and Teaching

Teachers’ moral desire to make a difference in the lives of students has been reported as a primary factor for their entrance into (Feistritzer, 2005; Fried, 2005; Hammerness, 2003) and retention (Lieberman & Miller, 1992; Lortie, 1975) within the profession. In fact, research (Easley, 2006) has shown that teachers who enter the profession for alternative, personal gains such as career surfing are significantly more likely to attrite in comparison with those who are morally grounded by their interests in the academic and social benefits for students.

The employment aspirations of teachers are best understood through the cultural domain of power; they simultaneously broaden the boundaries of social relations beyond the interactions among two or more peoples. The findings reveal the associative influence of culturally driven motivations and the assumed spoils that are to accompany one’s participation in certain social conventions, in this case, employment within a particular context of reform. Yet, it is clear that the paradox of teachers’ employment aims from one case to another cannot be gainsaid. Rather, the divergence reflects a cultural schism residing in one body. Giroux (1981) explains that culture is political in that it defines more than lived experiences and their functions; rather, culture is the broader social and economic spheres that inform human action. It goes without saying that human action operates in concert with the beliefs of man and his conceptualizations of what is and is not in the realm of possibility, his sense of self, and the conditions of the situated milieu. According to Giroux (1981), culture is the

. . . complex realm of antagonistic experiences mediated by power and struggle and rooted in the structural opposition of labor and capital, as one instance, and, in another instance, as the transformative ability of human beings to shape their lives while only being partially constrained by the social, political, and economic determinants that place interventions on their practice. (p. 27)

Despite the low pay and semi-professionalization of teaching in comparison with other public service professions like those for nurses and doctors, teachers’ conceptualization of self-as-professional is often altruistic and intrinsic, as demonstrated by their relationships with students. After all, working with children is the fundamental mission of teaching (Donaldson, 2001), held deeply within the psyche of American culture and internalized by educators. Related research (Crocco & Costigan, 2007) has shown that caring, personal (or nurturant) relationships with students are essential to teachers’ mission and identity within the profession.

While certain sectors of the American public may value the altruism of teaching—altruism that upholds the ideals of nurturant relationships (Easley, 2005, 2011; Lakoff, 2002)—others are more likely to uphold a moral self-interest. Lakoff (2002) explains the differences between the conceptualizations of moral self-interest and moral self-nurturance as residing within one’s relationship to community. While moral self-nurturance signifies the importance of subsistence to position oneself for helping others, moral self-interest turns inward for the sole purpose of self-interest. Teacher aspirants are not immune to such dichotomous moral underpinnings. Moreover, these moral dimensions do not connote fixed attributes and may both inhabit an individual, simultaneously and to different degrees. As well, they are amorphous in response to time and space. Such is the case as when teachers enter the profession, filled with passions and excitement for facilitating students’ learning, but find their passion waning over time, due to changing conditions within the workplace, their professional or personal lives, or even the economy.

Innovation Compared to Managed Instruction

While the initial case revealed the district’s adoption of managed curriculums for mathematics and language arts, accountability, and leadership practices umpired by both the district and the school principal resulted in uneven control mechanisms for instructional oversight. Much of the daily governance for instruction rested in the hands of the principal. As a result, teachers reported a fair amount of flexibility to engage in instructional innovations in and across their classrooms for the advancement of students’ academic and personal success. Conversely, 7 years later, the district more tightly coupled curriculum and instruction by prescribing a top-down, a more centralized management for instructional planning and the oversight of the new principal’s instructional leadership via walk-throughs by central office officials and other strategies. Rigid compliance measures for curricular implementations resulted.

In the initial case, teachers described their instructional practices as anchored in nurturant relationships (Easley, 2005, 2011; Lakoff, 2002) that were simultaneously mediated by a commitment to the student population of Hillside. Within these relationships, teachers positioned the social, emotional, and academic needs of students as central to their internal capacity to engage in TLIs. Their capacity was not without challenge in the form of district governed, curriculum standardization for mathematics and language arts; yet, along with nurturant relationships, collaborative instructional planning sessions were identified as important vehicles for their engagement in TLIs. Teachers met in subject area teams and by grade level several times a week for instructional planning. Mr. Thachery, the former principal, introduced these collaborative planning sessions as a form of professional development. During the sessions, teachers regularly reviewed student learning outcomes from their classrooms, compared the findings across classrooms, and discussed instructional practices in relation to these data. Teachers explained that, over time, they were given increased control over the content of these sessions. Taken together, their nurturant instructional stances and their expanding ability to govern the substance of the collaborative planning sessions bolstered their capacity for engagement in TLIs—to modify instructional and other classroom practices to meet the diverse needs of students either as subgroups (within and across classrooms) or as individuals. Teachers explained,

Especially since they are coming with so many different things at home or whatever might be affecting them, I have had kids who were low performers in the morning. Sometimes this is because they come to school hungry and/or they just weren’t interested in what’s going on. Getting to know each individual kid, and trying to understand what motivates them and what they have going on, and understanding these things, lets me know how to deal with each child. But, I can’t deal with all them in the same way. (Ms. Lenora)

A lot of the curriculum is written assuming that students come to school or to this grade level with certain background knowledge and experiences. But with the population that we are working with, the kids don’t have a lot of that background. So, a lot of times I have to go backwards and build that background before we can move forward. (Ms. Campbell)

And,

This [collaborative planning] allows us the time to bounce ideas off of one another and to get some strategies that we may not have thought of for handling a specific part of our instruction or a specific part of our classroom management that we are having personal difficulties with. It also gives us ideas from another teacher who is in the same position we are [i.e., working in the classroom with students]. In my case, there are two other teachers on the team. (Ms. Johnson)

While curricular constraints were made known during the first case, the district’s 2006 adoption of America’s Choice CSR model for Hillside exerted considerable control across the primary curricular controls identified by Au (2007)—content, knowledge, and pedagogy. Mr. Pressman explained that in 2006, the district began to implement a managed curriculum for language arts and more recently for mathematics specific to America’s Choice schools. As such, a core body of district personnel writes the lesson plans for the content areas. These, in turn, are presented to the teachers in schools, typically a week ahead of time, for implementation. He further clarified that many of the teachers perceived the curriculums as being scripted. Teachers provided their unique perspectives of the district’s managed curriculums and lesson plans, as well as the impact these have on their external capacity for engaging in TLIs:

I try to meet the needs of middle, low, and high level students. I do differentiate by giving them a different workload or homework assignments of more or less difficulty based on their levels; but as far as innovation, innovation has been taken out of classroom instruction. We are now regimented—this is what you do and how you do it. We have an opening, a work time, and a closing. Things are structured, I have a booklet that tells what I can say, what questions I may ask, and I follow a script. I think it has taken the fun out of education for both teachers and students. (Mr. Bond)

We have a managed curriculum. I feel very tied to this curriculum more so than I ever have in my career. I don’t feel like there is any room for creativity or innovation. We are being timed. We have administrators coming in with their watches and looking at the script. They don’t like the word script, but it used to be called the scripted curriculum when it was first released. They [district officials] are looking at you with these young children, letting you know that you are 5 or 10 min behind the pacing, not a unit behind or a lesson behind. There are so many things that come into play when dealing with people, let alone little children, that it is difficult to maintain the pacing. We used to be creative and be able to make a game or activity relevant to the kids, but now we are documented and criticized if we go beyond the curriculum. It has taken the joy out of teaching (Ms. Love).

The increased, top-down tightening of curricular and instructional controls found in the second Hillside case is not a unique occurrence for urban school reform. Findings from a sample of 180 schools over 43 districts reveal that “school districts varied in the range and specificity of district-mandated expectations for professional practice in schools—in particular, for curriculum and instruction.” The authors (Wahlstrom, Seashore Louis, Leithwood, & Anderson, 2010) continue to explain, “Still, the district trend everywhere is to reduce school/classroom level flexibility and to increase [instructional] standardization” (p 18). Relatedly, Au’s (2007) qualitative meta-analysis of 49 studies examining the relationship between high-stakes testing and either curriculum or instruction revealed three types of curricular controls: content, formal (i.e., knowledge forms), and pedagogic. He explains that content is often narrowed to match the material to be tested and teachers often curtail their instructional practices in a “teacher-centered” fashion in order to cover the test-required information and procedures (p. 263).

Structure and Teaching

Collins’ (2009) structural domain of power is exemplified in the juxtaposition of the functional role of power relations of these two cases. While both are demonstrative of the district’s oversight for the content of Hillside’s language arts and mathematics curriculums, from case to case, top-down control intensified. According to Collins (2009), structure is often conceived as something that is fixed and immovable; structure is something that confines our actions (p. 96). In this regard, structure is hegemonic and political.

The hierarchical design of bureaucratic decision-making epitomizes the structural domain of power. It inherently dictates who is able to make decisions for others. Such power is held fixed by the establishment of offices, roles, and procedures, and as these become standardized, their functions are internalized as “the way we do things around here.” The examination of such increased bureaucracy found between the district and Hillside unearths an embedded dichotomy of social order and control that is both political and ethical (Apple, 1996; Curtis, 1992; Durkheim, 1893). That is, the aims of the district to foster instructional efficiency in the hopes of a rise in student achievement by way of a standardization of practice simultaneously impinge upon individual and intellectual freedoms at the classroom level and erode opportunities for fashioning education democratically among subgroups of stakeholders. Donaldson (2001) explains that in light of the tenuous professionalization of teaching, “At the heart of teachers’ satisfaction is, for many, their almost total control over what they do with students. The classroom is the teacher’s professional empire” (p. 23). Collins (2009) offers a related perspective: “The classroom is a dynamic location, an inherently political space where [governed by emancipatory pedagogy] we actively create, revise, research, and debate our own points of view about what we choose to believe and what we choose to reject” (p. 96).

These tensions between the centralization of curricular and instructional decision-making and the capacity for teachers to act on their intrinsic rewards within the profession (i.e., their intellectual work with students) are formidable and real. Research (Easley, 2006) has found that when teachers are supported for the fulfillment of their intrinsic aims to work with students and/or to make a difference in the lives of students, their intentions for staying in the profession are more likely to flourish. Conversely, a focus group with teachers (Roellke & Rice, 2008) has shown that “this tendency for greater centralization . . . makes the profession less attractive, particularly in low-performing schools [like Hillside and others] that are under the watch of the state” (p. 291).

It is clear that the bureaucratic structure of centralized control over instruction had a notable impact on Hillside teachers’ sense of professionalism, their wherewithal to employ independent decision-making for diverse needs of learners, that is, their engagement in TLIs. While both cases reveal a certain level of centralization regarding curriculum design and instruction, the range of alignment and harmony between district policy, school leadership, and support for instructional flexibility directly influences teachers’ perceptions of their ability to engage in TLIs. Wahlstrom et al. (2010) explain that teachers in their study did not disparage the loss autonomy following district efforts to standardized curriculum and instruction. However, their admiration was conditional, depending upon factors such as the quality of district support for instructional implementation and the “opportunities for teacher discretion within the parameters and boundaries established by the district” (p. 19).

Calibrated Compared To Centralized Leadership

During the initial leg of this study, the principal hired to open the newly reconstituted school exhibited a grassroots, calibrated approach to leadership. As such, and over time, teachers were provided greater control over certain aspects of the school’s programming. In particular, they were able to manage the topics of collaborative planning sessions, based on student learning data drawn from their classrooms and their individual instructional conundrums. Seven years later, the capacity for similar forms of teacher leadership was non-existent. Rather, the principal was relegated to manage district mandates for instructional purity as defined by central office officials.

Mr. Thachery, the principal during the first case, exhibited calibrated leadership (Easley, 2011). That is, he initially enlisted a rigid management approach to address, what he perceived to be, massive challenges within the organization (e.g., student behavior problems, low achievement rates, and the acculturation of a new faculty). He recognized that while change may be ephemerally forced, sustainability results from a leadership of guidance (Fullan, 2001a).

His leadership approach can be greatly attributed to the leeway provided by the district. According to Mr. Thachery,

The extent of what [information] I was given as a principal about what this [school] should look like or what it would involve was that it was going to be a technology school. This is what they [district officials] said, “We re-wired the building, put in another computer lab and that all the classrooms would have computers.” And, that’s what made it a technology institute.

Even in the advent of district-adopted curriculums for language arts and mathematics, the core decisions of school-based management remained with Mr. Thachery. As teachers became acclimated to the culture of the organization, the principal adjusted his leadership approach, thereby making room for teachers’ increased capacity to engage in TLIs. Mr. Thachery explained,

I made it plain when I hired them that I was not in the business of trying to win friends. I was brought in to clean up a very bad situation. And so, I wasn’t listening to a whole bunch of “whooha.” I know that’s not a word, but I had a set way that I believed I could get from point A to B. I wasn’t interested in, and I know this is going to sound terrible, a lot of what they [the new arrangement of teachers] had to say about how it was going to get done.

They first needed to demonstrate to me that a level of professional exchange could occur [as exhibited through the collaborative planning sessions]. It got to a point where they really took ownership of the process. So, my role became more of one in which I needed to find additional resources for teachers. I needed to find other opportunities for them to shine . . .

The calibration of Mr. Thachery’s leadership approach most directly exemplifies what Wahlstrom et al. (2010) refer to as shared leadership drawn from the researchers’ examination of how principals and teachers collaboratively change classroom practices to support and improve student learning. They define shared leadership as “teachers’ influence over, and participation in, school-wide decisions with principals” (p. 10). Though a recent trend in leadership studies has emerged to focus on leadership behaviors and practices rather than leadership styles, all leadership behaviors are shaped by leadership ideologies, and are most often applied in relation to the conditions that define the contexts of their schools and districts.

In comparison, Mr. Pressman’s principalship can be best defined as influenced by a district-level panopticon of surveillance (Bushnell, 2003; Foucault, 1979). Such surveillance works in tandem with high-stakes accountability as a mechanism of control designed to ensure implementation purity of reform initiatives. What is made evident is that the district’s oversight played a significant role in shaping leadership practices at the school level. In fact, Mr. Pressman utilized many of the strategies for classroom observations employed by district officials without waiver. The result was a centralization of practice for instructional leadership. Like instances in which teachers organize their curriculum work around the rewards and punishments of high-stakes testing, it would appear that school leaders face similar constrains for operationalizing their administrative responsibilities in alignment with central office demands. Mr. Pressman explained that the district held specific expectations for instructional delivery to which both he and teachers were held accountable.

In turn, the ways in which school leaders organize their responsibilities simultaneously impact teachers’ sense of general teacher efficacy (GTE) and personal teaching efficacy (Ashton & Webb, 1986; Flores, Desjean-Perrotta, & Steinmetz, 2004; Gibson & Dembo, 1984; Guskey & Passaro, 1994; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990). Related research (Easley, 2008; Edmeier, 2003) reveals that leaders’ attention to issues that matter most to teachers such as teaching and learning is most highly regarded as a source for building efficacy. The following contemplations from teachers demonstrate their understanding of how district-level controls influenced Mr. Pressman’s instructional leadership, the development of their sense of efficacy, as well as their abilities to engage in TLIs. Mr. Eric who has been a teacher for approximately 30 years explained,

I know I said that I do some things that I feel work better, but I don’t feel innovative. I still feel restricted by the district and what they want you to do. So I am not off doing my own thing. I don’t think that I am that innovative because they don’t allow us to. I am not by the book, but I try to conform to the extent possible. I still don’t think that there is one cut [way of doing things] for every child, and I feel like that is what the district is promoting. I have never been this restricted before [as a teacher] and I can’t say that it comes only from the district. No room is provided for us to go beyond the script to engage the students. We are told that ideas such as field trips take away from instructional time. I don’t feel as successful as I could be. Next year I will have to be more vocal about this level of injustice for student learning.

The impact of the centralization for instructional leadership on Hillside teachers’ sense of efficacy and their capacity to engage in TLIs are best demonstrated through the juxtaposition of Mr. Eric’s contemplations with those of Ms. Kristine, a fledgling teacher of 3 years:

I think I used to be more innovative at my other school. But here, I feel like I am treading water in terms of fitting in their curriculum (emphasis added). So, I don’t have the chance to be innovative. I try different things to make some of the lessons more engaging by adding things like throwing the [nerf] basketball [to practice spelling words] or how I phrase things a bit differently, but innovative I don’t think I have the opportunity here. I am not sure if I am allowed to do that. I think the administration definitely affects my teaching, I think at 80%.

She continued,

The fear of me being written up for not pacing instruction according to the curriculum makes me uncomfortable and makes me stick to the curriculum like I think I am supposed to. The building administrators are taking the lead from the district. When they come around, you have to have things on the wall and be on task and have the students on task. The way the district puts pressure on him [the principal]; he puts pressure on us. Last week I had a meeting with other new teachers of the ALAs [Accelerated learning Academies of which Hillside is one] and we were really questioning how we were not treated like professionals and asking why do I have a master’s degree in education only to read a script.

Discipline and Teaching

In today’s climate of educational reform, accountability is held in high regard. In many cases, high-stakes accountability is the primary driver of reform. A comparative analysis of the Hillside cases reveals that accountability, that is, the aims and measures for increasing student achievement, has changed the landscape of schooling since the 1990s. NCLB is to be credited for much of this growing shift, noted for strengthening the ties between standards and government based accountability strategies. Common among these are the posting of school report cards that advertise achievement as well as the employment of budget and performance accountability that financially penalizes or rewards schools in accordance with student achievement outcomes. Also made evident is that, in the context of reform, accountability legitimates disciplinary power.

Following this logic, disciplinary power emanates from the structural culture of organizations and society. Bureaucracy and hierarchy are the fulcrums of such power, thereby providing a foundation for disciplinary policies and practices. Collins (2009) accordingly explains that disciplinary power is most commonly operationalized as surveillance. For Hillside, accountability as discipline is evidenced as a surveillance and inspection mechanism by which school principals construct their behaviors aimed at regulating and tracking instructional practices to improve student achievement. In particular, the increased centralization of disciplinary actions from case to case concomitantly shaped school level leadership and, in turn, teachers’ capacity for engagement in TLIs.

If Donaldson (2001) is correct in his claim that leadership does not rest with the individual, but resides within the transactional networks of group members (i.e., teachers, principals, central office bureaucrats, community members, etc.), then the increasing centralization of disciplinary power exhibited through the juxtaposition of cases deserves a particular critique. This critique is one that highlights the potential for centralized disciplinary power to erode democratic exchange and intellectual meaning making among network members. Germaine to Hillside, these members are the both principals and teachers.

Discussion

The details of teachers’ experiences affirm that the context of school reform is complex, encompassing the logic and operations of reform as well as the lattice like interplay among stakeholders. Stakeholders’ understanding of reform, itself, their professional aspirations, and their actions are simultaneously part and parcel of such complexity. Even still, the social relations that play out within this context are simultaneously mediated by power relations, whether they be overt or covert, hegemonic or by habitus. The intersections of these forces act in a compounding and interrelated fashion, demonstrating how the social relations of school reform are pedagogical and directly impact upon teachers’ capacity to engage in TLIs.

While the actual impact of TLIs and school reform on student learning was not examined, it is clear that instructional innovation is highly regarded among teachers as a conduit for student success, their instructional effectiveness, and to some extent, their professional identity. Their perspectives of innovation shatter commonly held assumptions that place ubiquitous, electronic technologies at the center of instructional innovation; rather, TLIs define the core work of teachers’ intellectual and moral enterprise for supporting the diverse learning needs of students. Yet, this core is not always an inherent motivator for employment nor is it possible for teachers to fully actualize their professional aims within the core, given the context reform.

Using Collins’ (2009) framework of power, it is clear that each of these themes—teachers’ commitment to students compared to employment, innovation compared to managed instruction, and calibrated compared to standardized leadership—represents contradictions within CSR played out over time. While the logic of reconstitution remained the same for each case, the social relations of reform define convergent contexts. The impact of these social relations on school reform concomitantly offers new insights for the management of school turnaround.

First and foremost, the context of reform (i.e., the conditions into which reform is introduced and the conditions formed by its implementation) requires acute and responsive attention. Using the Hillside cases as an example, the complex context of reform can be viewed as occurring at the macro and the micro levels: beyond the classroom and inside the classroom, respectively. Unpacking these levels, Hansen (1981), for example, contends that research on teacher effectiveness often does not adequately account for the impact of organizational and structural changes, new curricular packages, representative of the macro level. Meanwhile at the micro level, Libman (2012) explains that the variability of learner associated factors is one attribute that remains an ongoing challenge, thereby challenging consistency as to what indicators define the variable of quality teaching. Libman’s (2012) further categorizes prominent learner differences as “their individual abilities, expectations, motivation and behavior; the resources of their homes as well as the attitudes and support systems provided by their families; [and] the abilities, attitudes and behavior of their peers; . . . ” (p. 158). Yet, the intricate interplay among both levels further challenges policy makers and school leaders’ management of context with sensitivity.

Second, increased centralization for school turnaround, which often strengthens the controls for surveillance, inspection, and accountability, does not necessarily foster the conditions for improved instructional effectiveness attuned to the diverse needs of learners. The diminishing capacity for TLIs, as particularly demonstrated by the latter two Hillside themes, corroborates this abstraction. Increased hyperrationality of accountability and surveillance in the absence of context sensitivity runs the risk of resulting in what White (2003) refers to as the manufacturing of the middle mind, “a form of management” (p. 26), “in the business of producing ‘content’ while seemingly to provide an authentic culture” (p. vi). Similar to the function of tightly controlled and managed curriculums alluded to in the Hillside case, the middle mind simultaneously ensures that all thoughts are convergent and that imagination is neutralized. The middle mind “thrives on the thoughtless and ephemeral enthusiasms that it presents as [authentic] culture” (p. 43). Worded, differently, Postman (1995) identifies this tendency as entropy, “which means that everything in the universe moves inexorably toward sameness, and when matter reaches a state in which there is no differentiation, there is no employable energy” (p. 77).

For Hillside, entropy is represented by the increasingly graduated centralization of leadership practices and other control mechanisms from case to case. It is represented by a growing oversight of instructional practices at the classroom level. As a result, the narrative for describing effective instruction became reduced to a binary of right and wrong—a narrative authored by the district, impenetrable by school personnel. Over time, it would appear that teachers lost ground for defining the content and methods of their instructional practices. In turn, their capacity to engage in TLIs for student success was taxed.

In sum, it is evident that educational reform is like a living entity, and as such, is easily effected by and simultaneously affects its ecological context. Similarly, policy enactments and reform technologies are likely to yield unpredictable results, though they tend to be birthed from a linear logic with particular outcomes in mind. Moreover, the social relations of school reform are politically charged. And even when policy makers and implementers astutely attend to the culture of reform and the ethical responsibility of their actions, they are not always able to control for the ways in which change will influence organizational conditions nor the behaviors of individuals, despite well-intended plans as these are “difficult for policymakers to influence, at least in the short run” (OECD, 2005; Hattie, 2003, as cited in Libman, 2012, p. 159). Perhaps the greater challenge from managing school turnaround is the actualization of democratic systems whereby policy makers, school leaders, teachers, and other relevant stakeholders mutually co-construct school turnaround. Such an approach disrupts the forces of hegemony and habitus that define traditional divisions of labor and is likely to re-align the power relations with greater sensitivity to the varied realms of concern among employees’ stations. In turn, the pedagogical capacity for teachers’ engagement in TLIs stands a greater chance for sustainability beyond a single reform.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Jacob Easley II is dean of the School of Education and Professional Studies/Graduate Division at Eastern Connecticut State Univeristy. His research also includes a focus on leadership prepartion and international perpectives of school effectiveness and improvement. He is apprecitive to the teachers and leaders of Hillside Elementary for their candor and participation.

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