The SAGE Handbook of School Organization 2018959875, 9781526420664

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The SAGE Handbook of

School Organization

INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD Tony Bush, University of Nottingham Christopher Chapman, University of Glasgow Chris Day, University of Nottingham Daniel L. Duke, University of Virginia Bill Firestone, Rutgers University Alma Harris, University of Bath Michael Humphreys, Durham University Stephan Huber, University of Teacher Education Zug Bob Johnson, University of Alabama Benjamin Kutsyuruba, Queens University Kingston, Ontario Ken Leithwood, University of Toronto Karen Seashore-Louis, University of Minnesota Peter Sleegers, BMC, The Netherlands John Chi Kin Lee, The Education University of Hong Kong Sigríður Margrét Sigurðardóttir, University of Akureyri Allan Walker, The Education University of Hong Kong

The SAGE Handbook of

School Organization

Edited by

Michael Connolly, David H. Eddy-Spicer, Chris James and Sharon D. Kruse

SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road New Delhi 110 044 SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 3 Church Street #10-04 Samsung Hub Singapore 049483

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Introduction & editorial arrangement © Michael Connolly, David H. Eddy-Spicer, Chris James, Sharon D. Kruse, 2019 Chapter 1 © Michael Connolly, David H. Eddy-Spicer, Chris James and Sharon D. Kruse, 2019 Chapter 2 © Bob L. Johnson, Jr, 2019 Chapter 3 © Daniel L. Duke, 2019 Chapter 4 © Tony Bush, 2019 Chapter 5 © Stephen L. Jacobson, 2019 Chapter 6 © Gary L. Anderson and Ethan Chang, 2019 Chapter 7 © Catherine Farrell, 2019 Chapter 8 © Scott C. Bauer and S. David Brazer, 2019 Chapter 9 © Ebony N. BridwellMitchell, 2019 Chapter 10 © Philip A. Woods, 2019 Chapter 11 © Michael Connolly and Sharon D. Kruse, 2019 Chapter 12 © Priscilla Wohlstetter and Angela Gargaro Lyle, 2019 Chapter 13 © Izhak Berkovich and Ori Eyal, 2019 Chapter 14 © David H. EddySpicer and Chris James, 2019 Chapter 15 © Chen Schechter and Haim Shaked, 2019 Chapter 16 © Peter Sleegers, Nienke Moolenaar and Alan J. Daly, 2019 Chapter 17 © Jaap Scheerens, 2019 Chapter 18 © Kathleen Lynch, 2019 Chapter 19 © Jill Blackmore, 2019 Chapter 20 © Katherine Cumings Mansfield, 2019 Chapter 21 © Megan TschannenMoran, 2019 Chapter 22 © Howard Stevenson, 2019

Chapter 23 © Melanie Ehren, 2019 Chapter 24 © Daniel Muijs, 2019 Chapter 25 © Cheng Yong Tan and Clive Dimmock, 2019 Chapter 26 © Stephanie Chitpin and Colin W. Evers, 2019 Chapter 27 © Eric C. K. Cheng and John Chi-kin Lee, 2019 Chapter 28 © Donald J. Peurach, William R. Penuel and Jennifer Lin Russell, 2019 Chapter 29 © Julie W. Dallavis and Mark Berends, 2019 Chapter 30 © Andrew Wilkins, 2019 Chapter 31 © Vincent Cho, Virginia Snodgrass Rangel and Anna Noble, 2019 Chapter 32 © Christopher Chapman, 2019 Chapter 33 © Daniel N. Sifuna, 2019 Chapter 34 © Pamela Woolner and Cynthia L. Uline, 2019 Chapter 35 © Joelle Rodway and Alan Daly, 2019 Chapter 36 © Alice Huguet, Lok-Sze Wong, Christopher W. Harrison, Cynthia E. Coburn and James P. Spillane, 2019 Chapter 37 © Andrew Townsend, 2019 Chapter 38 © Cristián Bellei, Liliana Morawietz, Juan Pablo Valenzuela and Xavier Vanni, 2019 Chapter 39 © Rick Mintrop, Elizabeth Zumpe and Mahua Baral, 2019 Chapter 40 © Michael Connolly, David H. Eddy-Spicer, Chris James and Sharon D. Kruse, 2019

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959875 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-5264-2066-4

Contents List of Figures ix List of Tables x Notes on the Editors and Contributors xi Acknowledgements xxvi 1

An Introduction to School Organization Michael Connolly, David H. Eddy-Spicer, Chris James and Sharon D. Kruse

PART I SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS 2

3

Organizations, Organizing, and Schools: Accessing Theoretical Tools and Models in Organization Theory Bob L. Johnson Jr Historical Perspectives on Schools as Organizations Daniel L. Duke

1

7

9

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PART II THE LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE OF SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

49

4

Conceptions of the Leadership and Management of Schools as Organizations Tony Bush

51

5

Managing the School Organization Stephen L. Jacobson

67

6

Competing Narratives of Leadership in Schools: The Institutional and Discursive Turns in Organizational Theory Gary L. Anderson and Ethan Chang

7

Governing and Governance of Schools as Organizations Catherine Farrell

84

103

PART III THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

117

8

119

Structural Perspectives on Schools as Organizations Scott C. Bauer and S. David Brazer

vi

  9

10

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Too Legit to Quit: Institutional Perspectives on the Study of Schools as Organizations Ebony N. Bridwell-Mitchell

139

School Organization: Authority, Status and the Role of Love as an Integrative Power Philip A. Woods

156

Organizational Culture in Schools: A Review of a Widely Misunderstood Concept Michael Connolly and Sharon D. Kruse

177

12

Inter-Organizational Networks in Education Priscilla Wohlstetter and Angela Gargaro Lyle

195

13

Feelings, Moods, and Emotion in Schools: Affective Perspectives Izhak Berkovich and Ori Eyal

210

14

Boundary Perspectives on Schools as Organizations David H. Eddy-Spicer and Chris James

228

15

Systems Thinking in School Organization Chen Schechter and Haim Shaked

249

16

The Interactional Nature of Schools as Social Organizations: Three Theoretical Perspectives Peter Sleegers, Nienke Moolenaar and Alan J. Daly

267

17

School Effectiveness and School Organization Jaap Scheerens

285

18

Inequality in Education: What Educators Can and Cannot Change Kathleen Lynch

301

19

Theorizing Schools as Organizations from a Feminist Perspective Jill Blackmore

318

20

Queer Theory Perspectives on Schools as Organizations Katherine Cumings Mansfield

340

PART IV  ORGANIZING IN SCHOOLS

359

21

Organizing in Schools: A Matter of Trust Megan Tschannen-Moran

361

22

Understanding Schools as Organizations and the Role of Organized Teachers: Perspectives on Teachers’ Work and Teacher Unions Howard Stevenson

376

Contents

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23

Schools as Organizations: Accountability Concerns Melanie Ehren

390

24

Organizational Performance Metrics for Schools Daniel Muijs

403

25

National and Transnational Influences on School Organization Cheng Yong Tan and Clive Dimmock

414

26

Decision-Making and the School Organization Stephanie Chitpin and Colin W. Evers

430

27

Lesson Study: Curriculum Management for 21st-Century Skills Eric C. K. Cheng and John Chi-kin Lee

447

28

Beyond Ritualized Rationality: Organizational Dynamics of Instructionally-Focused Continuous Improvement Donald J. Peurach, William R. Penuel and Jennifer Lin Russell

465

Parental Involvement in Schools as Organizations: Examining Consistent Benefits, Persistent Challenges, and Emerging Issues Julie W. Dallavis and Mark Berends

489

Assembling Schools as Organizations: On the Limits and Contradictions of Neoliberalism Andrew Wilkins

509

The Digital Age: Exploring the Relationship between Technology and School Organization Vincent Cho, Virginia Snodgrass Rangel and Anna Noble

524

School-to-School Collaboration: Building Collective Capacity through Collaborative Enquiry Christopher Chapman

540

29

30

31

32

33

Achieving Education for All: Organizational Issues in African Primary Schools 562 Daniel N. Sifuna

34

The School Building as Organizational Agent: Leveraging Physical Learning Environments to Advance the Educational Enterprise Pamela Woolner and Cynthia L. Uline

PART V  RESEARCHING SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS 35

Defining Schools as Social Spaces: A Social Network Approach to Researching Schools as Organizations Joelle Rodway and Alan J. Daly

576

597

599

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Research Use in Schools: A Framework for Understanding Research Use in School-Level Decision Making Alice Huguet, Lok-Sze Wong, Christopher W. Harrison, Cynthia E. Coburn and James P. Spillane

37

Practitioner Research in Schools as Organizations Andrew Townsend

38

Critical Issues for the Study of School Improvement: Contributions from a Research Program in Chile Cristián Bellei, Liliana Morawietz, Juan Pablo Valenzuela and Xavier Vanni

39

Design-Based School Improvement and Research for Education Leaders Rick Mintrop, Elizabeth Zumpe and Mahua Baral

40

Reflections on the State of School Organization Studies: Continuities and Challenges Michael Connolly, David H. Eddy-Spicer, Chris James and Sharon D. Kruse

618

632

650

666

690

Index 701

List of Figures   2.1 Levels of conceptual abstraction: Apple 19   2.2 Levels of conceptual abstraction: Organizations 20   8.1 Sensemaking as a source of structure 134 10.1 Love as an integrative power, showing connectedness as defining feature that encompasses integrative thinking and critical reflexivity 171 15.1 Four core characteristics of systems thinking in school organization as reflecting the two main meanings of systems thinking 259 15.2 Balancing process with delay 260 26.1 The cyclical process of identifying, testing and solving a problem 437 27.1 Structural equation model of the study by Jöreskog and Sörbom (1999) 454 32.1 A sociogram of programme participants working with two different partnership schools 549 34.1 Moos’ model of classroom climate 584 34.2 Gislason’s school environment model 585 34.3 Quality School Facilities: School Leadership-Building Design Model 585 35.1 Springhill Elementary School’s advice and collaboration networks 609 35.2 Map of the district-wide advice network with nodes sized by betweenness centrality 611 36.1 Conceptual framework for studying research use in schools 626

List of Tables   4.1 Comparing management and leadership 52   4.2 Typologies of leadership models 55   6.1 Shifts in discourses of ‘administration’ and ‘leadership’ in Educational Administration Quarterly 89   6.2 Four institutional perspectives of school reform 92   9.1 The three pillars of institutions 144 10.1 Types of authority 161 10.2 Status variables 166 12.1 Key dimensions of networks in education 201 13.1 Summary of the affective perspective of schools by metaphor 221 14.1 Worked example drawing on data from Eddy-Spicer (2017) and using Hernes’ framework for interpreting boundaries 240 14.2 An organizational boundary analytical framework for the study of educational organizations 244 15.1 Characteristics of systems thinking in school organization 257 16.1 Leading definitions of social capital 269 16.2 Three theoretical perspectives on the interactional nature of schools as social organizations 277 17.1 Effectiveness-enhancing conditions referred to in the review study by Reynolds et al. (2014), as summarized by Scheerens (2014) 286 17.2 Fend’s theory of the school 287 17.3 Intermediary causal structure of leadership at school 290 17.4 School models and key variables 297 28.1 An evolutionary logic: Exploration and exploitation in school improvement networks 472 28.2 Building innovation infrastructure: Comparing the maturation of impact to improvement 478 32.1 Key enablers and barriers to successful networked collaboration 555 35.1 Cohesion statistics for Springhill Elementary School and the Bellevue Elementary School District 605

Notes on the Editors and Contributors

THE EDITORS Michael Connolly is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy and Management, University of South Wales, UK, as a Visiting Professor of Education and Policy, University of Bath, UK. In addition, he is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. Professor Connolly has published a number of books, chapters in books and articles on education policy and management, learning in Higher Education as well as papers on public policy in Northern Ireland. Michael has been a co-editor of Public Money and Management (1988–2005, Taylor and Francis), book editor of Public Administration (2007–2012, Wiley) and a member of a number of editorial Boards for a range of academic journals. His research interests include education policy and management and the role of local government and local services. David H. Eddy-Spicer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leadership, Foundations and Social Policy at the Curry School of Education, University of Virginia. He holds a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has served on the faculties of the University of Bath, UK, and the UCL Institute of Education, London. His primary research interest focuses on the development of collective capacity for continuous improvement in struggling schools through interorganizational connections. He has expertise in program evaluation, case study research, realist synthesis, and the design and evaluation of professional learning environments. He has published in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Educational Change, Educational Management Administration and Leadership, Mind, Culture and Activity, Pedagogies, and Language and Education, and has authored or co-authored eight book chapters and over 40 text and multimedia case studies of professional learning and organizational change in the public sector. Chris James is the Professor of Educational Leadership and Management in the Department of Education at the University of Bath. He researches and teaches educational leadership, management and governance. During his career, Chris has published over 100 journal articles/book chapters and written 15 books/major reports. His research interests include the organizational dynamics of schools and colleges as institutions and, in particular: leadership influence, the importance of management, the affective aspects of organizing in schools, the organizational complexity of schools as institutions, and the way people make sense of their surroundings. Chris also researches the governing and governance of educational institutions and directs the Governing and Governance in Education Research Programme at the University of Bath. In the last seven years, he has completed nine research projects on the governing and governance of educational institutions.

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Sharon D. Kruse is Academic Director and Professor at Washington State University, Vancouver. Her scholarship broadly addresses two concerns: (1) to help teachers and school leaders better understand the key role leadership plays in schools, and (2) to explore how education is currently structured and influenced by social and organizational complexity. Kruse’s work focuses on understanding how schools can be better places for the children who attend them and the teachers who work in them. By focusing on the ways issues are framed, decisions are made, and problems are identified, she seeks to understand how schools can better educate and meet the needs of students. Her recent books include Educational Leadership, Organizational Learning, and the Ideas of Karl Weick: Perspectives on Theory and Practice (with Bob Johnson) (2019, Routledge) and A Case Study Approach to Educational Leadership (with Julie Gray) (2019, Routledge).

THE CONTRIBUTORS Gary L. Anderson is a Professor in Educational Policy and Leadership in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University. A former high school teacher and principal, he has published on topics such as critical ethnography, participatory action research, school micro-politics, new policy networks, and privatization. He has received two Fulbrights awards to do research in Mexico and Argentina. His most recent books are The New Democratic Professional: Confronting Markets, Metrics, and Managerialism (co-authored with Michael Cohen) (2018, Teachers College Press) and The Action Research Dissertation: A Guide for Students and Faculty (2nd ed., 2014, Sage). Mahua Baral received her Master’s in education from the University of Pennsylvania, and is earning her doctorate in Education Policy and Organizations at the University of California, Berkeley. She has over a decade of experience working on federal, state, and local education policy projects, as a research associate at the American Institutes for Research, and as a doctoral student. Her work includes managing assessment projects with state departments, consulting with school district leadership, and analyzing federal and state policies. In 2016, she co-authored sections in Rick Mintrop’s book, Design-Based School Improvement (2016, Harvard Education Press), including chapters about needs analyses and co-design partnerships. In 2017, her paper (with Rick Mintrop) on organizational ambidexterity, knowledge conversion and improvement science received the American Educational Research Association’s organizational theory paper of the year award. Her work focuses on knowledge and innovation in education organizations, federal education policy analysis, and the role of design in reforming urban districts. Scott C. Bauer is Professor and Associate Dean for Advanced Education and Doctoral Programs in the School of Education & Human Development, University of Colorado, Denver. Bauer’s work focuses on the application of organizational theory and design to the understanding and improvement of schools and colleges. His recent work includes a series of studies on the impact of isolation on school leaders, and the antecedents of a new principal’s intention to leave the profession. He is author (with David Brazer) of Using Research to Lead School Improvement: Turning Evidence into Action (2012, Sage), and serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Organizational Theory in Education.

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Cristián Bellei is an Associate Researcher of the Center for Advanced Research in Education and an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, both at the University of Chile. He previously worked at the Chilean Ministry of Education and for UNICEF in Chile. His main research areas are educational policy, school effectiveness, and school improvement. He has published extensively about quality and equity in Chilean education. Dr Bellei received his doctorate in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Mark Berends is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, where he directs the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity. He has written and published extensively on educational reform, school choice, the effects of family and school changes on student achievement trends and gaps, and the effects of schools and classrooms on student achievement. His research focuses on how school organization and classroom instruction are related to student outcomes, with special attention to disadvantaged students and school reforms aimed at improving their educational opportunities. Currently, he is conducting several studies on school choice, including an examination of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program, parent decision making and satisfaction in a lottery-based study of charter schools, and how school organizational and instructional conditions are related to student achievement gains in charter, private, and traditional public schools. Izhak Berkovich is a faculty member in the Department of Education and Psychology at the Open University of Israel. His research interests include educational leadership, ethics and social justice in school management, emotions in schools, politics and policy making in education, and educational reforms. Jill Blackmore is Alfred Deakin Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, inaugural Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation (2010–2015) and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia. Her research interests include, from a feminist perspective, globalization, education policy and governance; international and intercultural education; educational restructuring, leadership and organizational change; spatial redesign and innovative pedagogies; teachers’ and academics’ work, all with a focus on equity. Recent publications are Educational Leadership and Nancy Fraser (2016, Routledge), Globalised Re/gendering of the Academy and Leadership, co-edited with M. Sanchez and N. Sawers (2017, Routledge), and Mobile Teachers and Curriculum in International Schooling, co-edited with R. Arber and A. Vongalis-Macrow (2014, Sense). S. David Brazer is Associate Professor in the Stanford University Graduate School of Education where he teaches courses on general leadership principles, comparisons of different types of school, and instructional leadership. Brazer’s theory development and empirical research on strategic decision making, leadership, teacher learning, and organizational design have appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Brazer is lead author (with Bauer and Bob L. Johnson, Jr.) of the forthcomig volume, Leading Schools to Learn, Grow, and Thrive: Using Theory to Strengthen Practice (Routledge). He is the second author (with Robert G. Smith) of Striving for Equity: District Leadership for Narrowing Opportunity and Achievement Gaps (2016, Harvard Education Press) and (with Scott Bauer) of Using Research to Lead School Improvement: Turning Evidence into Action (2012, Sage). He serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Organizational Theory in Education.

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Ebony N. Bridwell-Mitchell is an Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government and a PhD in Organizational Theory and Management from the New York University Stern School of Business. Her research on the micro-social and cognitive dynamics of policy implementation and institutional change in public schools has been funded by the National Science Foundation, presented at numerous professional conferences and published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals. Ultimately, her academic and professional interests in education, organizational change, and public policy are an extension of her desire to encourage human development, public value, and social equity through institutional and systemic reform. Tony Bush is Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Nottingham, and previously held similar professorial posts at four other UK universities. He has published extensively on many aspects of school leadership theory, including his best-selling text, Theories of Educational Leadership, which is now in its fourth edition. He is a vice-president and Council member of the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society (BELMAS) and has been editor of the Society’s successful international journal, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, since 2002. His extensive international profile includes consultancy, external examining, funded research, and visiting professorships, in 22 countries on all six continents. Ethan Chang is a PhD candidate in Education with a Designated Emphasis in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He uses critical policy studies, institutional theory, and participatory action research to analyze and advocate for educational equity. His dissertation examines the politics of education technology reforms and competing notions of ‘21st century’ educational progress. In addition, Ethan collaborates with faculty and community leaders to develop and study equity-oriented, collaborative, community-based research (EOCCBR) – a methodology that aims to develop actionable knowledge that emanates from and is answerable to historically disinvested communities. Christopher Chapman is Professor and Director of Policy Scotland at the University of Glasgow, where he is also Founding Director of the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change and Co-director of What Works Scotland, a major £3 million three-year ESRC/ Government funded programme of research exploring public sector reform. He is a key architect of a number of collaborative approaches to system reform in Scotland, including the School Improvement Partnership Programme and the Network for Social and Educational Equity. He has over 100 publications in the areas of leadership, improvement and change, and is Senior Academic Advisor to the Scottish Attainment Challenge and a member of the First Minister’s International Council of Education Advisors. Eric C. K. Cheng is Associate Professor of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction of The Education University of Hong Kong. His research interests are knowledge management, school management and Lesson Study. He is editor of Education Reform Jounral and associate editor of the International Journal of Educational Administration and Policy Studies. His forthcoming publication is Successful Transposition of Lesson Study: A Knowledge Management Perpective in the Springer Brief in Education series. Stephanie Chitpin is an Associate Professor of Leadership in the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, Canada. Dr Chitpin’s principal contribution to leadership and to the

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professional development of principals rests on her rejection of the inductive method. She argues that knowledge is acquired by hypotheses deductively validated as ‘falsifiability criteria’. Her research program includes the analysis of the Objective Knowledge Growth Framework, based on Sir Karl Popper’s critical rationalism, as a new tool for understanding principal decision making. Dr Chitpin’s works include Decision Making in Educational Leadership: Principles, Policies, and Practices (with Colin Evers, 2015, Routledge), Popper’s Approach to Education: A Cornerstone of Teaching and Learning (2016, Routledge), Confronting Educational Policy in Neoliberal Times: International Perspectives (2018, Routledge), and the forthcoming Understanding Decision-Making in Educational Contexts: A Case Study Approach (2020, Routledge). She is Series Editor of Educational Leadership and Policy Decision-Making in Neoliberal Times, published by Routledge. Dr Chitpin is the Founding Director of the Canadian Principal Learning Network. Vincent Cho is an Associate Professor in educational leadership at Boston College. His research addresses issues relating to school leadership in the digital age. A former teacher and administrator, Cho’s aim is to help educators make the most of the knowledge and technologies in schools. Recent projects have examined 1:1 computing initiatives, administrators’ uses of social media, and districts’ implementation of computerized information systems. Cho serves as Assistant Editor for Educational Policy and is on the editorial board of Teachers College Record. In addition to works appearing in leading academic journals, Cho is also co-author of Supervision: A Redefinition (9th edition) with Thomas J. Sergiovanni and Robert J. Starratt (2013, McGraw-Hill). Cynthia E. Coburn is Professor at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She specializes in policy implementation, the relationship between research and practice, data use, and scale up of innovation. She has studied research use in schools and districts since 2002 and currently serves as co-Principal Investigator of the IES-funded National Center for Research in Policy and Practice. In 2011, Coburn was awarded the Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association in recognition of her contributions to the field of educational research in the first decade of her career. In 2015, she was elected Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, honoring ‘exceptional contributions to and excellence in educational research’. Coburn has a BA in philosophy from Oberlin College, an MA in Sociology and a PhD in Education from Stanford University. Julie W. Dallavis is faculty in the Institute for Educational Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame. She specializes in education-related program evaluation and her research focuses on school organization and culture, school sector effects, and school choice. She is currently completing a mixed methods study of school mission, examining practitioner use of statements, changes in statement content over time, and possible links between mission and student achievement. Alan J. Daly is the Director of the Joint Educational Leadership Doctoral Program and Professor in the Department of Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Alan’s research and teaching are influenced by his 16 years of public school experience in a variety of instructional and leadership roles. His research primarily focuses on the role of leadership, educational policy, and organization structures and the relationship between those elements on the educational attainment of traditionally marginalized populations. Alan draws on his methodological expertise in social network analysis. His books include Social Network

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Theory and Educational Change (2010, Harvard University Press), Using Research Evidence in Schools with Kara, S. Finnigan (2014, Springer), and Thinking and Acting Systemically: Improving School Districts Under Pressure (2016, American Educational Research Association). Professor Daly is also a Fulbright Global Scholar, having spent time in New Zealand and South Africa. Clive Dimmock is Professor in Professional Learning and Leadership in the School of Education, University of Glasgow. Among his research interests are learning-centred leadership; connectivity between learning, teaching, professional development and leadership, and whole school re-design; cross-cultural comparisons between Anglo-American and Asian systems of schooling; the roles of policy makers and school leaders in promoting equity across school systems; and problems arising from disconnections between research, policy and practice. Daniel L. Duke has taught graduate courses for over four decades in organizational change, organizational theory, and organizational history at Lewis & Clark College, Stanford University, and the University of Virginia. Well-known for his organizational histories of Thomas Jefferson High School, Fairfax County Public Schools, and Manassas Park City Schools, Duke also has contributed to the development of organizational history as a research methodology. Duke also has played a significant role in studying efforts to turn around persistently low-performing schools and understanding the dynamics of school failure and decline. His recent books include Leadership for Low-Performing Schools (2015, Rowman and Littlefield) and The Children Left Behind (2016, Rowman and Littlefield). Melanie Ehren is a Professor in Educational Accountability and Improvement at the UCL Institute of Education and head of the Centre for Educational Evaluation and Accountability (www.educationalevaluation.net). Her academic work focuses on the effectiveness of accountability and evaluation systems and aims to contribute to a greater understanding of the interplay between accountability and the broader education system in tackling inequality and improving student outcomes. Her key projects include an EU Erasmus+/KA2 comparative study on polycentric inspections of networks of schools across four countries, an EU-funded comparative study on the impact of school inspections in six European countries, and an ESRC-funded study on accountability, capacity and trust to improve learning outcomes in South Africa. Colin W. Evers is Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of New South Wales. Prior to that he was Professor of Education at the University of Hong Kong. He has a disciplinary background in mathematics and philosophy, and teaching and research interests in educational administration and leadership, the philosophy of education, and research methodology. He is co-author or co-editor of 12 books and over 100 scholarly papers. He is the section editor for educational administration in the Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory (2014, Springer) and a co-editor of the book series Educational Leadership and Policy Decision-Making in Neoliberal Times (Routledge). His most recent books include co-editing Questioning Leadership: New Directions for Educational Organizations (2017, Routledge), co-authoring Realist Inquiry in Social Science (2016, Sage), and co-editing Decision Making in Educational Leadership (2015, Routledge). Ori Eyal, PhD, is Chair of the Graduate Division of Policy, Administration, and Leadership in Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a Research Fellow at the Asia Pacific

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Centre for Leadership and Change (APCLC). His research focuses on the emergence of unsolicited innovation in education, school entrepreneurship, educational champions, educational policy, cross-sector alliances in the field of education, educational leadership, and, of late, the role emotions play in schools. Catherine Farrell is Professor of Public Management in the Faculty of Business and Society, University of South Wales, UK. Catherine is particularly interested in public boards and their governance, and strategic developments in the public sector, including education, police and fire and rescue. Professor Farrell chaired the Welsh Government’s Task and Finish Expert School Governance group, which reviewed models of governance in education. She is currently developing a new award for Academi Wales (Welsh Government) – an MSc Leadership and Governance – for the All Wales Graduate Public Services programme. Dr Farrell is currently working (with a colleague) on two consultancy projects as part of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015: Enablers and Barriers to New Ways of Working, a Review document prepared for Public Health Wales, and a Review of the NHS Centre for Equality and Human Rights, Wales. Christopher W. Harrison is an Assistant Professor of Educational Theory and Practice at Montana State University – Billings. Harrison’s research interests center on the ways that schools and districts leverage information as they develop, implement, and scale policies and practices. In addition, Harrison studies the politics of education – in particular, the politics surrounding teacher compensation, evaluation, and contracting reform. Before joining the faculty at MSU-B, Harrison was a post-doctoral fellow with the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice at Northwestern University and a research associate with the National Center for Scaling Up Effective Schools at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he earned his doctorate. Alice Huguet is an Associate Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation. She is interested in studying educational policies that may influence the academic and life opportunities of students attending urban schools. She employs qualitative methods to explore the complex environmental, institutional, and organizational factors that interact with the design and implementation of such policies. Huguet’s research explores a broad range of topics, including evidence-based decision making at the district, school, and classroom levels; data- and instructional-coaching programs; school leadership; multiple-measure teacher evaluation systems; portfolio-model district reform; and school site co-location. Prior to joining RAND, Huguet was a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She completed her PhD in urban education policy at the University of Southern California in 2015. Huguet’s work is motivated by her experiences teaching in Los Angeles middle school classrooms for five years. Stephen L. Jacobson is a Distinguished Professor in the University at Buffalo’s Graduate School of Education. He has also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy. He is past President of the University Council for Educational Administration and the Association for Education Finance and Policy. He is the senior editor of Leadership and Policy in Schools, lead editor of the book series, Policy Implications of Research in Education, and recently awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Albania. His research interests include successful leadership in high poverty schools, the reform of school leadership preparation and practice, and teacher compensation. His most

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recent works examined early childhood education in New Zealand and secondary education in Belize. He is the author of six books and over 80 peer-refereed journal articles and book chapters, and is regularly invited to present his research around the world. Bob L. Johnson, Jr, is a Professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Alabama. His research interests focus on leadership, leadership development, executive decision making, the politics of education, micro-politics, education policy, delineating the defining and distinguishing features of schools as organizations, and the work of Karl Weick. He was formerly a faculty member at the University of Utah, and past editor of Educational Administration Quarterly. John Chi-kin Lee is Vice President (Academic) and Chair Professor of Curriculum and Instruction as well as Director of Centre for Religious and Spirituality Education at The Education University of Hong Kong. He is also Chang Jiang Scholar Chair Professor conferred by the Ministry of Education in China. He is the former Dean of Education and Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests are curriculum studies, school improvement and teacher education as well as geographical and environmental education. He is Editor-in-Chief of Cogent Education and Executive/Regional Editor of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice and Educational Research and Evaluation respectively. His recent publication is Routledge International Handbook of Schools and Schooling in Asia (coedited with Kerry Kennedy). Angela Gargaro Lyle is a PhD candidate in the Educational Policy, Leadership and Innovation program at the University of Michigan. She specializes in large-scale instructional reform, educational networks, policy implementation, educational leadership and continuous improvement. Her current research focuses on network-based designs for instructional improvement. Lyle has a BA in interdisciplinary studies in social science from Michigan State University, an MA in K-12 Administration from Michigan State University and a PhD in Educational Studies (expected 2019) from the University of Michigan. Kathleen Lynch is Professor and Chair in equality studies at University College Dublin, Ireland. Lynch worked with colleagues to establish the UCD Equality Studies Centre in 1990 and the UCD School of Social Justice in 2005. Her most recent book (which is co-authored with Bernie Grummell and Dympna Devine) is New Managerialism in Education: Commercialization, Carelessness and Gender (2012, 2015, 2nd edition, Palgrave Macmillan). Professor Lynch has published also on egalitarian theory and practice with colleagues in Equality: From Theory to Action (2004, 2009, 2nd edition, Palgrave Macmillan) and on care and equality in Affective Equality: Love Care and Injustice (2009, Palgrave Macmillan). From 2014 to 2017 Professor Lynch worked as an Advanced Research Scholar funded by the Irish Research Council. She is also Pincipal Investigator for Ireland for a Horizon 2020 project on the study of solidarity in Europe 2015–2018. Professor Lynch has worked with non-governmental organizations and statutory bodies, both nationally and internationally, to challenge inequalities and promote social justice. Katherine Cumings Mansfield is an Associate Professor at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the Department of Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations. Mansfield graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a PhD in Educational Policy and Planning and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies. Mansfield’s interdisciplinary scholarship examines educational policy and practice as it relates to identity intersectionalities such

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as gender, class, and race across elementary, secondary, and post-secondary contexts. Mansfield has published in a variety of journals, including: Educational Administration Quarterly, Education Policy Analysis Archives, Educational Studies, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Journal of Research on Leadership Education, and Teachers College Record. In addition, Mansfield has co-edited two books: Women Interrupting, Disrupting, and Revolutionizing Educational Policy and Practice, with Whitney Sherman Newcomb (2014, Information Age Publishing) and Identity Intersectionalities, Mentoring, and Work-life (Im) Balance: Educators (Re)Negotiate the Personal, Professional, and Political, with Anjalé Welton and Pei-Ling Lee (2016, Information Age Publishing). Rick Mintrop is an educator and researcher of educational policy and organizations in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Faculty Director of the Doctoral Program in Leadership for Educational Equity (LEEP). He worked in school systems in the United States and Germany prior to his academic career. His work centers on organizational processes that improve schools, both in theory and practice. In 2016, he published Design-based School Improvement: A Practical Guide for Education Leaders (Harvard Education Press). For the last four years, he has been involved in a Research Practice Partnership with a Bay Area school district that uses a logic of continuous quality improvement to develop and spread deeper learning practices in the midst of pervasive experiences of social and economic adversity. Nienke Moolenaar is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her research interests include social capital theory, social network analysis, leadership and organizational behaviour. She studies social networks among educators to understand the complexity of social dynamics and its relevance for learning. Liliana Morawietz is assistant researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies in Education at Universidad de Chile. She holds a BA in Anthropology from Universidad de Chile, a MA in Oral History from Columbia University, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Higher Education Studies at Leiden University and Diego Portales University. Her research focuses on education quality and effectiveness, and on the non-disciplinary contents of schooling, such as 21st century competencies, citizenship, and intercultural education. Daniel Muijs is Head of Research at Ofsted. Previously, he worked as Professor of Education at the University of Southampton. Daniel is an expert in educational effectiveness, and has published widely in this area. He is co-editor of the journal School Effectiveness and School Improvement and a member of the executive council of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction. Anna Noble is currently completing a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Leadership at Boston College. Her recent publications include ‘A lifelong classroom: Social studies educators’ engagement with professional learning networks on Twitter’ in the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education (February, 2016) and ‘The emergence of studentcentered teaching in professional learning networks on Twitter: The role of choice and voice’ in Advancing Next-Generation Elementary Teacher Education through Digital Tools and Applications, edited by M. Grassetti and S. Brookby (2016, IGI Global). Her research interests include the role of technology in educational change and she is currently completing a longitudinal study of adaptive leadership practices among urban school leaders.

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William R. Penuel is a Professor of learning sciences and human development in the School of Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His current research examines conditions needed to implement rigorous, responsive, and equitable teaching practices in STEM education. With colleagues from across the country, he is developing and testing new models for supporting implementation through long-term partnerships between educators and researchers. Penuel has partnerships with large school districts and a national association of state science coordinators focused on implementing the vision of science education outlined in a Framework for K-12 Science Education. As co-Principal Investigator of the Research+Practice Collaboratory, he developed numerous resources to help people build and sustain research– practice partnerships. Penuel is currently PI for the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice, which is focused on how school and district leaders use research. He is one of the developers of an approach to improvement research called Design-Based Implementation Research. Donald J. Peurach, is an Associate Professor of Educational Policy, Leadership, and Innovation in the University of Michigan’s School of Education and a Senior Fellow of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. His research, teaching, and outreach focuse on the production, use, and management of knowledge in practice, among social innovators and those they seek to serve. Peurach examines these issues in the context of largescale, network-based eduational improvement initiatives, focusing specifically on how these networks continuously learn and improve over time. Peurach is the author of Seeing Complexity in Public Education: Problems, Possibilities, and Success for All (2011, Oxford University Press) and co-author of Improvement by Design: The Promise of Better Schools (2014, University of Chicago Press). He is also the developer of Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement, a program that uses massive open online courses on the edX platform to provide a comprehensive introduction to large-scale, network-based instructional improvement. Joelle Rodway, is Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Prior to this appointment, she was a Research Officer with Michael Fullan Enterprises. Joelle’s scholarship is greatly informed by her experience as a middle and high school teacher in the province of Ontario’s public education system. Her research interests focus on the role of social capital in whole-system educational change. Taking a social network approach, Joelle investigates the ways in which interactions among and between educators at various levels of education systems enable (or restrict) educational reform efforts. Her work has been recognized by the Albert Shanker Institute in Washington, DC, and has been published in Educational Policy Analysis Archives, Canadian Journal of Education, and Education Review. Jennifer Lin Russell is an Associate Professor of learning sciences and policy in the School of Education and a research scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. She is also a senior fellow of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. She received a PhD in education policy and organizations from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines policy and other educational improvement initiatives through an organizational perspective. Her recent work examines two primary issues: (1) how schools create social and organizational structures that support reform; and (2) how interorganizational collaborations and networks can be structured to support educational improvement.

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Chen Schechter is a Professor of leadership, organizational development and policy in education at the School of Education, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Aiming to integrate theory with empirical evidence and practice, his research areas include reform implementation, educational change, professional learning communities, organizational learning, collaborative learning from success, educational leadership, leadership development, and systems thinking for school leaders. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Educational Administration (JEA), the oldest and most respected leading journal in the field of educational leadership and management. He is the Chair of AERA Organizational Theory SIG. Jaap Scheerens is Professor emeritus at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and currently associated with the research institute Oberon, in Utrecht. In his capacity as Professor of Educational Organization and Management, he led a research program on educational effectiveness and educational evaluation. Scheerens was Scientific Director of a network of education faculties in the Netherlands and Director of the research institute of the Faculty of Education at the University of Twente. He carried out activities for the OECD, as a chairman of a network to develop process indicators on educational systems and schools, and as chairman and member of the Questionnaire Experts Groups for PISA 2009 and 2012. He has coordinated numerous research projects funded by the European Union and worked as a consultant for the World Bank and Unesco. He has published 20 books and over 100 articles. Haim Shaked is Vice President for Academic Affairs and Head of the Department of Education, Hemdat Hadarom College of Education, Netivot, Israel. As a scholar-practitioner with seventeen years of experience as school principal, his research interests include instructional leadership, system thinking in school leadership, and education reform. His book (coauthor Chen Schechter) Systems Thinking for School Leaders: Holistic Leadership for Excellence in Education was published recently by Springer. Daniel N. Sifuna is Professor of history of education, and international and comparative education in the Department of Educational Foundations at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya and a director and senior partner of OWN & Associates: Centre for Research and Development. He holds a B. Ed degree of Makerere University in Uganda, an M.A. (Education) and Ph.D from University of Nairobi. He has published several books and many articles in education in local and international journals. Professor Sifuna has held many prominent positions in the academia and professional organizations. He has also worked with many universities in Africa, especially in Eastern and Southern Africa, and won several awards and fellowships that have enabled him to work as a visiting scholar in universities in the United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. He has in addition provided consultancy services to many international organizations, including the United Nations’ agencies. Peter Sleegers is senior researcher and consultant at BMC Consultancy in the Netherlands. His research and writing concerns leadership, school organization, school improvement and educational change. Among his research projects are studies into the effects of educational leadership on teacher and student learning and longitudinal research into sustainable school improvement. Virginia Snodgrass Rangel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Houston, where she teaches courses on

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program evaluation, research design, and quantitative research methods. She is interested in the opportunity structures within and outside of schools that limit or enhance students’ academic trajectories. Currently, she is examining opportunity structures in STEM-focused schools and during the school re-entry process for justice-involved youth. Her work has appeared in the American Educational Research Journal, Review of Educational Research, the Journal of School Leadership, and the Journal of Research on Technology in Education. James P. Spillane is the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Professor in Learning and Organizational Change at Northwestern University where he is a Professor of Human Development and Social Policy, Learning Sciences, and Management & Organizations (by courtesy). He is also a faculty associate at Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research and a senior Research Fellow with the Center for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). A member of the National Academy of Education, Spillane’s work explores relations between government policy and local practice at the school district, school, and classroom levels. He is author of five books, including Standards Deviations (2009, Harvard University Press), Distributed Leadership (2006, JosseyBass) and Diagnosis and Design for School Improvement (2011, Teachers College Press) as well as over 60 journal articles and numerous book chapters. Howard Stevenson is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the School of Education, University of Nottingham, UK. He has extensive experience of researching employment relations issues in education systems, and specifically the role and strategies of teacher unions. He has undertaken funded research projects in these areas for the European Commission, Educational International and for several individual teacher unions in different parts of the world. Cheng Yong Tan is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. His research program unravels home and school factors that influence student achievement and comprises socioeconomic inequality in student achievement and school leadership. It is premised on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory that argues for the need to understand human development in multiple contexts such as the home and school. Andrew Townsend is Associate Professor in Educational Leadership in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham. He is especially interested in the participatory features of leadership, research and change. He is a member of the Collaborative Action Research Network and the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society. He is the coordinating editor of the journal Educational Action Research, and sits on the editorial boards of the journals Leadership in Education and Educational Research for Social Change. He has written on the subjects of action research, practitioner research and participatory change and has also edited several texts on these subjects. The interests which have guided his work as a consult and academic are informed by his experience as a teacher of science over a period of nine years. Megan Tschannen-Moran is a Professor of Educational Leadership at the College of William and Mary. Growing out of her 14 years of experience as the founder and principal of a school serving primarily low-income and minority students in a distressed neighborhood of Chicago, she is motivated to work at the intersection of theory and practice so that schools grow in their capacity to serve all students well. Her research and scholarly publications focus on relationships of trust in school settings and how these are related to important outcomes, such as collective teacher efficacy beliefs, teacher professionalism, and student

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achievement. Her book Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools (2nd edition, 2014, Jossey-Bass) reports the experience of three principals and the consequences of their successes and failures to build trust. Cynthia L. Uline is Professor Emeritus of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University. Cynthia serves as Director of SDSU’s National Center for the 21st Century Schoolhouse (http://go.sdsu.edu/education/schoolhouse/). Her research explores the influence of built learning environments on students’ learning, as well as the roles leaders, teachers, and the public play in shaping learning spaces. Cynthia’s current research considers the potential of green schools as student-centered, ecologically responsive, and economically viable places for learning. She has published articles related to leadership for learning, leadership preparation, and the improvement of social and physical learning environments in journals such as Educational Administration Quarterly, Journal of Educational Administration, Teacher College Record, Journal of School Leadership, Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, and International Journal of Leadership in Education. She and Lisa A. W. Kensler of Auburn University co-authored Leadership for Green Schools: Sustainability for Our Children, Our Communities, and Our Planet (2017, Routledge). Juan Pablo Valenzuela is an Associate Researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies in Education (Universidad de Chile). He holds a PhD in Economics from Michigan-Ann Arbor University, an MA in economics also from Michigan-Ann Arbor University, and a BA in Economy from Universidad de Chile. His research focuses on economics of education and social inequality. Dr Valenzuela has published extensively on Chilean education quality and equity in Chilean and international journals. His latest work focuses on schools and academic segregation within the educational system, and schools’ effectiveness trajectories and the factors and processes that explain it. Xavier Vanni is an Associate Researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies in Education at the University of Chile and researcher at the Leadership Center for School Improvement. He previously worked at the Chilean Ministry of Education. He holds a BA in Psychology (Diego Portales University, Chile) and a Masters in Policy Studies in Education from the Institute of Education, University of London. His research focuses on educational policy, school improvement, and educational leadership. Andrew Wilkins is Reader in Education at the University of East London. He is a member of several journal editorial boards, including Critical Studies in Education, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, British Journal of Sociology of Education, and Journal of Applied Social Theory. Recent book publications include Modernising School Governance: Corporate Planning and Expert Handling in State Education (2016, Routledge), for which he was awarded joint-second prize by the Society for Educational Studies (SES) for books published in 2016, and Education Governance and Social Theory: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research (2018, Bloomsbury). Priscilla Wohlstetter is Distinguished Research Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University in the Department of Education Policy & Social Analysis. She is interested in alternative forms of governing public schools and has investigated a variety of forms, from the Annenberg Challenge networks of the 1990s to the implementation of charter school networks (CMOs) and the recent creation across the USA of intra-district networks for

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school improvement. In addition, her research agenda focuses on strategic alliances (e.g., public-private partnerships) – networks of different types of organizations, often cross-sectoral – whose organizations come together to solve common problems which are too big for any one organization to solve on its own. Wohlstetter holds an EdM from Harvard University in administration and social policy and a PhD from Northwestern University in education policy. Lok-Sze Wong is a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Wong’s scholarship is at the intersection of poverty, race, schooling, and policies designed to improve instruction and its management. Using an organizational and systems-level learning perspective, she seeks to understand how policy makers and school systems can better support positive student experiences. Her most recent project aims to understand students’ perceptions of caring relationships with teachers, and how policy and systemic change could better support such relationships. She also studies practitioners’ professional learning opportunities within their efforts to improve their schools and schooling systems. Wong seeks to support administrators and teachers as they continuously improve their practice while redesigning the very organizations in which they work. Wong earned her PhD in Educational Administration and Policy from the University of Michigan. Philip A. Woods is Director of the Centre for Educational Leadership and Professor of Educational Policy, Democracy and Leadership at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, as well as an active member and former Chair of the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS). His work focuses principally on leadership as a distributed and democratic process and on issues of governance, equity and change towards more democratic and holistic learning environments. He is author of over 130 publications and has wideranging experience and expertise in leading, managing and participating in major funded projects for organizations including the British Academy, UK government and European Union. His latest book is Collaborative School Leadership: A critical guide, authored with Amanda Roberts (2018, Sage). Pamela Woolner is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK, and co-director of the Centre for Learning and Teaching (CfLaT). Pam has an international reputation for researching educational environments and a commitment to the cross-disciplinary work that underpins this area. Her research includes investigations of underlying issues for learning space design, and examinations of the use and development of space in British schools. These projects include reviewing the evidence base for the impact of school premises on learning, working collaboratively with schools to improve their learning environments, and developing an overview of the potential for school premises to support and enable change and improvement. Her published work includes a seminal review, The Impact of School Environments (2005, Design Council), a book about school space aimed at users, The Design of Learning Spaces (2010, Continuum), and an interdisciplinary edited collection, School Design Together (2015, Routledge), which explores participatory design of school space. Elizabeth Zumpe is a doctoral candidate in the Policy, Organizations, Measurement, and Evaluation Program (POME) and an instructor in the Leadership for Educational Equity Program (LEEP) in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on understanding and navigating the social psychological dynamics of improvement in schools facing adversity, collaborating with educators to find engaging

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approaches to collective problem solving. In recent years, she has been part of a long-term, district-wide Research Practice Partnership, which involves co-designing routines and tools to engage teachers in professional learning. She contributed to Design-based School Improvement: A Practical Guide for Education Leaders (2016, Harvard Education Press). Before graduate study, she taught for over a decade in several urban school districts serving large proportions of disadvantaged students. She holds National Board Certification in Teaching and an MA in Education from the University of California, Berkeley.

Acknowledgements We wish to acknowledge the support and patience of our partners (Una, Nancy, Jane and Paul) and offer them, and all the members of our families, thanks. We hope they all ‘pluck till time and times are done, the silver plus of the moon, the golden apples of the sun’ (W. B. Yeats).

1 An Introduction to School Organization M i c h a e l C o n n o l l y , D a v i d H . E d d y - S p i c e r, Chris James and Sharon D. Kruse

In this introduction to The Handbook of School Organization, we focus on four main themes. First, we orient the reader to the purpose and our intentions for this volume. We then offer a descriptive overview of the volume, explaining the structure and logic of the chapters. From there, we outline the ways in which our conceptions of school organization frame the Handbook. Finally, we acknowledge the people who helped make this project possible.

OUR INTENTIONS FOR THE HANDBOOK Developing a Handbook that covers the full range of scholarship in school organization is not an easy undertaking. The field itself is complex and multifaceted, particularly so because writing about school organization falls within the wider, more general field of organizational studies.

Furthermore, and notably, the different disciplines that inform the broad literature often stand in sharp contrast to each other. Our approach to this volume, therefore, has been to include a broad range of different perspectives – established and new. Our effort to offer a panoramic view of the current landscape of school organization also reflects our aim to appeal to a broad audience, from practitioners expanding the boundaries of school and school system organization in their practice to researchers developing and pushing the edges of organizational theory. We also aimed to appeal to those emerging scholars and practitioners coming to this Handbook for a fundamental orientation to the field. We invited contributors who we believed brought to the volume a solid foundation of understanding about the area of their contribution. The reader will see a number of familiar names as a consequence of that endeavor. However, we also encouraged collaboration and new voices. Equally

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important, we wanted the volume to be solidly international in focus, and we purposefully reached out to colleagues in countries outside the USA and the UK to develop a comprehensive set of understandings. We hope the reader finds the inclusion of this broad range of voices instructive. Furthermore, we encourage the reader to consider the chapters as complementary of each other and to be read with a sense of how theory and practice across contexts and cultures differ and remain the same.

WHY THIS HANDBOOK? We were motivated to produce this Handbook due to the turbulence that schools and school systems as organizations are currently facing. As a result of this high degree of change, understanding, as well as leading and managing – organizing – schools and school systems in these times raises novel issues. We designed the Handbook as a forum for scholars in school organization to engage in a theoretically critical conversation concerning the historical development, current state, and future orientations of the field. The past three decades of varied and sustained attempts around the globe to change the organizational structure of schools and school systems has revealed more than ever the need for organizational perspectives as a prelude to, not an afterthought of, a focus on leadership. Understanding systemic complexities entails greater awareness of organizational structure, processes and dynamics accompanied with critical clarity about conceptual underpinnings. In pursuing this particular path, our compass is one that steers us to ask, ‘In what ways, and to what extent, contributions elaborate organizational perspectives on schools?’ More simply put, the central question that is explored in this Handbook is the following: What is the nature of school organization as a theoretical and practical discipline?

DEFINING SCHOOL AS ORGANIZATION Three decades ago, Tyler (1988, p. 9) offered what still stands as a serviceable definition of a school: ‘… a localized administrative entity concerned with the face-to-face instruction of the young, usually on a single site…’. It has the following characteristics: a It has formal organizational properties, however minimal or pre-bureaucratic in the Weberian sense. b The face-to-face encounter is central to its instructional practices. c It has spatial and temporal specificity – individual schools typically have ‘a local habitation and a name’.

This definition suggests that we need to understand both the internal organizing features of the school, a micro-analytic perspective, and its social, political and economic environment, a macro-analytic one. These macro- and micro- analytical challenges are of course a long-standing feature and analytic puzzle in organization studies in education, and one that the chapters in this volume reveal as being continuously in search of a secure grounding. Bidwell (2001), whose work in the mid-1960s arguably went on to ignite Weick (1976) and then Meyer and Rowan (1978), identifies two ways of framing schools as educational organizations, with one strand emphasizing teachers’ work and the other the institutional surround, highlighting the micro-analysis/macro-analysis divide. Tyler (1988), in his time, appealed to scholars for suitable conceptual frameworks and analytic tools that might steer us between ‘the Scylla of macro-structural models … and the Charybdis of micro-analysis of situation and episode in the daily encounters of the classroom’ (Tyler 1988, p. 17). Even further back in organizational studies more broadly, Thompson (1967) followed uncertainty into the technical core of organizations, attempting to reconcile the

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‘closed-system’ approaches to organizational analysis and rationality that had generated so much management literature and the newer (at that time) natural-systems approach to viewing organizations not as entities but as processes and relations within an institutional environment. More recently, Scott (2013), in his typical and very useful panoscopic approach, offers an encapsulation of the state of play that will be useful to us. He uses a table from Hoffman and Ventresca (2002) to illustrate a, ‘higher, more encompassing level of analysis’ in ways that: emphasize the shift from structure to process, insist on attention to the empowering as well as the constraining effects of institutions, attend to both structural and cultural elements, and recognize a larger role for power processes and strategic action. (Scott, 2013, p. 257)

This idea brings into the foreground the middle-level of educational organizing, meso-analytic perspectives, and highlights once again the fundamental push and pull of process and structure in our efforts to capture school organization ‘in the wild’. The dynamism in the field that is now apparent in theorizing and studying school organization as a multilevel, multidimensional phenomenon challenges our best efforts to present a comprehensive view of the landscape. And yet, it is for that reason that we have set some basic guiderails to structure this volume. Certainly, some chapters will address broader issues, and others narrower ones. However, in the end, we hope that, read in context with each other, the chapters set forth inclusive and far-reaching perspectives that tackle process and structure, micromeso-macro dynamics, and all while drawing on a range of international experiences.

THE HANDBOOK – AN OVERVIEW The Handbook is divided into five main sections, each addressing separate questions in regard to the field, as follows.

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Part I: Schools as Organizations The chapters in this section focus on foundational issues that are at the heart of any analysis of schools as organizations: ‘What are schools as organizations?’ and ‘What theories and models have informed our thinking and in what ways have these ideas changed and persisted?’ Central tasks here are concerned with defining and conceptualizing school as organization and broadly characterizing analytic perspectives on the school as organization.

Part II: The Leadership, Management and Governance of Schools as Organizations In this section, the chapters focus on the key concepts: the leadership, management and governance of schools as organizations. Important questions for this section are: ‘How are schools led and managed?’ and ‘In what ways do our narratives of school leadership and management inform our theorizing about schools as organizations and how are these affected by the governance arrangements?’ In this way, Part II takes on the internal and external contexts of school organizations as foundational to understanding school organizations with any clarity.

Part III: Theoretical Perspectives on Schools as Organizations The chapters in this section consider schools as organizations from a range of theoretical standpoints and provide contrasting perspectives on schools as organizations. The central questions addressed include: ‘What is the variety of theoretical perspectives that have been adopted in our study of schools as organizations?’ and ‘How, and in what ways, is knowledge about school organization generated in relation to action and policy? Hence, Part III covers a range of topics, some of

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which are expected, for example, culture and organizational structure, and a number of which cover more novel issues, such as complexity and boundary perspectives.

consider that the high quality of the contributions we have assembled, and the Handbook in its entirety, contribute substantially to our understanding of the field in a robust and vigorous way.

Part IV: Organizing in Schools In this section, the various chapters address specific issues that face schools as organizations, opening up those issues for critique and scrutiny. The section includes a number of chapters that focus on issues such as curriculum, the role of parents and continuous improvement in schools. The various chapters address the questions: ‘What are the distinguishing organizational features of school organizations?’ and ‘What features matter and in what ways do they influence organizational outcomes within the school both socially and politically?’

Part V: Researching Schools as Organizations The chapters in this section consider aspects of researching schools as organizations, including the role of practitioners in developing knowledge about schools and their organization. Key questions here include: ‘How can the school organization be researched?’, ‘What counts as valid knowledge in school organization and why?’ and ‘What is the future of research in schools and to what organizational purposes can our understandings be used?’ Inevitably, given the scale and scope of the issues addressed in each chapter, the answers provided will only be partial, but will in that way reveal and open up new avenues for scholarly investigation and analysis. An editorial challenge in any project such as the development of a handbook is to embrace the uncertainty and incompleteness that accompanies this work. Nevertheless, we

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Naturally, in creating this volume, we have incurred a large number of debts. We wish to thank our contributors and apologize for nagging them at various times. Your patience, tolerance and forbearing are appreciated almost as much as your prompt and excellent contributions. We would also like to thank members of our editorial board for their willingness to be associated with this venture and for helping us in various ways with ideas and suggestions about both topics and authors. In some cases, members of the board also wrote chapters. We are truly grateful. Various members of SAGE were also very helpful and we are pleased to be associated with the company. Finally, we thank our colleagues, friends and families for putting up with us as we moaned, mostly unreasonably, about the project’s progress. We’ll do the same for you – perhaps – someday!

REFERENCES Bidwell, C. E. (1965). The school as formal organization. In J. G. March (ed.), Handbook of Organizations (pp. 972–1022). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. Bidwell, C. E. (2001). Analyzing schools as organizations: Long-term permanence and short-term change. Sociology of Education, 74, 100–114. Hoffman, A. J. & Ventresca, M. J. (2002). Organizations, Policy, and the Natural Environment: Institutional and Strategic Perspectives. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

An Introduction to School Organization

Meyer, J. W. & Rowan, B. (1978). The structure of educational organizations. In M. W. Meyer (ed.), Environments and Organizations (pp. 78–109). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Scott, R. W. (2013). Institutions and Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Thompson, J. D. (1967). Organizations in Action. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Tyler, W. (1988). School Organization: A Sociological Perspective. New York: Routledge. Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1), 1–19.

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PART I

Schools as Organizations

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2 Organizations, Organizing, and Schools: Accessing Theoretical Tools and Models in Organization Theory Bob L. Johnson Jr

‘I never let my schooling interfere with my education.’ So said the American humorist, Mark Twain. Although the exact source of the quote is unknown, like any insightful pun it evokes multiple connotations. For one it suggests that there is something about the organization of education that gets in the way, negates or even undermines its ostensible purpose: teaching and learning. As a periodic school-hater, Twain extols the virtues of young Huck, who, as the mood hits, escapes school to pursue adventures in the woods or on the river. Although its purposes are perennially contested, education remains a powerful means of cultural transformation. Seeking to account for the longitudinal effects of shifting educational goals on reform initiatives, Tyack and Cuban (1995) characterize this ongoing quest as ‘tinkering toward utopia’ – given the society we envision, how can we organize schools and educate toward this end? Like Twain’s quote, such imagery is also evocative. Utopia – literally that

no-place – conveys images of a perfect world. Yet as Tyack and Cuban note, society’s persistence in pursuing this elusive vision(s) – tinkering – remains undiminished. Beyond the potency of education as a tool for realizing social ends, this imagery highlights two truths: (1) the faith placed in education as a means for realizing the normative societal ends; and (2) the uncertainties encountered when even the ‘best-laid organizational plans’ are introduced. While realization of the intended goals of a reform can never be assured ex ante, the emergence of unintended consequences after implementation certainly can. Though a philosopher by training, Dewey’s (1938) insistence that schools be structured in ways that bring Huck’s woods-and-river adventures into the classroom reflects a fundamental appreciation of the organizational context of teaching. Decades later the implications of his argument continue to reverberate. When juxtaposed with Tyack and Cuban’s notion of tinkering toward utopia,

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these observations underscore the need for educators to move toward a more nuanced understanding of the organizational character of schools. Teaching, learning, and the multiple supporting tasks found in schools occur in an organizational context that circumscribes what can and cannot be done. It consists of a complex web of relationships animated by numerous variables. Schools in turn exist in a larger environment populated by multiple and varied organizations. This too is consequential. To ignore this organizational context and environment is to limit our collective ability to make sense of what is and should be occurring in schools. One cannot talk about these activities without attending to the context in which they occur and how this context shapes and is shaped by them. These thoughts further underscore the importance of the field of organization theory and its contributions to our collective understanding of organized schooling. It evokes a fundamental question: how can we organize schools in ways that facilitate the teachinglearning process for students? Among other things, this question assumes the possibility that current organizational arrangements may be less than optimal. Further implied is a recognition of the contingent nature of structure: the enacted structure of a school must be sensitive to context. While the technical demands of teaching are more or less similar across educational organizations, the variables that define the context of teaching and the specific configuration of these are not. Both differ across classrooms, schools, and districts. In light of the clarity which defines an organization’s core task, the ongoing goal of organizational structure is to facilitate the effective and efficient coordination of this task toward the realization of organizational goals in light of critical contingencies and environmental demands. Stated differently and in the context of school organizations, a workable structure is ultimately a function of how well it facilitates the effective and

efficient performance of teaching-learning in the pursuit of goals deemed acceptable by the school’s institutional environment and made possible by its technical environment (Ogawa and Scribner, 2002; Scott, 2014). Adequately addressing this question requires that one stand at the intersection of two established disciplines: pedagogical and organization theory. To provide a state-ofthe-art answer one must integrate knowledge of teaching and learning with knowledge of organizations. This begs an equally important question: how does one do this? As educators and policy makers, how can we combine our best knowledge of teaching-learning with our best knowledge of organizations to create, recreate school organizations that consistently facilitate the core task that defines them? These are significant questions. To answer them is beyond the immediate intent and constraints of this endeavor. Nevertheless, they provide context for the purpose and arguments which follow. Other than recognizing that certified educators possess a certain level of expertise required by a state, this chapter does not address pedagogical theory per se. The emphasis given to it in pre-service and graduate education make the lack of pedagogical knowledge the exception rather than the rule in schools where certification is required. Rather, the focus of this chapter is on organization theory (OT) and educators’ appropriation of this knowledge base. Beyond that which is accrued intuitively on the job or indirectly through pre-service, it is reasonable to suggest that the inadequate working knowledge of OT displayed by many sets limits on the instructional capacity of schools (Elmore, 2012; Johnson, 2004; Rowan, 1995). There are certainly exceptions to this. Teachers continue to remain effective without systematic exposure to this field. This can be explained in part by the isolated nature of classrooms – the primary venue of teacher work and attention, where most of their professional lives is spent. The cellular structure of school coupled with the discretion

ORGANIZATIONS, ORGANIZING, AND SCHOOLS

teachers enjoy function to buffer environmental dynamics that would otherwise disrupt their work. Sensitivity to this environment is heightened as decisions, demands, and needs of the school impinge on the flow of teachers’ work or require inordinate dependence on others for success. Given these dynamics, how might a working knowledge of the OT benefit teachers and other educators? The normative promises of many reforms outrun the descriptive realities of schools. There is a need to temper these promises with what we know about the organizational character of schools. This character consists of those defining features and dynamics which distinguish the organizational grain of schools from other types of organizations. Wood is wood. Yet there are different types of wood, each distinguished by the pattern of its grain: oak, cherry, ash, pine, elm, etc. Perusal of the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) literature and discussions with enthusiasts reveal a superficial grasp of the specific organizational grain of schools. PLC is a reform informed by empirical work done in organizations other than schools, abstracted from that context, and imposed on education in ways that fail to adapt its rich ideas to the distinctive organizational character of schools. Using this logic, it is reasonable to suggest that reform initiatives consistent with the organizational grain of schools are more likely to succeed than those which are not. Ceteris paribus, educators with a fundamental working knowledge of OT understand this and are in a better position to lead or navigate change than those who are not. When coupled with the thoughts articulated above, these arguments justify what follows.

PURPOSE AND RATIONALE The purpose of this endeavor is to offer a set of strategies to approach, make sense of, and appropriate the OT literature in ways that

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both complicate and empower educators’ theorizing about schools (Weick, 1978). Multiple OT theories and concepts will be used to illustrate these strategies and the logic on which they rest in the context of school organizations. Several considerations substantiate this purpose. First, OT is a literature that makes use of many abstract and – what might appear to those new to it – inaccessible concepts: core task, technological complexity, structural coupling, environmental isomorphism, critical dependencies, to name a few. As such, it represents a body of knowledge that some find intimidating, beyond cognitive reach. While patience is required, there is no need for intimidation. Its abstract concepts and relational schemes belie a commonsensical logic. These summarize common organizational experiences that many have not considered in depth. When distilled and reduced in abstraction, the field has much to offer educators. Second, as noted above, a fundamental understanding of organizations and organizing processes is absent from the working knowledge of many educators and policy makers. Teaching and learning are facilitated or constrained by the organizational context in which they occur (Elmore, 2012; Mintzberg, 1979; Rowan, 1990). An inadequate grasp of this context increases the probability that the instructional capacity of a school will be limited. This myopia is expressed in at least three ways. It can be discerned in the attitudes many educators exhibit toward OT and its perceived lack of relevance. Whether unwilling or unable to engage this abstract literature or frustrated by the theory movement on which it rests, the pragmatic demands and pace of practice leave little or no time for extended reflection. It is also reflected in an undue preoccupation with narrowly defined measures or specific organizational features that are considered apart from the organizational context in which they occur. As with the PLC

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THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

example, absent is an appreciation for the relationship these and other learning outcomes share with key organizational variables. No single or set of variables should be considered apart from the ecological whole. Yet this is often done by educators. Further, as I have previously noted (Johnson, 2004), this superficial grasp is reflected in the cut-flower approach, in which many of its concepts are used in policy and practitioner dialogues. One need only point to the concepts loose-coupling and teacher autonomy as examples. As initially articulated by Bidwell (1965, 1978), loosecoupling describes the strength of the structural linkage between classroom units and between these units and the larger school. Without a knowledge of the evolution of this concept and the larger organizational feature to which it speaks, many carelessly underestimate the number and strength of structural links which bind classrooms to each other and the larger school. To say that the structural link between the classroom and school is loosely coupled is not to say that it is de-coupled, i.e., that no or a single structural link connects classroom subunits with each other and the school. These concepts are often erroneously equated. Classrooms are not structurally de-coupled from the school. Rather, they are coupled with it. There are multiple structural links which connect classroom to school. The number and strength of these vary across and within schools (Gamoran and Dreeban, 1986; Scott, 2002). Whether expressed as a prescribed curriculum, a required text, a teacher evaluation system or an end-of-year standardized exam, these links place constraints on what teachers do (Spillane et al., 2011). While the equivocalities of teaching-learning call for a structure which allows for classroom discretion, teacher autonomy is not without its limits. It is a constrained autonomy. Districtand school-level constraints are always felt in the classroom. There are multiple linkages of varying strength which bind classrooms and define the level of autonomy experienced

by teachers. Passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) tightened structural linkages around learning outcomes. The superficial manner in which these and other organizational concepts are often used perpetuates an inadequate view of school organizations. Many educational professionals and policy makers under-appropriate the rich array of theoretical tools of this variegated field. Its veins of conceptual ore often go under-mined. In light of this, two strategies for appropriating the OT literature will be offered for consideration: (1) contextualizing one’s thinking about schools in the macro-questions which animate the study of organizations and define the major contours of its literature; and (2) developing the cognitive ability to navigate across the multiple levels of abstraction found in this literature. Both are offered with the intent of increasing the theoretical capacity of educators. In the end, it is not theoretical knowledge alone that makes educators effective. Rather it is skillful theorizing and the creative use of OT and other knowledge as inputs to theorizing that make educators effective (Johnson, 2010). Select models from the OT literature that facilitate our understanding of educational organizations are used to illustrate these strategies and the logic on which they rest.

STRATEGY I – APPROPRIATING THE ORGANIZATION THEORY LITERATURE VIA ITS DEFINING QUESTIONS The purpose of a literature review is to summarize and critique what is collectively know about a topic in order to gauge and advance this knowledge. A review is an attempt to make meta-sense of previous attempts to make sense. Many benefits follow from a thorough review. It provides insight into the origins, development, and evolution of a topic by revealing: (1) the fundamental and emerging questions driving this topic; (2) its

ORGANIZATIONS, ORGANIZING, AND SCHOOLS

enduring conceptual puzzles; (3) the growing theoretical sophistication of our understanding of it through time; (4) fruitful and promising lines of inquiry; and (5) the conceptual dead-ends – popular or otherwise. One strategy for making OT more accessible is to identify the fundamental questions animating the field. While many micro questions are discernable in OT, these can be loosely aggregated into a handful of macro questions that broadly define its parameters yet are frequently overlooked. Considered together these provide a useful point of departure for making sense of the literature in the context of schools. In so doing they offer a heuristic for gaining one’s conceptual bearings and contextualizing what is read. These questions are as follows.

MQ1: What Is an Organization? What Is Its Defining Essence? At the most basic level, the literature provides a description of essential organizational components and processes. What is an organization? What does it mean to organize? Why and of what does it consist? How do these vary? What relations do they share? Without the working knowledge solicited by these questions, it is difficult to think systematically about organizations. Building on the seminal ideas of Leavitt (1965), subsequent theorists have identified five essential components common to all organizations (Hall, 2002; Hatch with Cunliffe, 2013; Mintzberg, 1979; Scott, 2002): goals, participants, a core and supporting tasks, organizational structure, and an environment. Regardless of how ambiguous they may be, goals are the desired ends toward which the work of the organization is directed. This work is done by participants who vary along a number of dimensions. Organizational work is defined by a core and supporting set of tasks. The technological know-how of these tasks – the knowledge, skills, and hardware needed to do them – vary from simple to

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complex, clear to ambiguous. These tasks are divided and coordinated through an organizational structure which consists of physical and social dimensions. The former refers to the physical division of labor and concrete mechanisms used to coordinate this work. There is also a socio-cultural dimension that emerges in and around this structure. It is reflected in the organization’s culture, informal structure, and the conflict and political tensions inherent in these. Organizations also exist in a larger environment, with which they share a bidirectional relationship. Organizations influence and are influenced by this environment in functional and dysfunctional ways. Environments are populated by a multitude of constituents and organizational entities that make demands, offer supports, and compete for scarce resources. These five components exist in all organizations and share relationships of varying degrees. Schools reflect these essential features (Cusick, 1992; Johnson, 2010). They are: (1) animated by multiple goals (Cohen et al., 1972; Spring, 2016); (2) defined by an ambiguous core task (Rowan, 1990, 1995; Thompson, 1967); (3) populated by a fluid set of participants (Cusick, 1992; Hoy and Miskel, 2013); (4) characterized by bureaucratic and professional control structures embedded in an organizational culture (Deal and Peterson, 2016; Kardos et  al., 2001; Mintzberg, 1979; Spillane et al., 2011); and (5) exists in a porous, highly institutional environment (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2014). Studies of the subcultures found therein – student versus teacher versus administrative – and the tensions that exist between these exemplify a focus on organizational participants and the socio-cultural dimensions of organizational life (Hoy and Miskel, 2013; Johnson, 2010; Waller, 1932; Willower, 1991). These five components constitute the DNA of organizations and provide a taxonomy for classifying and contextualizing the educational organizational literature, if only in a general way.

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MQ2: What Relationships Do These Essential Organizational Components Share and How Do They Vary? Beyond defining the essence of an organization, there is a segment of the literature that focuses on one or more of the relationships shared by these five elements. What effect does structure have on organizational participants (structure-participants)? To what extent do environmental norms dictate acceptable organizational structures (environment-structure)? Given the sophistication of the core task, what level of training is needed for organizational participants (participants-core task)? As Thompson (1967), Mintzberg (1979) and others note, in light of the clarity which defines an organization’s core task, the ongoing purpose of structure is to facilitate the effective and efficient performance and coordination of this task toward the realization of organizational goals in light of critical contingencies and the institutional and technical demands of the environment (Burns and Stalker, 1994; DiMaggio and Powell, 1991; Scott, 2014; Weick, 1995). Stated differently and in the context of school organizations, a workable structure is ultimately a function of how well it facilitates the effective and efficient performance of teaching-learning (Hoy and Miskel, 2013; Rowan, 1990) in the pursuit of goals deemed acceptable by organization’s institutional and technical environments (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Together these observations highlight an ongoing structural dilemma in schools – reconciling (1) the need for the bureaucratic controls necessitated by the challenges of public education and its demands for uniform educational student outputs on a massive scale (batch-processing) with (2) the discretion individual teachers need to address the differentiated learning needs of students in the classroom. This is a defining organizational tension in schools.

MQ3: How Do Organizations Differ? In addition to describing how organizations are similar, there is a literature that examines how and why organizations differ? How might organizations be classified? How do they differ from other types of social collectives? What are the implications of these differences? While it reasonable to suggest that the specific constellation of relationships between defining organizational elements provides a means for differentiation, organizations can be compared along a number of dimensions. How do organizations differ? Merton and his sociological progeny at Columbia examined organizations from a comparative perspective (Carper and Snezak, 1980; Groth, 2012). For example, how does Apple differ from the Catholic Church, Oxford University, Oak Ridge High, Sam’s Used Cars or the New York Yankees? In that the objects of work in public schools are captive clients with immature tendencies, schools are similar to prisons: client control and movement is a defining problem. Yet in that schools are not ‘total institutions’ (Goffman, 1961), they are unlike prisons. Given that the core task of educational organizations is ambiguous, schools are like the Eastern Orthodox Church and other human service organizations (Furman and Gibleman, 2013; Hasenfeld, 1983). They must be structured in ways that allow for autonomy and discretion at the teacher/priest level (Elmore, 1990, 1995, 2000; Rowan, 1994, 1995).

MQ4: Given Desired Ends, How Can Organizational Performance Be Improved So as to Realize Goals More Effectively and Efficiently? A fourth contour centers on performance. This segment of the literature explores the ongoing quest for effectiveness and

ORGANIZATIONS, ORGANIZING, AND SCHOOLS

efficiency in the pursuit of organizational goals. Whereas effectiveness addresses the extent to which goals are realized, efficiency focuses on the resources allocated in this pursuit. In a world defined by scarce resources (e.g., land, labor, capital, time), the need exists in most organizations to increase the ratio of inputs to outputs. Organizations are purposive social collectives. Organizing precedes organization; both presume purpose (Weick, 1979). To what extent are organizational arrangements producing these outcomes in a satisfactory way? From a pragmatic standpoint, this is the ultimate question to which all others are penultimate. It propels the field forward. Organizational goals serve a variety of functions (cognitive, cathetic, symbolic, evaluative, and as justification for action) and may even conflict. Yet in light of various uncertainties to which organizing is a response, the realization of valued ends is not guaranteed. For these reasons, effectiveness represents an ongoing puzzle for organizations. As strategic contingencies change, the organization must learn to reconfigure its elements in ways that increase the probability of future viability. Thompson (1967) argues that uncertainty and coping with this uncertainty are the fundamental obstacles to organizational effectiveness. Just as complete uncertainty and randomness are the antithesis of purpose and organization, complete certainty is a figment of the imagination. Solving this puzzle gives rise to a number of related questions, all of which can be inferred from defining contours in the literature. How do organizations thrive and survive? How do they learn to do so? What role does the environment play in this pursuit? Why do organizations become anemic and die? How must they adapt? What is(are) the causal-pathway(s) to effectiveness? What specific variables and configurations define this pathway? What can be predicted? What can be controlled? What are the points of strategic leverage? Why is change/adaptation difficult? A holistic view of organizations and

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organizing processes is need to adequately address performance questions such as these. Included in this is the larger environmental context in which they exist. In the education sector, the existence of multiple and competing goals coupled with the ambiguities of the core task that is teaching-learning define the conceptual terrain for those motivated to improve them. As that entity charged with the socialization of society’s most important yet vulnerable asset – children – public education is a valueinfused institution (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2014). Schools are both museums and custodians of virtue (Waller, 1932). They are expected to steward the trust society places in them. Failure to do so typically evokes a passionate environmental response. Together, these factors mean that educators must attend to school performance in spite of the conceptual and operational challenges associated with it. Environmental constituents demand it. The conscientious shift to define effectiveness in terms of student-based outcomes, signaled by the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001), has led to the enactment of hundreds of accountability measures across the country. This in turn has fueled efforts to identify empirically-based models of school effectiveness, some of which are short on validity (Kowalski et  al., 2008). What organizational variables are essential to authentic student learning? How and in what proportion do they contribute to a viable model of effectiveness that can inform school improvement strategies across a variety of contexts? While most theoretical models include variables, relationships, and configurations that depict the organization or a sub-unit thereof as the unit of analysis, fewer intentionally drawn on the rich theoretical tool-set provided by the OT literature to explicate the nuances of these models in an educational context. Many of these models make use of the nomenclature of OT but lack an awareness of: (1) the theoretical context out of which these concepts emerged; and

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(2) the relationships they share with other key organizational variables. Rather than identify negative exemplars, it is more beneficial to identify theorists who, using these criteria, are advancing the knowledge base in OT-informed ways either through the development of comprehensive school-improvement models or through the exploration of relational sub-sets within these models. Two examples of this are studies of academic optimism and trust in schools. Several studies have documented the relationship these important variables share (Hoy et  al., 2006; Tschannen-Moran et  al., 2013; Wagner and DiPaola, 2011). Fewer have explicated the precise roles these play as mediating variables within a larger theoretical model of school improvement across multiple organizational levels. As importantly, when significant statistical results are found, many fall short of (1) explicating their conceptual (as opposed to statistical) significance for schools in organizational terms, and (2) contextualizing their significance for organizations other than schools. The first omission ignores the contributions of OT to our understanding of schools, and the second ignores the contributions of empirical studies grounded in schools to the larger OT literature. Finding both in a study of schools is the exception rather than the rule. Additional examples of work reflecting these qualities include that done in the areas of: (1) school-improvement modeling (Beaver and Winebaum, 2012; Bryk et  al., 2010; Copeland and Knapp, 2006; Elmore, 2000); (2) leader-effects in schools (Elmore, 1995; Goddard et  al., 2007; Leithwood and Seashore-Louis, 2012; Robinson et  al., 2008); (3) organizational trust and school outcomes (Bryk and Schneider, 2002; Tschannen-Moran, 2014); (4) organizing teaching for learning (Elmore, 2012; Rowan, 1990, 2002); (5) organizational routines and school effects (Enomoto and Conley, 2008); and (6) the institutional functions of school structure (Bidwell, 1965; Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Ogawa and Scribner, 2002).

While this is not an exhaustive list of research on schools informed by the OT literature, it exemplifies theorists who exhibit an informed grasp of it. Such contributions prove richer than those which lack this working knowledge.

MQ5: What Are the Effects of Organizations on Individuals and Society? The fifth and final macro question driving the OT literature focuses on the functional, and to a greater extent, dysfunctional effects organizations on individuals and society. Work in this area reflects strong sociological overtones. Organizations are the dominant social structure and principle mechanism for action in society (Coleman, 1993; Scott, 2002). As Barnard notes, ‘the defining structural feature of society is not its institutions, customs, and norms, but its complex formal organizations’ (1938: 285f). Organizations are everywhere, play an important role in life, and define much of our behavior. At any given time, one is associated with and/ or are affected by many organizations. We are born in hospitals, christened in churches, educated in schools, employed by organizations of various types, belong to health clubs, and are citizens of a city, county and state. Much of one’s life is spent in organizations. Given this, a working knowledge of them is essential for understanding contemporary social life. For good or ill, our organizational experiences serve important socializing functions. Organizations can be the most oppressive type of social collectives, even in democratic societies (Morgan, 2006; Scott, 2002). The dysfunctional effects are well documented (Hatch with Cunliffe, 2013; Merton, 1957). Marx (2010) identified the quest for the accumulation of capital as the driving force behind the organizational forms and worker alienation of his day – relationships which

ORGANIZATIONS, ORGANIZING, AND SCHOOLS

subordinated the interests of the many to the few. Concerned with the threats bureaucratic forms present to human freedom, Weber (1994) foresaw the emergence of the iron cage of rationality in the industrialized West, a theme later echoed in Rand’s popular novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957). Such concerns have spawned multiple lines of inquiry on the deleterious effects of organizations on individuals and society (Follett, 1923; Merton, 1957; Whyte, 1956; and the human relations school). The literature on the effects of organized schooling on students and society is voluminous (e.g., Bowles & Gintis, 2011; Spring, 2016, etc.; for an early expression of this, see Karabel and Halsey, 1977, and the work of Apple, 2012; and Giroux, 2015). Descriptive and critical accounts transcend the OT and sociological literatures to include the social sciences and humanities. As a means of cultural transmission and transformation, schools both perpetuate and challenge existing inequities (Collins, 2009). While these issues can be examined from a number of perspectives, the limitations of this chapter, coupled with its focus on OT, dictate the use of a single example for illustrative purposes. As a means of socialization, schools present students with a number of dilemmas. To survive the demands of organizational life, they must learn to navigate these in functional ways (Cusick, 1992; Fredricks et  al., 2004; Pipher, 1994). These dilemmas revolve around: (1) school crowdedness; (2) ongoing student evaluation; and (3) unequal power relations among school participants. Schools represent densely populated, interactively-intense places for students. Living and functioning in this crowded environment requires patience. While older, more mature students tend to be more adept at this, younger students are less so. Through trial and error most learn to negotiate this dilemma in time, but with varying degrees of success. Pressures for peer acceptance that run counter to ‘official’ expectations periodically

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lead students to act in unacceptable ways. The tendency to congregate during extended periods of transition (e.g., between classes, during lunch, assemblies, fire drills, etc.) increases the challenge for successful navigation. Such occasions create opportunities for students to congregate en masse. Spurred on by peers and hiding behind the face of the collective, students who are otherwise compliant often find the courage to challenge acceptable norms of behavior. Brinkmanship is assertive student behavior that challenges school authority in the hope of avoiding negative sanctions (Licata and Willower, 1975; Schwebel et al., 2007). Students also live in an environment of constant evaluation. Progress through the educational system is monitored through a steady stream of homework, tests, projects, report cards, standardized exams, and inventories. This evaluation is formal and informal. While teachers are the chief source, students also face evaluations from non-teaching personnel (administrators, counselors, coaches, etc.) and, as importantly, their peers. The cumulative effect is a complex system of sorting and labeling in both academic and non-academic areas. Evaluations open and close doors of academic opportunity for students. Evidence of this is seen in the gate-keeping activities of student advising, course tracking, and/or permission to enroll in certain courses. Once doors are closed, the chances of academic recovery are diminished. Evaluations also define a student’s place in the social hierarchy among peers within the student subculture. This subculture emerges as a result of natural affinities shared by students, e.g., common age, school experiences, and cultural interests. It stands in contradistinction to school authority and demands for compliance. For good or ill, the environment of evaluation that characterizes school life does much to define the identity of students to themselves and others. It does so by empowering those who possess the innate skills and dispositions to succeed, and hindering (and

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even imprisoning) those who do not. Students grapple with the dilemmas presented to them by this ongoing evaluation. Schools do little formally to assist in this important area of student life. In addition to crowdedness and ongoing evaluation, students must learn to deal with unequal power relationships within the school community. Included in this are differentials between themselves and teachers, administrators, and other students. Teachers and other school personnel are authority figures to whom students must comply. Failure to do so is often consequential. Students exhibit an array of adaptive responses. These range from the extremes of total acceptance (receptive adaptation) or total rejection of school authority (drop-out response) with numerous gradations in between (Licata and Willower, 1975; Schwebel et al., 2007). Beyond total acceptance, each represents an attempt to redefine school in ways inconsistent with societal expectations. Positive and in-between forms of adaptation enable students to gain some satisfaction within the school community and increase the probability of persistence. As noted above, asymmetric power relations also define life within the student subculture where peer pressure and bullying often go undetected by school personnel. Navigating these social conundrums present substantive challenges for students. Success is not guaranteed and inadequate responses can have life-long effects (Pipher, 1994). In sum, there are two curriculums that students must negotiate as part of school life: the academic and hidden. Learning how to adjust to crowd life, respond to constant evaluation, and deal with unequal power relations represent the school’s hidden curriculum. As these examples illustrate, accessing the conceptual fruit of OT is facilitated by an acquaintance with the fundamental questions driving the field and finding the parallels in the educational organization literature. Where does this phenomenon of interest in my school fit in the context of these questions?

What macro question does it reflect? What does the OT literature reveal about this topic? How does this knowledge inform our collective understanding of school organizations?

STRATEGY II – ACCESSING OT THROUGH GAUGING AND ENGAGING LEVELS OF CONCEPTUAL ABSTRACTION A second strategy for making the knowledge base of OT more accessible focuses on the ability to discern and move between levels of abstraction. As noted above, OT makes use of numerous abstract concepts. Every field has its own constellation of essential concepts (including pedagogical theory). Its maturity is a function of the extent to which these have been identified, empirically grounded, operationalized, and related to explain phenomena. As inductive summaries abstracted from concrete realities, concepts are the building blocks of theory. The power of a concept lies in its ability to identify similar phenomena beyond the context from which it was derived. The further it moves away from this context, the greater its cognitive utility. With this comes an increase in abstraction whereby particulars give way to generalization. For example, I currently have a Fuji apple in my pantry. It is one particular apple – unique and distinct from others. In that it can be found only at my house, this specific apple is contextual. Yet because apple is a well-developed concept, there is no need for others to see it to understand what I mean. Apple is a concept that can be pitched at multiple levels of abstraction. Figure 2.1 depicts some of these. Several inferences follow from it. First, the level of abstraction increases as one moves from lower (AL1: my Fuji apple) to higher levels (AL6: fruit). Second, this movement is from particular to general, from my apple to the more abstract concept, fruit. Third,

ORGANIZATIONS, ORGANIZING, AND SCHOOLS

higher AL6

fruit fruit that grows on trees

AL5

apples

AL4

apple types

AL3 AL2 lower

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AL1

Fuji apples my apple

Figure 2.1  Levels of conceptual abstraction: Apple

these levels are nested. As one moves up in abstraction, lower levels are encapsulated (like Russian matryoshka dolls). This logic is as follows: My specific apple is a Fuji, one apple-type among many (e.g., McIntosh, Red Delicious), all of which, though different, are known by a common signifier. Apples are a tree fruit. Other types of fruit do not grow on trees, etc. Thus, as the level of abstraction increases, more concepts/phenomena are captured. As it decreases, fewer, more homogenous concepts are included. The concept fruit encompasses a wider range of sub-concepts than apple. In turn, apple is a broader concept than Fuji apple. One can talk about a specific Fuji apple, different types of apples or even apples as a type of tree fruit. Figure 2.1 does not depict all possible levels. Yet it illustrates how concepts can be pitched at different levels of abstraction. An analogue to this exists in biology. Using cell structure as the discriminating variable, the Linnaean taxonomy classifies living organisms into seven distinct levels: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Each contains organisms with similar characteristics. Kingdom is the largest and broadest category. Species is the smallest and narrowest of levels, e.g., homo sapiens. Each successive level contains fewer yet more similar organisms. Of relevance in this context is the ability to discern the level of abstraction being considered as one reads and the cognitive facility required to move up

and down as the context dictates. People vary in these abilities. Developing these skills is a potent strategy for increasing the ability to incorporate the knowledge-base of OT into one’s thinking about schools. Conversely, organizational theorists who have little or no exposure to the literature on teaching face a similar challenge in accessing pedagogical theory. The question of is how can this be done? Incorporating this logic, Figure 2.2 provides a means for thinking about schools and organizations at various levels of abstraction. Although incomplete and lacking the precision of the Linnean scheme, it provides a working heuristic for: (1) locating the level at which one habitually thinks about organizations; (2) moving up and down in levels of abstraction; and (3) understanding with greater precision the logic involved when moving from one level to the next. Oak Ridge High School (ORHS) is a particular high school defined by a specific physical location and socio-cultural context. With its unique set of faculty, students, and community, there is no other school like it; it has its own unique footprint. As such, it exists at a low level of abstraction. One can talk about this particular school – its specific characteristics, demographics, and challenges– to the exclusion of others. ORHS can also be conceptualized at a higher level of abstraction. It can be examined as a specific kind of school: a high school. ORHS is one of many high

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social system

AL8

higher

formal organization

AL7

latent organization

AL6

human service organization

AL5

public organization

AL4

educational organization

AL3 AL2 AL1

high school Oak Ridge High School

lower

Figure 2.2  Levels of conceptual abstraction: Organizations

(or secondary) schools that exists. In contrast to elementary or middle schools, secondary schools have features that distinguish them. For example, unlike elementary schools, the division of work in high schools is based primarily on subject matter rather than grade cohorts. Sub-units are organized by departments/discipline rather than grade level. In addition, high school students are older and require less supervision. Whereas there is less literature on ORHS, there is much written about high schools. Because of the experiential knowledge they possess, educators in secondary schools can access this literature with relative ease. Pitched at a higher level of abstraction, high schools are a type of educational organization. Included in this category are a variety of formal entities that range from: pre-school to the post-graduate level; elementary to high school; traditional to alternative; general to specialized foci (vocational-technical); community colleges to research universities; and even magnet, parochial, and charter schools. While these represent a wide variety of educational organizations, they do not exhaust all possibilities. The definitive feature these organizations share is core task. The technology and ongoing challenges associated with teachinglearning give rise to a number of common

organizational features. Among these are a recognizable division of labor, a differentiated physical structure (classrooms with similar features), a formalized knowledge base that informs performance, and professional norms that govern behavior (Cuban, 1988; Jackson, 1990; Lortie, 2002; Monteiro, 2015; Moore-Johnson, 1990). While these vary across educational organizations, together they conceptually bind them together. Hence, educators working in K-12 settings can benefit from reading Tierney’s (2008) examination of organizational culture at the post-secondary level, and vice versa (Deal and Peterson, 2016). Likewise, those seeking to gain a fundamental understanding of teaching would be naive to ignore its occurrence in a variety of educational settings (Shulman, 2004). A comparative study of organizations reveals how teaching differs across these settings. Beyond the age and cognitive abilities of clients, research universities are distinguished by the contested nature of their defining core task. The defining task of most K-12 organizations is teaching. The university has multiple core tasks: teaching, research, and service. While struggles over which will be given priority create organizational tensions exhibited with greater frequency at the university level, secondary schools are not immune to these dynamics, particularly

ORGANIZATIONS, ORGANIZING, AND SCHOOLS

those with rich extra-curricular traditions. Be it athletics, music, dance or theatre, demands for maintaining such programs create similar tensions. At best, these demands can divert scarce resources away from the school’s core task; at worst, these same demands coopt teaching-learning altogether. There is yet a higher level of abstraction at which ORHS, high schools, and educational organizations are nested. Like most high schools, ORHS is a public organization. This conceptual category encompasses a wider range of organizations than schools. Like their private school counterparts, there are a variety of public-school types. Multiple distinctions can be made between public and private schools. Only two will be noted here. Both speak to the organization-environment relationship: (1) public schools are financed by public revenues generated at multiple levels of government; and (2) in most cases these schools are required to admit all who live within their jurisdiction. The cumulative effect of these features means that public schools, like other entities in the public sector, are not compelled to attend to all needs of the typical organization. Such organizations enjoy a relative monopoly within the environmental niche they serve. For example, unlike their private counterparts, public schools do not compete with other educational organizations for students. Because they are mandated and supported by public revenues, their existence is guaranteed at a minimal level. Contrary to the rhetoric of accountability, this funding is loosely coupled with school performance. Like other public entities, the protected status of schools promotes an inertia that makes adaptation difficult and rapid or radical change almost impossible (Cuban, 2013). For these reasons, and as Carlson (1973) noted decades ago, society is apprehensive about public organizations (cf., for example, the Veterans Administration Hospital System, Public Housing Authority, etc.). While their existence is recognized as essential to the maintenance of society, public organizations

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are viewed as kept organizations, unresponsive to the full array of environmental demands voiced by constituents. This in turn perpetuates a default orientation that promotes preservation of the organizational status quo. Seasoned educational leaders know that while all demands voiced in the environment need not be heeded, those arising from constituents who control critical resources must, if only symbolically (Johnson and Fauske, 2000; Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Whereas in the private sector the consumer is sovereign, in the public sector the voter and patron are sovereign. Because not all sovereigns share equal power, different sovereigns create different environmental dynamics for organizations. Thinking about ORHS and high schools at this abstraction level points educators to the literature on public organizations (Rainey, 2014). More specifically, it underscores the need to explore commonalities among these types of collectives. As public organizations, schools share these features. Hence, there is much to be learned from thinking comparatively about schools at this level of abstraction. My experience suggests that many educators are unaware and thus neglect the OT literature at this level. Educational organizations can be further contextualized at a higher level as a type of human service organizations (HSOs). HSOs are distinguished by the object of work. Whereas other collectives transform inanimate objects into outputs, the focus of work in HSOs is people (Furman and Gibelman, 2013; Hasenfeld, 1983). Because HSOs define, shape, and alter the personal attributes of clients, they share a common set of features. Churches, social security offices, residential treatment centers, hospitals, and schools are examples of HSOs. Royal Dutch Shell, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Manchester United are not. Organizational goals are problematic in HSOs. The ethical implications associated with altering human behavior combined with disagreements over the specific end(s) of

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transformative efforts foster the existence of goals that are incompatible, frequently contested, and subject to change. Toward what end is the Rabbi’s work directed? What is society’s goal for those incarcerated? What defines the educated citizen? Questions such as these persist in HSOs. Coupled with this are the ambiguities which surround the means used to effect change. As noted above, teaching is an equivocal task. That which proves effective with one biology class may be ineffective with another. The technical systems of HSOs are defined by such ambiguities. While there is much known about the core technologies of HSOs, much remains unknown. How exactly does one ‘save a soul’? How can dependence on a destructive chemical addiction be eliminated? What treatment will be given medical ailments of which little is known? HSOs are plagued by ambiguities surrounding their technical systems. The clients on whom human service organizations work are also self-determining. While the limits of agency vary, clients play a role in determining the extent to which they will cooperate with work done in their behalf. The uncertainties created by this dynamic underscore the centrality of the professional– client relationship in HSOs. Establishing and maintaining cooperation are functions of the quality of this relationship. Waller (1932) describes the student–teacher relationship in schools as a fragile equilibrium subject to disruption at any time. If a functional level of trust does not exist between addict and counselor, the prescribed treatment is jeopardized. The ethical overtones, high-stake outcomes, and weak technical systems which define HSOs make that vulnerable to normative environmental demands (Rowan, 1990). As value-infused institutions (recall the observation above: ‘schools are museums and custodians of virtue’), HSOs exist in strong institutional environments (Scott, 2014). Hence, the legitimacy of HSOs is questioned when teachers engage in inappropriate relations with students, nursing homes

residents are abused, or indigent populations are denied care. The environments of HSOs are particularly vulnerable to moral provocation. HSOs are likewise distinguished by dual yet competing authority structures (Mintzberg, 1979; Scott, 2002). This distinction springs from two countervailing tensions. The need to coordinate the work of the organization in an efficient manner must be reconciled with the autonomy needed to address the variable needs of clients. Like organizations in general, HSOs contain a number of bureaucratic mechanisms. While the strength and effectiveness of these vary (Hatch with Cunliffe, 2013; Mintzberg, 1979; Scott, 2002), together they provide a means for coordinating various organizational tasks. Prescribing the parameters in which work is done in an effective and efficient manner is a primary concern to leaders. Yet the effect of these features is often mixed. Whereas bureaucratic mechanisms can facilitate the work of the organization, these same mechanisms can hinder it. HSOs are also professional organizations (Mintzberg, 1979; Tierney, 2008; Weick and McDaniel, 1989). The judgments called for by those at the core – doctors, educators, clergy – require a level of knowledge attainable through years of training. Independently ‘certified’ as competent, these professionals possess skills that others in the organization do not (including leaders). Work in HSOs cannot be done without them. Given the responsibility of addressing client-needs in a manner consistent with professional norms, the primary commitment of these individuals is typically to clients and the profession – not to the specific organization of which they are a part. The professional community transcends any single organization. While concerns for effectiveness and efficiency cannot be dismissed, the priority given to clients makes such concerns secondary. The knowledge and professional judgments required to meet client needs afford an autonomy that at times

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challenges the limits of bureaucratic control. Whereas addressing the needs of clients in a competent manner promotes the expression of professional autonomy, the bureaucratic demands of the organization circumscribe it. Consequently, professionals in HSOs often find themselves caught between two sets of competing demands: those of the organization and those of the profession. One has a centralizing, rationalizing effect; the other a decentralizing one. Organizations that exhibit this dual authority structure are known as professional bureaucracies (Mintzberg, 1979). Educational organizations qualify as such. Policy makers and educators would glean much from a comparative study of organizations that share this structural feature and tension. As noted in Figure 2.2, ORHS can be conceptualized at other levels of abstraction, higher than any identified to this point: as a formal organization and type of social system. The latter represents the highest level of abstraction depicted Figure 2.2. Whereas all formal organizations are social systems, not all social systems are formal organizations. Formal organizations differ from social collectives in a number of ways (Barnard, 1938; Blau and Scott, 1962; Scott, 2002). Organizations are created a priori to achieve a specific end(s) (Weick, 1979). Organizations are also defined by formal mechanisms that: (1) differentiate status among members; (2) define policies that govern behavior; and (3) incentivize participation. An impromptu mob or group of individuals in a queue to see a Broadway musical share no formal relationship. Nor do these collectives differentiate status or provide material incentives for participation. Neither is a formal organization. The discriminating factor between organizations and social collectives does not reside in the presence or absence of chaos, but in the principles of organization. Whereas the former is deliberate, purposeful, and formal, the latter is less so, if at all. Once established, an organization assumes an identity independent

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of members. ORHS is more than a social collective, it is a formal organization. As noted above, organizations share five generic features. Formal organizations are goal-oriented entities, purposely structured around a core task directed toward goal(s) realization. This and other tasks are performed by select individuals who, in exchange for strategic inducements, agree to join and persists as participants. Organizations exists in an environment from which resources flow and to which they must account for performance. Each of these features and the relationships between can assume a wide range of variation (Mintzberg, 1979). Beyond these generic commonalities, organizations can be classified as similar or dissimilar based on the relations these five variables share. Like stars on a summer night, similar organizations can be identified as such because of the constellation formed by these essential components. Thus, at a general level, educational organizations reflect a similar configuration, as do automobile manufacturers and food service organizations. Postmodern epistemological concerns notwithstanding, this level of abstraction reflects the ongoing search for properties, dynamics, and regularities common to all organizations. The search is for knowledge aggregated at a relatively high level and applicable to a variety of organizational contexts. Talk in this domain is less about a specific organization or type and more about organization/organizing in the abstract. Hence, the significance of knowledge pitched at lower levels lies in the utility it has for developing theoretical generalizations at higher levels. A useful analogue for this utility is the logic of statistical aggregation. Data aggregation is the process whereby information is gathered and expressed in a summary form. For example, simple descriptive statistics can be used to profile the instructional capacity of ORHS along a number of dimensions. This can be done as data collected at one level (individual) are aggregated and analyzed at another (school). Using this strategy, two

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performance profiles are possible: (1) individual student, and an (2) aggregate organizational profile. Both make use of the same data but in different ways. The second builds on the first. Without individual-level data, an aggregate profile is not possible. In a similar fashion, the raw material for conceptual aggregation at the formal organization level proceeds from knowledge generated at lower levels of abstraction. Yet the validity of theoretical generalizations developed at higher levels of abstraction is determined through tests done at lower levels. In the context of school organizations, the vertical movement of this logic can be demonstrated in two sets of questions. Both represent incremental and substantial leaps across multiple levels of abstraction (AL1 – AL8, of Figure 2.2). Vertical-Upward: As a principle of ORHS, how can the particularities of this school (AL1) contribute to our understanding of formal organizations (AL7)? How might the political contests between teachers and departments over limited resources (AL1) inform our understanding of political dynamics in all organizations (AL7)? Vertical-Downward: How does our collective understanding of (1) factors that promote organizational learning (AL7) and (2) the need to sync organizational structure with core task (AL7) inform efforts to increase the capacity for corporate learning in high schools (AL2)? In light of the historic structure of schools (AL3), what structural changes (AL7) might facilitate the professional learning at ORHS (AL1)? Given what we know about the change process (AL7), how might change proceed at our school (AL1)?

Several observations follow from these questions and the abstraction levels embedded in them. Just as individual differences at lower levels are masked when statistical aggregation occurs, so contextual particularities fall away as concepts are aggregated from lower to higher levels. Because of this, concepts at one level must be interpreted differently at another. For example, although I have a firm grasp of the literature on organization

learning, considerable thought must be given to how these abstract ideas (aggregated at AL7) translate to my specific school (disaggregated to AL1). Mindfulness is required (Vogus and Sutcliffe, 2012; Weick and Roberts, 1993). The effective use of concept such as this rests on the ability to move methodically and with relative ease between levels of abstraction. Reflected in this is a cognitive agility that enables one to reconcile general abstractions (AL7) with the particularities of a specific context (AL1). Second, sudden leaps between extreme levels of abstraction – for example, from AL8 to AL1 and vice versa – often confuse and even frustrate those unaware of this logic. Students in my OT doctoral seminar are required to read the opening chapters of Scott’s, Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems, early in the course. This book is pitched at the formal organization (AL7) and social system abstraction levels (AL8). Given that the thinking of most is preoccupied with the schools they lead, many question the relevance of this abstract reading to their professional lives. This liminal experience creates an opportune moment for exploring abstraction-logic with them. Excessive leaps in abstraction such as this frequently lead to what can be described as the conceptual bends. Divers succumb to the bends (decompression sickness) when, after prolonged submersion, they ascend too quickly. Dissolved nitrogen creates bubbles in tissues that debilitate the body. This sickness can be avoided, however, if the ascent is gradual and in stages. In a similar manner, conceptual bends can be avoided if deliberation is given to movements across abstraction levels. A significant portion of the OT literature and most of that considered definitive is pitched at higher levels of abstraction (AL7). Given the logic articulated above, this should come as no surprise. Because these transcend the context of any specific organization or type, this literature has the broadest applicability. For these reasons, it can be understood why the influence of Durkheim (1893), Weber (1922),

ORGANIZATIONS, ORGANIZING, AND SCHOOLS

Follett (1923), Barnard (1938), Simon (1976), Merton (1949), Selznick (1957), March and Simon (1958), Lawrence and Lorsch (1967), Thompson (1967), Weick (1969), Pfeffer (1981), Hannan and Freeman (1989), and many others persists. It is from this abstraction level that lower levels deduce: how does these general principles, properties, and dynamics help understand ORHS? Yet it is to these same levels that lower levels induce (generalize): how do the specific principles, properties and dynamics of ORHS advance our knowledge of organizations? Regardless of the direction one is traversing – be it down (deduction) or up (induction), movement across multiple levels of abstraction is required. As noted above, the concepts and relational schemes articulated at higher levels of abstraction in the OT literature belie a commonsensical and familiar logic. When distilled and reduced in abstraction, the field has much to offer educators. These concepts summarize common organizational experiences that many have not considered systematically in these terms. I would suggest that many are unaware and thus do not think about schools in this manner. Once made aware, most are capable of understanding this logic. Traversing levels of abstraction requires thoughtful deliberation, patience, and occasional heavy cognitive-lifting. When combined with a working knowledge of the defining questions/contours of the literature, both strategies outlined here provide useful means for assessing the field of OT. As importantly, these strategies place educators in a position to think more consciously about the organizational context of their work as their understanding of the organizational grain of schools is further nuanced. It is toward these ends that I offer these thoughts.

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Lawrence, P. and J. Lorsch (1967). Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Leavitt, H. (1965). Applied organizational change. In J. March (ed.), Handbook of Organizations (pp. 1144–1171). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. Leithwood, K. and K. Seashore-Louis (2012). Linking Leadership to Student Learning. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. Licata, J. W. and D. J. Willower (1975). Student brinkmanship and the school as a social system. Educational Administration Quarterly, 11(2), 1–14. Lortie, D. (2002). Schoolteacher. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. March, J. and H. Simon (1958). Organizations. New York: Wiley. Marx, K. (2010). Das Kapital. Translated by Samuel Moore. Seattle, WA: Pacific Publishing. Merton, R. (1949). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: The Free Press. Merton, R. K. (1957). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: The Free Press. Meyer, J. and B. Rowan (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340–363. Mintzberg, H. (1979). The Structuring of Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Monteiro, A. (2015). The Teaching Profession. Lisbon, Portugal: Springer. Moore-Johnson, S. (1990). Teachers at Work. New York: Basic Books. Google Scholar Morgan, G. (2006). Images of Organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, P.L. 107-110, 20 U.S.C. § 6319 (2002). Ogawa, R. and S. Scribner (2002). Leadership: Spanning the technical and institutional dimensions of organizations. Journal of Educational Administration, 40(6), 576–588. Pfeffer, J. (1981). Power in Organizations. Marshfield, MA: Pitman Publishing. Pipher, M. (1994). Reviving Ophelia. New York: Berkley Publishing. Rainey, H. (2014). Understanding and Managing Public Organizations. San Francsico, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

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3 Historical Perspectives on Schools as Organizations Daniel L. Duke

To state the obvious, that schools are organizations, is not to render a conclusion, but to open a discussion that can go in many directions. The history of public education offers evidence that a variety of perspectives can be employed to make sense of schools as organizations. Schools, for example, have been studied as complex social systems, cultural entities, professional workplaces, and institutions. While a school is an organization in its own right, typically it is also an organization within a greater organization – a school district or local educational authority. The literature on organizations include several efforts to classify perspectives. One of the most frequently cited examples is Bolman and Deal’s (2008) quartet of ‘frames,’ including the structural, human resource, political, and symbolic. Each frame entails a different metaphor for an organization – factories, families, jungles, and temples – and each encompasses different assumptions about how organizations can be understood.

Bacharach and Mundell (1995) specifically address ‘analytical perspectives’ on schools as organizations. They refer to these perspectives as ‘images’ and identify four – designs, decision-making arenas, learning organizations, and cultural entities. Each image of the school, according to the authors, provides ‘different answers to the questions of why and how individual behavior is organized in formal groups’ (p. vii). Scott (1992, p. 27) uses the term ‘perspective’ to represent a ‘conceptual umbrella’ under which can be gathered a variety of related viewpoints. He identifies three perspectives on organizations in general: (1) rational systems, (2) natural systems, and (3) open systems. Each system encompasses clusters of theories and concepts reflecting common assumptions about the nature of organizations and the key organizational elements that need to be understood. The present chapter embraces Scott’s sense of perspective as a guiding term, though his trio of systems will not be used. Instead, perspectives

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on school organization will be referred to as bureaucratic, social systems, cultural, workplace, and institutional. This scheme does not capture all of the possible perspectives, but it is sufficient to describe the evolution of thinking about school organizations. The chapter opens with a discussion of schools as bureaucratic organizations, perhaps the most frequently used perspective historically. Scott (1992, p. 30) considers this perspective to represent the rational systems rubric in that bureaucracies presumably are designed purposefully in order to achieve predetermined goals. Subsequent sections address the social systems and cultural perspectives, which contain elements of Scott’s natural and open systems perspectives. The workplace perspective focuses on the impact of school organization on education professionals. Combining aspects of all three of Scott’s perspectives, the institutional perspective encompasses organizational actions that are repeated and given similar meaning by actors within and outside the organization (Scott, 1992, p. 117).

SCHOOLS AS BUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATIONS Becoming Bureaucratic The origins of public education in the United States are closely linked to the common school, a ‘type of schooling that would educate all in common, using the same curriculum’ (Urban & Wagoner, 1996, p. 93). ‘All,’ of course, did not typically include AfricanAmericans. Supported by taxes, mostly local property taxes, common schools were free, meaning no tuition was charged. The earliest common schools were stand-alone organizations usually accommodating children from more than one neighborhood or geographical district. Urban and Wagoner (1996) maintained that common schooling was ‘more the ideological slogan of a reform crusade than it was a description of a particular type of formal educational institution’ (p. 96).

According to Michael B. Katz (1971, p. 5), the first half of the nineteenth century found Americans exploring a variety of organizational possibilities in addition to the common school. The options included paternalistic voluntarism, democratic localism, corporate voluntarism, and incipient bureaucracy. Pauper schools operated by charitable organizations and supported by the well-to-do represented paternalistic voluntarism. Democratic localism referred to the earliest common schools. Corporate voluntarism chiefly described secondary academies and colleges. These entities functioned as individual corporations financed either wholly through endowments or a combination of endowments and tuition. They were governed by a self-perpetuating board of trustees. The fourth organizational option and the one that, according to Katz, eventually became the standard for public school organization was incipient bureaucracy. Had the United States remained largely a rural nation, democratic localism might have continued to flourish, but the second half of the nineteenth century was a period of rapid urbanization. Cities could not accommodate all their children in one school. School systems had to be created, and these systems required standardization, predictability, and consistency – the hallmarks of bureaucracy. The impetus to bureaucratize public schooling was captured by Cremin (1964) in his account of William Torrey Harris’s tenure as superintendent of St Louis public schools (1868– 1880). Faced with the growing demand for universal education, Harris’s solution ‘was the graded school, organized by years and quarter-years of work, with pupils moving through on the basis of regular and frequent examinations’ (Cremin, 1964, p. 19). To ensure the efficient operation of a system of graded schools, Harris ‘devoted himself to attendance reports, to textbooks, to the collection of school statistics, to the standardization of pedagogical terminology, to the lighting, heating, and ventilation of school buildings, to teacher salary schedules, and to the

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

continuing supervision of instruction’ (p. 19). In other words, Harris functioned as the leader of a bureaucracy. Efforts by Harris and his counterparts in other cities to bureaucratize schooling were not without their challenges. Tyack writes of these challenges in The One Best System (1974, p. 78): Although school managers tried to create smoothrunning, rational, conflict-free bureaucracies during the nineteenth century, often with the assistance of modernizing business elites, in most cities they encountered serious opposition. At times they had to answer critics who claimed that in consolidating urban systems they were creating mindless and oppressive machines.

Even school administrators registered concerns. According to Tyack (1974, p. 79), principals resented the fact that important educational decisions were being made by lay school boards and central office bureaucrats removed from the front lines of teaching and learning. Despite these concerns, bureaucratic organization prevailed, at least in the public sector. It provided a platform for professional educators, instead of ward bosses and local politicians, to control schooling. Bureaucracy promised freedom from the corruption that characterized many city governments. The United States was not alone in adopting bureaucracy as the foundation for organizing public schooling. In Great Britian, Canada, and Australia, bureaucratic organization was largely localized with local education authorities overseeing the operation of schools. Other countries, France being the most notable example, operated schools through a state bureaucracy that prided itself on nation-wide uniformity of curriculum and instruction.

Commentary on Schools as Bureaucratic Organizations Over the years, various scholars have focused on schools as bureaucratic organizations. This section addresses the treatment of the

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topic in three handbooks – Handbook of Organizations (March, 1965), Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (Boyan, 1988), and Handbook of Research on Educational Administration, second edition (Murphy & Louis, 1999). Because of their comprehensiveness, these three handbooks also will be used as reference benchmarks for examining subsequent perspectives on schools as organizations. Charles Bidwell’s contribution to the Handbook of Organizations, entitled ‘The School as a Formal Organization’ (Bidwell, 1965), sought to develop a formulation of the organizational character of schools. He proposed three basic assumptions concerning the nature of public elementary and secondary school systems as organizations: 1 that school systems are client-serving organizations; 2 that the role structure of a school system contains a fundamental dichotomy between student and staff roles; 3 that school systems are to some degree bureaucratic. (Bidwell, 1965, pp. 973–974)

Under the third assumption, Bidwell listed four bureaucratic characteristics of schools and school systems: (1) a functional division of labor, (2) the definition of staff roles as offices based on merit and competence, (3) the hierarchic ordering of offices (authority structure), and (4) operation according to rules of procedure (p. 974). These characteristics reflect the ideal model of a bureaucratic organization originally proposed by Max Weber (2004, pp. 73–78). At times Bidwell seemed to be uncertain about his assumptions. He recognized that school systems vary widely with respect to their level of bureaucratization, but then asserted that ‘the product of each classroom and school unit must be uniform’ (p. 976). He went on to acknowledge that school systems ‘seem to differ from the classical bureaucratic structure’ in regard to ‘the looseness of articulation between subunits’ (p. 976). Later in his chapter, after references to Willard Waller’s

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analysis of schools as social systems, Bidwell argued that the actions of teachers and students tend toward ‘debureaucratization’, a process by which top-down mandates and central authority are resisted (p. 991). The last section of his chapter focuses on research on the school as a bureaucracy. Bidwell’s discussion continues the theme of ambivalence regarding schools as bureaucratic organizations. He declares, for example, that the ‘act of teaching … is at once compatible and incompatible with the bureaucratic setting’ (p. 993). Teaching in the early days of public education reflected a ‘military model’ based on ‘repeated, routinized drill and practice’ – a model compatible with bureaucratic organization (p. 993). This model began to be challenged in the 1930s, however, as concerns by progressives for student motivation and emotional development led to questions about its efficacy. Ambivalence also is conveyed in ‘the inherent bureaucratic conflict of authority based on expertise and on legal criteria’ (Bidwell, 1965, p. 1012). As professionals, teachers expect to exercise discretion, but their professional judgment may be superseded by the decisions of superiors and standardized procedures intended to ensure uniformity of practice. Bidwell cites the appropriate treatment of students as an area where professional judgment and uniform codes of behavior often clash. The picture of school organization that emerges from Bidwell’s chapter is one of contested terrain and variability. He notes that the ‘looseness’ previously associated with articulation between sub-units cannot be assumed. In the end, what can be assumed, in his opinion, is ‘that the functioning of school systems can be understood only as an outcome of complex interactions between structural arrangements (degree of bureaucratization), the attitudes and orientations of staff (degree of professionalization) and board members (fiduciary or managerial), and recruitment to organizational roles’ (Bidwell, 1965, p. 996).

The theme of complexity acknowledged by Bidwell received reinforcement 23 years later in the Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (Boyan, 1988). The contribution by Corwin and Borman (1988) to that volume recognized the contradictory norms and ambivalence built into the bureaucratic structure of school systems. Six domains of structural incompatibilities were identified as sources of complexity and conflict by the authors. One such domain involves ‘the dilemma of administrative control,’ which refers to the fact that ‘central office administrators are officially in charge of school districts, but actually many policies are determined by the actions of local schools’ (Corwin & Borman, 1988, p. 212). The authors thus recognized that, despite the hierarchical structure of school districts, decentralization processes are constantly at work. Noting that the ‘tensions between school district administration and schools are products of a complex balance of power,’ Corwin and Borman (1988, p. 214) contend that the relationships between schools and district administration ultimately are ‘products of negotiation.’ The important point of Corwin and Borman’s analysis is that school organization cannot be understood apart from school district organization. What might appear to be a standard bureaucratic structure in which schools faithfully fulfill central office directives turns out to be more a matter of mutual adjustment and adaptation. Eleven years after publication of the Corwin and Borman chapter, the second edition of the Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (Murphy & Louis, 1999) appeared. In a chapter entitled ‘Enduring Dilemmas of School Organization,’ Ogawa, Crowson, and Goldring (1999) picked up where Corwin and Borman left off. Once again, the nature of school organization was characterized as complex and problematic. These qualities were captured in seven organizational dilemmas, four dilemmas of relations internal to schools, and three dilemmas involving external

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

relations. All of the dilemmas are directly or indirectly related to the bureaucratic structure of schools and school systems. One internal dilemma involves the tension between organizational goals and the motives and interests of individual members. Another dilemma juxtaposes formal rules and procedures against an informal structure rooted in the social system of the organization. The third internal dilemma pits bureaucratic management against the norms of professionalism. Organizational decision making and the merits of centralization versus decentralization constitute the fourth internal dilemma. Dilemmas also derive from schools’ relations with their external environment. One such dilemma concerns the school’s capacity for change versus the inertial forces of stability. A second dilemma entails the determination of boundaries, where the school organization begins and ends. The last external dilemma involves the various and often competing expectations with which schools are supposed to comply. Ogawa, Crowson, and Goldring (1999) ultimately are interested in the extent to which these structural dilemmas impede the ability of schools to adapt to environmental conditions. As with previous observers, they recognized that bureaucracies are more inclined toward continuity than change. This tendency may be appropriate for relatively stable environments, but public education, at least in recent years, has been forced to confront a variety of shifting conditions – demographic, social, economic, technological, and so on. So far, the discussion suggests that the bureaucratic perspective on school organization reflects more concern than confidence. In his classic analysis of bureaucracy, Downs (1966, p. 1) concluded, in fact, that bureaucracy had become ‘a term of scorn.’ With regard to schooling, bureaucratic organization has been seen to be less a solution to pressing concerns than a source of problems. In the Handbook of Research on Educational Administration, Abbott and Caracheo (1988, p. 240) plainly state, ‘Bureaucracy is a type

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of domination.’ Their critique suggests that bureaucratic organization may be effective for certain enterprises, but not necessarily for schools dedicated to addressing the needs of young people and employing large numbers of trained professionals. In the highly influential book, Politics, Markets and America’s Schools, Chubb and Moe (1990), two political scientists, argued, in fact, that the reasons schools in the US were losing ground to schools in other nations could be traced to red-tape-bound bureaucracy and too much local democratic control. Greater school choice was their prescription. It is worth noting, though, that many of the nations that were cited as out-performing the US possessed highly centralized and highly bureaucratized education systems.

The Benefits of Bureaucratic Structure Concerns over red-tape, rigidity, and centralized control have not prevented some observers from taking a more balanced view of the bureaucratic organization of schools and school systems. Moeller and Charters (1966), for example, set out to confirm the hypothesis that teachers’ ‘sense of power’ would be lower in more highly bureaucratized schools. Their hypothesis assumed: … that the teacher, constrained by rules and regulations in whose establishment he had but a small voice, would respond to the impersonality, the magnitude, and the complexity of the bureaucratic system with a distinct feeling of impotence to control events which would affect his interests. (p. 448)

The researchers surveyed 662 teachers in 20 St Louis-area school systems characterized by varying degrees of bureaucratization. Contrary to their hypothesis, Moeller and Charters found that teacher sense of power was greater in more highly bureaucratic school systems. They speculated that more highly bureaucratic school systems may select teachers with different attributes than less bureaucratic school systems.

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Following conceptual work by Adler and Borys (1996) that suggested bureaucratic structures have the potential to be enabling as well as coercive, Hoy and Sweetland (2001) applied these ideas to school structures. They focused on two constructs from organization theory: (1) formalization – the degree to which an organization has written rules, regulations, procedures, and policies, and (2) centralization – the degree to which employees participate in decision making. Lists of positive and negative characteristics were generated for each. Concerning formalization, for example, an enabling characteristic was the facilitation of problem solving, while a coercive characteristic involved blindly following rules, regardless of the consequences. Centralization could provide the coordination needed for genuine improvement or add layers of unnecessary control to inhibit innovation. After some field testing, Hoy and Sweetland (2001) eventually constructed a 12-item measure of enabling school structure. They then set out to determine if this construct was related to important school outcomes. Three hypotheses were specified: the more enabling the bureaucratic structure of a school, (1) the greater the extent of faculty trust in the principal, (2) the less the degree of truth spinning in school, and (3) the less the extent of role conflict in the school. Measures were developed for the three dependent variables. When tested, all three of the hypotheses were supported. Once again, the bureaucratic nature of at least some schools was perceived to be beneficial. Texas researchers (Meier, Polinard, & Wrinkle, 2000) have offered an explanation for why the bureaucratic structure of schools and school districts is sometimes unfairly maligned. In a direct challenge to Chubb and Moe’s (1990) argument that the bureaucratic structure of US schools has contributed to lower student achievement, they contend that increased bureaucratization is a consequence, not a cause, of low achievement. Using seven years of data from over 1,000 school districts,

Meier, Polinard, and Wrinkle (2000) found that bureaucratic growth in the form of new programs and additional personnel is a signal ‘that the school system is responding to environmental demands’ such as an influx of poor families and English language learners. Far from a cause of low achievement, bureaucratic growth is evidence of organizational concern and responsiveness. A subsequent study by Smith and Larimer (2004) also examined the relationship between bureaucracy and student outcomes. Outcomes included student achievement on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills test (TAAS), student attendance, and dropout rates. Increased bureaucracy was represented by larger proportions of district staff employed in central office and school-based administrative positions. After compiling and analyzing data from 350 multiracial Texas school districts with a minimum of 1,000 students each, the researchers found that bigger bureaucracies were associated with lower TAAS pass rates, but also lower rates of absenteeism and dropouts. Smith and Larimer’s findings seem to support the preceding study’s contention that bureaucracy is likely to expand in school systems with more low-achieving students. Better attendance and graduation rates were the benefits of more bureaucracy.

Evidence of the Bureaucratic Perspective The preceding discussion of the bureaucratic perspective relied heavily on scholarly accounts and analyses of school and district organization. While it is the case that many in the academic community have employed the bureaucratic perspective to make sense of what does and does not go on in schools and districts, it also is true that practitioners often find the perspective useful. Consider superintendents like San Diego’s Alan Bersin, who restructured central office units in order to achieve a greater focus on teaching and learning (Hightower, 2002). Changes in

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

school and district leadership frequently are accompanied by restructuring and reorganization initiatives. Whether these efforts are purely symbolic gestures intended to signal a transition at the top or genuine attempts to effect sweeping changes is, of course, a matter of considerable debate. An entire industry has grown up around structural efforts to improve school and district organization and achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness. The operating assumption guiding many consultants in these endeavors derive directly from the bureaucratic perspective. Sometimes the prescriptions call for greater centralization of authority; at other times decentralization and shared decision making are the order of the day. Strategies also may call for more division of labor or less role differentiation, more specialized units or greater integration of units, and so on. A good example of the bureaucratic mindset is the list of criteria for judging the adequacy of a large school district’s organizational structure. Developed by the Council of the Great City Schools (2006, p. 13), the list includes such indicators as the following: • Has the adequate number of staff members to plan, manage, coordinate, direct, implement, and evaluate programs and services. • Has explicit reporting lines and precise locations of authority and responsibility for executing tasks. • Is supported by job descriptions that define organizational relationships, qualifications, authority, responsibilities, functions, and accountability.

School and district improvement efforts aimed at making structural adjustments typically take the focus off blaming individuals for organizational problems. The central assumption, as Bolman and Deal (2008) make clear in their discussion of the structural frame, is that individual behavior is shaped by organizational structure. If employees are not performing up to expectations, aspects of bureaucratic organization must be contributing factors.

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Challenging the Bureaucratic Perspective While some have embraced the potential merits of bureaucratic structure, others have questioned the validity of the bureaucratic perspective itself, at least where schools are concerned. Hannaway (1978, p. 414) noted that Cohen and March characterized educational organizations as ‘organized anarchies.’ She went on to explain the meaning of the term: ‘goals are vague, inconsistent, and defy meaningful measurement; the technology is familiar, but not understood; and the pattern of involvement of participants, who include parents, students, teachers, political figures, and government officials, varies from time to time’ (p. 414). All of this seems a far cry from Weber’s idealized bureaucracy. The counter-perspective to schools as classical bureaucratic organizations is most frequently associated with the notion of loose coupling (Weick, 1976). A decade before Weick popularized the term, Bidwell (1965, p. 977) recognized that school systems differed from typical bureaucratic structures in their ‘looseness of articulation between subunits.’ According to this view, teachers exhibit some degree of autonomy once the classroom door is shut. Similarly, schools within a school district exercise considerable latitude with regard to central office policies and rules. Lipsky (1980) provided support for the notion of loose coupling in his book StreetLevel Bureaucracy. Street-level bureaucrats – including teachers, police officers, and welfare workers – often make decisions, Lipsky argued, that run counter to official policies and rules. While sometimes their improvisations lead to successful interactions with the publics they serve, their exercise of discretion on the firing line also can lead to ‘favoritism, stereotyping, and routinizing’ – all of which can be self-serving (Lipsky, 1980, p. xii). In the 1988 Handbook of Research on Educational Administration, Corwin and Borman (1988, p. 214) argued that the ‘distinction between bureaucracy and loosely

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coupled systems has not been useful, and in fact it has been misleading.’ They went on to observe that bureaucracy ‘is a means of organizing administration’ and that it was never intended to apply to all aspects of an organization (p. 214). Corwin and Borman conclude that the most appropriate perspective on school organization is one based on the idea of complex organizations. This broader view permits the integration of bureaucratic, professional, and political variables and accommodates such diverse notions as bureaucracy, informal organization, and loosely coupled systems. Interest in the loose coupling counterperspective seems to have lessened in recent years. Rowan and Miskel (1999) anticipated that the rise of accountability pressures in public education would lead to more specific rules governing the technical core of schools and reduced discretion for school-based educators. Their prediction was bolstered by the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. The law’s strict accountability requirements and sanctions for low performance compelled educators to consider researchbased best practices and develop more standardized processes and procedures.

century when John Dewey maintained that a school should operate as a ‘cooperative society’ in which individuals function in close proximity to each other in order to find value in sharing (Tanner, 1997, p. 26). Dewey’s perspective was rooted in the belief that the central problem of education entailed ‘the harmonizing of individual traits with social ends and values’ (p. 25). The Laboratory School that Dewey created in 1896 at the University of Chicago was the embodiment of the social systems perspective – namely, to provide children with a setting in which to develop together as they solved practical problems. Dewey’s notion of the school as a small society was taken up several decades later by Willard Waller, but without Dewey’s idealistic vision. In one of the earliest sociological analyses of schools, Waller (1932, p. 6) argued that the school is a ‘social organism,’ a ‘closed system of social interaction.’ Taking a broad view of schooling, Waller believed that a school ‘exists wherever and whenever teachers and students meet for the purpose of giving and receiving instruction’ (p. 6). He went on to specify the defining features of the schools of his era:

OTHER PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

1 A definite population. 2 A political structure arising from the social interactions characteristic of the school. 3 A compact network of social relationships. 4 Pervasive ‘we-feeling.’ 5 A distinctive culture. (Waller, 1932, pp. 6–7)

While a case can be made that the bureaucratic perspective on schools and school districts has been the dominant perspective historically, it certainly has not been the only perspective. This section considers several popular alternative perspectives, beginning with the view of schools as social systems. This perspective challenges the notion that behavior is shaped primarily by organizational (bureaucratic) structure.

Schools as Social Systems The view of schools as social systems can be traced at least as far back as the late nineteenth

This social systems perspective seems a far cry from Weber’s ideal bureaucracy where people are characterized by sets of expectations (roles) and become interchangeable organizational components. Waller’s view of the school was not one of an arrangement of organizational units, but a set of tenuous relationships between individuals and groups. The authority of school administrators and teachers is constantly vulnerable to challenges by students, parents, the school board, alumni, and each other. Maintaining authority and control, to Waller, became the central challenge for education professionals.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

Though he found the social system perspective most useful for understanding schools, Waller recognized the necessity of organization as well as its dangers. In his penultimate chapter he declares, ‘Something happens to ideas when they get themselves organized into social systems’ (1932, p. 441). To illustrate (and to reveal his bias), Waller observed how the teachings of Christ have been ‘smothered by churches’ (p. 441). His ambivalence regarding organization is reflected in the following lines: A social principle degenerates into a dogma when an institution is built about it. Yet an idea must be organized before it can be made into fact, and an idea wholly unorganized rarely lives long. Without mechanism it dies, but mechanism perverts it. (Waller, 1932, p. 441)

Distrusting the formalisms of large bureaucracies and the ever-present threat of goal displacement, Waller’s answer was reminiscent of John Dewey’s vision of schools. He called for a ‘social order which students and teachers work out for themselves in the developing situation, an order which is intrinsic in the personalities of those involved, a social order resulting from the spontaneous, inevitable, and whole-hearted interaction of personalities’ (Waller, 1932, p. 446). In his chapter on the school as a formal organization in the Handbook of Organizations, Bidwell (1965) acknowledged Waller’s many contributions. Waller was credited with recognizing that ‘the school is not only a formal organization but also a small society, a society with profound consequences for the organization’ (Bidwell, 1965, p. 979). This small society exists in a state of ‘uneasy equilibrium’ as administrators and teachers struggle to maintain control of students without undermining student motivation and engagement. Bidwell went on to acknowledge the growing body of research on schools as social systems. One of the most influential exponents of the social system perspective on schools was Jacob Getzels. Initially, Getzels and Thelen

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(1960) presented a model of the classroom as a social system in which organizational, individual, and group intentions are achieved. The model was expanded later to encompass the entire school (Getzels, Lipham, & Campbell, 1968). Whereas Waller regarded the school social system as closed, Getzels and his colleagues considered it to be an open system encompassing a historical, physical, and community environment. Because Getzels’ model links roles and their expectations to groups and their intentions, it constitutes an early effort to integrate the social system perspective and the bureaucratic perspective. Willower and Carr (1965) published an article in Educational Leadership in which they also argued that schools are social organizations. Characterized by both structure and norms, social organization entails stratification of roles and standards of behavior. It also gives rise, according to Willower and Carr (1965), to a ‘teacher culture’ which must be negotiated by principals interested in effecting innovation and change. Interestingly, Waller (1932) also noted the link between culture and social systems, though he was primarily interested in the ‘specialized culture of the young’ (p. 13). It was this culture, characterized by different age levels and reinforced by rituals and ceremonies, that bound personalities together to form a school. Getzels et al. (1968) recognized the cultural dimension of social systems as well, noting that the school social system is rooted in a culture with values and norms that influence goals, roles, and social behavior. Viewing schools as social systems is an example of what Scott (1992) terms a natural systems perspective on organizations. Whereas his rational systems perspective focuses on formal (bureaucratic) structure, natural systems reflect an organization’s informal structure. Scott explains that natural systems theorists acknowledge the existence of formal structures, but they question their importance, particularly their impact on the behavior of organization members. Formal structures do not take into account

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the personal characteristics and resources of these members. As Scott (1992, p. 54) puts it, ‘Individual participants are never merely “hired hands” but bring along their heads and hearts: they enter the organization with individually shaped ideas, expectations, and agendas, and they bring with them differing values, interests, and abilities.’ Informal structure, he goes on to note, constitutes an actual structure, not some amorphous collection of random elements. Evidence of informal structure can be found, for example, in a school’s ‘status and power systems, communication networks, sociometric structures, and working arrangements’ (p. 54). Ouchi (1979, p. 837) traces the discovery of informal structures to Roethlisberger and Dickson’s Hawthorne studies in the late 1930s. Since that time, researchers have investigated informal structures in all kinds of organizations, including schools. Coburn and Stein (2006), for instance, point out that the professional relationships among teachers in a school play an important role in policy implementation and teacher learning. As they put it, ‘We view policy implementation as a process of learning that involves the gradual transformation of practice via the ongoing negotiation of meaning among teachers’ (2006, p. 26). The social systems perspective, as reflected in the informal structure of schools, underscores the need to understand how groups and networks impact school organization and efforts to improve schools.

Schools as Cultures In The Sociology of Teaching, Waller (1932) recognized that schools reproduced the extant culture by serving as a repository of community values. He also maintained that a defining feature of each school was a distinctive organizational culture (pp. 6–7). This distinctive culture resulted from the clash of two subcultures, one rooted in the actions of students as they seek independence and the other generated by teachers’ efforts to

channel these actions. Willower (1989), in considering Waller’s work, explained the uniqueness of school cultures as follows: ‘while most organizations have only the problem of motivating employees to produce a quality product, schools have that problem, but must also motivate the product’ (p. 23). Ouchi (1979) also acknowledged that schools, along with some other public service organizations, represent special cases where culture is concerned. He argued that organizational control can be accomplished through bureaucratic structure (rules) and market forces in stable manufacturing industries, but these mechanisms are less likely to function well in service organizations staffed by large numbers of professionals. Such organizations, he contended, are apt to depend on subtler forms of control, such as ceremony and rituals, that are rooted in organizational culture (p. 845). It took several decades after Waller’s seminal book was published before the concept of school culture began to attract much attention. When Getzels, Lipham, and Campbell (1968) presented their general model of behavior in social systems, culture was a central feature. In their view, though, culture was a more complex phenomenon than it had been for Waller. Waller regarded school culture as a somewhat closed system despite its reflection of community values. Getzels, Lipham, and Campbell acknowledged that schools are cultures in their own right, but they went on to characterize the interaction between school culture and the surrounding environment as a dynamic process with the constant potential to produce conflict. The problematic possibilities of school culture also were recognized by Sarason (1971) in his landmark book, The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change. School culture, as embodied in various unquestioned ‘regularities,’ serves as a firewall against innovation and organizational change. Sarason’s analysis focused on the failure of massive, federally funded curriculum reforms in the 1960s to alter patterns of pedagogical practice

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

in public schools. School culture, in his view, constituted the aspects of life in schools that people took for granted and that ultimately undermined change initiatives. In Firestone and Corbett’s chapter on planned organizational change in the Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (1988), the cultural perspective on school organization received a fairly extensive discussion. The authors contended that the cultural perspective constituted the ‘most profitable direction’ for those interested in gaining a better understanding of the school improvement process (Firestone & Corbett, 1988, p. 335). They also questioned scholars like Sarason who stressed the immutability of organizational cultures. In their view, more attention needed to be directed at the ability of school leaders to shape school culture. A school’s culture, according to Firestone and Corbett (1988, p. 335), provides a normative structure for a social group. This conception places the cultural perspective squarely in Scott’s (1992) natural systems arena. Normative structure defines both ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’ (Firestone & Corbett, 1988, p. 335). Behavioral and procedural regularities must be altered in order to reshape school culture. Failure to do so, as Sarason insisted and Firestone and Corbett agreed, results only in superficial change, as suggested by the idiom ‘the more things change, the more they remain the same.’ In the 1999 Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (Murphy & Louis, 1999), an entire chapter is devoted to schools as cultures, a clear indication of growing interest in the cultural perspective on school organization. Chapter authors Firestone and Louis (1999, p. 297) begin by noting that the bureaucratic or structural perspective has not been especially useful because schools have a common formal structure that is highly resistant to change. The cultural perspective, in their view, is more attractive ‘because it offers administrators ways to bring meaning and effectiveness

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to schools’ (Firestone & Louis, 1999, p. 297). While a focus on formal structure assumes that relationships are impersonal, contractual, and self-interested, the cultural perspective acknowledges the importance of togetherness and community. It also provides a foundation for studying and understanding differences in schools across local, regional and national boundaries. Not all schools, of course, possess a robust culture. Firestone and Louis (1999) recognize, as did Waller, that schools also are characterized by subcultures. In some cases, powerful subcultures can prevent the development of a dominant organizational culture. Examples are given of studies that describe how subcultures form around departments in high schools. In other instances, school culture may be so oriented to the values and norms of veteran teachers that newcomers feel marginalized and alienated (Kardos et al., 2001). Growing interest in the cultural perspective has led to school improvement specialists advocating re-culturing as a strategy for increasing school effectiveness (Deal & Peterson, 1999; Fullan, 2001). Particular emphasis is placed on developing cultures that value and promote collegiality and collaboration among professionals. These concerns with the nature of the school as a workplace for educators also have been noted by representatives of another perspective, one focused squarely on the work environment of schools.

Schools as Workplaces It is impossible to address the work that goes on in schools without taking into account school structures, social systems, and cultures. Waller (1932) clearly recognized the interrelationship between these perspectives. What makes the workplace perspective different is its starting place. Efforts to understand school organization begin with a focus on the experience of education professionals working in schools and the impact of these

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experiences on their performance, job satisfaction, efficacy, beliefs, attitudes, and sense of well-being. A considerable portion of Waller’s The Sociology of Teaching (1932) is devoted to an analysis of working conditions for teachers and administrators. He noted, for example, that over-burdened teachers are prone to rely on routinized instruction, despite its dulling effect on students (1932, p. 443). Waller also acknowledged that teachers can be guilty of goal displacement, substituting self-interest for school objectives. These workplace tendencies were traced to school size and what Waller referred to as ‘institutionalism,’ a tendency for teachers to believe that their interests are ‘sacrosanct’ (p. 443). Waller was not the first to recognize the stresses and strains of teaching. Tyack and Hansot (1982), in their history of public school leadership, note the views of Chicago’s first woman superintendent of schools, Ella Flagg Young. Writing in 1916, Young decried the scientific management movement, which she believed was turning teachers into operatives who had to do the bidding of their superiors (Tyack & Hansot, 1982, pp. 180–181). Using the analogy of a factory, she saw schools becoming places where teachers, like machine operators, were given orders to follow. She attributed these circumstances to the fact that most teachers were women while most administrators were men. Perhaps the most significant impetus for the workplace perspective on school organization was the rise of teacher unions. The National Education Association was founded in 1857 and the American Federation of Teachers formed in 1916. Both sought to improve salaries and benefits for teachers. It was not until the advent of collective bargaining for public employees in the second half of the twentieth century, however, that teacher unions had the clout to gain concessions regarding such working conditions as class size and non-teaching duties. In 1965, Ronald Corwin devoted a chapter of his landmark book, A Sociology of

Education, to the topic of teachers as professional employees. The term ‘professional employee,’ according to Corwin, conveys the role conflict to which teachers are subject. Rooted in the tradition of local control of schools is the image of the teacher as a public servant, a salaried employee of the community. Salaried employees are expected to be compliant and respectful of community values. Professionals, however, are bound by universalistic standards sanctioned by agencies beyond local communities. Professionals expect to have their professional judgment respected and to exercise discretion when it comes to their areas of expertise. The conclusion to Corwin’s chapter acknowledged the rise of ‘militant professionalism’ in the mid-1960s (1965, pp. 257– 258). The union-based drive by teachers to gain greater control over their work placed them at odds with school administrators who also sought to be regarded as professionals. Corwin, however, did not anticipate that both teachers and administrators eventually would share a sense of deprofessionalization as states and the federal government began to exercise greater control over public schools and professional practice. In his 1988 handbook chapter, ‘School as Workplace: Structural Constraints on Administration,’ Corwin and his co-author revisited role conflicts, but this time from the vantage point of school administrators. Combining bureaucratic and workplace perspectives, Corwin and Borman (1988) examined the forces that limited the authority and power of principals to control teachers’ work. One concern, for instance, involved the limited incentives available to principals for recruiting and rewarding good teachers. Corwin and Borman also noted the unwillingness of many teachers to sacrifice their personal autonomy, however constrained, for cross-classroom cooperation. Rosenholtz (1989) followed Corwin and Borman’s (1988) chapter with her own effort to integrate perspectives on school organization. In her analysis, the workplace perspective

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

was inseparable from the social systems perspective. Schools could not be understood, she argued, unless we understand them as teachers do. ‘We are interested not only in ways that the structure of their daily experiences affects teachers’ beliefs, cognitions, and behaviors, but also in the reciprocal effect of those beliefs, cognitions, and behaviors on their school’s social organization,’ Rosenholtz (1989, p. 3) asserted. Schools shape teachers, in other words, as teachers shape schools. Recent decades have found researchers taking an increased interest in the school as workplace. In Teachers at Work, Susan Moore Johnson (1990) provides an excellent introduction to the workplace perspective. A workplace, she contends, is more than a physical setting: ‘it is also the context that defines how work is divided and done, how it is scheduled, supervised, compensated, and regarded by others’ (1990, p. 1). To learn how teachers felt about their workplace, Johnson interviewed 115 teachers from public, independent, and church-related schools. Compared to their independent and parochial school colleagues, public school teachers considered their workplaces deficient in a variety of ways. This finding pertained to suburban as well as urban schools. Suburban schools frequently were reported to be ‘unsatisfying and unsuccessful, demanding conformity among staff, generating unsettling competition, and discouraging teachers’ professional growth’ (p. 329). Johnson (1990, p. 107) concluded that workplace redesign was needed: If schools were structured from the inside out rather than the outside in, if they derived their form from the needs of teachers and students rather than the priorities of administrators and business, they would be smaller, more flexible, and varied organizations.

In 1992, an entire yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (Lieberman, 1992) was devoted to the changing contexts of teaching. While every chapter offered insights into the school as workplace, two chapters were especially pertinent.

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Cohn (1992) traced changes in teachers’ perceptions of teaching over the two decades from 1964 to 1984. Questions that Dan Lortie had asked Dade County, Florida, teachers in 1964 were repeated in the same school system 20 years later. The findings indicated a marked decline in job satisfaction, due in part to diminished respect for teachers and the lack of extrinsic rewards. In 1984 teachers also reported that students were less motivated and more difficult to teach and parents were less supportive of teachers. When asked what bothered them most about teaching, teachers’ most frequent response involved growing paperwork demands. They also noted the loss of control over curriculum and instruction, and closer supervision by administrators. Louis (1992), in her chapter, focused on research conducted on the high school workplace. As with the studies of Dade County teachers, lack of respect for teachers emerged as a central concern. Opportunities for teachers to work with colleagues was important to respondents, though they indicated that collaboration could be exhausting and intense. Researchers were surprised to find that empowerment of teachers through involvement in school decision making was not a pressing concern. Teachers expressed a desire for effective and efficient leadership, characterized by administrators’ awareness of what goes on in classrooms and drop-in visits to discuss concerns. Since the advent of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, researchers interested in the workplace perspective on school organization have devoted attention to the impact of federal, state, and local accountability measures. Ingersoll (2003) focused on the variety of formal and informal modes of workplace control to which teachers have become subject. He concluded that ‘teachers are pushed to accept a remarkable degree of personal accountability, in the face of a remarkable lack of accountability on the part of the schools that employ them’ (2003, p. 13). Ingersoll (2003, p. 15) expanded his analysis in order to raise the following question: ‘Are

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essential white-collar occupations like teaching more akin to professional vocations, based on experience, training, and skill, or are they closer to factory-like jobs, which underutilize human resources and alienate employees?’ His research indicated that efforts to tighten accountability in schools were leading to less teacher influence over workplace conditions, a trend that he saw as undermining school improvement efforts. ‘The road to school improvement,’ he insists, ‘lies not through decreasing but through increasing delegation, deregulation, and decentralization’ (2003, p. 242). Grissom, Nicholson-Crotty, and Harrington (2014) analyzed four waves of the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey covering the period from 1994 to 2008 and found reason to question the assumption that accountability measures had led to a deprofessionalized workplace for teachers. Teachers reported that they were working longer hours, but they felt more support from colleagues, administrators, and parents as well as greater control over their classrooms. Teacher job satisfaction and commitment to the profession also appeared to have increased over the 14 years of the study. The debate over the impact of recent educational reforms on the school as a workplace is not limited to the US. Moves to promote self-governing schools, school choice, and state- mandated accountability in England, Australia, and New Zealand have prompted scholars to question whether schools are becoming more or less teacher-centered (Whitty, Power, & Halpin, 1998, pp. 64–78). Some have concluded that the primary beneficiaries of self-governance have been school heads, not teachers (Gewirtz & Ball, 1996). Kallos and Lundahl-Kallos (1994) suggest that similar findings have characterized educational reforms in Sweden.

Schools as Institutions The institutional perspective on schools is relatively recent. In the 1999 Handbook of

Research on Educational Administration, Rowan and Miskel (1999) trace the origins of institutional theory to a series of case studies by Philip Selznick in the 1950s and early 1960s. This work found that the structural nature of organizations was shaped by a variety of internal and external constituents and the ever-changing social environments in which the organizations operated. These influences pressed for conformity to institutionalized rules, thereby increasing organizational legitimacy and survival without necessarily increasing organizational efficiency and effectiveness (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). This perspective stands in marked contrast to the bureaucratic perspective which holds that organizational survival depends on the efficient achievement of organizational goals. The institutional perspective challenges conventional, Weberian notions of bureaucratic organization. According to Selznick (1992, p. 239), when we view an organization as an institution, we are mainly concerned with the values it embodies, not simply its espoused goals and the extent to which the goals are accomplished. One indication that an organization is becoming an institution, in fact, is our difficulty pinpointing the specific purposes of the organization. Selznick puts it thus: ‘Internally, as the organization takes on a distinctive identity the source of integration shifts from goals to values, from specific objectives to ways of thinking and deciding’ (1992, p. 237). From an external point of view, the organization comes to be ‘a locus of value and a center of power’ (p. 237). Interest in institutional theory languished for nearly two decades but re-emerged in the 1980s. In the field of school and school district organization, the ‘new’ institutionalism, as the revival was dubbed, drew on the work of W. Richard Scott, John Meyer, and Brian Rowan (Rowan & Miskel, 1999). These scholars rejected perspectives that regarded schools and other organizations as ‘engaging in unrestrained, rational pursuit of their interests’ (1999, p. 362). Organizational behavior

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

instead was viewed as ‘socially embedded and constrained by regulations, normative obligations, and/or cognitive schemata’ (p. 362). When the institutional perspective began to be applied to schools and school districts in the late 1970s, it was with the intent to correct certain misunderstandings about their history. Rather than seeing school organization as a purposeful effort to coordinate the technical work (instruction and assessment) of education, Meyer, Scott, and Deal (1983, p. 411) argued that schools were formed to ‘bring the process of education under a socially standardized set of institutional categories.’ Conforming to institutional rules concerning such matters as teacher credentials, student selection, and the proper topics for instruction supplanted in importance the careful monitoring of teaching and learning activities. While much of the work associated with institutionalism stresses the forces that produce similarities across organizations in a given domain, Scott (2008) cautions against assuming conformity. As he puts it, ‘Although all organizations within a given institutional field or sector are subject to the effects of institutional processes within the context, all do not experience them in the same way or respond in the same manner’ (2008, p. 160). Such factors as local jurisdictional authority, organizational size, and past history can serve to modify the impact of institutional forces. The institutional perspective initially reinforced the notion of loose coupling because it explained why the technical core of schooling was not more closely linked to the bureaucratic structure of schools. Structural conformity, or isomorphism, became more important than technical conformity (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). In other words, teachers could exercise considerable latitude in the classroom as long as they possessed the proper credentials and their schools received accreditation. Rowan and Miskel (1999) observe that earlier efforts by institutional theorists to support loose coupling of technical and structural aspects of schooling have been revised.

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Recent work stresses a variety of ways in which institutional arrangements are tied to technical activities in schools. A good example of the linkages between the technical and the structural dimensions of schooling is the movement in the US following passage of the No Child Left Behind Act 2001 to develop standards for what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed, and to prescribe how to fix low-performing schools. Glatter (2015) has written of the growing interest in the institutional perspective in Great Britain. Peter Scott (1989), for instance, has put forth the argument that educational organizations share a dual identity as both administrative and moral entities. He believes that too much attention has been directed at the first of those aspects. According to Glatter (2015, p. 103), this tendency to neglect the moral dimension of school organization has increased in recent years with the specification of technical standards for schooling. He advocates a greater focus on the role of values in schools, an emphasis he maintains would ‘promote breadth in education and prioritize continuity over frequent mandated and often weakly justified structural changes’ (2015, p. 103). Rowan and Miskel (1999) illustrate how institutional theory helps explain national differences in educational systems. Given the importance of local control, community values, individualism, and volunteerism, for example, it is no surprise that a highly centralized national educational bureaucracy does not exist in the US. France, on the other hand, is characterized by a more tightly coupled, state-centered education system, a reflection of its political culture and social norms. Rowan and Miskel (1999, p. 378) maintain that institutional theory is less a perspective on school organization per se, than on the environment in which school organizations exist. In the conclusion to their Handbook chapter, they call for more investigation of institutional effects at the micro-level of teaching and learning. Further, they stress the importance of

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attention to historical processes in conducting institutional analyses. Noting that the institutional perspective has yet to offer much in the way of practical advice to school leaders, they suggest that a theory of institutional design might be a useful first step. Such a theory, they contend, should provide educators with a set of tools to shape and constrain action within schools. These tools might include ‘institutional rules, regulations, norms, and the takenfor-granted assumptions of those at work in educational organizations’ (1999, p. 379).

CONCLUSION This chapter has focused on five distinct, but not necessarily unrelated, perspectives on schools as organizations, perspectives that focus on bureaucratic structure, social systems, cultures, the school as workplace, and institutional factors. There are, of course, other perspectives that have been employed in order to better understand how schools function as organizations. Bolman and Deal (2008), for example, point out that organizations are political entities in which actors pursue preferred agendas and exert power in various ways to see that their agendas are accomplished. Slater and Boyd (1999) devoted a chapter in the second Handbook of Research on Educational Administration to schools as ‘polities.’ They note that this perspective faces a variety of definitional and practical challenges. If, for example, one chooses to define polity as a political system, they are apt to address such organizational matters as micro-politics, conflict, resource distribution, and power. Polity, however, also can refer to civil order and to ‘rule of the many in the interest of the whole’ (1999, p. 325). Katz (1971) demonstrated that the view of schools as political entities has been around as long as the bureaucratic perspective on school organization. Another perspective holds that schools should be regarded as business organizations.

Private and parochial schools long have had to compete for ‘customers’ like other businesses, but the advent of charter schools has meant that regular public schools must also become more market-driven and competitive. While competition certainly gives rise to greater business-based thinking, Cuban (2004) rejects the notion that schools are just like businesses. In The Blackboard and the Bottom Line (Cuban, 2004, p. 157), he cites the ‘profound differences between businesses and schools in purposes, in deliberative decision making, and in accountability for outcomes.’ The five perspectives addressed in this chapter were chosen because they reflect the evolution of thinking and research on schools and school districts as organizations. Considered separately, each perspective offers a partial foundation for understanding the performance of schools and school districts as well as the behavior of those who work in and are served by them. Taken together, the perspectives provide a relatively comprehensive framework for organizational analysis. This chapter’s examination of the five perspectives reveals not only the distinctive nature of each, but also their interrelationships. Bureaucracy, for example, shapes social systems and organizational cultures, but social systems and cultures influence and moderate the impact of bureaucratic structure. All three, along with institutional factors, help to determine the nature of schools and districts as workplaces. Bureaucratic and institutional perspectives offer explanations for the commonalities among many schools and districts, while social systems, cultural, and workplace perspectives help account for many of the distinctive features of particular schools and districts. It would be a mistake to assume that there is only one correct perspective on schools as organizations. Perspectives emerge as scholars, policy makers, practitioners, organizational development specialists, and the public determine that existing perspectives fail to fully account for and explain what goes on in schools and school systems. The value of any

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

particular perspective resides in the fact that schools and school systems are highly complex phenomena. It is virtually impossible to grasp everything that is going on, at least not simultaneously. A perspective, as noted earlier, offers a place to begin the process of describing and making sense of schools as organizations.

REFERENCES Abbott, M. G. & Caracheo, F. (1988). Power, authority, and bureaucracy. In N. J. Boyan (ed.), Handbook of Research on Educational Administration. New York: Longman, pp. 239–257. Adler, P. S. & Borys, B. (1996). Two types of bureaucracy: Enabling and coercive. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(1), 61–89. Bacharach, S. B. & Mundell, B. (1995). Images of Schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Bidwell, C. E. (1965). The school as a formal organization. In J. G. March (ed.), Handbook of Organizations. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, pp. 972–1022. Bolman, L. G. & Deal, T. E. (2008). Reframing Organizations (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Boyan, N. J. (ed.). (1988). Handbook of Research on Educational Administration. New York: Longman. Chubb, J. E. & Moe, T. (1990). Politics, Markets and America’s Schools. Washington, DC: Brookings. Coburn, C. E. & Stein, M. K. (2006). Communities of practice theory and the role of teacher professional community in policy implementation. In M. I. Honig (ed.), New Directions in Education Policy Implementation. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp. 25–46. Cohn, M. M. (1992). How teachers perceive teaching: Change over two decades, 1964– 1984. In A. Lieberman (ed.), The Changing Contexts of Teaching. The 91st Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Part I. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 110–137. Corwin, R. G. (1965). A Sociology of Education. New York: Appleton-Century-Crifts. Corwin, R. G. & Borman, K. M. (1988). School as workplace: Structural constraints on

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administration. In N. J. Boyan (ed.), Handbook of Research on Educational Administration. New York: Longman, pp. 209–237. Council of the Great City Schools. (2006). Review of the Organizational Structure and Operations for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Retrieved from http://files. eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED498840.pdf. Cremin, L. A. (1964). The Transformation of the School. New York: Vintage. Cuban, L. (2004). The Blackboard and the Bottom Line. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Deal, T. E. & Peterson, K. D. (1999). Shaping School Culture. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. DiMaggio, P. J. & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147–160. Downs, A. (1966). Inside Bureaucracy. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Firestone, W. A. & Corbett, H. D. (1988). Planned organizational change. In N. J. Boyan (ed.), Handbook of Research on Educational Administration. New York: Longman, pp. 321–340. Firestone, W. A. & Louis, K. S. (1999). Schools as cultures. In J. Murphy & K. S. Louis (eds.), Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, pp. 297–322. Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a Culture of Change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Getzels, J. W., Lipham, J. M., & Campbell, R. F. (1968). Educational Administration as a Social Process. New York: Harper & Row. Getzels, J. W. & Thelen, H. A. (1960). The classroom group as a unique social system. In N. B. Henry (ed.), The Dynamics of Instructional Groups. The 59th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 53–82. Gewirtz, S. & Ball, S. J. (1996). From welfarism to managerialism: Shifting discourses of school leadership in the education quasimarket. Paper presented to Fourth ESRC Quasi-markets Seminar, University of Bristol, 25–26 March. Glatter, R. (2015). Are schools and colleges institutions? Management in Education, 29(3), 100–104.

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Grissom, J. A., Micholson-Crotty, S., & Harrington, J. R. (2014). Estimating the effects of No Child Left Behind on teachers’ work environments and job attitudes. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36(4), 417–436. Hannaway, J. (1978). Administrative structures: Why do they grow? Teachers College Record, 79(3), 413–436. Hightower, A. M. (2002). San Diego’s big boom: Systemic instructional change in the central office and schools. In A. M. Hightower, M. S. Knapp, J. A. Marsh, & M. W. McLaughlin (eds.), School Districts and Instructional Renewal. New York: Teachers College Press, pp. 76–93. Hoy, W. K. & Sweetland, S. R. (2001). Designing better schools: The meaning and measure of enabling school structures. Educational Administration Quarterly, 37(3), 296–321. Ingersoll, R. M. (2003). Who Controls Teachers’ Work? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Johnson, S. M. (1990). Teachers at Work. New York: Basic Books. Kallos, D. & Lundahl-Kallos, L. (1994). Recent changes in teachers’ work in Sweden: Professionalization or what? In D. Kallos & S. Lindblad (eds.), New Policy Contexts for Education: Sweden and United Kingdom. Umea, Sweden: Umea University. Kardos, S. M., Johnson, S. M., Peske, H. G., Kauffman D., & Liu, E. (2001). Counting on colleagues: New teachers encounter the professional cultures of their schools. Educational Administration Quarterly, 37(2), 250–290. Katz, M. B. (1971). Class, Bureaucracy, & Schools. New York: Praeger. Lieberman, A. (ed.). (1992). The Changing Contexts of Teaching. The 91st Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-Level Bureaucracy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Louis, K. S. (1992). Restructuring and the problem of teachers’ work. In A. Lieberman (ed.), The Changing Contexts of Teaching. The 91st Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 138–156. March, J. G. (ed.) (1965). Handbook of Organizations. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.

Meier, K. J., Polinard, J. L., & Wrinkle, R. D. (2000). Bureaucracy and organizational performance: Causality arguments about public schools. American Journal of Political Science, 44(3), 590–602. Meyer, J., Scott, W. R., & Deal, T. (1983). Research on school and district organization. In J. V. Baldridge & T. Deal (eds.), The Dynamics of Organizational Change in Education. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan, pp. 409–425. Moeller, G. H. & Charters, W. W. (1966). Relation of bureaucratization to sense of power among teachers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 10(4), 444–465. Murphy, J. & Louis, K. S. (eds.). (1999). Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub.L.No. 107-110. Retrieved from www.ed.gov/legislation/esea02/ [Accessed May 12, 2017]. Ogawa, R. T., Crowson, R. L., & Goldring, E. B. (1999). Enduring dilemmas of school organization. In J. Murphy & K.S. Louis (eds.), Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, pp. 277–295. Ouchi, W. G. (1979). A conceptual framework for the design of organizational control mechanisms. Management Science, 25(9), 833–848. Rosenholtz, S. J. (1989). Teachers’ Workplace: The Social Organization of Schools. New York: Longman. Rowan, B. & Miskel, C. G. (1999). Institutional theory and the study of educational organizations. In J. Murphy & K. S. Louis (eds.), Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, pp. 359–383. Sarason, S. B. (1971). The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Scott, P. (1989). Accountability, responsiveness and responsibility. In R. Glatter (ed.), Educational Institutions and Their Environments: Managing the Boundaries. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, pp. 11–22. Scott, W. R. (1992). Organizations, Third edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Scott, W.R. (2008). Institutions and Organizations, Third edition. Los Angeles: SAGE. Scott, W. R. (2008). Institutions and Organizations, Third edition. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

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Selznick, P. (1992). The Moral Commonwealth. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Slater, R. O. & Boyd, W. L. (1999). Schools as polities. In J. Murphy & K. S. Louis (eds.), Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, pp. 323–335. Smith, K. B. & Larimer, C. W. (2004). A mixed relationship: Bureaucracy and school performance. Public Administration Review, 64(6), 728–736. Tanner, L. N. (1997). Dewey’s Laboratory School. New York: Teachers College Press. Tyack, D. B. (1974). The One Best System. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tyack, D. B. & Hansot, E. (1982). Managers of Virtue. New York: Basic Books. Urban, W. & Wagoner, J. (1996). American Education: A History. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Waller, W. (1932). The Sociology of Teaching. New York: Wiley. Weber, M. (2004). Bureaucracy. In J. M. Shafritz & J. S. Ott (eds.), Classics of Organization Theory (6th ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt College Publishers, pp. 73–78. Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations in loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1), 1–19. Whitty, G., Power, S., & Halpin, D. (1998). Devolution and Choice in Education. London: ACER Press. Willower, D. J. (1989). Waller and schools as organizations: An appreciation and criticism. In D. J. Willower & W. L. Boyd (eds.), Willard Waller on Education and Schools. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan, pp. 9–38. Willower, D. J. & Carr, C. F. (1965). The school as a social organization. Educational Leadership, 13(4), 251–255.

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PART II

The Leadership, Management and Governance of Schools as Organizations

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4 Conceptions of the Leadership and Management of Schools as Organizations To n y B u s h

INTRODUCTION Leadership and management are twin identifiers for the work of school heads, principals and other staff. Their relative importance has changed over time, as theorists, policy-makers and practitioners have redefined their views about what constitutes effective headship. Management was in the ascendancy in England following the Education Reform Act (ERA) 1988, which devolved many activities and responsibilities to school governing bodies and head teachers. These seismic changes focused heads’ attention on the newly defined ‘chief executive’ role and the previous ‘leading professional’ expectations receded into the background. Bottery (2004: 176) noted that school governing bodies sought a managerial leader: ‘the headteacher they were looking for had to be more like a chief executive of a business than a head teacher’. This view was understandable as the post-ERA activities were perceived to be managerial and included human resource management, financial resource

management, site management, marketing, and stakeholder relationships. The government employed management consultants, Coopers and Lybrand, to advise on the introduction of Local Management of Schools, a central plank of the ERA. Its report (Coopers and Lybrand 1988) stressed the importance of ‘good management’. Management was also seen as the main construct in other countries, including much of Europe and Africa. However, in other jurisdictions, including Australia, Canada, and the United States, management was barely used and the term ‘administration’ was preferred. In the 21st century, there has been a shift in emphasis, with ‘leadership’ being normatively preferred. This shift was reflected in the founding of the English National College for School Leadership in 2000, and in similar bodies in other countries. Senior management teams have been replaced by senior leadership teams in most schools. Leadership has also become the concept of choice in North America and Australia, at the expense of the former emphasis on administration.

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In this chapter, I will examine the differences between leadership and management, consider whether school practice reflects such normative changes, and review the various concepts that underpin these descriptors.

DEFINING LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT A decade ago, I asked whether the shift from ‘leadership’ to ‘management’ was simply semantic or whether it signalled a more fundamental shift in the ways that schools and other organizations operated (Bush, 2008). This question remains open because definitions of these two approaches overlap, creating confusion and uncertainty. Some definitions (e.g., Cuban, 1988) distinguish between maintenance and development, while others (e.g., Day et  al., 2001) link management to ‘systems’ and ‘paper’, and leadership to the development of people. Heck and Hallinger (2005: 240) stress that the differences relate to maintenance and change: We refer to management and administration as the managerial processes that maintain stability in organisations, such as planning, organising, coordinating and controlling. We refer to leadership as change-related functions, such as setting a vision and goals for the school and motivating stakeholders to move towards their achievement. This distinction has become more pronounced … as part of school accountability.

My own view (see Bush, 1998, 2011) is that leadership is mainly about values and purposes

while management relates to implementation and technical issues. Put simply, leadership may be about ‘what’ while management is about ‘how’. Table 4.1 is an attempt to distinguish these terms by utilizing several different modes of analysis. It provides a simple way of distinguishing between leadership and management, along various dimensions. The next section explores these distinctions in greater depth.

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT Main Focus Elsewhere (e.g., Bush, 2011), I argue that educational management needs to be underpinned by a clear sense of purpose but the definitions discussed above focus much more on implementation. This focus leads to the possibility of managerialism, where the emphasis is on managerial efficiency rather than the aims and purposes of education. Newman and Clarke (1994: 29) describe this emphasis as the ‘mission statement of management’, meaning that efficiency is the purpose of management, rather than working towards educational goals. Most definitions of leadership stress the need for transparent educational purposes, informed by clear personal and professional values. These are often encapsulated in vision statements, although the evidence (e.g., Bolam et al., 1993; Bottery, 1998; Hoyle and

Table 4.1  Comparing management and leadership Factors

Management

Leadership

Main focus Power Structure Processes Accountability Work allocation Relationships

Implementation and efficiency Positional authority Hierarchy Technical-rational Vertical Delegation Transactional

Values and purposes Influence Fluid Open and fluid Multi-directional Distribution Transformational

CONCEPTIONS OF THE LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS

Wallace, 2005) suggests that such visions are rarely specific to individual schools and colleges and may be rather general aims informed by external imperatives, set by government or other official agencies. Hoyle and Wallace (2005) are dismissive of ‘visionary rhetoric’ and claim that visions have to conform to centralized expectations.

Power Management tends to equate power with positional authority rather than personal attributes. Principals, for example, are powerful because of the office they occupy. If they lose their position, they also lose their power. In centralized systems, with high power-distance, in particular, principals are respected because of their position, regardless of personal qualities. Leadership, in contrast, stresses the very different notion of influence. This emphasis is unrelated to position and may emanate from any part of the organization. It is much more subtle and subjective than authority and sources of influence may differ, depending on how ‘followers’ respond to ‘leaders’, who are not defined by their titles.

Structure The formal structure is seen as a particularly significant aspect of management. It is usually portrayed as a hierarchy with a strong emphasis on vertical links. Organizational charts are remarkably similar across countries, with a pyramidal representation. Principals are shown at the top of the organization, followed by senior leaders, middle leaders, classroom teachers and support staff. Formal communications, and often instructions, flow down the organization and cooperation, or compliance, is seen as unproblematic. In centralized countries, in particular, principals are also seen as key players in the wider educational system and are expected to comply with government requirements.

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Structure is portrayed as much more fluid in the leadership literature. The principal remains important but is not the sole source of power, as noted above. Communications, and decision-making, may be lateral rather than vertical and may emanate from teams as well as individuals. Such flexible arrangements may be regarded as more appropriate for professional organizations, such as schools, colleges, and universities, where expertise is widespread.

Processes The management literature tends to stress rational decision-making processes, initiated and controlled by formal leaders such as principals. This emphasis may be reflected, for example, in data-led decision-making, informed by sophisticated data storage (Hoyle and Wallace, 2005). The pre-ERA Coopers and Lybrand (1988) report advocates what is ‘essentially a rational’ model for resource allocation (Levacic, 1995: 62). However, Hoyle and Wallace (2005: 36) note that teachers and heads ‘make a multitude of decisions “on the run” in contingent and evolving circumstances’. The leadership literature assumes much more open and fluid decision processes, which may be initiated from anywhere in the organization, consistent with the notion of widespread expertise and influence in a professional unit such as a school. Teacher participation in decision-making is advocated because it enhances ownership of decisions and should lead to more effective implementation. It is also more likely to encourage innovation and ‘risk-taking’.

Accountability Management implies a strong focus on vertical accountability, with teachers being responsible to principals via middle and senior leaders, and principals being accountable to

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external agencies, notably the Ministry of Education. The principal’s accountability is often a legal requirement and this tends to reinforce positional authority. A significant aspect of this emphasis is that formal accountability is regarded as more important than responsibility to other stakeholders, such as parents and students. Teachers and principals may also subordinate their own professional judgement to privilege external accountability (Bottery, 2004; Bush, 2011). The assumptions about accountability pathways are more fluid and diverse in the leadership discourse. Responsibility to less powerful stakeholders, such as parents, students, and local communities, is considered to be just as important as vertical accountability. Because there may be multiple leaders, the formal accountability of the principal may be seen as less significant. However, it is difficult for heads to escape externallyimposed expectations, which may limit the scope for multiple accountabilities.

Work Allocation ‘Delegation’ is a well-established term used to describe how managers allocate roles and tasks to subordinates. Leithwood, Jantzi, and Steinbach (1999: 19), for example, say that managers should ‘ensure efficient completion of specified tasks by organisational members’. Subordinates are accountable to their managers for satisfactory completion of the allocated tasks. Allocating roles, rather than just tasks, suggests a higher level of autonomy for the subordinate, but s/he remains accountable for successful outcomes. Distributed leadership is the normatively preferred leadership model of the 21st century. In its ‘pure’ form, leaders provide a climate to nurture leadership, which is ‘emergent’ from different parts of the organization. This model developed in Western contexts (e.g., Gronn, 2000, in Australia; Harris, 2004, in England; and Spillane, 2006, in the USA), but has also become popular in centralized systems.

In Malaysia, for example, distributed leadership is advocated in The Malaysia Education Blueprint (Ministry of Education, Malaysia, 2013), the main reform document. However, here and elsewhere, the model of distribution is allocative, rather than emergent. This is a very different approach, suggesting some conceptual gymnastics. This dichotomy will be explored in more detail later.

Relationships Managerial relationships are often construed as transactional. ‘The head requires the cooperation of staff to secure the effective management of the school. An exchange may secure benefits for both parties’ (Bush, 2011: 119). Miller and Miller (2001: 182) say that transactional relationships ‘are based upon an exchange for some valued resource’. In simple terms, the employee provides work and loyalty in exchange for payment and other benefits. Transactional and transformational models are often linked (Judge and Piccolo, 2004; Miller and Miller, 2001) but the latter is regarded as a leadership approach. Leaders inspire greater levels of organizational commitment, which are thought to lead to extra effort and greater productivity (Leithwood et  al., 1999). Transformational leadership is linked to vision, with leaders seeking widespread support for their ideas, which are often portrayed as ‘school goals’. These twin models will be further examined later. The normative preference for leadership in the 21st century has led to management being de-emphasized, or even ‘neglected’ and ‘downplayed’ (Connolly et al., 2018), but both approaches are required for organizations to be effective. Glatter (1997) and Bolman and Deal (1997) both made this point as leadership was moving into the ascendancy: Erecting this kind of dichotomy, between something ‘pure’ called leadership and something ‘dirty’ called management, or between values and purposes on the one hand and methods and skills on the other, would be disastrous. (Glatter 1997: 189)

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Leading and managing are distinct, but both are important … modern organisations require the objective perspective of the manager as well as the flashes of vision and commitment wise leadership brings. (Bolman and Deal, 1997: xiii–xiv)

It is important also to stress that these descriptors are ways of distinguishing between aspects of the work of heads, principals, and other staff. They are primarily analytical tools and require care when applied to the day-today work of principals (Leithwood, 1994). We should note the advice of Hallinger (2003) that a leadership perspective on the work of the principal does not diminish their managerial roles.

CONCEPTIONS OF LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT As noted above, leadership has been in the ascendancy in the 21st century and this emphasis has been accompanied by theory development, with new models emerging and established approaches being redefined and further developed. There has been much less debate and development in respect of management models, so this section of the chapter will focus mainly on leadership conceptions, with a lesser emphasis on management. This section draws on previous work by the author (Bush, 2011, 2015; Bush and Glover, 2014), based on UK and international school leadership literature.

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There are many alternative, and competing, models of school leadership. Leithwood, Jantzi and Steinbach (1999) identified six theories following their scrutiny of four leading journals. Bush and Glover (2014) discuss several models, seven of which are shown in Table 4.2. There is significant overlap between the two typologies but ‘distributed’ replaces ‘participative’ leadership in the Bush and Glover (2014) list, reflecting changing fashions in leadership labels. Transactional leadership, included in the Bush and Glover (2014) typology, is very well established and it is perhaps surprising that it did not feature in the Leithwood et al. (1999) list. Hallinger (1992) argued that the expectations of American principals evolved during the 20th century and that this was reflected in changing conceptions of school leadership. The focus shifted from managerial to instructional to transformational approaches. The first part of the discussion below follows this sequence.

Managerial Leadership Leithwood et al. (1999: 15) claim that ‘there is evidence of considerable support in the literature and among practicing leaders for managerial approaches to leadership’. They add that ‘positional power, in combination with formal policies and procedures, is the source of influence exercised by managerial leadership’ (1999: 17). The main emphasis is

Table 4.2  Typologies of leadership models (adapted from Leithwood et al., 1999, and Bush and Glover, 2014) Leithwood et al. (1999) models

Bush and Glover (2014) models

Managerial Participative Transformational Moral Instructional Contingency

Managerial Distributed Transformational Moral Instructional Contingency Transactional

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on managerial processes, and on completing functions and tasks efficiently, rather than on the purpose of education. The language of managerial leadership is remarkably similar to that used to describe management, as the discussion below indicates. This aspect is where differences between leadership and management are most difficult to discern.

Bureaucracy The management model linked to managerial leadership is bureaucracy, developed in the 19th century and strongly associated with the work of Max Weber (1989: 16), who also stresses efficiency: The purely bureaucratic type of administrative organisation … is … capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency [and] … is superior to any other form in precision in precision [and] … reliability.

The model assumes a hierarchical authority structure, division of labour based on expertise (as in high school departments), a rulebound culture, and impersonal relationships, reflected, for example, in referring to people by position (e.g., principal) rather than by name. There are substantial overlaps between bureaucracy and managerial leadership.

Managerialism The shift in the language of school organization to favour ‘leadership’ at the expense of ‘management’ is partly semantic, as noted above, but also reflects anxiety about the dangers of value-free management, focusing on efficiency for its own sake, what Hoyle and Wallace (2005: 68) describe as ‘management to excess’: Effective leadership and management ‘take the strain’ by creating structures and processes which allow teachers to engage as fully as possible in their key task. Managerialism, on the other hand, is leadership and management to excess. It transcends the support role of leadership and, in its extreme manifestation, becomes an end in itself.

Managerial leadership is the model which provides the greatest risk of a managerialist approach to school organization. By focusing

on functions, tasks, and behaviours, there is the possibility that the aims of education will be subordinated to the managerial aim of greater efficiency. Simkins (2005: 13–14), for example, claims that managerialist values, such as rigid planning and target-setting regimes, are being set against traditional professional values. Evidence of a managerialist approach to education may be found in English schools (Hoyle and Wallace, 2007; Rutherford, 2006). Managerial leadership is an essential component of successful schools but it should complement, not supplant, valuesbased approaches. Effective management is essential but value-free managerialism is inappropriate and damaging (Bush, 2011).

Instructional Leadership I noted earlier that the 1988 Education Reform Act in the UK, and similar moves towards school autonomy in other countries, focused attention on the principal’s ‘chief executive’ role. In the 21st century, however, there has been a renewed focus on heads’ professional role, leading to greater recognition that managing teaching and learning are the core activities of educational institutions. This emphasis has led to ‘instructional leadership’ being re-emphasized. Leithwood et  al. (1999: 8) claim that this recognition means ‘that the critical focus for attention by leaders is the behaviour of teachers as they engage in activities directly affecting the growth of students’. Instructional leadership is the longest established concept linking leadership and learning. However, several other terms may be used to describe this relationship, including pedagogic leadership, curriculum leadership, and leadership for learning. Despite its prominence and longevity, instructional leadership has been criticized on two grounds. First, it is perceived to be primarily concerned with teaching rather than learning (Bush, 2013) and it has been superseded in England

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and elsewhere by the notion of learningcentred leadership. Rhodes and Brundrett (2010) argue that the latter concept is broader and has greater potential to impact on school and student outcomes. They explore the transition from instructional leadership, which is concerned with ensuring teaching quality, to leadership for learning, which incorporates a wider spectrum of leadership action to support learning and learning outcomes. The second criticism of instructional leadership is that it ‘focused too much on the principal as the centre of expertise, power and authority’ (Hallinger, 2003: 330). As a consequence, it tends to ignore or underplay the role of other leaders, such as deputy principals, middle managers, leadership teams, and classroom teachers. In larger schools, in particular, it is impossible for principals to have the specific expertise, let alone sufficient time, to be the main instructional leader. As Lambert (2002: 37) notes: The days of the lone instructional leader are over. We no longer believe that one administrator can serve as the instructional leader for the entire school without the substantial participation of other educators.

Hallinger and Heck (2010) comment that, in the 21st century, instructional leadership has been ‘reincarnated’ as ‘leadership for learning’. MacBeath and Dempster (2009) outline five main principles which underpin leadership for learning, two of which directly address the weaknesses of instructional leadership. The first is a stress on shared or distributed leadership, counteracting the principal-centric approach of the instructional model. The second is a focus on learning, in contrast to the teaching-centred dimension of instructional leadership. There is much less emphasis on the relationship between management and student learning. However, Hoyle and Wallace (2005: 68) note the relationship between managerial leadership and leadership for learning: ‘Management functions to support learning and teaching, the core of the educational

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enterprise.’ This suggests that management is a ‘back office’ function while instructional leadership indicates a strong direct influence on teaching and learning.

Transformational Leadership This leadership model emanates from the general leadership literature and was subsequently applied to education, for example by Leithwood (1994). It assumes that transformational leadership behaviours produce greater commitment to organizational goals, leading to extra effort and enhanced productivity. The focus is on building and communicating the school vision, creating a productive school culture, and demonstrating high performance expectations. Connolly et  al. (2018) explain that transformational leadership relates to intrinsic motivation, which is linked to teachers’ sense of vocation. There is also some empirical support for this model in the schools’ context (Kirkbride, 2006; Leithwood, 1994). The transformational model provides a normative approach to school leadership, focusing on the process by which leaders seek to influence school outcomes rather than on the nature or direction of those outcomes. However, it may also be criticized as being a vehicle for control over teachers (Bush, 2011; Chirichello, 1999). The contemporary policy climate within which schools have to operate also raises questions about the validity of the transformational model, despite its popularity in the literature. Transformational language is used by governments to encourage, or require, practitioners to adopt and implement centrally-determined policies. In South Africa, for example, the language of transformation is used to underpin a non-racist post-Apartheid education system. The policy is rich in symbolism but weak in practice because many school principals lack the capacity and the authority to implement change effectively (Bush et al., 2009).

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The English system may be seen to require school leaders to adhere to government policies, policed by the Office for Standards in Education, which affect aims, curriculum content, and pedagogy as well as values. In this respect, transformation may be a unilateral process of implementation, not a context-specific assessment of the needs of individual schools and their communities. There is ‘a more centralized, more directed, and more controlled educational system [that] has dramatically reduced the possibility of realizing a genuinely transformational education and leadership’ (Bottery, 2001: 215). Bottery (2004: 17) adds that ‘there is much to question’ in assessing transformational leadership, arguing that it transforms reality and may be more a heroic than a shared leadership model. When transformational leadership works well, it has the potential to engage all stakeholders in the achievement of educational objectives. The aims of leaders and followers coalesce to such an extent that it may be realistic to assume a harmonious relationship and a genuine convergence leading to agreed decisions. When ‘transformation’ is a cloak for imposing the leader’s values on teachers and other stakeholders, or for implementing the prescriptions of the government, then the process is political rather than genuinely transformational (Bush, 2011: 86): The strongest advocacy of a transformational approach to reform has come from those whose policies ensure that the opportunity for transformation is in fact denied to people working in schools. (Hoyle and Wallace, 2005: 128)

The transformational model stresses the importance of values but, as shown above, the debate about its validity relates to the central question of ‘whose values’? Critics of this approach argue that the decisive values are often those of government or of the school principal, who may be acting on behalf of government. Professional values, as held and practised by teachers, may be subjugated to externally-imposed values.

Transactional Leadership Transformational leadership is often contrasted with transactional approaches (e.g., Miller and Miller, 2001). The latter relates to relationships between leaders and teachers being based on the exchange of valued resources. In its simplest form, teachers provide educational services (teaching, pupil welfare, extracurricular activities) in exchange for salaries and other rewards. This form of leadership is a basic approach and does not lead to the level of commitment associated with the transformational model. Connolly et al. (2018) say that transactional leadership relies on an external stimulus, the exchange, rather than the intrinsic motivation associated with transformational approaches. The management model most closely associated with transactional leadership is the political model. Principals are assumed to act politically when they encourage or persuade teachers to act in certain ways, in exchange for ‘rewards’ (Bush, 2011; Hoyle, 1986). As Table 4.1 demonstrates, transactional relationships are more readily associated with management than with leadership.

Moral Leadership As the discussion above implies, transformational leadership may be directed at achieving worthy or less worthy aims. We can all think of charismatic or transformational leaders whose purposes were inappropriate or immoral (e.g., Hitler). Moral leadership differs from the transformational approach through its emphasis on integrity. Leadership is assumed to be underpinned by leaders’ values, beliefs, and ethics (Bush and Glover, 2014; Leithwood et al., 1999). Several overlapping terms have also been used to describe values-based leadership, notably ethical leadership (Starratt, 2005), authentic leadership (Begley, 2007), and spiritual leadership (G. Woods, 2007). West-Burnham (1997: 239) discusses two approaches to leadership which may be

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categorized as ‘moral’. The first he describes as ‘spiritual’ and relates to ‘the recognition that many leaders possess what might be called “higher order” perspectives’, perhaps represented by a particular religious affiliation. Such leaders have a set of principles which provide the basis of self-awareness. G. Woods’s (2007: 148) survey of headteachers in England found that 52% ‘were inspired or supported in their leadership by some kind of spiritual power’. West-Burnham’s (1997: 241) second category is ‘moral confidence’, the capacity to act in a way that is consistent with an ethical system and is consistent over time. Heck and Hallinger (2005: 234) stress that leadership should be seen as a ‘moral endeavour’. ‘Scholars do not focus on … leadership and management as a science or craft, but as a moral endeavor. … This reflects a changing concern with the ends of leadership. Some ends may focus on improving student achievement while others focus on increasing social justice’. Sergiovanni (1991: 329) argues for both moral and managerial leadership: In the principalship, the challenge of leadership is to make peace with two competing imperatives, the managerial and the moral. The two imperatives are unavoidable and the neglect of either creates problems. Schools must be run effectively if they are to survive. … But for the school to transform itself into an institution, a learning community must emerge. … [This] is the moral imperative that principals face.

The relationship between moral and managerial leadership, signalled by Sergiovanni (1991), captures the wider connections between leadership and management. Visionary leadership is required to provide a values-based sense of direction but effective management is equally important to ensure that school goals can be achieved. The concept of authentic leadership has grown in significance but covers similar ground to that of moral leadership. Begley (2007: 163) defines it as ‘a metaphor for professionally effective, ethically sound and consciously reflective practices’. P. Woods (2007: 295)

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adds that it is ‘essentially about the conduct and character of the individual leader’. He identifies three dimensions of ‘holistic authenticity’: personal, ideal, and social. Moral and authentic leadership are underpinned strongly by leaders’ values. The models assume that leaders act with integrity, drawing on firmly held personal and professional values. These serve to inform the school’s vision and mission and to underpin decision-making.

Distributed Leadership The models discussed above are essentially about individual (usually principal) leadership. However, there have been several approaches which seek to widen the debate to include shared approaches to leadership. Crawford (2012) notes the shift from solo to shared leadership. She attributes this shift, in part, to welldocumented failures of high-profile ‘superheads’ in England, leading to scepticism about individual, or ‘heroic’, leadership. Collegial and participative leadership were popular shared approaches in the late 1990s but distributed leadership has become the normatively preferred leadership model in the 21st century. Gronn (2010: 70) states that ‘there has been an accelerating amount of scholarly and practitioner attention accorded [to] the phenomenon of distributed leadership’. Harris (2010: 55) adds that it ‘represents one of the most influential ideas to emerge in the field of educational leadership in the past decade’. An important starting point for understanding distributed leadership is to uncouple it from positional authority. As Harris (2004: 13) indicates, ‘distributed leadership concentrates on engaging expertise wherever it exists within the organization rather than seeking this only through formal position or role’. Gronn (2010: 70) refers to a normative switch ‘from heroics to distribution’ but also cautions against a view that distributed leadership necessarily means any reduction in the scope of

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the principal’s role. Indeed, Hartley (2010: 27) argues that ‘its popularity may be pragmatic: to ease the burden of overworked headteachers’. Lumby (2009: 320) adds that distributed leadership ‘does not imply that school staff are necessarily enacting leadership any differently’ from the time ‘when heroic, individual leadership was the focus of attention’. Bennett et al. (2003: 3) claim that distributed leadership is an emergent property of a group or network of individuals in which group members pool their expertise. Harris (2004: 19), referring to an English study of ten English schools facing challenging circumstances (Harris and Chapman, 2002), says that there should be ‘redistribution of power’, not simply a process of ‘delegated headship’. However, Hopkins and Jackson (2002) argue that formal leaders need to orchestrate and nurture the space for distributed leadership to occur, suggesting that it would be difficult to achieve without the active support of school principals. Given that leadership is widely regarded as an influence process, a central issue is ‘who can exert influence over colleagues and in what domains?’ (Harris, 2005: 165). Heads and principals retain much of the formal authority in schools, leading Hartley (2010: 82) to conclude that ‘distributed leadership resides uneasily within the formal bureaucracy of schools’. However, the emphasis on ‘informal sources of influence’ (Harris, 2010: 56) suggests that distributed leadership may also thrive if there is a void in the formal leadership of the organization. Harris (2004: 16) argues that ‘successful heads recognize the limitations of a singular leadership approach’ and adopt a form of leadership ‘distributed through collaborative and joint working’. However, Gronn’s (2010: 74) overview of four research projects leads him to conclude that principals retain considerable power. ‘Certain individuals, while they by no means monopolized the totality of the leadership, nonetheless exercised disproportionate influence compared to their individual peers’. Bottery (2004: 21) asks how distribution is to

be achieved ‘if those in formal positions do not wish to have their power redistributed in this way?’ Harris (2005: 167) argues that ‘distributed and hierarchical forms of leadership are not incompatible’ but it is evident that distribution can work successfully only if formal leaders allow it to take root. As suggested earlier, the existing authority structure in schools and colleges provides a potential barrier to the successful introduction and implementation of distributed leadership. ‘There are inherent threats to status and the status quo in all that distributed leadership implies’ (Harris, 2004: 20). It can also be argued that distributed leadership blurs the power relationship between followers and leaders (Law, 2010). Lumby (2013) also links distributed leadership to power, claiming that little attention is given to the implications of the former for power relations in education. As Table 4.1 indicates, distribution may be seen as the process for work allocation through a leadership lens. In its pure form, ‘distribution’ is organic rather than linear, and teachers may choose to initiate activity. The management approach is rather different and assumes that principals ‘delegate’ tasks to teachers and other subordinates (Connolly et al., 2018). However, the differences between distribution and delegation may not always be apparent to participants, especially in centralized systems. For example, when asked about distribution, teachers in Nigerian secondary schools offer examples which are much better understood as delegation (Imoni, 2018). This connects to the notion of allocative distribution (Bolden et  al., 2009), where leaders expect teachers to perform certain roles or just tasks, significantly modifying the ‘emergent’ aspects of distribution. Hairon and Goh (2015: 708), referring to Singapore, note that ‘empowerment is distinctly bounded’, while Lumby (2017) argues that distributed leadership resembles formal and informal delegation within a bureaucratic system. Fitzgerald and Gunter (2008) also refer to the residual significance of authority and hierarchy, and note

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the ‘dark side’ of distributed leadership, managerialism in a new guise. While distribution is seen as a leadership concept, management remains significant and, arguably, captures the language of distribution to maintain control. Gronn’s (2010: 77) ‘hybrid’ model may offer to connect distributed leadership with managerial delegation. This is also consistent with the contingent approach, which will be discussed later.

Teacher leadership There are clear links between teacher leadership and distributed leadership. Frost (2008: 337) characterizes the former as involving shared leadership, teachers’ leadership of development work, teachers’ knowledge building, and teachers’ voice. Muijs and Harris’s (2007: 961) research in three UK schools showed that: Teacher leadership was characterised by a variety of formal and informal groupings, often facilitated by involvement in external programmes. Teacher leadership was seen to empower teachers, and contributed to school improvement through this empowerment and the spreading of good practice and initiatives generated by teachers.

Timperley (2005: 418) cautions that developing teacher leadership in ways that promote student achievement presents difficulties. Teacher leaders with high acceptability among their colleagues are not necessarily those with appropriate expertise. Conversely, the micro-politics within a school can reduce the acceptability of those who have the expertise. Helterbran (2010: 363) notes that teacher leadership ‘remains largely an academic topic and, even though inroads have been made, teacher leadership remains more a concept than an actuality’. It is difficult to imagine distributed leadership becoming embedded in schools without teacher leaders. This view suggests that teacher leadership should be conceptualized as a shared, rather than a solo, model. Both models are underpinned by the notion of shared values. As noted above, difficulties arise when this assumption is not realized in practice.

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Stevenson (2012) argues that the interpretation of teacher leadership is managerialist in nature and inherently conservative. Muijs and Harris (2007: 126) conclude that ‘teacher leadership requires … clear line management structures’. One way in which teacher leadership may be incorporated within such formal structures is through ‘master teachers’, an idea that has been introduced by several education systems to keep talented teachers in the classroom. These advanced practitioners may also have roles outside the classroom, within and beyond their own schools, for example in Malaysia and the Philippines (Bush et al., 2016). Teacher leadership may thus be seen as a device to maintain managerial control.

Contingent Leadership The models of leadership examined above are all partial. They provide valid and helpful insights into one particular aspect of leadership. None of these models provides a complete picture of school leadership. As Lambert (1995: 2) notes, there is ‘no single best type’. The contingent model provides an alternative approach, recognizing the diverse nature of school contexts, and the advantages of adapting leadership styles to the particular situation, rather than adopting a ‘one size fits all’ stance. ‘This approach assumes that what is important is how leaders respond to the unique organizational circumstances or problems’ (Leithwood et al., 1999: 15) Yukl (2002: 234) adds that ‘the managerial job is too complex and unpredictable to rely on a set of standardised responses to events. Effective leaders are continuously reading the situation and evaluating how to adapt their behaviour to it’. As Vanderhaar, Munoz and Rodosky (2007) suggest, leadership is contingent on the setting. Leadership requires effective diagnosis of problems, followed by adopting the most appropriate response to the issue or situation (Morgan, 1997). This reflexive approach is particularly important in periods

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of turbulence when leaders need to be able to assess the situation carefully and react as appropriate rather than relying on a standard leadership model. A contingent approach also helps to counter the normative features of many leadership models and responds to the tendency to advocate one ‘right’ approach to school leadership. By recognizing that a range of approaches can be valid, it provides a more complete picture of leadership practice. The contingent model is pragmatic and is not underpinned by a clear set of values. Contingency theory also helps in addressing the leadership–management dichotomy. Principals and their senior colleagues may have to operate as leaders in certain respects, notably in setting and communicating a clear sense of purpose for the school. However, a management approach is required in response to some problems and events, particularly when facing a ‘crisis’, such as a possible closure or an adverse inspection report. Short-term, top-down actions may be required to address the immediate challenges, but sustained success requires a clear, long-term vision, which enthuses and engages teachers, students, and other stakeholders. The discussion below compares the models and traces the history of ‘fads and fashions’ in school leadership theory.

CONCLUSION: CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT The concept of management has been joined, or superseded, by the language of leadership but the activities undertaken by principals and senior staff resist such labels. Successful leaders are increasingly focused on learning, the central and unique purpose of educational organizations. They also face unprecedented accountability pressures in many countries in what is clearly an increasingly ‘results-driven’ business. As these environmental pressures intensify, leaders and managers require

greater understanding, skill, and resilience to sustain their institutions. Heads, principals, and senior staff need to act as leaders and managers to provide a holistic perspective on developing their organizations. Each of the leadership and management models discussed in this chapter is partial. They provide distinct but unidimensional perspectives on school leadership. They are also artificial distinctions, or ‘ideal types’, in that most successful leaders are likely to embody most or all of these approaches in their work. For example, heads may aspire to develop distributed instructional leadership. They are also likely to both lead and manage their schools. We noted earlier that leadership and management theory is subject to fashion and that models increase and decrease in perceived importance over time. This is most evident in the normative shift from management to leadership, as descriptors of the work undertaken by heads and principals. Management has been discredited and dismissed as limited and technicist, but it is an essential component of successful leadership, ensuring the implementation of the school’s vision and strategy. Management without vision is rightly criticized as ‘managerialist’, but vision without effective implementation is bound to lead to frustration. In centralized contexts, it is the most appropriate way of conceptualizing the principal’s role because of the system’s expectations that s/he is mainly responsible for implementing external imperatives with little scope for local initiative. This is evident in many African countries, including Rwanda (Kambanda, 2013) and Nigeria (Imoni, 2018), and in much of Eastern and Southern Europe, including Greece (Kaparou and Bush, 2015). Even in decentralized systems, however, effective implementation of initiatives, whether externally or internally generated, remains important. Management is a vital part of the armoury of any successful principal. Contingent leadership acknowledges the diverse nature of school contexts, and the advantages of adapting leadership styles to the particular situation, rather than adopting a

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‘one size fits all’ stance. The educational context is too complex and unpredictable for a single approach to be adopted for all events and issues. Principals need to be able to read the situation and adopt the most appropriate response. Contingent leadership, then, is not a single model but represents a mode of responsiveness which requires effective diagnosis followed by careful selection of the most appropriate leadership or management style. It is pragmatic, rather than principled, and can be criticized for having no overt sense of the ‘big picture’.

Implications for School Leaders Recent evidence in England (Leithwood et al., 2006), and internationally (Robinson, 2007), provides powerful empirical support for the widely accepted view that the quality of leadership is a critical variable in securing positive school and learner outcomes. Leadership is second only to classroom teaching in its potential to generate school improvement. However, much less is known about how leaders impact on outcomes. While ‘quick fix’ solutions to school under-performance, often involving strong management, can produce short-term improvement, sustainable progress is much harder to achieve. The leadership and management typologies discussed in this chapter provide many clues for principals, senior and middle leaders, and senior leadership teams. Theory is a significant influence on practice, even when this influence is not acknowledged (Bush, 1999; Heck and Hallinger, 2005). Distributed leadership provides a powerful example of this link. Probably because it was advocated by the former National College for School Leadership (NCSL), school leaders often refer to distributed leadership when discussing their practice, for example in respect of senior leadership teams (Bush and Glover, 2012). A managerial approach, operating through the hierarchy, can mandate clearly targeted change, such as a stronger focus on examination and test scores. However, this approach

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often depends on a single leader and may not lead to sustainable change. Transformational leadership approaches aim to widen commitment to school-wide objectives, through the development of shared vision, but the ‘vision’ is often that of the head or principal, with acquiescence, rather than genuine commitment, from teachers and other staff. The limitations of the hierarchy have led to a plethora of alternative models – participative, distributed and teacher leadership – which are all designed to broaden leadership and to stress lateral as well as vertical relationships. These are often manifested in teambased structures. Bush and Glover’s (2012) study of high-performing senior leadership teams showed their value in providing coherence and leadership ‘density’. Departmental and key-stage teams have the same potential to widen leadership participation but there is little evidence about the most effective way to develop and sustain such teams. While there are different approaches to leadership and management, a focus on leadership for learning, or ‘instructional leadership’, is an essential element for successful schooling. This focus is a central aspect of the ‘leading professional’ role of principals and heads, which has grown in significance as ‘high stakes’ testing has become established in many countries. However, the ‘chief executive’ function remains important, as heads need to ensure the effective implementation of their school-based, or externally imposed, visions. Contingent leadership suggests that a flexible approach is required that includes both leadership and management.

REFERENCES Begley, P. (2007), ‘Editorial introduction: Crosscultural perspectives on authentic school leadership’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(2): 163–164. Bennett, N., Harvey, J., Wise, C. and Woods, P. (2003), Distributed Leadership: A Desk Study. Nottingham: NCSL.

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Bolam, R., McMahon, A. and Weindling, D. (1993), Effective Management in Schools. London: HMSO. Bolden, R., Petrov, G. and Gosling, J. (2009), ‘Distributed leadership in higher education: Rhetoric and reality’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 37(2): 257–277. Bolman, L. and Deal, T. (1997), Reframing Organisations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Bottery, M. (1998), Professionals and Policy. London: Cassell. Bottery, M. (2001), ‘Globalisation and the UK competition state: No room for transformational leadership in education?’, School Leadership and Management, 21(2): 199–218. Bottery, M. (2004), The Challenges of Educational Leadership. London: Paul Chapman. Bush, T. (1998), ‘The National Professional Qualification for Headship: The key to effective school leadership?’, School Leadership and Management, 18(3): 321–334. Bush, T. (1999), ‘Crisis or crossroads? The discipline of educational management in the late 1990s’, Educational Management and Administration, 27(3): 239–252. Bush, T. (2008), ‘From management to leadership: Semantic or meaningful change?’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 36(2): 271–288. Bush, T. (2011), Theories of Educational Management (4th edn). London: Sage. Bush, T. (2013), ‘Instructional leadership and leadership for learning: Global and South African Perspectives’, Education as Change, 17(S1): 5–20. Bush, T. (2015), ‘Organisational theory in education: How does it inform school leadership’, Journal of Organizational Theory in Education, 1(1): 35–47. Bush, T., Duku, N., Kola, S., Kiggundu, E., Moorosi, P. and Msila, V. (2009), The Zenex ACE School Leadership Research: Final Report. Pretoria, South Africa: Department of Education. Bush, T. and Glover, D. (2012), ‘Distributed leadership in action: Leading high performing leadership teams in English schools’, School Leadership and Management, 32(1): 21–36. Bush, T. and Glover, D. (2014), ‘School leadership models: What do we know?’, School Leadership and Management, 34(5): 553–571.

Bush, T., Glover, D., Ng, A. Y. M and Romero, M. J. (2016), ‘Master teachers as teacher leaders: Evidence from Malaysia and the Philippines’, International Studies in Educational Administration, 43(2): 81–102. Chirichello, M. (1999), ‘Building Capacity for Change: Transformational Leadership for School Principals’, paper presented at the ICSEI conference, January, San Antonio. Connolly, M., James, C. and Fertig, M. (2018), ‘Analysing the essential difference between educational leadership and educational management and bringing responsibility and authorisation to the fore’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership. DOI: 10.1177/1741143217745880 Coopers and Lybrand (1988), Local Management of Schools: A Report to the DES. London: HMSO. Crawford, M. (2012), ‘Solo and distributed leadership: Definitions and dilemmas’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 40(5): 610–620. Cuban, L. (1988), The Managerial Imperative and the Practice of Leadership in Schools. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Day, C., Harris, A. and Hadfield M. (2001), ‘Challenging the orthodoxy of effective school leadership’, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 4(1): 39–56. Department for Education (1988), Education Reform Act 1988. London: HMSO. Fitzgerald, T. and Gunter, H. (2008), ‘Contesting the orthodoxy of teacher leadership’, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 11(4): 331–341. Frost, D. (2008), ‘Teacher leadership: values and voice’, School Leadership and Management, 28(4): 337–352. Glatter, R. (1997), ‘Context and capability in educational management’, Educational Management and Administration, 25(2): 181-192 Gronn, P. (2000), ‘Distributed properties: A New architecture for leadership’, Educational Management and Administration, 28(3): 317–388. Gronn, P. (2010), ‘Where to next for educational leadership?’, in T. Bush, L. Bell and D. Middlewood (eds), The Principles of Educational Leadership and Management. London: Sage. Hairon, S. and Goh, J. (2015), ‘Pursuing the elusive construct of distributed leadership: Is

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the search over?’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 43(5): 693–718. Hallinger, P. (1992), ‘The evolving role of American principals: From managerial to instructional to transformational leaders’, Journal of Educational Administration, 30(3): 35–48. Hallinger, P. (2003), ‘Leading educational change: Reflections on the practice of instructional and transformational leadership’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 33(3): 329–350. Hallinger, P. and Heck, R. (2010), ‘Leadership for learning: Does collaborative leadership make a difference in student learning?’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 38(6): 654–678. Harris, A. (2004), ‘Distributed leadership in schools: Leading or misleading?’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 32(1): 11–24. Harris, A. (2005), ‘Distributed leadership’, in B. Davies (ed.), The Essentials of School Leadership. London: Paul Chapman. Harris, A. (2010), ‘Distributed leadership: Current evidence and future directions’, in T. Bush, L. Bell and D. Middlewood (eds), The Principles of Educational Leadership and Management. London: Sage. Harris, A. and Chapman, C. (2002), Effective Leadership in Schools Facing Challenging Circumstances: Final Report. Nottingham: NCSL. Hartley, D. (2010), ‘Paradigms: How far does research in distributed leadership “stretch”’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 38(3): 271–285. Heck, R. and Hallinger, P. (2005), ‘The study of educational leadership and management: Where does the field stand today?’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 33(2): 229–244. Helterbran, V. R. (2010), ‘Teacher leadership: Overcoming “I am just a teacher” syndrome’, Education, 131(2): 363–371. Hopkins, D. and Jackson, D. (2002), ‘Building the capacity for leading and learning’, in A. Harris, C. Day, M. Hadfield, D. Hopkins, A. Hargreaves and C. Chapman (eds), Effective Leadership for School Improvement. London: Routledge.

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Hoyle, E. (1986), The Politics of School Management. Sevenoaks, UK: Hodder and Stoughton. Hoyle, E. and Wallace, M. (2005), Educational Leadership: Ambiguity, Professionals and Managerialism. London: Sage. Hoyle, E. and Wallace, M. (2007), ‘Educational reform: An ironic perspective’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(1): 9–25. Imoni, R. (2018), ‘Leadership distribution in government secondary schools in Nigeria: fact or fiction’, Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK. Judge, T. and Piccolo, R. (2004), ‘Transformational and transactional leadership: A metaanalytical test of their relative validity’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(5): 755–768. Kambanda, S. (2013), ‘The role of high school principals in leading and managing school culture: A case study of Huye District in Rwanda’, Unpublished PhD thesis, Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand. Kaparou, M. and Bush, T. (2015), ‘Instructional leadership in centralized systems: Evidence from Greek high performing secondary schools’, School Leadership and Management, 35(3): 321–345. Kirkbride, P. (2006), ‘Developing transformational leaders: The full range leadership model in action’, Industrial and Commercial Training, 38(1): 23–32. Lambert, L. (1995), ‘New directions in the preparation of educational leaders’, Thrust for Educational Leadership, 24(5): 6–10. Lambert, L. (2002), ‘A framework for shared leadership’, Educational Leadership, 59(8): 37–40. Law, E. (2010), ‘Distributed curriculum leadership in action: A Hong Kong case study’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 38(3): 286–303. Leithwood, K. (1994), ‘Leadership for school restructuring’, Educational Administration Quarterly, 30(4): 498–518. Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A. and Hopkins, D. (2006), Seven Strong Claims about Successful School Leadership. London: DfES. Leithwood, K., Jantzi, D. and Steinbach, R. (1999), Changing Leadership for Changing Times. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.

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Levacic, R. (1995), Local Management of Schools: Analysis and Practice. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Lumby, J. (2009), ‘Collective leadership of local school systems: power, autonomy and ethics’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 37(3): 310–328. Lumby, J. (2013), ‘Distributed leadership: The uses and abuses of power’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 41(5): 581–597. Lumby, J. (2017), ‘Distributed leadership and bureaucracy’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, DOI: 10.1177/1741143217711190. MacBeath, J. and Dempster, N. (2009), Connecting Leadership and Learning. London: Routledge. Miller, T. and Miller, J. (2001), ‘Educational leadership in the new millennium: A vision for 2020’, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 4(2): 181–189. Ministry of Education, Malaysia (2013), The Malaysia Education Blueprint. Putrajaya: Ministry of Education. Morgan, G. (1997), Images of Organization. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Muijs, D. and Harris, A. (2007), ‘Teacher leadership in (in)action: Three case studies of contrasting schools’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(1): 111–134. Newman, J. and Clarke, J. (1994), ‘Going about our business? The managerialism of public services’, in J. Clarke, A. Cochrane and E. McLaughlin (eds), Managing School Policy. London: Sage. Rhodes, C. and Brundrett, M. (2010), ‘Leadership for learning’, in T. Bush, L. Bell and D. Middlewood (eds), The Principles of Educational Leadership and Management (2nd edn). London: Sage. Robinson, V. (2007), School Leadership and Student Outcomes: Identifying What Works and Why. Winmalee, New South Wales: Australian Council of Leaders. Rutherford, D. (2006), ‘Teacher leadership and organizational structure: The implications of restructured leadership in an Edison school’, Journal of Educational Change, 7(1–2).

Sergiovanni, T. J. (1991), The Principalship: A Reflective Practice Perspective. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn Bacon. Simkins, T. (2005), ‘Leadership in education: “What works” or “What make sense”’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 33(1): 9–26. Spillane, J. (2006), Distributed Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Starratt, R. (2005), ‘Leading a community of learners: Learning to be moral by engaging the morality of learning’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(2): 165–183. Stevenson, H. (2012), ‘Teacher leadership as intellectual leadership: Creating spaces for alternative voices in the English school system’, Professional Development in Education, 38(2): 345–360. Timperley, H. (2005), ‘Distributed leadership: Developing theory from practice’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(4): 395–420. Vanderhaar, J. E., Munoz, M. and Rodosky, R. (2007), ‘Leadership as accountability for learning: The effects of school poverty, teacher experience, previous achievement and principal preparation programs on student achievement’, Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education, 19(1 & 2): 17–33. Weber, M. (1989), ‘Legal authority in a bureaucracy’, in T. Bush (ed.), Managing Education: Theory and Practice. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. West-Burnham, J. (1997), ‘Leadership for learning: Re-engineering “mind sets”’, School Leadership and Management, 17(2): 231–243. Woods, G. (2007), ‘The “bigger feeling”: The importance of spiritual experience in educational leadership’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(1): 135–155. Woods, P. (2007), ‘Authenticity in the bureauenterprise culture: The struggles for authentic meaning’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(2): 295–320. Yukl, G. A. (2002), Leadership in Organizations (5th edn). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

5 Managing the School Organization Stephen L. Jacobson

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW This chapter explores the role of schools as important, highly visible, public institutions and the role of school leaders in managing them, particularly in times of resource constraint, high-stakes accountability and policy turbulence. To provide this discussion with both history and context, the chapter begins with a brief overview of the evolution of schools as institutions (Culbertson, 1988), changing from communities to organizations, and potentially back to more communitarian institutions (Sergiovanni, 1994; Jacobson, 1998). It starts with a review of the expansion and evolution of schools in the United States (US) that covers almost two centuries of growth fueled primarily by industrialization and waves of immigration. The growth in school enrollment that resulted from the confluence of these factors led to school reorganizations and consolidations aimed at creating greater resource efficiencies

for the development of a workforce capable of fueling America’s burgeoning industrial engine (Jacobson, 1998). This discussion is followed by a description how school governance functions evolved in response to these new governance forms and how perceptions of key management/leadership roles, responsibilities and practices evolved accordingly (Cooper & Boyd, 1988). Larger school entities – both individual schools and the consolidated school districts that were created to govern them – required new and different management and leadership approaches to accommodate an increasing span of faculty control and a broader community constituency. Driven initially by this business management mindset focused primarily on creating greater resource efficiencies (Callahan, 1962; Callahan & Button, 1964), leadership practices subsequently had to adapt to policy mandates calling for greater equity and fairness in educational opportunity regardless of race, gender or disability

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(Foster, 1988; Greenfield, 1988). These mandates were then followed by demands for increased academic excellence, which was intended to help students meet the challenges of the global marketplace, most notably in the 1983 report A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), with ‘excellence’ being publicly monitored through greater student performance accountability. Over time, these changes led schools to evolve from being relatively local institutions that sat at the very center of their respective communities to more corporate enterprises that were forced to serve larger and more diverse communities; communities that often have competing expectations for an expanding array of educational services. Next, the chapter provides an examination of leadership preparation and how the approach to training school leaders has evolved to keep pace with changing governance environments and their administrative demands (Cooper & Boyd, 1988). Following this discussion of the evolution of educational organizations and leadership practices in the US, the chapter will then review the efforts of school leaders in seven nations involved in the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) – Australia, Cyprus, Denmark, England, Norway, Sweden and the US – to improve the performance and management of their respective schools, especially in terms of instructional leadership (IL), organizational learning (OL) and culturally responsive practices (CRP) (Jacobson & Day, 2007; Ylimaki & Jacobson, 2011). The chapter concludes with a discussion about emerging leadership standards for both administrator preparation and practice (Darling-Hammond et  al., 2007; National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015; Council of Chief State School Officers, 2017), as well as offering some recommendations about best practices for school organizations, suggesting that more communitarian approaches to educational governance and leadership might prove beneficial in light

of converging global policy mandates, such as greater accountability and marked sifts in student demographics that schools will confront in the 21st century.

SCHOOLS AS COMMUNITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS In Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1957 [1887]), Tonnies argued that social relationships imply interdependence such that the will of any one person can influence that of others. Gemeinschaf describes natural relationships that arise organically through sentiments such as kinship and neighborliness, whereas gesellschaft describes social relationships that operate through calculated transactions. Sergiovanni (1994) aligned these conceptions with current definitions of organization and community, particularly as they apply to governance and social exchange in schools. He suggested that schools as organizations are defined by management structures, procedures, roles and role expectations. There is also an explicit hierarchy that equates one’s position in the organization with expertise, such that someone high on the organizational chart is presumed to be more knowledgeable than those lower, whether or not there is evidence to support the presumption (Jacobson, 1990). In contrast, communities emphasize more informal relationships that emerge from ‘the binding of people to common goals, shared values, and shared conceptions of being and doing’ (Sergiovanni, 1994, p. 219). In communities, expertise is not presumed to correlate with hierarchal positioning because such a structure, if it exists, is informal. Commitments in a community are based on informal sentiments and intrinsic motivators rather than extrinsic rewards, typically pecuniary, used by organizations to influence employee behavior through positive or negative transactions. For example, an organization may have rules governing workplace dress, rules that can

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lead to sanctions if broken. In a community, such rules are informal, and enforcement is governed by personal codes of what it is to be a good neighbor, with sanctions most likely to come from peer pressure to conform. Social justice provides another way to consider differences in organizations and communities (Rawls, 1971). Marshall and Ward (2004) describe social justice as a means of ‘fixing’ inequities. While communities may work to reclaim and advance their members’ inherent rights of equity and fairness in social, economic, educational and personal dimensions (Goldfarb & Grinberg, 2002), organizations can inadvertently (or intentionally) reify inequities through hierarchal structures and formal rules that dispense rewards and punishments that explicitly appeal to individual as opposed to collective self-interest. For example, a gender wage gap may persist in an organization unless explicit sanctions are put in place to prevent it. In contrast, a community’s collective self-interest comes from its members’ belief that good deeds will be reciprocated, even though such behavior is not required. Applied to school leadership, social justice is an attempt to use education to create greater freedom and opportunities for all citizens ‘to participate in and sustain a free, civil, multicultural, and democratic society’ (Larson & Murtadha, 2002, p. 136). It comes from an awareness of systemic disparities in access to quality educational services and inequities in the allocation of resources needed to provide such service. Hargreaves (1995, p. 20), for example, argued that connecting schools to communities through managerialism, marginalizes women, working-class people and ethnic minorities, who may feel less able to exercise choices through the formal procedures of bureaucratic organizations. An inclusive concern for incorporating the needs of others would be a more communitarian approach to management. Which begs the questions, why do schools nowadays look more like organizations than communities, and how did they get that way?

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THE EVOLUTION OF SCHOOL GOVERNANCE IN THE US Early in its history, when the US was still predominately agrarian and rural, public schools were the center of the community, a gathering place for social as well as educational events. But as the 19th century drew to a close, America was becoming increasingly industrialized and urban, and the needs of industry began to reshape the purpose and structure of schools. What was good for business was good for America, and America’s schools had a critical role to play in making sure that business was good. Industry needed a labor force with a common language and strong work ethic that could be supervised easily and at minimal cost. Schools were tasked with preparing this labor force with the skills needed to work efficiently in America’s factories. By the late 1890s, the opportunity for employment, coupled with noxious factors across Europe, such as famine and religious persecution, caused a wave of immigration to the US. The magnitude of growth in American public education between 1850 and 1900 is striking, with the number of school-aged children growing more than 400% (Bureau of the Census, 1976), while the average number of days pupils attended school increased from 78 to 121 (Spring, 2016). In other words, schools had to educate more children for longer periods of time with the expressed goals of Americanizing immigrant youngsters, training a labor force for industrialization, reforming urban areas and providing child care (Spring, 2016). This rapid growth created pressure for schools to adopt specialized hierarchical roles and standardized operating procedures similar to industrial organizations (Jacobson, 1998). The assembly-line model of each worker doing a specific task in an efficient, ‘scientifically’ managed fashion was attractive to the public. Taylor’s principles of scientific management were introduced to public education early in the 20th century

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(Taylor, 1911), and with it came what Callahan (1962) called a ‘cult of efficiency’. To create the economies of scale needed to efficiently reduce unit costs, schools began to consolidate and centralize. Individual schools that were small in enrollment, faculty and physical size were discontinued and/or combined with other schools to create larger units of district governance (Spring, 2016). There were approximately 130,000 districts in 1930, but only 18,000 by 1970. During the same time period, enrollments grew from 29 to 51 million (Bureau of Census, 1976). As a result, over 40 years, average district enrollment increased from 200 to almost 3,000. As districts increased in size and administrative responsibility, they became more bureaucratic and hierarchically structured (Abbot & Caracheo, 1988). Administrators higher on the organizational chart became further removed from day-to-day classroom operations, while decision making over curriculum design, faculty hiring and placement moved further from the classroom, teachers and even principals (Corwin & Borman, 1988). This distance often led to adversarial relationships when those higher in the hierarchy usurped the authority that teachers and principals felt was rightfully theirs due to their proximity to students and the classroom. This tension becomes further exacerbated when teachers and principals are then held accountable for policies they had no say in developing (Corwin & Borman, 1988). Consolidation also began to distance schools from their local communities as larger, but fewer, centralized schools replaced smaller neighborhood schools.

THE EVOLUTION OF SCHOOL MANAGEMENT IN THE US Concurrent with these evolving forms of governance were changes in how administrators perceived their roles and how they were prepared (Culbertson, 1988). Cooper and

Boyd (1988) noted that during the late 19th century school leaders were seen as ‘philosopher-statesmen’, or, more cynically, ‘happy amateurs’. Culbertson (1988) described school leaders of that time as individuals who valued ideas and reason more than data. But as a result of scientific management, those charged with leading schools began to take on the trappings of business. Cooper and Boyd describe evolving conceptions of the school administrator. First is the ‘educational capitalist’, someone with no formal training, but who is committed to the business ethos and efficiency. Next came the administrator as ‘business manager’, and with it rudimentary training at universities in business accounting to support efficiency, as well as the centralization of authority embodied in supervisory control of all processes (Bobbitt, 1913). The final phase of this period was the administrator as ‘school executive’, requiring university preparation (typically a Master’s degree) and state licensure (Callahan & Button, 1964). The business model mindset that defined the first quarter of the 20th century eventually gave way to other leadership orientations, most notably from the social sciences (Jacobson, 1990). Concepts from psychology, sociology and political science came to the fore. Especially influential was Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism and the need for administrators to understand how to function in democratic contexts. School leaders now saw themselves as ‘social agents’ mediating teaching and learning with other social purposes of schooling. Research in the 1920s and 1930s revealed the extent to which worker agency, group norms and informal networks had to be considered for a school to be successful (Hoy & Miskel, 2013). Human relations became a co-equal with scientific management. But the second half of the 20th century brought with it a concern that the focus on human relations and democratic practices had become long on prescriptions lacking empirical support (Campbell, 1971). The academic community

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desired an administrative science based on logical positivism that could overcome perceived limitations of the pragmatic approach. The ‘theory movement’ hoped to place educational administration on an equal footing with business management and public administration. Prepared as ‘behavioral scientists’, administrators would now focus on description, explanation and prediction, and not just prescription (Cooper & Boyd, 1988). But soon the logical positivistic underpinnings of the theory movement gave way to phenomenology and critical theory embedded in human social interactions (Greenfield, 1988). Foster (1988, p. 73) argued for the inclusion of ‘such values as liberation and equity … to increase the possibility for a truly democratic regime’. School leaders were now being asked to advocate for social justice so that all children could receive fair treatment regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, disability and/or sexual orientation. Instead, A Nation at Risk, the 1983 report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE), refocused public attention on improving student performance and teacher quality (Farrar, 1990). The premise of the report was that if the US was to remain pre-eminent in the global marketplace, ‘excellence’ and not ‘equity’ would have to be the watchword for school leaders. This ‘first wave’ of educational reform was described by some as a call for schools to continue to do what they were doing, but somehow to do it better (Petrie, 1990). Performance standards and teacher credentials were raised, but little else changed. Essentially, this was a newer version of scientific management, simply adding public accountability to pressure schools into achieving greater productivity. But public shaming alone would do little to improve school management without a deeper dive into the preparation and practice of teachers and administrators. In response, ‘second wave’ reforms focused on upgrading the requirements and quality of teacher preparation (Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, 1986; Holmes Group, 1986), while

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a ‘third wave’ sought to address the requirements and quality of preparation for school leaders (University Council for Educational Administration, 1987; Jacobson, 1990). The evolution of America’s public schools, coupled with changing conceptions of leadership, required a better alignment between preparation and practice. Among the recommendations made by the National Commission on Excellence in Educational Administration (NCEEA) in its 1987 report, Leaders for America’s School, (UCEA) were greater collaboration between universities and school districts, the more systematic recruitment of higher caliber candidates, especially minorities and women, a clearer definition of good educational leadership and a tighter alignment between what it is leaders are taught and what they do on the job. In 1996, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) developed the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Standards. These performance standards intended to provide guidance to university preparation programs and state licensing bodies as to the knowledge and skills needed by aspiring and practicing administrators. The ISLLC Standards were revised in 2008 and then again in 2015. Now commonly known as the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL), it identified the key challenges faced by schools in the 21st century, notably a competitive global economy with rapidly transforming jobs caused by advances in technology, and marked shifts in the demographic characteristics of students and their family conditions (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015). Making these challenges even more daunting for school management are increasing accountability mandates and threats of constrained resources due to anticipated cuts in educational budgets (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015). In response, PSEL makes explicit calls for equity of educational opportunity and culturally responsive practices; cultivating inclusive, caring and supportive school

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communities; and engaging families and communities in meaningful and mutually beneficial ways, all in the service of promoting student academic success and well-being. In other words, schools must figure out how to do more, perhaps with less, but nevertheless to do it better, and in collaboration with their communities. Concerns about how school organizations can best be managed, and by whom, are not peculiar to the US, as similar educational policy mandates have emerged in many developed and developing countries. In 2011, Ylimaki and Jacobson examined the intersections between educational policy, practice and preparation from a comparative perspective by reanalyzing findings previously collected and reported as part of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP). They compared evolving policy mandates and successful leadership practices in the US with those in other nations. They found a convergence of educational policy initiatives that called for a better understanding of the key practices found in successful attempts to improve the management of schools across diverse national contexts (Leithwood et al., 2011). Although tempered by contextual and national differences, three broad categories of leadership practices emerged that helped produce school improvement: (1) Instructional Leadership (IL), (2) leading Organizational Learning (OL), and (3) leadership for Culturally Responsive Practices (CRP).

GLOBAL EDUCATIONAL POLICY CONVERGENCE For at least the past two decades, three issues have been of concern in many developed and developing nations: (1) demands for greater public accountability, (2) tensions in determining the appropriate balance between the centralization and decentralization of

governance, and (3) rapid changes in student and community demographic diversity (Leithwood et al., 2011). Increased accountability and public scrutiny have forced policymakers to re-evaluate the utility of their locus of educational control, specifically greater centralized decision making versus more localized control. What is the most efficacious balance between top-down, centrally mandated school improvement initiatives and bottom-up, decentralized responses to reform? These tensions are further complicated by changing patterns of student demographics, both at the national and local levels, caused by unprecedented human migrations due to war, civil strife, natural catastrophes and/or famine (Goddard, 2015). As Goddard (2015) reports, the number of immigrants worldwide grew from 175 million in 2000 to 232 million in 2013, which is greater than the world’s fifth most populous nation, Brazil (United Nations High Commission for Refugees, 2013). While the impact of demographic shifts can vary from nation to nation, and even from one part of a nation to another, school leaders must prepare for change and consider what practices have the best chances of addressing them successfully. The secondary analyses of ISSPP cases indicated that many of the successful responses to this convergence of pressures could be explained across contexts by one or a combination of IL, OL and CRP (Ylimaki & Jacobson, 2011). Moreover, the enactment of these practices was often found in schools with less rigid, formal relationships between teachers and principals, and a principal who led with a deep sense of equity and fairness in the treatment of students and their communities. These findings offer evidence of the utility of more communitarian organizational models in addressing the challenges that school face. The next section provides an overview of the ISSPP, the multinational project whose findings shed light on the leadership practices that support improved school management.

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THE INTERNATIONAL SUCCESSFUL SCHOOL PRINCIPALSHIP PROJECT (ISSPP) Begun in 2001, ISSPP built on several other research projects and a comprehensive review of the empirical literature on successful school leadership (Day et al., 2000; Kilpatrick et al., 2002; Gurr et al., 2003; Mulford et al., 2004; Leithwood & Riehl, 2005). Using a multi-case study methodology, ISSPP employed purposive sampling in each participating country (currently around 26 nations), with cases selected based on improved student achievement, principals’ reputations, and/or other evidence indicating success during a principal’s tenure (Jacobson & Day, 2007). The US team was the only national team to look exclusively at highneed schools, but similar schools were found in almost every other country (Jacobson et al., 2007; Ylimaki et al., 2007). High-need schools were selected because they are often the most challenging in terms of school improvement initiatives. They are often located in communities with severe socioeconomic disadvantage and they have to deal with associated problems, including high percentages of families living in poverty, non-native language speakers, historically/ socially excluded or indigenous groups, and/ or students with learning differences (Keys et al., 2003). These schools often have high percentages of teachers teaching outside their formal content area and high levels of teacher/ leader turnover. As a result of persistently low student performance, high-need communities often view schools with mistrust and suspicion, therefore building trust with parents and the community can be difficult. Uncovering practices to lead all schools successfully is important, but understanding what is essential to improving the management of schools in greatest need is critical. Ylimaki and Jacobson (2011) therefore reanalyzed ISSPP cases focusing specifically on IL in enabling school success, the extent to

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which schools had engaged in OL, and the role of CRP in improving school–community relationships. Comparative national triads were created that matched findings from schools in the US with those of two other countries for each of the three themes, focusing first on the contextual factors that shaped the leaders’ successful practices and then drawing inferences as to how future leaders ought to be prepared. The following triads were studied: IL in Australia, Denmark and the US (Ylimaki et  al., 2011); OL in England, Sweden and the US (Day et  al., 2011); and CRP in Norway, Cyprus and the US (Johnson et al., 2011). These comparative perspectives of school management provided insight into educational systems positioned at various points on continua for each of the three factors. For example, racial and ethnic diversity are common in many US schools and urban schools in England, but less so in Norway or Cyprus, with Australia and Denmark situated somewhere in between. Similarly, decentralization and accountability vary to some degree with English and Australian principals having had to deal with public scrutiny and league tables for almost two decades, while it has come more recently to principals in the US and Norway (Jacobson & Ylimaki, 2011). With this variation in mind, how did leaders in these seven countries use IL, OL and CRP to successfully manage their organizations.

Instructional Leadership (IL) Instructional Leadership has been a key element of reform initiatives in the US since the 1980s when the ‘effective schools’ literature identified this key aspect of school leadership as an important correlate of student success (Rosenholtz, 1985; Hallinger, 2005; Jacobson & Bezzina, 2008). More recent accountability efforts in the US, Australia and England, as well as the Scandinavian nations and other parts of Europe and Asia, have ‘…placed everyone, including school

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leaders, “on notice” that the only fully satisfactory justification for what they do is its contribution to student achievement’ (Leithwood et  al., 2011, p. 18). As a result, performance accountability policies are fairly common in school management worldwide (Jacobson, 2011). Ylimaki et al. (2011) found that in order to improve student academic performance, successful school leaders in the US, Australia and Denmark had begun to place far greater emphasis on teacher subject matter expertise, test data analysis and curriculum alignment. It is important to note that the leaders studied in these countries all defined student success far more broadly than just improved scores on standardized tests. Their practices aligned with much of Hallinger and Heck’s work on IL, particularly in the principals’ efforts to define their school’s mission, manage its instructional program and promote a school climate that valued the whole child (Hallinger & Heck, 2010). Moreover, the school leaders studied by Ylimaki et  al. (2011) all fostered greater teacher participation by distributing leadership in instructional decision making, and by learning side by side with their teachers. As Robinson (2007) found, teachers and leaders learning together can have a significant impact on student achievement, as well as enhance their collective capacity. Furthermore, engaging in both individual and collective learning can foster higher levels of teacher empowerment and community participation that will, in turn, lead to improved and sustained student performance (Harris, 2005; Louis et al., 2010). These IL practices can be best described as ‘leading’ instructional teams, rather than being ‘the leader’ of instructional teams, since the lead role in a distributive approach should differ depending upon available expertise in the subject area (Jacobson & Battaglia, 2001). While a principal may have subject expertise in some content areas, it is unlikely s/he will be highly competent in all, especially at the secondary level. Therefore, the principal needs to provide leadership

in the form of support and guidance to an instructional team, while the group’s subject ‘leader’ is more appropriately a teacher with proven expertise in the content area (Firestone & Martinez, 2007). This approach to leadership lays the ground work for OL, which is more than just an aggregation of individual learnings (Jacobson, 2016). Teams require significant development of their collective as well as individual capacities (Mulford et  al., 2004), because individual learning can take place in the absence of OL, but not vice versa. Indeed, when it comes to OL, in successful schools ‘the whole MUST be more than the sum of its parts’ (Leithwood et al., 2011, p. 22). For school management, this suggests that individual transactions alone, whether rewards or sanctions, will be insufficient to move schools beyond the development of individual capacities and perspectives. To enable the collective capacities and perspectives necessary for successful IL and sustained OL, school leaders must work to develop community-centered relationships in more communitarian-like organizations.

Organizational Learning (OL) Like scientific management, Organizational Learning is a concept borrowed from the world of business (Senge, 2000). When applied to schools, the emphasis has been on leaders developing professional learning communities (PLC), which depend for their success on a sense of common purpose, relationships that are authentic and transformational rather than just transactional, and a set of agreed upon principles of practice (Kruse et  al., 1994; Leithwood & Jantzi, 2005). Furthermore, in PLCs, individuals are asked to be explicitly engaged in critical reflection and become committed citizens of the school community (Louis, 2007), an approach to educational management that demands its members be more communitarian than typically found in traditional organizational cultures (Spillane & Orlina, 2005). ­

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Organizational cultures can probably be best described as ‘how things get done around here’. Over time, school cultures can rigidify and how things get done may no longer be very productive (assuming they ever were), yet they perpetuate nonetheless. Indeed, a major challenge to re-culturing a school is breaking the sense of isolation many teachers often feel. Working alone can reify patterns of learning and lead to individuals pushing back against changes to the status quo (Mayrowitz et  al., 2007). Therefore, to reshape an unproductive culture requires a more constructivist approach to shared sense making than found in a school managed through individual incentive transactions. School leaders successful at OL work with their faculty and parents to develop a common understanding that to improve and sustain performance gains over time the collective has to work together (Stoll & Fink, 1996). These collegial relations and collective learnings were at the core of building capacity for school improvement and OL, and central to the school findings from England, Sweden and the US (Day et al., 2011). There developed high levels of trust among members of the school communities across the three national contexts studied, with leaders respecting teacher pedagogical expertise and teachers respecting their leaders’ administrative skills (Day et al., 2011). With regard to the high-need schools studied, particularly in the US, principals focused first on creating a physically safe and nurturing atmosphere if they were to improve their school’s learning environment (Giles et  al., 2007; Jacobson, 2008). They used whatever resources they could generate to engage teachers in professional dialogue and development, as well as working hard to engage parents and other community members in school activities and decision making (Jacobson, Johnson, & Ylimaki, 2011). Reconnecting the school to its local community was absolutely essential to their school improvement efforts (Jacobson et al., 2007; Johnson, 2007), something that may

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have been lost due to consolidation and centralization, especially in these high-need communities. Once trust develops, then distributed leadership can emerge, which allows those with appropriate expertise, and not just positional authority, the opportunity to lead when and where appropriate (Leithwood et al., 2007; Spillane et al., 2007). Moreover, these shared opportunities to lead build both individual and collective efficacy within the school organization, enabling the re-cultured environment and resultant improvements in performance to be sustained (TschannanMoran & Barr, 2004). The findings indicated that while the strategies used to successfully lead OL were often a function of the particular expertise and personal disposition of a school leader, the practices these leaders employed were embedded in the cultural norms and values of the nation in which it occurred (Day et  al., 2011). These national cultural values are potentially powerful antecedents and moderators of CRP (Somech, 2010), which suggests that leaders not only need to be aware of the personal and national values that undergird their practices, but also how those practices respect and incorporate the cultural values of others in the school community if they are to gain their trust.

Culturally Responsive Practices (CRP) Johnson et  al. (2011) argue that creating a dichotomy between social justice and an emphasis on academics can be counterproductive because narrow conceptions of student achievement often privilege certain social and cultural groups while marginalizing others. Leadership practices that emphasize academics in the absence of cultural responsiveness often approach diversity from a deficit model. Focusing on the students’ history and family background should not be seen as oppositional to promoting academic achievement. On the contrary, understanding cultural diversity should be viewed as a

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prerequisite for promoting improved student performance outcomes (Johnson, 2006; Ryan, 2006). Too often definitions of intellectual development become tied exclusively to standardized test scores that fail to incorporate diverse cultural knowledge (Furman & Shields, 2005). Finding an appropriate balance between honoring home cultures and emphasizing student learning does not easily lend itself to normative models and quick fixes. From their triad of cases, Johnson et  al. (2011) found that school leaders must be selfreflective in striking a balance between honoring students’ cultures while simultaneously emphasizing their learning in the mainstream culture. This can be accomplished by making student achievement just one of several key measures of success, which might also include self-esteem, cultural awareness, social skills and civic engagement. In addition, leaders using CRP should be evaluated on their ability to address the needs and perspectives of students and families from diverse racial, ethnic and religious groups, and consider how historically repressive structures in education can be addressed to empower all members of the community (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Johnson, 2007). Culturally responsive practices include incorporating the history, values and cultural knowledge of students’ home communities into the curriculum, as well as working to develop a critical consciousness among students and teachers and empowering parents from diverse communities to challenge inequities in mainstream society. When successfully implemented, these practices can begin to address the cultural mismatch and power imbalance between students from diverse backgrounds and their predominantly white, middle-class teachers (Johnson et al., 2011). But differences in national context and embedded values can make a difference in the how leaders focus their efforts. For example, leaders in the American schools tried to take social relationships into account in spite of high-stakes accountability, while

in Norway there was far more talk about the whole child and not just their cognitive skills. Another contextual difference would be that in American schools, incorporating diverse populations has a long history and educational policy has been largely racebased, while in Norway and Cyprus, student diversity is a far more recent issue and the challenges presented are usually identified in terms of differences in language and/or ethnicity (Johnson et al., 2011). Even within the same national context, the impact of CRP can vary and the advocacy of leaders may be more crucial in some communities than in others, most notably in communities that are economically disadvantaged with concentrations of recent immigrants, second-language learners and families living in poverty (Jacobson & Ylimaki, 2011). Considered together, IL, OL and CRP should be seen as complementary leadership practices that can enable school organizations to address the challenges identified in the PSEL, specifically, creating equity of educational opportunity and culturally responsive practices that support communities and engage families in mutually beneficial ways that promote student academic success and well-being, while simultaneously enabling schools to sustain these endeavors over time. Common to all three practices in the seven educational contexts examined was the extent to which they required collaborative action to be successful; collaborative action based on a collective recognition of being part of a common community, and not just the result of calculated transactions. In other words, the schools had become more communitarian organizations committed to the collective welfare and not just the advancement of certain individuals. The question that remains is how to best prepare school leaders to take on the management challenge of re-culturing schools by moving them from a reliance on traditional organizational transactions to more personal and collective communitarian commitments.

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PREPARING COMMUNITARIAN SCHOOL LEADERS Many nations, but not all, require pre-service or post-appointment training for an administrative posting (Jacobson & Ylimaki, 2011). The US has a long history of university preparation and state administrator licensure. School leader certification in New York State, at both the building and district levels, requires aspiring leaders to complete at least three years of teaching or equivalent educational experience, such as school counselor, prior to being an administrator. They must complete an accredited university program, typically 30–36 credit hours in duration, including a minimum 600-hour clinical internship, and then pass a state examination. In New York, certification is equivalent to a Master’s degree (MA) and, for many, it is their second MA since they already earned one to get permanent certification as a teacher. Usually leadership preparation requires at least two years of formal training before a candidate can even compete for a position. Unfortunately, even with this lengthy period of pre-service preparation, and the fact that university programs have to be accredited, there are no definitive criteria as to what makes for exemplary preparation, although some attempts have been made to identify such programs (Darling-Hammond et al., 2007; Jacobson, McCarthy & Pounder, 2015). In 2017, New York, like many other states, adopted the PSEL 2015 as its benchmark for professional performance (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015). As noted previously, PSEL prioritizes the importance of human relationships and collaborative engagement as being central to effective school management. Moreover, these standards align tightly with the central tenets of IL, OL and CRP, particularly in terms of how leaders and teachers should work with one another and their school community. As its starting point, the PSEL

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suggest that leaders collaborate with teachers and the community in developing a shared understanding of the school’s mission, vision and core values. Moreover, they stress the importance of CRP, requiring that each student be treated fairly and respectfully, based on an understanding of their home culture, and recognizing that diversity and culture are assets (not deficits) for teaching and learning. To do this effectively, school leaders are asked to confront and alter institutional biases that can lead to marginalization, deficit-based schooling and low expectations associated with race, class, culture, language, gender, sexual orientation and/or disability (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015). In other words, schools must become culturally competent and more responsive to the needs of the increasingly diverse communities they serve. In terms of IL and OL, particularly the establishment of PLCs, the Standards suggest that leaders entrust their teachers with the collective responsibility of meeting each student’s needs by creating a professional culture of engagement and commitment based on ethical and equitable practice, trust and open communication, collaboration, collective efficacy, and continuous individual and organizational learning and improvement (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015). Leaders are expected to make the school a resource for both families and the larger community, they need to advocate for the importance of education and the needs of all students, and engage regularly in open, two-way communication with families and the community (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015). Their goal should be to create viable partnerships that can support student learning both in and outside of school. The theory of action, as noted in the CCSSO Principles of Effective School Improvement Systems (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2017) is that ‘if you want to go far, go together’. School improvement is to be viewed as something to

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be done with members of the school community, not to them, or what might be viewed as a move towards more communitarian models of governance. Whether adherence to leadership performance standards can actually produce improved school outcomes is an empirical question that remains to be tested (Goldring et al., 2009; McCarthy et al., 2016). In fact, agreement about a definitive list of experiences that make for exemplary preparation is not a settled issue, although there is consensus around some elements recognized as being especially important, such as researchbased course content, curricular coherence, field-based internships, problem-based learning strategies, cohort structures, mentoring, and collaboration between universities and school districts (Darling-Hammond et  al., 2007; Jacobson et al., 2015). To be successful, all of these experiences depend heavily upon the quality of the candidates that programs select. These key features of exemplary preparation in the US align with the cross-national training recommendations made by Ylimaki and Jacobson (2011), based on findings from their study. Specifically, they argue that aspiring leaders of high quality should be encouraged to enter programs with cohort models in which members enter and move through training together so that they can work as a team to address authentic, school-based problems, with the support of experienced mentors. Aspiring leaders in all contexts need intensive internships that provide administrative responsibility and authority so that they become socialized as a leader, while maintaining their understanding of what it is to be a good teacher. Such experiences should engage them in faculty collaboration and distributing decision making, especially regarding curriculum, learning and instruction (Ylimaki & Jacobson, 2011). Preparation must emphasize relational trust between leaders and teachers and between schools and their students’ parents and communities (Gurr et al., 2011). Aspiring leaders also need to reflect on their own core values

and possible cultural biases and consider how they align with those of the communities they serve. They must become aware of the role schools can play in reifying societal structures that marginalize groups of students. As advocates for equity, leaders must work to interrupt such structures in their daily practice by modeling acceptance of all students and families in the community (Jacobson & Cypres, 2012). In other words, leaders and the schools they manage must reveal a sense of moral purpose and committed engagement to the students and communities they serve. If these practices become part of school leader evaluation in New York and other states that have adopted PSEL, more communitarian approaches to school management may become the normative expectation for all. The only caution with such a development is that leaders may simply comply with these standards in a transactional fashion, rather than enacting them authentically because they align with their own core values.

CONCLUSIONS AND FINAL THOUGHTS This chapter examined the evolving management of schools as public institutions and how school leaders have viewed their role and responsibilities in school management over time. The rapid expansion of public education in the US was used to show how schools evolved from relatively small institutions tightly engaged with their local communities into increasingly hierarchal and transactional organizations modeled on the efficiency-driven approaches found in the business sector. While cost-efficiency imperatives may have proven useful during rapid periods of growth, the size and scope of these much larger, consolidated and centralized organizations also changed relationships between schools and their communities and even between teachers and administrators within the same school. Over time, what

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may have been gained in terms of how much a school could provide students costefficiently due to economies of scale, may have been undercut by an erosion of public trust in the institution and its management. In response, it is recommended that school management needs to be re-cultured from being transactional organizations into more communitarian institutions utilizing IL, OL and CRP. Findings from the ISSPP suggest that across diverse national contexts, these three leadership practices can be used successfully to foster greater trust, collaboration and collective action among school leaders, teachers, parents and school communities. Moreover, these practices are being codified in emerging standards for effective leadership that should impact both administrator preparation and practice. Implicitly, these new leadership standards are encouraging school organizations to be driven less by business models of hierarchal authority and extrinsic transactions and more by the types of trusting relationships and good citizenship found in communities committed to advocating for the worth of everyone who is part of it. This return to a more communitarian approach to school management and leadership just might prove to be the most productive response to the pressing educational policy challenges of the 21st century, most notably policy mandates for greater accountability coupled with resource scarcity and potential budget cuts, as well as rapidly changing student and community demographic diversity.

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Leithwood, K., Jacobson, S., & Ylimaki, R. (2011). Converging policy trends. In R. Ylimaki & S. Jacobson (Eds.), US and CrossNational Policies Practices and Preparation: Implications for Successful Instructional Leadership, Organizational Learning, and Culturally Responsive Practices (pp. 17–28). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Kluwer. Leithwood, K. & Jantzi, D. (2005). A review of transformational school leadership research 1996–2005. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 4(3): 177–199. Leithwood, K., Mascall, B., Strauss, T., Sacks, R., Memon, N., & Yashkina, A. (2007). Distributing leadership to make schools smarter: Taking the ego out of the system. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 6(1): 37–67. Leithwood, K. & Riehl, C. (2005). What we know about successful school leadership. In W. Firestone & C. Riehl (Eds.), A New Agenda: Directions for Research on Educational Leadership (pp. 22–47). New York: Teachers College Press. Louis, K. (2007). Creating and sustaining professional communities. In A. Blankstein, P. Houston, & R. Cole (Eds.), Sustaining Professional Communities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Louis, K., Leithwood, K., Wahlstrom, K., & Anderson, S. (2010). Learning from Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning. New York: Wallace Foundation. Marshall, C. & Ward, M. (2004). ‘Yes, but …’: Education leaders discuss social justice. Journal of School Leadership, 14: 530–563. Mayrowitz, D., Murphy, J., Louis, K., & Smylie, M. (2007). Distributed leadership as work redesign: Retrofitting the job characteristics model. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 6(1): 69–101. McCarthy, M., Shelton, S., & Murphy. J. (2016). Policy penetration of the ISLLC standards. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 15(2): 221–230. Mulford, W., Silins, H., & Leithwood, K. (2004). Educational Leadership for Organizational Learning and Improved Student Outcomes. Boston, MA: Kluwer. National Center for Education Statistics (2002). The Condition of Education 2002. Washington, DC: US Government Office.

National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983). A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education, United States Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Commission on Excellence in Education. National Policy Board for Educational Administration (2015). Professional Standards for Educational Leaders 2015. Reston, VA: National Policy Board for Educational Administration. Petrie, H. (1990). Reflections on the second wave of reform: Restructuring the teacher profession. In S. Jacobson & J. Conway (Eds.), Educational Leadership in an Age of Reform (pp. 14–29). New York: Longman. Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Robinson, V. (2007). School Leadership and Student Outcomes: Identifying What Works and Why. Monograph 41. Winmalee, NSW: Australian Council for Educational Leaders. Rosenholtz, S. (1985). Effective schools: Interpreting the evidence. American Journal of Education, 93(3): 352–388. Ryan, J. (2006). Inclusive leadership and social justice for schools. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 5(1): 3–17. Senge, P. M. (2000). Schools That Learn. New York: Doubleday. Sergiovanni, T. (1994). Organizations or communities? Changing the metaphor changes the theory. Educational Administration Quarterly, 30(2): 214–226. Somech, A. (2010). Participative decisionmaking in schools: A mediating-moderating analytical framework for understanding school and teachers’ outcomes. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46: 174–209. Spillane, J., Camburn, E., & Pareja, A. (2007). Taking a distributed perspective to the school principal’s workday. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 6(1): 103–125. Spillane, J. & Orlina, E. (2005). Investigating leadership practice: Exploring the entailments of taking a distributed perspective. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 4(3): 157–176. Spring, J. (2016). American Education. New York: Taylor & Francis.

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Stoll, L. & Fink, D. (1996). Changing Our Schools: Linking School Effectiveness and School Improvement. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Taylor, F. W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. New York: Harper & Brothers. Tonnies, F. (1957 [1887]). Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Community and Society). Trans. C. P. Loomis. New York: Harper & Row. Tschannen-Moran, M. & Barr, M. (2004). Fostering student learning: The relationship of teacher collective efficacy and student achievement. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 3(3): 189–209. United Nations High Commission for Refugees (2013). Mid-Year Trends, 2013. Retrieved from: www.unhcr.org/52af08d26.html University Council for Educational Administration (1987). Leaders for America’s Schools: The Report of the National Commission on Excellence in Educational Administration.

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Tempe, AZ: University Council for Educational Administration. Ylimaki, R., Gurr, D., Moos, L., Kofod, K., & Drysdale, L. (2011). Democratic instructional leadership in Australia, Denmark and the United States. In R. Ylimaki & S. Jacobson (Eds.), US and Cross-National Policies Practices and Preparation: Implications for ­ Successful Instructional Leadership, Organizational Learning, and Culturally Responsive Practices (pp. 17–28). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Kluwer. Ylimaki, R. & Jacobson, S. (2011). US and Cross-National Policies, Practices, and Preparation. New York: Springer. Ylimaki, R., Jacobson, S., & Drysdale, L. (2007). Making a difference in challenging, highpoverty schools: Successful principals in the US, England and Australia. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 18(4): 361–381.

6 Competing Narratives of Leadership in Schools: The Institutional and Discursive Turns in Organizational Theory Gary L. Anderson and Ethan Chang1

INTRODUCTION To a great extent, how we think about leadership depends on how we theorize organizations and their institutional environments. Globally, scholars of public sector organizations and leadership generally agree that there has been a shift toward market-based regimes of governance that have introduced markets, metrics, and managerialism to the public sector (Ball, 2009; Hood, 1991; Meyer & Rowan, 2006; Shipps, 2012). This ‘shift’ has been accomplished through a new set of discourses and practices that are mutually reinforcing and that new networks of local, national, and global policy entrepreneurs have mobilized. And yet our theories of leadership and organization are not theoretically up to the task of incorporating these global and institutional developments into our studies of organizational leadership, particularly at the discursive level where language and discourse do more than reflect reality; they also

construct reality (Gee, 2006). Researchers in education too often study school reforms and school leaders decontextualized from these broader institutional and discursive developments. Even when critiques appear of high-stakes testing or market incentives, we struggle to connect the dots to institutional and discursive struggles that seem to go on over our heads. This is often the case even when we are inclusive of race, gender, disability, and low-income communities in our analyses. We lack both a vertical and horizontal approach to intersectionality (Anderson & Scott, 2012; Collins & Bilge, 2016). In this chapter, we provide an overview of theoretical and discursive debates within the fields of organizational and leadership theory, and suggest that discursive institutionalism provides a way to understand how education professionals are being reshaped by new dominant discourses within their institutional field (Evetts, 2009; Fligstein & McAdam, 2015). And yet, this shaping, while enforced by new technologies of

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power, leaves some openings and agency for enactments that challenge its hegemony, though not without risks (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2006; Theoharris, 2007). We argue that discursive institutionalism accounts for this mutual shaping and effectively guides inquiry into hegemonic institutional discourses that bear on school organizations and constrain specific leadership subjectivities and practices, while preserving conceptual space for exploring what leaders might do to resist and rework dominant discourses and the institutional rules they stabilize. We begin this chapter with contrasting portraits of educational leadership: first, the new entrepreneurial professional, sanctioned by market discourses, followed by the equitable educational advocate, representing counterdiscourses. These portraits serve as an entrée into the questions we raise in this chapter concerning the relationship between discourses, the practices of educational professionals, and the organizational and institutional contexts that condition the possibilities of their actions. We then discuss how scholars have historically theorized ‘leadership’ and ‘organizations’, and their lack of an institutional and discursive analysis. We then describe how discursive institutionalism helps us track the discursive chains that flow across institutional fields and that help to constitute the ‘new managed professional’ through the discoursepractices of New Public Management (Evetts, 2009; Mautner, 2010; Ward, 2012). We conclude by discussing what discursive institutionalism might contribute to scholars of organizational theory and leadership studies, particularly in a moment in which schooling is largely re-articulated through languages of business and markets that threaten the prospects of educational and social equity.

The New Entrepreneurial Leader In the zero-sum-game of schooling, to succeed is to be the desired school ‘choice’ (Meshulam & Apple, 2014) even if individual

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school success damages the efficacy of the broader public-school system (Anderson & Cohen, 2015). The new entrepreneurial leader strategically reads this competitive market environment and aspires to enhance organizational success, which he defines in terms of prevailing measures of educational outcomes and test-based accountability (Ball, 2001, 2015). The new entrepreneurial professional recognizes that high achievement scores translate into favorable school ratings, which contribute to his school’s abilities to recruit parent and student ‘clientele’ (Bartlett, Frederick, Gulbrandsen, & Murillo, 2002; Cucchiara, 2013). To accomplish this task, the new entrepreneurial professional assumes the organizational helm and takes up dominant policy narratives that call on school leaders to ‘Captain their own ship’ (Kulz, 2017, p. 85). Drawn to symbolic models of charismatic, ‘turnaround’ leadership (Ehrensal, 2015; Ishimaru, 2013), he engages in unilateral decision-making – hires staff, purchases curricula, establishes prescriptive ‘No excuses’ disciplinary policies. These practices are aimed at combating the ‘poverty of aspirations’ he sees as prevalent among students from communities of color and low-income communities (Green, 2016, 2017). Absent of a language of equity and historical accountability, he conceptualizes school failure as a reflection of individual student deficits. Data-driven decision-making guides his practices and choice of strategic interventions; remedies that a burgeoning ‘school improvement industry’ (Rowan, 2006) makes readily available. These technical solutions are particularly amenable for leaders like himself, who seek cost-effective solutions for raising achievement scores (Shipps, 2012), especially those targeted for students who are labeled ‘at risk’ of failing (Burch, 2009; Trujillo, 2014). When opportunities to involve parents present themselves, he solicits nominal community input and integrates these comments into prevailing school aims, such as preparing ‘all’ students to be college and career ready (Auerbach, 2010; Warren, 2005).

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The Equitable Educational Advocate Like the new entrepreneurial professional, the equitable educational advocate inhabits organizational contexts influenced by market logics of data-driven policies and high-stakes accountability (Ball, 2001, 2015; Strathern, 2000). Yet, instead of viewing the reform context as something she must faithfully implement, the equitable educational advocate negotiates and enacts reforms that align with her commitments to equity (Koyama, 2014; Werts, Brewer, & Mathews, 2012). She understands success as being more than addressing ‘gaps’ in achievement, and instead, about responding to historic ‘educational debts’ (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Scheurich et  al., 2017), including the structural barriers associated with pernicious ‘opportunity gaps’ (Carter & Welner, 2013). In addition, she attends to historic structures and policies that have created an unequal playing field to inform the design and implementation of immediate and long-term solutions (Ishimaru & Galloway, 2014). Guided by a commitment to equity, she rejects reductive notions of leadership as the qualities or traits of charismatic individuals. Rather than ‘captain’ the ship, she enlists partners within her organization (Pounder, Ogawa, & Adams, 1995) and beyond school walls (Auerbach, 2010). She adopts assetand structural-based understandings of communities of color and low-income communities (Green, 2017; Horsford, 2012), and, in doing so, explores opportunities to develop transformative visions in partnership with community – particularly in ways that appreciate the interwoven relations between school and community change (Anderson, 2009; Auerbach, 2010; Green, 2015; Warren, 2005; Warren & Mapp, 2011). All the while, she acknowledges the difficulties of even, committed democratic efforts to adequately include the most marginalized members of society (Trujillo, Hernández, Jarrell, & Kissell, 2014). She reflects critically on

the constraints of schools as organizations steeped in institutional environments that naturalize the reproduction of inequities in a stratified society (Carpenter & Brewer, 2014). Understanding these contextual limitations, she organizes community members to shift political power in ways that can realize equitable visions of educational and social change (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015). These contrasting portraits of educational leadership raise questions about the external forces that influence the organizational structures and processes within which school leaders operate and the bases upon which their efficacy as leaders are evaluated. Further, they demonstrate the role of educational leaders in galvanizing organizational change within deeply constrained school contexts. As we previously alluded, however, studies of educational leadership that situate individual leadership practices within institutional contexts are limited; a gap in existing scholarship that motivates our search for a framework that can help us understand why, among a broad array of possibilities for arranging schooling and the work of educational leaders, models like the new entrepreneurial professional prevail.

LEADERSHIP: AN ELUSIVE PHENOMENON The concept of leadership has fascinated historians for centuries, and there has been much written about ‘leaders’ from biblical times to the present. Early ‘great man’ theories tended to focus on innate traits and drew heavily from military and statesman models of leadership. Social scientists began doing more empirical studies of leadership in the 1940s and 1950s, focusing less on innate traits or characteristics and more on leader behaviors (Halpin & Winer, 1957). Studies of leadership at the Ohio State University and The University of Michigan in the 1950s attempted to identify the behaviors of effective leaders

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using the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ). Their notions of task-oriented and people-oriented became the standard four-quadrant model that future theorists would rework in different ways. These early four-quadrant models led to a series of contingency theories that argued against a single best type of effective leadership and for a more contextualized approach. Examples included Fiedler’s (1958) contingency theory, Hersey and Blanchard’s (1969) situational theory, as well as transactional theories, sometimes called leader-memberexchange theory, that saw leadership as a more strategic micropolitical interaction with followers. Later, Burns’ (1978) studies of world leaders as diverse as Churchill and Gandhi proposed theories of transformational leadership that continue to be popular today in many fields. Within the field of educational administration, the 1970s saw a series of theoretical debates between functionalists and constructivists that would define the field for decades to come. The more dominant group followed a largely positivist and functionalist approach to the study of organizations and administration that is still largely dominant. The notion that social and organizational systems had ‘functions,’ that organizational members enacted roles, and the measurement and manipulation of variables has dominated the field since the 1950s. It was in the 1970s that challengers to this approach began to promote theories of social constructivism and interpretivist research methods. The fields of Educational Administration and Organizational Theory in the United States have largely see-sawed between these two approaches ever since. Discursive approaches were part of the constructivist tradition and appeared largely with Corson’s (1995) book Discourse and Power in Educational Organizations. The constructivists viewed organizations as social constructions that emerge from the dynamics of social interaction and negotiation (Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Kingdon, 1984; Putnam, 1983). Constructivists turned

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from the study of organizations to the study of the process of organizing. In constructivist theories of organizing, internal organizational structures, such as goals, rules, norms, and roles, do not simply determine and reinforce desired patterns of social interaction within the organization. Instead, such forms of social interactions were viewed as involving negotiation (Straus, 1978), intersubjectivity (Greenfield 1973), or micropolitics (Hoyle, 1982). While seemingly tame today, this constructivist challenge to functionalism marked a contentious period in the development of both organizational theory and educational administration. It should also be noted that the fields of organizational theory and educational administration before and during the 1970s were dominated by White males, so issues of gender and race were not theorized within either of these approaches. Only in the 1980s were they interrupted at the margins by feminist, critical and post-structural theorists, approaches we will discuss in more detail below. During the 1980s constructivist theories of leadership and schools as organizations were also informed by social psychologists and notions of social, situated, and distributed cognition and activity theory (Bandura, 1986; Lave, 1988; Vygotsky, 1978). Drawing on theories of distributed cognition, distributed leadership theory has had an important influence on the study of the internal dynamics of professional interactions in schools, but has failed to theorize context beyond the notion that context is the result of social interaction through activities, usually limited to notions of organizational capacity and work redesign (Ho & Ng, 2017; Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2001). While both organizational and leadership studies have mainly focused on within-school factors that influence school improvement, there is a tradition of studying the boundary-spanning role of principals and school-community relations, which in its more functionalist formulations has limited its focus on parent involvement and public

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relations (Shutz, 2006). There is a long history of conflict between schools and communities – especially low-income communities of color – that has yet to be effectively theorized (Driscoll, 1998; Podair, 2002). However, there is a growing body of work that has addressed how school leaders might take a less school-centric approach to seeking authentic community relations, incorporating some of the research on community organizing (Green, 2017; Ishimaru, 2013; Miller, 2008; Shutz, 2006). Studies of leadership in social change organizations could contribute to this line of work (Ospina & Foldy, 2010; Ospina & Su, 2009). While this literature attempts to expand leadership horizontally outside the school and into the community, some argue that this fails to address the ways in which more vertical, macro-level forces, as well as institutional discourses, negatively impact both schools and communities (Carpenter, 2015). While mainstream functionalists expanded their range to the study of open and interacting organizational systems, and to middlerange theories (Merton, 1968), they largely ignored institutional and macro-structural influences. In education, radical functionalists, largely informed by Marxist and critical theories, emphasized the pre-eminence of social reproduction and schools as State ideological apparatuses, but largely failed to theorize how these forces penetrated schools and classrooms (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). Critical ethnographies struggled to study the micro– macro dialectic with only limited success (Anderson, 1989; Anyon, 1980). Problems of context and causality have continued to haunt research on organizations and leadership (Anderson & Scott, 2012). Other theorists have suggested that leadership is a folk theory and that there is no empirical evidence of its existence. As early as 1977, Pfeffer argued that ‘The personification of social causality serves too many uses to be easily overcome. Whether or not leader behavior actually influences performance or effectiveness, it is important because people

believe it does’ (p. 110). While this critique largely refers to person-centered leadership approaches, Lakomski (2008), extended it to distributed leadership. She claims that we should ‘abandon the study of leadership, distributed or not, and rather concentrate our efforts on studying the causal features of human cognitive activity’ (Lakomski, 2008, p. 159). She does not see any evidence for the claim that leadership causes organizational improvement and views the ‘traditionally implied cognitive privilege of the leader-cumCEO-cum-school principal, [as] an empiricist assumption in the leadership literature that claimed more than it could deliver’ (2008, p. 160). While these epistemological and ontological arguments are provocative, they fail to theorize why the notion of leadership is so popular and whose interests it serves. As more women and scholars of color began entering the field in the 1980s and 1990s, studies increasingly centered on issues of gender and race in organizational and leadership theory. Extending early writing on multicultural education, feminists and critical race theorists began to analyze the institutional, structural, and intersectional forms of oppression within organizations and the public sphere (Fraser, 1990). Shakeshaft (1989) wrote an influential book on the impact of gender on the lives of school and district administrators, and Ferguson (1984) studied how bureaucratic discourses distorted the positive values that women could bring to organizational life. The theorizing of race broke out of the constraints of ‘multicultural education’ with the emergence of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), which was later supplemented by other theorizations of race in education (Darder & Torres, 2004; Leonardo, 2013). And yet, there is limited intersectional analysis of class, race, and gender, and how these discourses are mobilized by leaders within the context of neoliberalism and New Public Management. The most promising studies in this area are those that analyze how leaders cope with changing demographics of class

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and race (Evans, 2007; Holme, Welton, & Diem, 2012; Posey-Maddox, Kimelberg, & Cucchiara, 2014; Turner, 2015). While a plethora of constructivist, discursive, and critical theories and research methods gained ground in the 1980s and 1990s, by the 2000s there was a significant backlash and a reinforcement of positivism and functionalism. This backlash emerged in part due to the rise of a nation-wide, quantitative accountability system (Strathern, 2000), a functionalist, ‘what works’ approach to research and practice (Biesta, 2007), and a report by the National Research Council (2002) that prioritized experimental research which influenced funders of research. These developments, which some called new managerialism or New Public Management (Hood & Peters, 2004), all led to a reinvigorated technical rationality and functionalism in research, schools, and classrooms. For instance, during the 1980s and 1990s, academic discourse in education slowly abandoned the notion of the administration of public bureaucracies and replaced it with ‘leadership,’ a term that had already gained legitimacy within business, the military, and geopolitics (Burns, 1978). Table 6.1 shows the discursive shift from ‘administration’ to ‘leadership’ since 1960, based on their use in titles of articles in Educational Administration Quarterly, generally considered a major journal in the field. Departments of educational administration began changing their names from administration to leadership, ‘administration’ being associated with the management of public

bureaucracies and the welfare state. O’Reilly and Reed (2010) argue that leadership has been appropriated by New Public Management (NPM) and neoliberal reformers as a cover term for administering the dismantling of the welfare state and the implementation of new market-based, performative demands placed on teachers, principals, and superintendents (Dent & Whitehead, 2002). They suggest the term ‘leaderism’ best describes the new managerialism of New Public Management. Bourdieu’s (1996) view of institutional fields would suggest that there is a discursive power struggle over the definition of ‘leadership’, and that the social, cultural, and economic capital of new neoliberal policy entrepreneurs are able to appropriate its meaning. While the field of educational administration has adopted a discourse of leadership, there is a discursive power struggle within the field over its definition that few scholars in the field seem aware of. While this overview of theory and research in organizational and leadership theory in education is necessarily reductionist, we have provided it to demonstrate what we consider to be the limitations of both organizational and leadership theories that fail to incorporate an analysis that provides for the complex ways that organizations interact with their institutional environments. While such theories did exist (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), as we will discuss in the next section, they did not heavily inform research or leadership in education. In the rest of this chapter, we will explore what we think is the most generative organizational theory: discursive institutional theory.

Table 6.1  Shifts in discourses of ‘administration’ and ‘leadership’ in Educational Administration Quarterly Decades 2010–2017 2000–2010 1990–2000 1980–1990 1970–1980 1960–1970

‘Leadership’ 91 90 43 13 15 4

‘Administration’ 5 18 44 43 37 5

‘Management’ 10 7 8 10 11 0

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A REVIEW OF INSTITUTIONAL THEORIES AND THE ‘DISCURSIVE TURN’ Longstanding disagreement about what constitutes ‘institutions’ – which range from formal laws, settled habits, cultural mores, or, more recently, sedimented discourses (Immergut, 1998) – contributed to disparate lineages within institutional theory. Although institutional theorists share an interest in examining who benefits from prevailing institutional arrangements and how and under what conditions institutions change (Campbell & Pedersen, 2001; DiMaggio & Powell, 1991; Rowan & Miskel, 1999; Scott, 1995), competing assumptions about the ontological character of institutions offer limited guidance for researchers. In this section, we specify how and why recent scholarly interest in ‘discursive institutionalism’ offers a generative basis for theorizing schools as organizations and the roles of educational leaders. Often referred to as the ‘fourth institutionalism’ (Schmidt, 2008), discursive institutionalism represents a distinctive institutional framework in contrast to rational choice, historical, and sociological institutionalism. We discuss how discursive institutionalism preserves key concepts of ‘early’ and ‘neoinstitutional’ theories, while integrating theoretical advances from discourse theory, such as an attention to power as implicated in what is knowable and how actors can rewrite discourses through creative acts of appropriation. We define discursive institutionalism and specify how we imagine this framework might promote more contextualized analyses of educational leadership.

Defining Discursive Institutionalism Discursive institutionalism examines how frameworks of meaning enable and constrain interpretations of the social world within specific institutional and organizational arrangements (Kjaer & Pedersen, 2001; Panizza & Miorelli, 2013). In contrast to

early institutional theories, which emphasized the role of political and social institutions that mediated social action (e.g., charters, courts, bureaucracies, legal codes, and administrative rule: Durkheim, 1893; Eckstein, 1963; Weber, 1930), discursive institutionalism explores how prevailing systems of knowledge became institutionalized and shape what can be thought and said within distinctive institutional contexts (Kjaer & Pedersen, 2001; Panizza & Miorelli, 2013). From a discursive institutionalist perspective, power is not embedded in prevailing rules (rational choice institutionalism), historically engrained paths (historical institutionalism), or cognitive schemas (sociological institutionalism), but inflected in what is considered to be ‘true’ (Foucault, 1972). Several scholars contend that the ‘discursive turn’ in institutional theory contributes a more expansive, but less deterministic conception of institutions (Kjaer & Pedersen, 2001; Schmidt, 2008). By attending to how power operates through language and symbolic systems of meaning, discursive institutionalists also call attention to how actors assemble and reframe discourses to then transform institutions (Campbell & Pedersen, 2001; Schmidt, 2008). While discursive institutionalism builds on Meyer and Rowan’s (1977, p. 341) influential conceptualization of ‘rationalized myths’ – socially constructed notions of rational and efficient organizational structures that obtained a taken-forgranted, ‘rule like’ status – it challenges how rationalized myths spread. In contrast to notions of ‘isomorphism,’ which argued that institutional change occurs through patterns of diffusion and convergence (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Rowan & Miskel, 1999; Scott, 1995), discursive institutionalism understands change through processes of ‘translation,’ whereby actors select and rearrange concepts to displace prevailing discourses (Kjaer & Pedersen, 2001, p. 219). Schmidt (2008, p. 314) offers a cogent summary of this ‘discursive turn’ in contrast to other institutional frameworks:

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RI [rational choice institutionalism], HI [historical institutionalism], and SI [sociological institutionalism] effectively leave us with ‘unthinking’ actors who are in an important sense not agents at all. This subordination of agency (action) to structure (rules) is the key problem for HI, SI, and RI, and it is why all manner of new institutionalists have turned to ideas and discourse in recent years.

By investigating how institutional actors shape, and are shaped by, possible and preferable ways of imagining and enacting institutional identities, discursive institutionalism advances a framework in which power is a constraining and generative force (Foucault, 1972). Table 6.2 synthesizes how competing institutional theories conceptualize schools as organizations and the constraints and possibilities of educational leadership.

Specifying Affordances of Discursive Institutionalism for Organizational and Leadership Studies Discursive institutionalism is a particularly useful approach for making sense of and intervening in school and leadership studies. We believe this theory is the most generative for the following reasons: (1) It takes on the issue of organizational context by providing a synergistic theory of how organizations relate to their institutional environments and how discourses travel across sectors, particularly from private to public (Mautner, 2010; Rowan, 2006). (2) It provides a dynamic and contingent understanding of institutions as animating, and animated by, the everyday work of educational leaders; in other words, leaders are not beholden to institutions, but actively appropriate discourses in ways that sustain or transform prevailing institutional rules. (3) Last, discursive institutionalism provides the potential for both a horizontal and vertical intersectional understanding of organizational life, that is, both how individuals bring these orientations in with them – including issues of neoliberalism, racism, sexism, and classism that become institutionalized at the organizational

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level – and also how the institutional environment legitimates them from ‘above.’ First, discursive institutionalism helpfully preserves early institutional understandings of organizations as they have been shaped by political struggles in the institutional field (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Rowan & Miskel, 1999; Scott, 1995), one in which neoinstitutional scholars helpfully specified by calling attention to patterns of cross-sector borrowing among states, markets, professional associations, and the media (Lecours, 2005; Meyer & Rowan, 1983; Rowan & Miskel, 1999; Scott, 1995; Zucker, 1987). Discursive institutionalism offers a framework for understanding how discourses travel and become engrained in specific institutional and organizational contexts. And while discursive institutionalism reflects prior discursive inquiries of educational leadership (Anderson & Grinberg, 1998; Cohen, 2014; Scheurich, 1994; Thomson, Hall, & Jones, 2013), it offers an explicit attention to how discourse travels and influences the organizational contexts within which leaders operate. In doing so, it better situates the constraints and possibilities of educational leaders’ everyday work. Second, rather than seeing institutions as given or static, discursive institutionalism understands institutions as contingent, stabilized systems of meaning. Discourses constrain social action, and yet are unable to fully determine or ‘fix’ meanings or identities (Panizza & Miroelli, 2013). This more malleable theory of institutional change does not reduce processes of change to exogenous shocks, as in historical institutional theories (Immergut, 1998; Mackay, Kenny, & Chappell, 2010). Instead, it theorizes changes as an agency-driven process, mobilized by actors within institutional and organizational contexts. This assumption is fundamental to theorizing the role of educational leaders as agents of school and educational change. Third, with a more dynamic account of structure and agency, it offers a vertical and horizontal intersectional understanding of

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Table 6.2  Four institutional perspectives of school reform Approach

School reform problem

Rational choice institutionalism

School reforms fail as a result of Reform schools by rewriting ineffective ‘rules’ or policies. ‘rules.’ • Market perspectives critique • Market proponents aspire union protections and state to dismantle public control. protections and allow for • Progressive reformers critique greater market competition state-market collusion that and flexibility. inhibits more equitable • Progressive perspectives organizational processes and argue for stricter regulations structures. of private market interests to restore the public character of K-12 schooling. School reforms fail as a result of Reform schools by directly enduring historic inequities addressing historically built into the institution of embedded organizational schooling. structures. • Early institutionalization of • ‘Tinker’ with existing elitist values and interests structures to make them (e.g., scientific behaviorism). more amenable to new • Outdated factory designs of societal values, beliefs, and public schooling. interests. • Design new institutions by working outside entrenched habits, rituals, and practices of early institutional contexts. Reforms fail as a result of Reform schools by deeply constraining cognitive confronting the deeply and normative logics. constraining cognitive and • Deeply engrained cognitive normative scripts. schema, such as the • Problematize taken-for‘grammar of schooling’ limit granted beliefs about reform. schooling and reform. • Normative logics constrain • Work alongside teachers to reforms and privilege identify how the ‘grammar the accomplishment of of schooling’ shapes legitimacy over technical teaching practices. change. Reforms fail as a result of Reform schools by power/knowledge discourses problematizing the very that condition definitions of discursive formations ‘schooling’ and ‘reform’ that that make ‘schooling’ and reproduce broader inequities. ‘reform’ intelligible. • Enduring discursive logics, • Examine how reforms such as success, meritocracy, organize meaning to and individualism limit sustain existing inequities. possibilities of reform. • Reconfigure terms and languages to imagine new practices and institutional forms that can build toward more equitable institutions.

Historical institutionalism

Sociological institutionalism

Discursive institutionalism

Theory of organizational change

Implications for educational leadership • Actors are goal-oriented, self-interested, and rational, and seek to contest prevailing rules. • Change occurs through bargaining, conflict, and strategic gaming.

• Change is unlikely given that organizational structures, once institutionalized, tend to follow a path-dependent logic. • Actors are largely determined subjects working within pre-existing institutional environments.

• Actors tend to follow logics of appropriateness to sustain legitimacy; contributing to patterns of institutional isomorphism. • Actors tend to operate as unconscious or deeply constrained individuals.

• Discourse reflects power and actively constructs institutions. • Actors are constrained, but un-determined and creative agents. Re-appropriating existing discourses can contribute to new institutional and organizational arrangements.

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organizational life, both how the institutional environment legitimates organizational features from ‘above,’ but also how individuals bring these orientations in with them. Discursive institutionalism sutures microanalyses of leadership identities to studies of organizational and institutional change. Through a discursive institutional lens, institutions shape and are shaped by political processes of leadership identity formation, which involve rethinking the self within a new set of discursive elements (Panizza & Miorelli, 2013). Our analyses of the equitable educational advocate exemplify the possibilities of creative processes of discursive appropriation within constrained, but undetermined, contexts. In sum, discursive institutionalism offers a generative framework for thinking about the tensions in the institutional field of education reform and the work of educational leaders in driving processes of organizational and institutional change. It invites researchers to ask: What discourses shape schooling and the school contexts within which educational leaders operate? Which actors or organizations in the institutional field mobilize specific school discourses? And what possibilities remain for leaders to enact identities that challenge prevailing notions of leadership and re-imagine schooling in ways that better reflect equitable educational advocacy? The following section takes up these questions and illustrates the utility of discursive institutionalism through an inquiry of the translation of new public management discourses to educational contexts.

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privatize and marketize the public sector, and specifically, public schooling. We illustrate how discursive institutionalism offers a framework for making sense of how policy entrepreneurs translated NPM discourses to the education sector, how these discourses became institutionalized in schools, and how shifting organizational contexts constrain the work of school leaders. Importantly, discursive institutionalism does not interpret school leaders as rule-bound followers of institutional and organizational arrangements, and, like the opening example of equitable educational advocates, it preserves possibilities for educational leaders to engage in discursive re-articulation. NPM, sometimes called new managerialism, is the manifestation of global neoliberal policies at the organizational and institutional levels. As a new form of governance and technology of power that gained global popularity in the 1990s, it cuts across all public sectors and, according to several authors, involves the following practices, each with its own set of discursive framings (ArellanoGault, 2010; Bottery, 1996; Hood, 1991; Ward, 2012).

THE DISCURSIVE DESTABILIZATION AND ‘MODERNIZATION’ OF PUBLIC SCHOOLING

• Greater use of standardization and ‘scaling up’ of practices • Increased emphasis on outcomes and their measurement using quantitative data • Greater efficiency in resource allocation • Decentralization and bounded autonomy at the street level • Entrepreneurial management borrowed from the private sector • Contracting out of public services to the private sector • The creation of internal and external markets and competition in the public sector • Controlling and steering the system from a distance • The public sector as an emerging profit center.

Discursive institutionalism is useful in explaining how New Public Management (NPM) discourses have been successfully promoted as a strategy to ‘modernize,’

Notably, the viability of New Public Management and privatization is prepared discursively. Drawing on Whitfield’s (2001) study of the privatization process in Britain,

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Ball (2007) describes three stages through which the creative destruction of the public sector is accomplished. While this is not a coordinated, linear process, it has the following internal logic. The public sector is destabilized through discourses of derision and constant ridicule to undermine its credibility. This is accompanied by disinvestment from and shifting resources within the public sector. Finally, a process of commodification ‘reworks forms of service, social relations and public processes into forms that are measurable and thus contractible or marketable’ (Ball, 2007, p. 24). In this way, new markets are created that attract private providers, creating whole new arenas of commercial activity for ‘social entrepreneurs.’ It is within the context of broader material and discursive change that the educational institutional terrain is prepared for NPM ‘reforms.’ As public institutions like schools and universities become more financially strapped, they need to seek funding from the private sector, in many cases from new philanthropic organizations with privatizing agendas. These patterns are evident in an example Ball (2007, p. 23) offers from a school principal: ‘You can’t run on your ordinary budget, everyone knows that, so you have to get involved in various initiatives and cater for that, the initiative’s priorities, and bend your curriculum and your priorities in order to get hold of that bit of money.’ This principal articulates organizational barriers that are deeply informed by broader NPM discursive shifts. Reformist solutions, such as public-private partnerships that help to breach and re-work key boundaries between the public and private (Verger & Moschetti, 2016), emerge as preferable only within these broader discursive and institutional contexts of public disinvestment. These shifting discourses create new material demands upon schools, which have increasingly become stabilized as a new normal to which organizational leaders must adapt. These shifts did not happen naturally, nor were they the result of popular demand. As Van Dijk (2008) reminds us, discursive

shifts are inseparable from material questions of who has access to discursive production. New policy entrepreneurs, and the think tanks they fund, have been successful at delegitimizing public schooling by discursively reframing it as broken and turning to NPM solutions as being urgent and necessary (Lakoff, 2008; Saltman, 2010; Scott, 2009). For example, the shift from public servant to chief executive officer (CEO) is the result of several well-funded attempts to bring a business mindset into the public sector (Abrams, 2016). Among venture philanthropists, Eli Broad has had an important influence on the leadership of urban districts (Saltman, 2010). In fact, his retreats and workshops influenced so many urban superintendents that it is referred to as the ‘Broad effect.’ For over three decades, Broad has recruited many military and business executives into the urban superintendency and taught business principles such as Total Quality Management to superintendents. This is just one of the many ways that the language of business has found its way into the lexicon of urban superintendents and has trickled down to principals. Similarly, school district leaders’ roles have been discursively redefined from that of public servants to CEOs. These changes have occurred because of discursive shifts within the institutional field of schooling that transfer the discourses and logics of business into the public sector (Mautner, 2010). The public sector has been dismantled discursively in order to reconstruct it around business and market discourses. Embedded within these discourses are a series of what Meyer and Rowan (1977) have called legitimating myths, such as the myth of meritocracy and the myth of the superiority of the private sector (Berliner & Glass, 2014).

Institutionalizing NPM within Schools These discursive and institutional contexts influence the metrics and categories of

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meaning through which schools must recruit public trust and legitimacy. Consequently, attempts at replacing bureaucratic control with NPM have resulted in new technologies of control that reach deeper into universities, schools, and classrooms and operate as measures of effectiveness. These NPM practices are deeper and wider than ever today, making the creation of authentic spaces for teaching and learning more difficult. As control is exercised from a distance through highstakes testing, power breaches the classroom door and operates directly on teachers, tightening loosely-coupled systems (Weick, 1976) and diminishing the pockets of autonomy that existed in classrooms under previous bureaucratic organizations (Anderson, 2009). Ball (2003) warns that current reforms do not simply change what we as educators do, it changes who we are, as we increasingly attune our work to the demands of performativity: ‘What it means to teach and what it means to be a teacher (a researcher, an academic) are subtly but decisively changed in the processes of reform’ (Ball, 2003, p. 218). Our subjectivities have been privatized and we have become what sociologists of the professions call ‘new professionals,’ no longer ruled from within by our professional associations and ethics, but rather managed externally (Anderson & Cohen, 2015; Evetts, 2009).

NPM and School Leadership Despite the weight of external controls on the work of teachers and school leaders, discursive institutionalism insists on the creative abilities of organizational and institutional actors in reframing discourses and, in this case, challenging the ostensibly given ways schools are organized. As the example of an equitable educational advocate attest, school leaders retain creative capacities to resist the ways their work and subjectivities are outlined. They might question the limits of a NPM language of ‘achievement,’ and in doing so, negotiate and advocate for broader criteria upon which

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students and schools are evaluated. They might adopt asset-based understandings where prevailing NPM models see only ‘gaps’ and ‘deficits’ to be closed. Further, instead of settling for reformist solutions and public-private partnerships, school leaders might challenge institutionalized patterns of public disinvestment – host a bake sale, but also organize transformative visions alongside families, community members, and young people seeking a more robust public education. Further, discursive institutionalism does not over-simplify the processes through which leaders can enact a new counter-language of leadership. Instead, it appreciates the contexts of organizational survival that constrain leaders’ practices. Methods of ‘principled resistance’ (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2006), which entail overt or covert rejections of policies or programs that undermine professional principles, remain permanently available, but entail grave risks for educational leaders who are also charged with maintaining organizational survival. Discursive institutionalism is aspirational and measured in its analysis of the prospects of institutional change. Ultimately, the task of a discursive approach to institutional theory is to reconstruct this largely neglected discursive history of how business and market discoursepractices were intentionally promoted by powerful non-state actors and their policy networks in collusion with the State. It inquires into the discursive formation of individual school issues and the ways in which power is inflected in the systems of meaning that constitute the roles, practices, and criteria upon which school leaders are evaluated. Discursive institutionalism aids in efforts to denaturalize what appears to be common sense about the nature of public schools and how they should be administered, whether for a competitive individual or for a common good. Further, it makes conceptually legible the actions of educational leaders, such as equitable educational advocates, who renegotiate and reframe the prevailing terms of their work to advance equity.

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CONCLUSION As we have sought to demonstrate in this chapter, the combination of institutional and discourse theories represents a particularly useful approach for understanding schools as organizations and the role of educational leaders. Discursive institutional theory helpfully reminds us that what goes on in schools – from the selection of curricula to the patterned ways of teaching and learning – tends to reflect dynamics in the institutional field. Studies of individual, psychological accounts of leaders divorced from their organizational contexts misleadingly perpetuate ‘great man’ theories of leadership as a set of innate traits. Discursive institutionalism intervenes in these problematic tendencies and orients analyses toward the interwoven relations between leadership practices and the institutional field. Attention to the discursive and institutional contexts of schools are increasingly urgent given a heightened focus on models of leadership, like those championed by Broad, among other organizations and actors actively operating at the interstices of a public-private landscape of education reform. Our discussion of NPM identifies how prevailing organizational structures tend to reflect vested interests, of business and market reform organizations and actors in the institutional field. Yet, as discursive institutionalism and our models of leadership attest, organizational leaders are not determined, but creative, agentic actors. We are not suggesting that education scholars who study organizations and leadership have not used institutional theory or discourse analysis. Typically, however, those who use discourse as an analytic category are drawing from Foucault’s notions of power/knowledge and disciplinary practice or Fairclough’s more linguistically oriented critical discourse analysis (CDA) methodology (for more on these studies, see Anderson & Mungal, 2015). While institutional analysis was popular in the 1990s, it was perhaps discussed more theoretically than used as a theoretical

framework. We believe that the affordances of institutional theory in combination with an analysis of discursive struggles within institutional fields provide us with organizational and leadership studies that are more intersectional and contextual. As noted in Table 6.1, ‘administration’ became the language of managing public bureaucracies under the Welfare State, and was appropriated by educators. By no means are we suggesting a return to the discourse of administration. In education, ‘administrators’ were largely male and had limited experience as teachers. It was also a discourse that was a product of the first foray of business into education that produced the factory model school and a cult of efficiency (Callahan, 1962), although it did retain an ethos of public service for the common good, which is largely lost in a competitive, market-oriented institutional environment. As a discourse of ‘leadership’ began to emerge along with NPM, it became a contested discourse within the institutional field of education and other public sectors. It tended to refer to the more cultural, symbolic, and discursive aspects of leadership, and middle management in education was viewed as a key conduit for neoliberal thought to filter into educational organizations and redefine teaching and leading. Further research is needed that traces the institutional sources of leadership practices that currently stand-in as exemplars of educational leadership. Analyses of how emergent discourses reconfigure the core technologies of teaching offer useful models for scholars of educational leadership (Spillane & Burch, 2006). These studies could illuminate the sectors, actively translating and reskilling what it means to be an educational leader and the organizational contexts that sanction these types of leadership practices. In addition, studies of how leaders, like equitable educational advocates, renegotiate and reframe the prevailing terms of their work could form a generative empirical basis upon which new knowledge and new ways of organizing

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schools and leadership practices emerge. Researchers might inquire into how these leaders navigate the line between efforts to sustain legitimacy, while actively reframing discourses that limit or undermine their equity commitments (Carpenter & Brewer, 2014). We conclude by recognizing the ‘glacial speed’ of institutional change (Meyer & Rowan, 2006, p. 317). Training-committed, justice-oriented leaders are a key aspect of school change processes. Yet, a focus on individuals will not, on its own, contribute to sustainable, equitable institutional change. Discursive institutionalism reminds us that leadership is not the sole production of individual efforts, but a reflection of collectively held beliefs about what schools ought to do and what role leaders play in processes of school change. And while notions of ‘reculturing’ the organization or managing its meaning have become common aspects of school leadership (Deal & Peterson, 2016), it is not clear to what extent leadership merely entails legitimating the dominant institutional discourses or challenging them. The urgent task for scholars and practitioners is to identify ways of resisting New Public Management discourses in the interim and to mobilize counter-projects of long-term, equity-oriented institutional transformation. The task is ultimately to reclaim discourses of equity and a common good in the face of forces intent on marketizing and privatizing public education.

Note 1  Both authors contributed equally to this chapter.

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Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2001). Investigating school leadership practice: A distributed perspective. Educational Researcher, 30(3), 23–28. Strathern, M. (Ed.) (2000). Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics, and the academy. London: Psychology Press. Straus, A. (1978). Negotiations: Varieties, processes, contexts, and social order. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Theoharris, G. (2007). Social justice educational leaders and resistance: Toward a theory of social justice leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 43, 21–58. Thomson, P., Hall, C., & Jones, K. (2013). Towards educational change leadership as a discursive practice – or should all school leaders read Foucault? International Journal of Leadership in Education, 16(2), 155–172. Trujillo, T. (2014). The modern cult of efficiency: Intermediary organizations and the new scientific management. Educational Policy, 28(2), 207–232. Trujillo, T. M., Hernández, L. E., Jarrell, T., & Kissell, R. (2014). Community schools as urban district reform: Analyzing Oakland’s policy landscape through oral histories. Urban Education, 49(8), 895–929. Turner, E. O. (2015). Districts’ responses to demographic change: Making sense of race, class, and immigration in political and organizational context. American Educational Research Journal, 52(1), 4–39. Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Verger, A. & Moschetti, M. (2016). Public-private partnerships in education: Exploring different models and policy options. New York: Open Society Foundations. Available at: https://ddd. uab.cat/pub/worpap/2016/174585/pubpripar_a2016.pdf Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ward, S. (2012). Neoliberalism and the global restructuring of knowledge and education. New York: Routledge. Warren, M. R. (2005). Communities and schools: A new view of urban education reform. Harvard Educational Review, 75(2), 133–173.

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7 Governing and Governance of Schools as Organizations Catherine Farrell

INTRODUCTION The way in which education is provided and schools are governed varies in different places. The approach adopted is dependent on the role of the state in different countries and this role is influenced by political values and judgements about how services, including education, should be provided. In England and Wales, schools are governed by governing bodies and it is these organizations which form the focus of this chapter. As public organizations providing education services, the role of governors and governing bodies is central to the organization of effective schools in which pupils are successful. Theoretically, headteachers, as ‘chief executives’, are accountable to their governing bodies and it is the role of these organizations to govern schools. Governors decide how schools should operate strategically and leadership in that arena is firmly their responsibility. For effective governance and accountability, governors need to challenge

and scrutinize the information given to them by headteachers and (Office for Public Management and The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, 2004). The issue arises as to how these relationships play out in practice. The formally designated role of headteachers is to put the strategy decided by their governing bodies into place. There is, therefore, an official separation between the role of governors as strategists and that of the staff of schools, who are responsible for the implementation of these strategic plans. The chapter focuses on governing and the governance of schools as organizations. It is divided into four parts. The first outlines the theoretical and conceptual background to governance and the principles associated with it. In the second section, different approaches to school governance are presented. The third part focuses on governance and the performance of schools. Reviewing a range of evidence, the fourth sectionexamines governance in practice using key governance activities which take place in school,

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including the headteacher’s report, and also the practices of accountability as these are important for effective governance. The chapter concludes that accountability within school governing bodies can be undermined by managed and staged performances. This finding has important implications for governing bodies and governors as those who have responsibility for governing may not be as involved in strategy and leadership as they should be. This finding is relevant within the context of UK school governing bodies and has wider implications for the governing boards and bodies which exist across many public and third sector organizations in the UK and internationally.

GOVERNANCE, GOVERNING AND GOVERNING BODIES With the shift from services directly provided by the government to those delivered by other agencies, which has been taking place in the UK and in many other countries since the 1980s, new forms of governance and governing have been put in place (Newman, 2005). This shift has meant that politicians, previously held directly responsible and accountable for many public services, have been displaced and many of these services are now governed by other agencies, often directly involving citizens (John, 2009). Bevir and Trentman (2007, p. 2) refer to this changing governance as the ‘new governance which refers specifically to changes in the nature and role of the state following the neoliberal reforms of the public sector in the 1980s and 1990s. Typically, these reforms are said to have led to a shift from a hierarchic bureaucracy toward a greater use of markets, quasi-markets and networks.’ Bevir and Trentman (2007, p. 7) argue that ‘a concern with governance more or less entails a rejection of the idea that the state has a topdown, one-way relationship of power over a population. It encourages us, rather, to think

about the ways in which forms of power are constructed in part through the activity of organizations and individuals in civil society.’ As service delivery has changed to these new forms of organization, there is ‘a concern to ensure that these other actors continue to be held accountable’ (Bevir and Trentman, 2007 p. 2). Bevir’s (2013, p. 1) definition of governance as the ‘new theories and practices of governing and the dilemmas to which they give rise’ raises the possibility of issues which can arise in relation to governance and this chapter focuses on a number of these. The board model of governance in the public, private and third sector institutions is prevalent across the UK and internationally. This model separates those responsible for the overall conduct of institutions from those responsible for their day-to-day operation and is widely used in the goverance of schools. The governing board, which is normally constituted by individuals from various backgrounds and with a range of different kinds of expertise, is primarily responsible for the overall conduct and governance of the school as an organization and its strategic position in the medium and long term. Across many boards, the person with responsibility for the proper function of the institution on a day-to-day basis is typically referred to as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), or Chief Officer (CO), and, in the school context, the headteacher (although increasingly the term CEO or CO is used), and is normally a member of the board. Models of corporate governance are relevant to the governance of schools. First is agency theory, where the owners of an organization are separated from those who manage it. Thus ‘agency theory sees corporate governance arrangements as another means to ensure that management acts in the best interests of shareholders’ (Cornforth, 2003, p. 7). This type of board, therefore, focuses on compliance and checking that managers are focusing on the tasks identified for them by the board. The second model of board leadership is more closely aligned to the existence of a partnership

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between the management and the board and this model is based on stewardship theory. Here, the assumption is that ‘managers want to do a good job and will act as effective stewards of an organisation’s resources. … The main function of the board is not to ensure managerial complicance or conformance, but to improve organisational performance. The role of the board is primarily strategic, to work with management to improve strategy and add value to top decisions’ (Cornforth, 2003, p. 8). This approach is in contrast to the agency approach as the board is not about monitoring but is more focused on adding value. The third approach is based on stakeholder theory. Here, boards are made up of those who have an interest or stake in the organization. As Cornforth (2003, p. 9) highlights, ‘by incorporating different stakeholders on boards, it is expected that organisations will be more likely to respond to broader social interests than the narrrow interests of one group’. Under the stakeholder model, the relationship ‘with the manager can either be of the principal-agent kind or of the stewardship kind. It would be contingent on the way that manager was viewed, the alignment of the managers and the board and the concern about any asymmetries in the knowledge of the managers and that of the board’ (James et al., 2010, p. 12). The governing board features in many organizations and services and these are based on the range of theories outlined above. While the existence of the owners and managers of organizations is not directly applicable within the context of public organizations, the board model, which separates those who lead the organization from those who manage it, is prominent. The approach to governance is dependent on the role adopted by the board – whether this approach is as a scrutinizer of management or as a partner. In education, the board is the school governing body, while in health, the board is the health board and for the Fire and Rescue Service in Wales, the board is the Fire and Rescue Authority and in Scotland it is also a board. In England, there

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has been a shift in some areas and there is now an elected Commissioner in place with responsibility for this service. This trend is quite a recent one. Third sector and voluntary organizations also have boards, which may be called ‘trustee boards’ or non-profit boards or housing association boards, with members referred to as ‘trustees’. Private companies also have boards, and in this sector, they are called boards of directors. In relation to their membership, some of these boards have members directly elected to them, such as parents on governing bodies, or they may be indirectly elected, for example elected local government councillors can sit on school governing bodies and on the Fire and Rescue Authority in Wales. Some members are appointed, and these include what are termed ‘public appointments’ and are put in place by government. Individuals apply for these positions and some are then selected to undertake the role. Some members of the health boards are appointees, as are members of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Board. A further issue with regard to boards and their governance is that some boards reward their members with a payment and some do not. There are no payments for members of school governing bodies but there are for some members of the health board, such as those appointed to it (as opposed to executive members), and the Fire and Rescue Board in Scotland, for example. Many boards reward members with token payments but some boards offer members higher fees, particularly where they undertake specific duties, for example, chairs of the board. A number of members of boards receive no payment at all and, apart from the parents who sit on school governing bodies, these will also include patients on the health board. There are a number of complexities and peculiarities of different boards. With regard to their governance, which of the models of governance do different boards adopt? James and Sheppard (2014) highlight that the stakeholder board is central in the governance

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of many schools in substantial numbers of European countries, in South Africa and in New Zealand. A key issue, then, is the extent to which these and other boards operate on the basis of the principal-agent or the stewardship model. This issue is examined in terms of the practice of governing in the fourth section below. Given the significance of the board’s responsibility for governance, specifically for the leadership and strategy in public, private, voluntary and third sector organizations, it is surprising that boards have not received a great deal of attention from researchers and academics. In relation to private companies, there has been a longstanding debate focusing on the alleged dominance of managers in determining the strategy of companies. It can be traced to the work of Berle and Means, whose book The Modern Corporation and Private Property was published in 1932. More sophisticated research has of course taken place, including McNulty and Pettigrew (1999), who focused on the strategic role of the board. The authors did not find much evidence that these boards were effective in terms of the level of their involvement in strategic decisions. At times of crisis, for example, the financial crisis of the late 2000s, the role of the board in reviewing and assessing risk was the subject of the Cadbury Report (Cadbury, 1992), in which a new governance code was introduced. One of the key elements of this was the need for boards to ‘think deeply, thoroughly and on a continuing basis about their overall tasks and the implications of these for the roles of their individual members. Absolutely key in this endeavour are the leadership of the chair(man) of a board, the support given to and by the CEO, and the frankness and openness of mind with which issues are discussed and tackled by all directors’ (Cadbury, 1992, p. 5). It is crisis which frequently has attracted interest in governance in the public sector as well. For example, the activities at a hospital in Mid-Staffordshire in England, which came to light a decade later, highlighted several

issues, including governance. The inquiry into the activities at the hospital reported that, in particular, ‘there was a management failure to remedy the deficiencies in staff and governance that had existed for a long time, including an absence of effective clinical governance; there was a lack of urgency in the Board’s approach to some problems, such as those in governance’ (Francis, 2013, p. 13). Clearly, then, there have been weaknesses in governance in both public and private sectors, an issue deemed central to the delivery of better services. There has been a focus on governance in the third and voluntary sector as well. Cornforth and Brown (2013) highlights that, as these sectors have become more involved in the delivery of public services from the 1980s, the levels of scrutiny of their boards has increased: ‘paralleling developments in the private and public sectors, the spotlight has fallen on governance arrangements and whether they are adequate to ensure that non-profit organisations retain their independence and are effective, responsible and accountable for their actions’ (Cornforth, 2013, p. 1). Clearly, there are increasing demands on governing boards to improve their governance and oversight, particularly in organizations which are delivering public services. In relation to school governing and governance, not surprisingly governments have examined various aspect of the role of governing bodies in the UK. As a devolved service, education and the improvement of governance falls within the remit of the four governments in the UK and there has been a different policy reform agenda in each of these. In England, the agenda has focused on empowering schools to be more independent from local authorities with the creation of academies and free schools with their own governance system (Baxter, 2016). These schools ‘were intended to provide parents and community groups with the ultimate in choice – their own school, established and run by stakeholders’ (Baxter, 2016, p. 28). While

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there have been a number of controversies in relation to both academies and free schools, the direction of travel for the governance of schools in England has been market focused (Baxter, 2016), with governing bodies recruiting more members with specific skills, usually business skills. In Wales, this agenda has not been very prominent and, while the 22 local authorities continue to be central in both education and school governance, the Welsh Government has also invested in a more regional agenda whereby four regional consortia have been charged with improving schools and their governance (Farrell, 2014; Governors Wales, 2017) without being specific in terms of aligning membership more closely to business or professional skills. In recent guidance published in England, and therefore only affecting schools in England as a result of the devolution of education policy-making to the four jurisdictions of the UK, three core functions are outlined for the school governing boards of all types of school, including academy and maintained schools and also schools which are governed by multi-academy chains. These are: • ‘Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction; • Holding executive leaders to account for their educational performance of the organisation and its pupils and the performance management of staff; • Overseeing the financial performance of the organisation and making sure its money is well spent’ (Department for Education, 2017a, p. 9).

The regulations which relate to Wales emphasize the strategic role of governing bodies in the running of schools. This role is elaborated on, whereby: ‘a strategic role means that the governing body decides what they want the school to achieve and set the strategic framework for getting there. It should establish the strategic framework by: • Setting aims and objectives for the school; • Adopting policies for achieving those aims and objectives;

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• Setting targets for achieving those aims and objectives; and • Reviewing the progress towards achieving the aims and objectives’ (Welsh Government, 2016).

Baxter (2016, p. 23) highlights that governing bodies were ‘first introduced to ensure financial probity in schools in order to reassure educational philanthropists (and the Church) that their money was being put to good use’. This aspect continues to be an element of the role of governors – to oversee a range of activities within schools, including their finances and other aspects such as strategy and leadership. Headteachers are formally accountable to governing bodies for the ways in which they implement the strategic framework. It is the practice that at each meeting of the governing body, the headteacher gives a report. It is this feature which meets the formal accountability requirement of headteachers to governing bodies. Getting better governance is central to effective schools. ‘Good’ or effective governance is dependent on the existence and effective operation of the following six principles, as stated in The Good Governance Standard for Public Services (Office for Public Management and The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, 2004): 1 The organization’s purpose and on outcomes for citizens and users. 2 Performing effectively in clearly defined functions and roles. 3 Promoting values for the whole organization and demonstrating the values of good governance through behaviour. 4 Taking informed, transparent decisions and managing risk. 5 Developing the capacity and capability of the governing body to be effective. 6 Engaging stakeholders and making accountability real.

Effective governance relates to all aspects of schools and their governing bodies in their leadership. Accountability is one of the elements of good governance listed above, and as the body responsible for schools, governing

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bodies must be accountable to a range of stakeholders for their decisions. Good governance is not simply restricted to effective accountability; it also embodies other elements, including taking informed decisions, scrutiny and elements such as the citizen focus of its service. In the case of schools, good governance is about the effective governance of the school for the benefit of its pupils. With the introduction of a range of reforms since the Education Reform Act in 1988, school governing bodies have become central in the provision of education. The democratic control of education, originally in the form of local authorities and their education departments, has been reduced and the role of central government, the private sector and others involved in school governing has been strengthened (Baxter, 2016). Governing bodies are now in a key leadership role (Simkins, 2012). James et  al. (2011) argue that, to reflect this, school inspections now include a much greater focus on the effectiveness of the governing body as a leadership unit for the school and also place greater responsibility on governors for school performance. This change has occurred in both England and Wales. Evidence from Dutch schools, where boards have been involved and are part of the school inspection process, indicates a positive impact on school improvement and performance (Ehren et al., 2016). School governing bodies are part of the shifting forms of the provision of public services which involve a range of providers (Flynn and Asquer, 2017) and it is to the membership of these bodies that this chapter now moves on to consider.

APPROACHES TO GOVERNANCE IN THE SCHOOL ORGANIZATION Stakeholder Approaches to Governance There are two contrasting perspectives on the constitution or membership of the boards of

public sector institutions: the stakeholder model and the skills-based model. The basis of the stakeholder model is that public sector institutions should be governed by those who have an interest in them. In contrast, the skills-based model of board constitution is based on the notion that institutions are best governed by those who have the ‘requisite’ skills, with an expectation that these will be a useful asset in the leadership of the organization. In relation to schools and the type of governance model, an important date is 1976, when a major reform of school governing bodies took place in England and Wales. At  this time, governing bodies were re-constituted to include a range of stakeholder interests, including parents, teachers and co-opted members. Before this, the membership of school governing bodies was drawn from councillors who were elected to local authorities and the reform of governing bodies was driven by a view that a wider group of stakeholders should be represented on boards. There was also dissatisfaction about councillor governors at this time in terms of their attendance at school governing body meetings and the extent to which they reviewed and questioned those within schools (Taylor, 1977). Changing the group of member interests on boards was thought to widen the involvement of governors in schools to reflect their various interests. With some variations over the years, the 1977 reform of governing bodies continues to exist in Wales and this is called the stakeholder model of governance. This approach embodies the idea that schools are governed by those with a stake or interest in them. The membership is grounded in legislation and is determined by the number of pupils attending schools, and it will broadly include school staff, parents, local authority-nominated governors, community membership and headteachers, if they choose to be a member. In England, reflecting the more market-based government policy agenda, there has been a shift towards the skills-based approach.

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Ranson (2008, p. 206) argues that changes to the stakeholder model were driven by marketbased reforms that were introduced during the 1980s and 1990s: the ‘reconstituting of education governance mediates a direction of change for the public sphere of education, indicating that control of education is seeping from the public to the corporate sector and that traditional forms of local governance are steadily eroded’. At this time, and to reflect the more market-focused agenda, co-opted members were introduced to governing bodies to bring in wider interests, in particular, the business community. Thody (1994, p. 22) has drawn attention to some advice given to governors about their role, namely that ‘schools need to run like companies with the governing bodies being boards of directors and the headteachers the managing directors’. More recently, changing ownership of schools, including the rise of academy and ‘free’ schools in England, where private companies and other interests are in ownership and management roles, has also led to changing governance arrangements with many schools ‘now controlled by providers who bring exogenous interests to the public provision of education: defining the concern for school provision is an “external” interest in business, or profit or a denominational interest’ (Ranson, 2008, p. 206). Higham (2016, p. 406) argues that ‘academies have devolved school governance and site ownership to corporate trusts’ and away from local authorities, which traditionally were a key player involved in the governance of schools.

Skills-Based Approaches There has been a recent challenge to the stakeholder model of the school governing body in England with the publication of regulations for the constitution of school governing bodies (Department for Education, 2017b). These regulations and guidance to local authorities and schools emphasize the importance of the skills governors should

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have and also give a strong steer towards smaller governing bodies made up of members with the particular range of skills required by it. While having regard to the skills that governors have and keeping the number of members low, this guidance may not impact on the stakeholder model of governance. It will only be where parents and other stakeholders are deemed not to have the relevant skills and, in their place, governors with a specific skill set are added. The regulations state that the: governing body must only appoint someone they believe has the skills to contribute to the effective governance and success of the school. Their decisions should be informed by interviews and references and made in the light of the skills that governing bodies identify that they need. (Department for Education, 2017b, p. 4)

This quotation certainly indicates a direction of travel away from the stakeholder approach towards the appointment of new governors who have been identified as having a particular skill-set and who may have been interviewed for the role. It is possible that these aspects could undermine and reduce the opportunity of some individuals applying to take on the role, particularly those who ‘self identify’ as not having the required skill-set. It may also make it more difficult to recruit governors in the first place as a consequence of the ‘application process’, which some might regard as too onerous. Research into the recruitment of governors by Ranson, Arnott, McKeown, Martin and Smith (2005) certainly highlighted issues relating to the difficulties of recruiting governors in certain areas. This research also highlighted difficulties about giving those who choose to undertake the governor role as a volunteer, unpaid role too much to do. Sheard and Avis (2011, p. 100) also highlight that ‘historically, recruiting and retaining parents and other members of the local community as school governors was problematic and stakeholder and multi-agency representation was minimal and inadequate’.

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In Wales, where academies have not been introduced, the stakeholder model of governance continues to operate. As education and school governance are both devolved to the National Assembly for Wales, there has not been the same attempt to force schools in Wales to adopt a skills-based system. There has been a review of school governance undertaken in Wales and this was a ‘Task and Finish’ group set up by the Welsh Government to advise the Minister on improving governance with the ultimate aim of school improvement (Farrell, 2013). The report made a number of recommendations and the Welsh Government consulted widely on several policy options during 2016 and 2017 and once considered, may introduce new policy governors. A focus on the membership of governing bodies reflects tensions around the legitimacy of the involvement of different individuals as part of this civil society in governing. Haikio (2012, p. 417) argues: in a governance context, all participants face novel issues of legitimacy. Common distinctions between input legitimacy … and output legitimacy … frame legitimacy as an issue for government. In a governance structure, legitimacy is required not only of the governing system but also of participants.

Here, the issue is the rationale for determining the membership of governing bodies. In essence, in the context of schools as organizations, who is ‘entitled’ to a seat on the governing board? Is it those who have a stake in the school or those with an identified set of skills? Which of these approaches provides and delivers an effective model of governance? So far, the focus has been on the two approaches to governance – skills and stakeholder – which have been presented as being at opposite ends of the spectrum. In reality, there may be situations in which those who have a stake in the school also have an identified set of skills. Farrell (2013) referred to this as the ‘stakeholder+’ model and included this as a recommendation for Welsh

Government to consider in their reform of governing bodies. What are the key arguments supporting the stakeholder approach when it was put in place in 1980? Are these arguments no longer relevant? The stakeholder approach to school governing in England and Wales originated with the Taylor Report (Taylor, 1977) and the subsequent Education Act 1980 and Education No. 2 Act 1986. The genesis of the Taylor Report was rooted in both the diversity of school governing arrangements in England and Wales and concerns about the performance of certain school governing bodies. Bringing in a wider group of stakeholder interests was intended to broaden the diversity of voices around the school as it shifted away from a membership based solely on local elected members. Forty years on, it is now the case that it is the stakeholder model of governance itself which is the focus of significant pressure for change in England, with the skills agenda featuring prominently, and some focus on reforming governing bodies in Wales as well.

GOVERNANCE AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT: DOES GOVERNANCE MATTER? The focus of this chapter so far has been on modes of governance and different approaches to the membership of governing bodies. It is worth reflecting on why there is a need for governance to be effective in schools and this leads directly to pupils and their achievements. In their reflections on developments in school governance, Connolly and James (2011, p. 503) highlight that, in England, the ‘pressures to reform governance arrangements arise from dissatisfaction with school performance … in particular, there is a major concern about the persistent failure of children from socially and economically disadvantaged groups’. In relation to improving governance, there is

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strong link between good governance and effective schools (Ranson, Arnott et  al., 2005; Ranson, Farrell, Peim and Smith, 2005). Effective schools are those which have successful outcomes for their pupils and these outcomes might include pupil achievements in external examinations and assessments or high pupil value-added scores. Outcomes may also include achievements in sport, arts, science and other areas of the curriculum. Ranson, Farrell et al.’s (2005) study of governing bodies in Wales focused on different types of governing body from the ones which were involved with questioning and scrutiny and those which were not within schools across different areas of Wales, including ‘rural’, ‘industrial valley’, ‘urban’ and ‘border’. On the basis of their research, the authors identified four types of governing boards: deliberative forums, sounding boards, executive boards and governing bodies. In the research, schools have been identified as falling into one of these types on the basis of the ‘relationship of power between the headteacher and the chair of governors and the extent of corporateness of the governing body in its deliberation and decision making’ (Ranson, Farrell et al., 2005, p. 310), as well as the extent to which the governing body operated as a collection of individuals or an integrated board. The evidence from this research indicates that of the 72 schools which were part of the research, roughly one-third fall into the forum category, by which governors are led and directed by headteachers as the professional lead within the governing body. Another 30% fall into the sounding board group, by which ‘governors see their role as providing a sounding board for the strategies and policies provided by the headteacher as principal professional’ (Ranson, Farrell et  al., 2005, p. 311). In the final 30% of governing bodies an executive board model exists, where a ‘partnership has developed between the governors and the school and, in particular, between the head and the chair with the former leading “primus inter pares”’. In this

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type of board, the governing body takes the lead on various aspects, including budgets, staffing and buildings, while professional education colleagues lead on curriculum and related matters. Very few schools operated on the basis of the governing board approach in which governors lead and direct the school, set the aims and objectives and hand over the responsibility for the delivery of this to the headteacher and the other executives in the school. A key finding from this research in relation to the approach to school governance and school improvement is that those schools with governing bodies, executive boards and, to a lesser extent, forums govern in the highest performance schools. Those schools with governing bodies that act as deliberative forums are those with the lowest performance. This element of the research focused on primary schools and of the 39 schools involved in this aspect of the research, the researchers found an effective governing body in only six schools. This equates to 8% of the schools which were involved in the research. This is an alarming finding in view of the fact that this is the approach to governance which is set out in legislation and which is supposed to operate in schools. Governing bodies which operated as governing boards were deemed to be the most effective type. The key features of these bodies include scrutiny from governors, and questions and challenges directed to the chief executives, i.e., headteachers. Bodies which acted as ‘executive boards’ were identified as ‘business like’ and were also effective in their role as governing bodies in terms of their impact on the performance of the school overall. Those schools with governing bodies as ‘supporters’ clubs’ were not deemed to be effective as they were not focused on driving improvements in practices which impacted directly on pupil performance and success. Wilkins (2017) has recently argued that the demands for better school governance and more effective governing bodies in England have been driven by a desire to improve

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governing bodies so that they are better at the performance management of headteachers and other school leaders. In addition, the focus on governing bodies is also about monitoring governors more and disciplining them when they are deemed to be not fulfilling their roles. The more demanding framework introduced by Ofsted in England in 2012 in relation to monitoring the contribution made by governors has placed huge demands on them in view of the fact that they undertake these roles on a voluntary basis (Ofsted, 2012; Baxter, 2017). In fact, the more demanding the role becomes, the greater difficulties there will be in relation to the recruitment of all types of governors. James et  al. (2011, p. 416) argue that: the responsibilities of school governing bodies, which have grown over time and continue to do so, together with their onerous nature, complexity, and shifting nature, are significant pressures on governing bodies. These pressures in turn have implications for the recruitment of governing bodies, the capabilities required, the characteristics of school governors and governing processes.

As evidenced in this research, the recruitment of governors was especially difficult in schools which were located in areas with the lowest socio-economic status. Further, the task of good governance itself was deemed more demanding in schools which were the lowest and also those which were the highest in terms of their performance. In summary, therefore, effective governance is an important element of a good school and has a direct impact on pupils. School governing and the governing body have become more central in terms of responsibility for schools as local authorities have become less involved. It is now up to governors to ensure that schools are effective: clearly, inspectors are looking at this when they undertake their inspections. The role of school governors has increased and, as raised early in the chapter, governors are not paid for their role. While this may not directly be an issue, expecting more from those who are volunteering can be difficult. It may mean that there are fewer

people willing to take on the governance role and this would impact on schools in the future.

GOVERNING AND GOVERNANCE IN PRACTICE To what extent is there evidence of effective governance in schools? There has been some research about how boards such as governing bodies operate in practice. Cornforth’s (2003) research focuses on boards across public and non-profit organizations and, specifically, the role of the board. The review includes empirical studies on the operation of boards in practice. In an edited collection focusing on non-profit governance (Cornforth and Brown, 2013), many authors draw attention to the multi-level nature of governance arrangements in which partnerships and collaborations with other organizations are a part. Farrell’s (2005) research focuses on the operation of school governing bodies in practice and the extent to which they are involved in strategic activities, including leadership and decision making. Key findings indicate that executives, including headteachers and others within the staff of a school, are at least as involved as governing bodies and individual governors. This finding is not unique in either education or in the public sector – McNulty and Pettigrew’s (1999) study of the operation of boards of directors in the private sector also indicates that board members could be more involved in strategic and leadership activities. As evidenced in the Dutch study, the involvement of board members in activities such as school inspections is an important part of the improvement agenda (Ehren et al., 2016), and therefore the need to get governors more involved in governing and also in scrutiny will be important. There has been a focus on governors and inspection in England. Baxter (2016) puts forward the argument that as the UK public management reforms were put in place,

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the impact on school governing bodies was a change in accountability – in particular, to those who were inspecting schools. With the re-launch of the inspection body Ofsted, the format of the early inspections involved governing bodies right from the start. The 2012 School Inspection Framework outlines a clear need for governing bodies to be strategic in their leadership of schools and for them to challenge and support schools (Ofsted, 2012). More recently, under the Common Inspection Framework (Ofsted, 2015), governors, together with others in leadership roles in schools, are expected to be part of and promote areas such as vision, comparative performance and promoting the best outcomes for pupils and creating a successful learning environment. Research conducted by Balarin et  al. (2008) and James et al. (2011) indicate some of the challenges school governors face, including the monitoring of standards and the related area of pupil performance, and also issues relating to teaching and learning. For those who work outside education, in particular, understanding and being able to scrutinize performance information can be especially difficult. There is evidence too that it can be difficult for those, including parents, to fully participate as effective governors as language, particularly the use of acronyms, can serve to exclude them (Farrell and Jones, 2000). Ng’s (2013) study of parent governors in Hong Kong also highlights issues relating to their marginalization by others on the governing board and the difficulties associated with trust between school staff and parents. In a study of governing bodies undertaken by Farrell and Law (1999), while there was awareness among governors of their role in the strategy and leadership of schools, most headteachers and chairs of governing bodies were not fully operating on this basis of leadership within the board, with the day-today management being the responsibility of senior school leaders. More recently, Farrell et  al.’s (2017) study of a number of governing bodies and their operating practices

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found that some activities undermined the operation of good governance. These include the tabling of important information either in meetings or just before meetings, giving governors insufficient time to fully scrutinize this information. Other practices include the timing of meetings, whereby sub-committees can be scheduled just before the main governors’ meeting, which, again, can undermine the time for scrutiny because governors know that their time in the committee is limited. Essentially, the principles of good governance can be undermined by headteachers within schools (Office for Public Management and The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, 2004). It is therefore the responsibility of governing bodies that they undertake the governance of schools appropriately. A recent ethnographic study of governance in practice in four maintained schools in England (Young, 2017) reported a number of key findings. First, that governing bodies are more concerned with overseeing and ensuring that schools achieve the aims which have been set out for them than setting out the strategic direction of the school in the first place. Second, there is evidence that the inputs of those with ‘educational knowledge’ is valued more than those with ‘lay knowledge’. This is an important finding in view of the stakeholder model of governance which reflects the interests and inputs of a range of members, including those with ‘educational knowledge’ and also ‘lay knowledge’. This could seek to undermine further the contribution of those outside education to school governance. The governing bodies of schools in many countries clearly have responsibilities for leading and directing schools, for scrutinizing and challenging managers and others working in the school, and having to undertake these activities will be problematic and often challenging for governing bodies which operate on the basis of the stewardship model of governance. Stewardship is focused on partnership and on governors and senior school

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staff collaborating to deliver effective education for those within the school. The need for governing bodies to be fully accountable for their responsibilities and governance is more in keeping with the principal-agent approach. In situations where governing bodies need to scrutinize and monitor schools, informing them of their need to shift away from the stewardship to the principal-agent approach may resolve some of the challenges and problems which exist within school governing and governance. This shift may be difficult for some governors and governing bodies but in a system in which scrutinizing and monitoring are key, then changes to improve governance may be what is needed. These may involve training for governors and education around their roles and responsibilities. However, the challenge to operate more on the principal-agent model may be too much for some governors who see their role as more of a partner and a support for schools. It may also reduce the pool of willing governors who do not wish to take on monitoring and scrutiny functions in a role which is voluntary. Governing and the governance of schools is the focus of this chapter. Ensuring effective governance is a challenge for many involved in delivering education as those who have responsibilities have to be accountable for their governance. Good governance is associated with good performance and getting the governance right is the core role of many involved in education, in the wider public services and in the private and voluntary sectors. For example, Ingley and Van der Walt’s (2001) study of boards of directors in New Zealand drew attention to the need for directors on boards to be more strategic in their activities and more focused on driving up performance. Zhang’s (2010) study of companies in Norway indicates that an important part of developing the role of the board member is the diversity of the information upon which their decision making is based. Information, therefore, is key to governors undertaking the role effectively. Clearly,

where boards need to be strategic, where they need to monitor and scrutinize performance, governors need to be fully aware of their role and of the principal-agent approach to governance.

CONCLUSION Securing effective governance in schools is an important part of the improvement of schools and ensuring that pupils get the best possible outcomes. Getting the right membership of the board, comprising people who fully understand their governance role, is important. For those boards which have key strategic and monitoring roles, ensuring that governors are able to undertake the challenging and questioning of headteachers and other executives is key to effective governing and governance. This chapter has highlighted the options in relation to the stakeholder and skillsfocused boards and has drawn attention to the direction of travel towards the improvement of governance, which is widely seen as a shift towards bringing in more people with ‘skills’. This may serve to undermine the involvement of those who have been identified as not having these skills. Within the chapter, the association between governance and school improvement and performance has been reflected on and the involvement of the inspectorate in scrutinizing this relationship has been considered. Finally, the chapter has reviewed governance in practice, highlighting evidence to suggest that school governance may not be as effective as it could be. Making governors better at governance continues to be part of the improvement agenda within schools, particularly given the trend towards academies and other more independent forms of schools as organizations. As highlighted throughout the chapter, there is clearly a need for boards to fully understand the nature of their role.

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REFERENCES balarin, M., S. Brammer, C. R. James and M. McCormack, 2008. The School Governance Study. London: Business in the Community. Baxter, J., 2016. School Governance: Policy, Politics and Practices. Bristol: Policy Press. Baxter, J., 2017. School governor regulation in England’s changing education landscape. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 45(1), 20–39. Berle, A. and G. Means, 1932. The Modern Corporation and Private Property. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Bevir, M., 2013. The Sage Handbook of ­Governance. London: Sage. Bevir, M. and F. Trentman, 2007. Introduction: Consumption and citizenship in the new governance. In M. Bevir and F. Trentman (eds), Governance, Consumers and Citizens: Agency and Resistance in Contemporary Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cadbury, A., 1992. The UK Corporate Governance Code. The Cadbury Report. London: Financial Reporting Council. Connolly, M. and C. James, 2011. Reflections on developments in school governance: International perspectives on school governing under pressure. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 39(4), 501–509. Cornforth, C., 2003. The changing context of governance: Emerging issues and paradoxes. In C. Cornforth (ed.), The Governance of Public and Non-Profit Organisations. London: Routledge. Cornforth, C. and W.A. Brown, 2013. NonProfit Governance Research – the Need for Innovative Perspectives and Approaches. In C. Cornforth and W.A. Brown (Eds), NonProfit Governance. London: Routledge. Department for Education, 2017a. Governance Handbook for Academies, Multi-Academy Trusts and Maintained Schools. London: Department for Education. Department for Education, 2017b. The Constitution of Governing Bodies of Maintained Schools: Statutory Guidance for Governing Bodies of Maintained Schools and Local Authorities in England. London: Department for Education.

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Ehren, M. C. M., M. E. Honingh, E. H. Hooge and J. O’Hara, 2016. Changing school board governance in primary education through school inspections. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 44(2), 205–223. Farrell, C. M., 2005. Governance in the public sector: The involvement of the board. Public Administration, 83(1), 89–110. Farrell, C. M., 2013. School Governance: Task and Finish Group Report (Chaired). November. Cardiff: Welsh Government. Available from: http://csp.southwales.ac.uk/media/ files/documents/2014-09-26/140919school-governance-report-en.pdf Farrell, C. M., 2014. School governance in Wales. Local Government Studies, 40(6), 923–937. Farrell, C. M. and J. Jones, 2000. Evaluating stakeholder participation in public services: Parents and schools. Policy and Politics, 28(2), 251–262. Farrell, C. M. and J. Law, 1999. The accountability of school governing bodies. Education Management and Administration, 27(1), 5–15. Farrell, C. M., J. Morris and S. Ranson, 2017. The theatricality of accountability: The operation of governing bodies in schools. Public Policy and Administration, 32(3), 214–231. Flynn, N. and A. Asquer, 2017. Public Sector Management (7th edn). London: Sage. Francis, R., 2013. The Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry. The Francis Report. London: The Stationery Office. Governors Wales, 2017. www.governorswales. org.uk/faqs/2013/10/17/what-are-regionalconsortia/, accessed on 12 February 2018. Haikio, L., 2012. From innovation to convention: Legitimate citizen participation in local governance. Local Government Studies, 38(4), 415–435. Higham, R., 2016. Who owns our schools? An analysis of the governance of free schools in England. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 42(3), 404–422. Ingley, C. B. and T. Van der Walt, 2001. The strategic board: The changing role of directors in developing and maintaining corporate capability. Corporate Governance, 9(3), 174–185. James, C., S. Brammer, M. Connolly, M. Fertig, J. James and J. Jones, 2010. The Hidden

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Givers: A Study of School Governing Bodies in England. Bath: Bath University. James, C., S. Brammer, M. Connolly, M. Fertig, J. James and J. Jones, 2011. School governing bodies in England under pressure: The effects of socio-economic context and school performance. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 39(4), 414–433. James, C. and P. Sheppard, 2014. The governing of international schools: The Implications of ownership and profit motive. School Leadership and Management (formerly School Organisation), 34(1), 2–20. First published online, 16 July 2013, DOI: 10.1080/13632434, 2013.813457. John, P., 2009. Citizen governance: Where it came from, where it’s going. In C. Dunrose, S. Greasley and L. Richardson (eds), Changing Local Governance, Changing Citizens. Bristol: Policy Press. McNulty, T. and A. Pettigrew, 1999. Strategists on the board. Organization Studies, 20(1), 47–74. Newman, J., 2005. Remaking Governance: Peoples, Politics and the Public Sphere. Bristol: Policy Press. Ng, S. W., 2013. Including parents in school governance: Rhetoric or reality? International Journal of Educational Management, 27(6), 667–680. Ofsted, 2012. The Framework for School Inspections. London: Ofsted. Ofsted, 2015. The Common Inspection Framework: Education, Skills and Early Years. London: Ofsted. Office for Public Management and The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, 2004. The Good Governance Standard for Public Services. London: CIPFA. Ranson, S., 2008. The changing governance of education. Educational Management and Administration, 36(2), 201–219.

Ranson, S., M. Arnott, P. McKeown, J. Martin and P. Smith, 2005. The participation of volunteer citizens in school governance. Education Review, 57(3), 357–371. Ranson, S., C. M. Farrell, N. Peim and P. Smith, 2005. Does governance matter for school improvement? School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 16(3), 305–325. Sheard, M. and J. Avis, 2011. Schools, governance and community: A next practice intervention. Educational Management and Administration, 39(1), 84–104. Simkins, T., 2012. Understanding school leadership and management development in England: Retrospect and prospect. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 40(5), 621–640. Taylor, T., 1977. A New Partnership for Our Schools. The Taylor Report. London: The Stationery Office. Available at: www.education england.org.uk/documents/taylortaylor 1977.html Thody, A., 1994. School Governors: Leaders or Followers. London: Longman. Welsh Government, 2016. School Governors’ Guide to the Law. Cardiff: Welsh Government. Available at: http://gov.wales/topics/ educationandskills/schoolshome/fundingschools/school-governance/school govguide/?lang=en (updated 2016). Wilkins, A., 2017. Modernising School Governance: Corporate Planning and Expert Handling in State Education. London: Routledge. Young, H., 2017. Knowledge, experts and accountability in school governing bodies. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 45(1), 40–56. Zhang, P., 2010. Board information and strategic tasks performance. Corporate Governance, 18(5), 473–487.

PART III

Theoretical Perspectives on Schools as Organizations

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8 Structural Perspectives on Schools as Organizations Scott C. Bauer and S. David Brazer

INTRODUCTION Being scholars, readers likely remember what it felt like being picked last for the kickball team at recess. This sensation explains our first reactions when the editors of this volume asked us if we would be interested in contributing a chapter on structural models. Structural models are the dregs of organization theory, the uncoordinated non-athlete who must be allowed to play, the example of what not to do. They are barely tolerated in organization theory discussions, believed to be passé, overly simplistic, unsophisticated and generally limited in helping to describe, explain and predict important phenomena in organizational life. Structural analysis seems to belong to a bygone era, a time when functionalist models were helpful in explaining something of what was going on in organizations as societies moved from an agrarian into an industrial age, but ill-suited, at best, for twenty-first century thought on what makes organizations tick. What do these

models have to offer us today? Quite a bit, actually. The term ‘structure’ refers to the form of the organization. As Pugh (1997, p. 1) explained: ‘All organizations have to make provision for continuing activities directed toward the achievement of given aims. Regularities in activities such as task allocation, coordination and supervision are established which constitute the organization’s structure.’ Bush (1997, p. 42) describes it this way: ‘Structure refers to the formal pattern of relationships between people in organizations. It expresses the ways in which individuals relate to each other in order to achieve organizational objectives.’ Rules, policies and procedures that define how actors work, who has authority and over what they have authority, how work is controlled and participants are held accountable, and how individuals and groups are arranged vertically (hierarchy) and laterally (departmentalization) are all indicators of structure. In fact, for a field such as organization theory, in which there is little consensus

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about much of anything, it is a bit astounding that there is so much agreement about what organization structure means, regardless of whether we think these models are important. Structural models have become associated with a select few giants in our field who contributed theories that were, in their time, highly innovative, explanatory and prescient regarding how industrial and other organizations would emerge in the twentieth century. Their thinking is obligatory background for any course in organization theory and/or leadership, and it is arguable that their ‘big ideas’ are as important today as they were a hundred years ago, at least as foundations for understanding contemporary work. Notably, Max Weber’s (2004 [1924]) thoughts on bureaucracy and Frederick Taylor’s (1998 [1911]) principles of scientific management have become virtually synonymous with structural or ‘formal’ models, as Bush (2011) refers to them, the former focusing on the broader design and relationships among actors within the enterprise and the latter outlining a set of operating doctrines that define how to organize jobs efficiently within the firm. Weber’s work, in particular, was so important that Scott (1975, p. 1) marks the translations of his work in the late 1940s as the beginning of the study of organizations as a ‘distinctive field of sociological investigation.’ Taken together, it is reasonable to claim that no two thinkers have had more of an influence on organization theory and practice. Equating structural models with bureaucracy, however, has the effect of fueling the conclusion that such models are deterministic and inflexible. This linkage obscures the question: Where do structures come from? At the heart of the critique of classical structural theories, such as bureaucracy, is the reliance on the assertion that structure emerges solely based on the rational pursuit of clear and agreed-upon goals, a reality few contemporary thinkers find credible. Current models of organization each have their own answer to the puzzle involving who decides what the form of any given organization might be, and

what criteria might be important in arriving at a solution, but they leave us wondering how and why organizations take shape. The formation of schools as organizations has generally been taken for granted. Yet, as society’s demands on schools have evolved over the decades, their structures have been slow to adjust, generating some of the struggles in reform and improvement. Nevertheless, superintendents and principals often tinker with structure as one of the few areas over which they have direct control and might be likely to experience immediate (if sometimes superficial) change. The criteria that govern structural puzzle-solving and guide leaders’ decision-making as they seek organization that ‘works’ has been the subject of much contemporary theorizing, as has explaining the structural adaptations and solutions that appear in schools (e.g., Wahlstrom, Seashore Louis, Leithwood & Anderson, 2010). Questions related to the organizational design of schools (e.g., Bauer, 1998; Bauer & Bogotch, 2006; Bauer, Brazer, Van Lare & Smith, 2013), the degree of centralization or decentralization of decision-making (e.g., Bacharach, Bauer & Shedd, 1988; Murphy & Beck, 1995; Sharpe, 1996; Shedd & Bacharach, 1991), and the distribution of leadership tasks and activities (e.g., Gronn, 2008; Harris, 2008; Spillane, Halverson & Diamond, 2004) have been prominent topics in school reform. Structure, it seems, matters, but if the origins of structure are not yet understood, then a central question for organizing remains. Our purpose in this chapter is to move beyond the notion that structural models inevitably mean bureaucracy (though we will review the main ideas in that theory), and to discuss the complexity theorists and leaders face in determining structural solutions to organizing collective action within schools. We detail how structural concepts such as those embedded in bureaucracy (clear goals, rules and roles, and efficiency) evolved as ideals and were subsequently criticized by what scholars and practitioners

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noticed in daily work, all of which we relate to the development of school structures. As we strive to explain structural origins in schools, we develop a new model that reflects a more organic than stipulated organizational structure that is responsive to varying needs, ranging from keeping a school functioning to improving teaching and learning to building a school community. Organizing happens in educational institutions (such as creating teacher collaborative teams); principals and teachers create order that helps define what is possible when collaborating to achieve goals (such as scheduling team meetings and writing agenda). How this happens, which puzzles must be solved and which seem most daunting to education leaders are important questions for organization theorists and practitioners alike. Simply noting that criteria of rationality and optimization of outcomes do not seem to be at play in the real world of leadership practice may be valid, but it tells us precious little about how superintendents and principals organize work in districts and schools. After a review of the tenets of classical structural theory, our model helps situate thinking on the application of structural thought to the challenge faced by principals as they restructure schools to reach ever-more challenging goals.

CHARACTERISTICS OF STRUCTURAL MODELS As noted, scholars tend to summarize the primary characteristics of structural models of organization as closely aligned with, if not identical to, the tenets of Weber’s bureaucratic form (Bush, 2011; Scott & Davis, 2007). Since it is helpful to appreciate this work and the criticisms leveled against it, we follow suit by summarizing, in this section, the primary features of the bureaucratic form, several of its virtues, and criticisms noted about its application in organizing. We close the section with a brief discussion of Taylor’s principles of

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scientific management, focusing especially on factors in his work that add to the core ideas represented in Weber’s bureaucracy. Weber’s theory was largely descriptive in nature. That is, Weber was an observer of the organizational form emerging around him as societies transitioned from agrarian economies and monarchic governmental systems into industrial economies that spawned larger and more complex organizations with a rising technocratic class. Weber ‘endeavored to understand the changing bases of the social order as more traditional social structure rooted in shared culture, low mobility, and extended kinship ties gave way to a more mobile, differentiated, and impersonal order’ (Scott, 2003, p. xvi). The bureaucratic form developed over many years; Weber was the most authoritative chronicler of its origins (Perrow, 1986). His ‘ideal type’ was offered not as a hope or suggestion of preference, but as a theoretical statement of what the epitome of bureaucracy might look like. Further, Weber had concerns about the emergence of bureaucracy (Perrow, 1986) for reasons we will elaborate below. Weber conceptualized the bureaucratic form as related to the basis of authority associated with relations among actors. He posited three types (Scott & Davis, 2007, p. 47): • Traditional authority – resting on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them • Rational-legal authority – resting on a belief in the ‘legality’ of patterns of normative rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands • Charismatic authority – resting on devotion to the specific and exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him or her.

Each authority type is thought to yield particular organizational forms and administrative structures, with rational-legal authority associated with bureaucracy. The primary

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elements of the resulting form, as summarized by Perrow (1986, p. 3), include: 1 Equal treatment for all employees. 2 Reliance on expertise, skills, and experience relevant to the position. 3 No extraorganizational prerogatives of the position … that is, the position is seen as belonging to the organization, not the person. The employee cannot use it for personal ends. 4 Specific standards of work and output. 5 Extensive record keeping dealing with the work and output. 6 Establishment and enforcement of rules and regulations that serve the interests of the organization. 7 Recognition that rules and regulations bind managers as well as employees, thus employees can hold management to the terms of the employment contract.

To these, Scott and Davis (2007) add a fixed division of labor, hierarchy of offices and employment viewed as a career. Though Hinings, Pugh, Hickson and Turner (1967, p. 64) classify bureaucracy as ‘among the large scale unitary concepts of sociology,’ they and others (e.g., Hall, 1963a; Udy, 1959) accept that there are somewhat varied conceptualizations of bureaucracy that have emerged either as the result of testing the degree to which organizations embody the Weberian ideal type (and when they do not, to criticize the theory or pose alternatives), or to show that Weber’s conceptualization was somehow incomplete or insufficient (e.g., Gouldner, 1955; Selznick, 1949). Hall (1963a) conducted a review of nine scholars’ work on bureaucracy, including Weber, and subsequently (1963b) reported empirical analyses to determine how employees in a variety of organizations perceive these structural components. Hinings et al. (1967, p. 66) summarize six elements that most characterize the bureaucratic form resulting from this and other critical and empirical examinations: 1 Specialization, referring to the division of labour [sic] within the organization.

2 Standardization, being the extent to which activities and roles are subject to procedural rules. 3 Formalization, distinguishing how far communications and procedures in an organization are written down and filed. 4 Centralization, concerning the locus of authority to make decisions affecting the organization. 5 Configuration, relating to the shape of the organization. 6 Flexibility, expressing the change in organization structure.

Testimony to the pervasiveness of many of these elements in organizational theory abound; for instance, in the introduction to Theories of Organization, Tosi (2009) states that most, if not all, models of organization include the concepts of impersonal relations, formalization, rationality, hierarchy and specialization. In the twentieth century, at least, organization and bureaucracy became virtually synonymous. Theorists noted several advantages to bureaucratic structures. First, the emphasis on formal rules and procedures was an improvement for organizational actors over the favoritism and nepotism rampant in traditional organizations. Depersonalizing various organizational functions provides a degree of fairness. Second, specialization ‘leverages the power of the division of labor’ (Godwyn & Gittell, 2012, p. 73). By limiting the scope of responsibility and span of control of individual actors, it also accommodates the limited rationality inherent in individual decision-makers (March & Simon, 1993). Hierarchy provides a clear picture of reporting relationships and an unambiguous statement of jurisdiction based on competence. ‘Hierarchy without domination’ (Godwyn & Gittell, 2012, p. 73) conceived in bureaucratic structures means that while an actor may be subordinate to another within his/her job, s/he is not subordinate in any other social context. Professionalism defines mechanisms for individuals to know how to ascend the hierarchy and provides the possibility that individual learning and development will be

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rewarded with career progression based on guidelines unaffected by personal relations. Unlike Weber, Taylor was neither a scholar nor would he have called himself a theorist; he worked as an engineer designing tools and setting up factories in the northeast United States. Like Weber, though, Taylor was an astute observer of his times. He sought to make manufacturing more efficient, in part, by asserting more of a leadership role for engineers. Bothered by chaos on the production floor, especially in steel mills, Taylor sought to improve productivity and, by extension, workers’ wages by finding the most efficient means possible to organize men and machines. Taylor’s theorizing and experimentation with time-and-motion studies, focused on how individual production jobs are defined and arranged within large organizations, prizing specialization of task and organizational coordination (Taylor, 1998 [1911]; Weisbord, 2004). Taylor advocated the separation of design from the enactment of work and breaking tasks up to their smallest logical portions (Weisbord, 2004). Through the application of science and the study of work to promote specialization and the assignment of tasks most appropriate for each individual’s abilities, Taylor claimed to be able to achieve great efficiencies that produced both higher output and greater worker satisfaction (Taylor, 1998 [1911]). Taylor’s principles were met with resistance, but over time Taylor was able to convince management to reward labor with a portion of the benefits of increased productivity through higher wages. Taylor’s core belief was that workers are motivated primarily by economic concerns, an assumption that underlies rationalist approaches to the motivation to work (Brazer, Bauer & Johnson, forthcoming). Taylor’s successes were collected into a lecture that he delivered around the country and published as The Principles of Scientific Management (Taylor, 1998 [1911]). Taylorism, as his advocacy for rationality and efficiency became known, has been far more

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influential than Taylor himself in his lifetime (Weisbord, 2004). Perrow (1986) called his advocacy of the separation of thinking and doing – of planning from enactment of work – one of the most far-reaching and influential tenets of classical management theory. So pervasive was the adaptation of scientific management in education, Callahan (1962) referred to it as the Cult of Efficiency. We turn now to the incorporation of bureaucracy and scientific management in schools.

Bureaucracy goes to School Bureaucracy has been deeply entrenched in US education for over a hundred years. Movement from a loosely-structured accumulation of one-room school houses and urban scatter-shot approaches to educate the poor and immigrants (all dominated by local political elites who saw opportunities for power and wealth accumulation) into professional bureaucracies was engineered by Ellwood P. Cubberley and fellow reformers, who were known as the administrative progressives. Good government initiatives gradually removed personal relations and political spoils from education systems and inserted common professional education for teachers and administrators, impersonal criteria for hiring, job specialization (e.g., separating the roles of superintendents, principals and teachers), and formal rules and roles governing professional behavior (state education codes, teacher and administrator credentialing, district policies and procedures). Much of this transition deliberately mirrored the rationalization of work in heavy industry promoted by Taylor, with specific reference to and reverence for scientific management within the bureaucratic form (Cuban, 1988; Tyack, 1974). Weber’s conceptualization of bureaucracy, Scott and Davis (2007) write, was a statement related to how organizational participants were dealing with various problems or

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defects apparent in existing organizational forms, focusing largely on power relations and the plight of subordinates within evergrowing organizational units. Cubberley was especially drawn to this function of bureaucracy, based on his personal experience with rough-and-ready politics during his brief tenure as superintendent in San Diego (Tyack, 1974). The central concept in Weber’s model, according to Heckscher (2012, p. 98), is the rational definition of offices: ‘That is, jobs were defined by the needs of the organization rather than by the people in them.’ The rational-legal bureaucracy provides protections against particularism, favoritism and nepotism, which are rampant within systems reliant on traditional and even charismatic authority (Perrow, 1973). These same negative characteristics were prevalent in schools and districts from the 1840s through to the early twentieth century. Further, ‘By supporting increased independence and discretion among lower administrative officials constrained by general administrative policies and specified procedures, bureaucratic systems are capable of handling more complex administrative tasks than traditional systems’ (Scott & Davis, 2007, p. 50). Thus, in education, bureaucratization allowed for larger, more efficient systems in growing urban centers that gradually abandoned capricious hiring and firing, large and unwieldy school boards, and kickbacks to local officials for purchases of books and equipment. There are two additional characteristics of bureaucracy that deserve to be highlighted. First, bureaucratic organizations are goalseeking and goals defined by actors at the apex of the hierarchy are assumed to be both clear and supported by organizational members. The rules, procedures and other elements of structure are designed to optimize pursuit of these agreed-upon organizational goals and objectives. To be efficient begs the question, however, efficient at what? When leaders and/or owners create structures, the criteria of appropriateness for these solutions involve the calculus: Will these structures

help the organization rationally meet its stated goals? From the efforts of the early twentiethcentury administrative progressives through to today, the answers to the efficiency question in education have been elusive because of unclear and often conflicting goals and the difficulty of measuring meaningful education outputs. Education thus reveals major fissures in the ideal bureaucratic structure articulated by Weber. Fuzzy goals and ambiguous performance measures blur rules and roles and undermine predetermined structure. A second characteristic of bureaucracy is the assumption of organizations as closed systems. That is, there is little consideration of the various environments of the enterprise, and little attempt to acknowledge how variability or demands from those environments might impact organizational design attempted by leaders. The reality of education systems being more open than closed because of their political foundations bedeviled Cubberley and his fellow reformers striving to build efficient bureaucracies. As Thompson (2003 [1967]) predicted, in the face of externally imposed ambiguity they sought to close systems in their attempts to professionalize them and minimize the role of politicians. They were only partially successful in their efforts, and schools and school districts have porous boundaries today.

CRITICISMS OF STRUCTURAL MODELS Bureaucracy left some gaping holes as an explanatory model for organizations generally, and schools and districts specifically, despite its attractiveness for describing rational work relationships within a visible structure. Cubberley’s own career exposes some of these holes. He and many of his early twentieth-century colleagues traveled the country conducting audits of school districts that were essentially intended to align teachers’ and administrators’ choices and

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actions with educational objectives (Cuban, 1988; Tyack, 1974). If these bureaucratizing districts were organizing to align into hierarchies with clear rules and roles, why did they struggle with outcomes? Answers are legion – and still relevant in the twenty-first century – and most rely on phenomena not captured by the bureaucratic model. Even in the manufacturing world, Taylor’s scientific management enhancements of bureaucracy were generally short-lived and sometimes sparked strikes (Weisbord, 2004). Commonplace deviations from the bureaucratic ideal motivated strong criticism from multiple perspectives. The central tenet of scientific management – separation of thinking and doing – resulted in its own set of pernicious outcomes (Perrow, 1986; Weisbord, 2004). Taylor preached the application of science to the design of work. This led to the twin notions of extreme specialization and separation of tasks for the sake of efficiency, and the idea that only certain people with highly specialized knowledge ought to design work (Scott & Davis, 2007). Those at the point of production or delivery of a service were mere implementers of someone else’s thinking. As just one example of how this played out in education, the development of central offices populated by curricula experts vested with the authority to design curricula (and, in some decades and in some locales, the preparation of teacher-proof curriculum and lock-step pacing guides) resulted in what many perceive as the de-professionalization of teaching. As bureaucracies grew and Taylor’s principles of job design were adopted, theorists and practitioners alike realized that the human part of the equation seemed to be largely missing. Shafritz, Ott and Jang (2011) arrange the early development of organization theory into classical and neoclassical groups of authors. The latter camp criticized Weber, Taylor and others along the lines we have introduced here. Human behavior, as observed by the neoclassicists, was the key missing

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element for Weber and Taylor in particular. Barnard (1971 [1938]) presents an interesting critique of the Taylorist social engineering perspective. A businessman rather than scholar, Barnard anticipated important characteristics of human behavior not systematically discussed in academic literature until Maslow’s publication of ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’ (1943) and McGregor’s The Human Side of Enterprise (2006 [1960]). Maslow’s development of a hierarchy of human needs ranging from food, shelter and clothing through achieving life goals (selfactualization) explained that once human beings had enough to eat and didn’t have their physical safety threatened, they would seek additional life fulfillment. McGregor, impressed by Maslow, took these ideas into the workplace. For many organization participants, work is more than mere labor compensated at a market wage, McGregor (2006 [1960]) argued. Those engaged in higher order thinking (e.g., organizational design, strategic planning or human resources management) earn salaries that make them materially secure, thus allowing for pursuit of esteem from others and self-actualization. One of McGregor’s key insights was that a need once satisfied would not provide additional motivation by addressing it again – providing opportunities to meet ever higher needs culminating in self-actualization was the only means to sustain motivation at work. This psychological perspective coalesces with sociological and economic concepts from March, Merton, Selznick and Simon as a human relations perspective (Shafritz, Ott & Jang, 2011). Unfortunately, the chasm between structural theories and human resource or human relations theories tended to be overly simplified. As a critique of this, Perrow (1973) characterizes structural or mechanistic models as ‘the forces of darkness’ in contrast to human relations and other perspectives. Put simply: scientific management and bureaucracy bad, human relations and employee involvement good. Structural theories neglected the human

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portion of the organizing equation; efficiency trumped all other criteria of excellence and appropriateness, and in its application people became mere cogs in the machine. Indeed, the machine metaphor (Morgan, 2007) came to epitomize structural models. In a colloquial sense, the sins of bureaucracy are well established, starting first with the characterization of bureaucratic organizations as inflexible and unwilling to change, followed by their notorious subjugation and ill-treatment of individual employees, particularly those at the bottom of the hierarchy. To the critic, rules and procedures are red tape. Individuals’ needs are at least as important as the organizations’, and as long as bureaucracy credentials the needs of the enterprise to the apparent exclusion of real people, it is evil. Bush (2011) further summarizes some of the flaws in the assumptions inherent in the ideal bureaucratic type: 1 The characterization of bureaucratic organizations as goal-oriented relies on the assumptions that goals are clear, well understood and agreedupon criteria that may be seldom realized in practice. Considering schools, the organization’s goals may be at best contested; schools are expected to meet many and varied ‘core’ prerogatives, and there is much debate over these. Further, there may be many and varied sub-goals among organizational units like departments. 2 The characterization of decision-making within bureaucratic organizations as rational is fraught with problems, not the least reason being that goals are neither as clear nor as agreed-upon as we might pretend. Limits to rationality are well established by scholars such as March and Simon (1993), as is the notion that decision-makers can and do make decisions based primarily on institutional norms rather than clear goals that are specific to their organizations (e.g., DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977). 3 Bureaucratic models rely on the assumption of the primacy of organizational goals to the exclusion of individual goals; likewise, Bush writes, these models ‘ignore or underestimate the contribution of individuals’ (2011, p. 64, emphasis in original). The model, he continues, seems to

treat organizations as if they are independent of, rather than made up of people. Professionalism and equal treatment of employees results not in fairness but rather in a lack of consideration of individual differences and the needs of people within the enterprise. 4 Hierarchy and the focus on legitimate authority promotes the use of power over individuals, rather than the exercise of power with others. The implication is that there are clear and welldelineated lines of authority and accountability. In schools, where the core work is dependent on many people in different roles, this may inhibit efficiency by concentrating decision-making among individuals who are distant from the classroom and who have less direct information needed to make decisions about teaching and learning processes. 5 The closed-systems nature of the bureaucratic model relies on an assumption that the environment is more stable than it actually is. The environments of organizations like schools, in contrast, are varied and changing, which impacts the ability of top-down bureaucratic structures. Hierarchy, Perrow (1986, p. 29) writes, promotes both rigidity and timidity in the face of change, resulting in ‘delays and sluggishness’ and in general indecision rather than efficiency.

Merton (as cited in Shafritz et al., 2011) was also bothered by rule-driven rigidity that seemed to be inherent in Weber’s model of bureaucracy, but for somewhat different reasons closely aligned with the final point presented above. The problem, as he saw it, is two-fold: (1) bureaucrats in their loyalty to the organization elevate rules above goals and clients, and (2) devotion to rules causes bureaucrats to acquire what Veblen called ‘trained incapacity’ (as cited in Shafritz et al., 2011, p. 108). Argyris (1999) sees the formalism and rationality of organizations as inhibiting change and generating what he called learned incompetence. The combination of structure, supported by rules mechanically adhered to could be seen as key to schools’ inability to change as environmental factors such as demographics, politics and technology change. With bureaucrats in mind, Merton captures why teachers are

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particularly resistant to being changed by would-be reformers. ‘[B]ureaucratic officials affectively identify themselves with their way of life. They have a pride of craft which leads them to resist change in established routines; at least, those changes which are felt to be imposed by others’ (quoted from Shafritz et al., 2011, p. 111). Heckscher and Donnellon (1994) assert that by its very nature, bureaucracy wastes human capital – that is, human intelligence is wasted as individuals need to find workarounds for rules that inhibit rather than facilitate their work and go outside the formal structure to get things done. Informal networks become as important, if not more important, than the formal structures. Follett (1987 [1949]) added the criticism that the bureaucratic form tends to limit cooperation by failing to foster horizontal relationships, again calling into question whether the presumed efficiencies of bureaucracy optimize human capital. Scott and Davis (2007) argue that Weber muddles the very foundation of the model, his typology of authority, by asserting at once that authority is based on position in the hierarchy and that bureaucracies reward expertise and merit. While authority might be highly associated with position in the hierarchy, even a neophyte recognizes that technical expertise and position are seldom perfect partners, and in practice many (if not most) jobs are so multidimensional that it is difficult, at best, to know what kind of expertise might be needed in any given job. Positional authority and technical competence may be strange bedfellows. Finally, scholars looking at the impact of technology on structure (e.g., Burns & Stalker, 1961; Woodward, 1965) call into question whether the bureaucratic form might best suit only certain kinds of industries and be ill-suited to many, including schools, precisely because of the lack of goal clarity and widely varied and changeable demands made on workers as they enact their jobs. These and other contingency models

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(Donaldson, 1996) call into question whether a single type of organizational structure can be optimal for all kinds of organizing.

Criticisms Reconsidered Not all observers focused on bureaucracies’ deficiencies. On Weber and the ideal type, Perrow (1973, p. 6) wrote: ‘At first, with his celebration of the efficiency of bureaucracy, he was received with only reluctant respect, and even with hostility. All writers were against bureaucracy.’ He went on the say, however: But it turned out, surprisingly, that managers were not. When asked, they acknowledged that they preferred clear lines of communication, clear specifications of authority and responsibility, and clear knowledge of whom they were responsible to. They were as wont to say ‘there ought to be a rule about this,’ as to say ‘there are too many rules around here,’ as wont to say ‘next week we’ve got to get organized’ as to say ‘there is too much red tape.’ (Perrow, 1973, p. 6)

Rules, it turns out, can be changed almost as quickly as they are asserted. ‘The sins of bureaucracy,’ Perrow (1973, p. 7) summarized, ‘began to look like the sins of failing to follow its principles.’ Nevertheless, Weber himself cautioned against the potential sins of bureaucracy, particularly the potential for the concentration of power in the hands of a few and the dehumanizing nature of reliance on rules and order to govern and constrain the degrees of freedom exercised by individuals and groups. He warned of bureaucracy as an ‘iron cage’ (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott & Davis, 2007). Despite Weber’s apparent misgivings, his model took on an assumptive quality; early researchers, Scott (1975) observed, took structure to be context rather than a set of factors that might vary across organizations. The ‘answers’ to the questions of how largescale organizations were structured were defined by some approximation of the ideal type. Udy’s (1959) research, Scott (1975)

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notes, marks the beginning of scholars’ serious examination of structure as a set of variables that are consequential to organizational behaviors and outcomes. With this work, scholars started to examine how leaders solve the basic structural questions described in early theories – how hierarchies are arranged, how individuals relate to one another, how individual action is constrained and channeled to meet the goals of the collective, how efforts are coordinated, and so on. Although the bureaucratic form may not be the inevitable solution to the structural puzzle faced by leaders, bureaucracies do in fact organize the collective efforts central to all organizations, and this organization is consequential to effectiveness and efficiency.

STRUCTURAL PUZZLES A structural perspective is neither completely satisfactory for explaining how organizations work nor is it completely irrelevant. No matter how flawed structural theory may seem, the fact remains that schools, similar to many other organizations, are structured in specific ways. Reporting times, classes scheduled by the clock, transportation to and from school at specified times, and differentiated job tasks are some of the most obvious features. But schools face numerous challenges striving to educate all students to achieve minimum standards and well beyond. Consequently, principals and others tinker with structure – or possibly risk radical changes – in an effort to improve student, teacher and school performance. We think of these adjustments, modifications and changes in organizational structure as addressing puzzles that characterize the constant search for more effective organization. A ground-level view of what appears to be a firmly entrenched bureaucracy in schools reveals flexibility or ‘elbow room’ that influences structure in ways that defy established hierarchy as educators address daily

challenges in their work. Schools live in the nexus of ambivalence about rules and the desire for structure. Teachers want administrators to maintain order, discipline and academic standards but often believe that teachers should be able to exercise their professional judgment over how to handle individual student behavior and achievement struggles. In the same sense, teachers want to engage their students and encourage them to have a say in their own active learning, but want (and need) to maintain order and have an eye on such things as the pacing guide. Principals lobby the central office for freedom to manage their students, teachers and parents – their school communities – while insisting that the district bureaucracy invoke rules as ‘backup’ when disaffected parents appeal school site decisions. Superintendents strive to keep their districts’ schools improving along the dimensions they and their school boards deem most important, while expecting site leaders to exercise professional discretion as they face inevitable challenges from inside and outside their systems (Cuban, 1988; Smith & Brazer, 2016). In short, effective school leadership from the classroom through the central office looks much like avoiding trained incapacity while following the lead of those at the top of highly bureaucratized systems. Ambiguity, uncertainty and conflict seem inevitable and irresolvable unless structure is conceptually de-coupled from bureaucratic rigidity. When seen from this perspective, flexible response in the face of changing environments and needs may serve stability better than slavish rule-following. In the sections that follow, we address specific ways in which post-World War II organizational analysis adds subtlety and complexity to earlier depictions of organizations and how they work. Theorists from the second half of the twentieth century relax assumptions about organizational boundaries and leadership flexibility and introduce political and institutional dynamics. We circle back to individual perspectives through Karl Weick’s (2001) social psychological

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lens, leading us toward our own model for explaining the meaning of structure in the context of schools.

Close the Door but not the Organization The flaw in the bureaucratic and other structural models that stands out as receiving the most attention from scholars as organizational theory advanced in the latter stages of the twentieth century is the closed systems nature of the model and the reliance on an image of the world as relatively stable and predictable in nature. ‘When organizational structure is viewed as a limited set of factors which together may be arranged or modified to produce desired outcomes, then the logical model employed is that of a closed system’ (Scott, 1975, p. 2). Thompson (2003 [1967]) devotes his brilliant text, Organizations in Action, to explaining the inevitable result, noting that treating organizations as determinate systems subject to clear and predictable criteria of rationality and efficiency forces actors to assume – or pretend – that variables that are ultimately uncontrollable are irrelevant or controlled. Leaders buffer the organization’s technical core from indeterminateness and ‘seal off’ core technologies from the environment as they assert norms of rationality based on technical efficiency. ‘The concepts of rationality brought to bear on organizations establish limits within which organizational action must take place,’ Thompson (2003 [1967], p. 1) writes, and continues, ‘Uncertainties pose major challenges to rationality, and we will argue that technologies and environments are basic sources of uncertainty for organizations.’ Noting the seminal work of Simon, March, and their colleagues at Carnegie-Mellon University (e.g., Cyert & March, 1963; March & Simon, 1993 [1958]) on the limits of rationality, Thompson (2003 [1967], p. 9) contends that in the face of environmental

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turbulence, we must conceive of organization as a ‘problem-facing and problem-solving phenomenon. The focus is on organizational processes related to choice of courses of action in an environment which does not fully disclose the alternatives available or the consequences of those alternatives.’ In sum, the core problems faced by leaders are based in ambiguity that derives from the organizational environment. Organizations are inherently open systems (see also Katz & Kahn, 1966), subject to the vagaries imposed from entities outside their boundaries. As March (2008) concluded, organizational theory has to contend with the many ways the organization’s context matters. We mentioned earlier that Cubberley and the administrative progressives sought to buffer schools from local politics, but the political nature of school districts is derived from the fact that, in most districts, the governing school boards are locally elected. Thus, schools will always feel the ­influence of their local communities, as perhaps they should, given local funding sources and school board representation. The past 20 years of education policy at the federal and state levels have also demonstrated the porousness of school boundaries, most notably through the No Child Left Behind Act’s accountability mechanisms, Common Core State Standards’ establishment of minimum expectations and recommended strategies in specific content areas, and various mandates to provide appropriate education for special needs populations of students. Tragically, at the time of this writing we cannot ignore the gun violence that has permeated school boundaries, calling into question schools’ capacity to keep children safe while in their care. All of these influences and more threaten the core practices of teaching and learning while, in some cases, also providing access to resources that may have been previously unavailable. No one could deny that school structure is at least partially a response to factors beyond the artificial boundaries of school and district.

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Contingency Theory A first foray into accounting for the complexity of the organization’s context is represented by the structural contingency theories that grew out of systems theory (Donaldson, 1996). The work of Burns and Stalker (1961), Woodward (1965), Hage (1965), Lawrence and Lorsch (1967), and Thompson (2003 [1967]) are all prime examples of this perspective. As Donaldson (1996, p. 59) summarized: The core assumption of structural contingency theory is that low uncertainty tasks are most efficiently performed by centralized hierarchy since this is simple, quick and allows close coordination cheaply. As task uncertainty increases, through innovation or the like, then the hierarchy needs to loosen control somewhat and be overlain by participatory, communicative structures. This reduces structural simplicity and raises costs but is rewarded by the benefits from innovation.

Although there are a variety of ‘contingencies’ that organizational scholars postulated as relevant, the nature of the core technology as a contingency predicting the most effective and efficient structure seems most vital to understanding schools as organizations. As applied to schools which are characterized by a lack of clarity over goals, variability in terms of a student’s and family’s needs, and high degrees of uncertainty regarding the most effective means of teaching specific content to a particular group of students, structural contingency theorists would expect schools to be very decentralized, with teachers enjoying high degrees of autonomy, with considerable information sharing going on across classrooms, departments and grade levels and a high degree of distribution of leadership. Interestingly, districts and the schools within them appear to defy some of these predictions. Teachers typically do enjoy a high degree of autonomy, but efforts to engage teachers in collaborative learning, planning and decision-making have met with mixed success over many decades

(Malen, Ogawa & Kranz, 1992; Ogawa & White, 1994; Spillane, 2012; Van Lare, Brazer, Bauer & Smith, 2013).

Power and Conflict Political theorists (e.g., Bacharach, 1983; Bacharach & Mundell, 1993; Pfeffer, 1981) answered the question of where structure comes from by observing organizations as inherently conflictual arenas in which individuals and groups differ greatly in terms of their goals and priorities. As interests are pursued, structure emerges as a result of bargaining and exercising power over how to best serve these interests, with the dominant coalition having the greatest influence on the solution. Political theorists stress the ‘fishbowl’ in which schools operate as organizations, with many different publics each making sometimes overlapping, often quite different demands. In this arena, the leader is both a resourceprovider and facilitator of a resolution over what structures make best sense to meet the demands of powerful agents. Teachers coalesce into unions that protect their livelihoods and property rights. Principals and superintendents build coalitions to try to accomplish goals and protect themselves in the process (Smith & Brazer, 2016). Associations of parents put pressure on schools to provide the kinds of educational experiences they want and expect for their children. Political theory envisions a more changeable, adaptable and open-to-influence set of structures that emerge from the bargaining that is inherent as interest groups and coalitions exert their power to attain outcomes they value. Although politics is sometimes characterized colloquially as ‘dirty’ or somehow evil in nature, these theorists provide an answer that other perspectives cannot, namely how conflicts over goals and roles are resolved in the day-to-day in organizations. The theories offer a much more dynamic

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perspective on both puzzles and puzzle-solving, suggesting that there should be a wide variety of answers to structural puzzles, leading to great variability.

Neo-Institutional Theory Neo-institutional theorists (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2008) observed, however, that across the entire organizational field the variability in school structures is minimal. Further, they observed that schools often embrace structures and practices that do not seem to meet the organization’s stated goals rationally and optimally, calling into question the classical perspective. Embracing the open-systems nature of schools as organizations, these theories stress that decision-makers are under considerable pressure from their publics to conform to a set of ‘institutional rules’ regarding what structures and practices are legitimate, and hence conform to these solutions to ensure the organization’s survival.

Organizing as Sensemaking Weick’s (2001) social psychological conceptions of structure and structuring seem unbound by institutional rules and norms and add dimensions of segmentation, loose-coupling and fluidity over time to the problem of organizing to get work done. An important first step in breaking conceptual barriers to thinking about structure is recognizing that retrospective thought naturally creates order in the service of explanation, thus attending to rational, political and social needs by making a series of actions appear more stepwise and orderly than it was likely to have been in real time. For example, a principal might invoke the institutional norm of improving test scores as a means of rationalizing use of a radical, untested classroom technology that had nothing to do with

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responding to institutional constraints and outcomes which were entirely unpredictable. Orderly explanations leave out details of disorganization that occurred in the moment for whatever was being addressed. Statements such as ‘We modified the bell schedule by creating longer instructional blocks,’ or ‘We organized teachers into professional learning communities (PLCs) to address problems of practice’ naturally leave out the external mandates, political opportunism and interpersonal pulling and hauling that allowed these outcomes to emerge. Furthermore, there is no indication of what was originally intended as compared to the actual outcome. Weick’s perspective is that it is unlikely that ‘the school’ did anything. Rather, people take actions that are sometimes organized and sometimes not. Breaking down the school into smaller units – departments, grade levels, PLCs, friend groups, etc. – brings a different sort of organizing scheme into focus. The second grade PLC may function far better than the fifth grade math team. The lunchtime card players may get inspired to create a scheme to monitor the progress of first semester ninth graders. Weick (2001) notes that it is hard to keep track of this sort of emergent organizing and disorganizing over time. If the fifth grade math team experiences wise coaching from the district office, they could make great strides. If one or more of the card players retire, the ninth grade effort may fizzle before it is fully implemented. The loosely-coupled nature of the kind of efforts imagined here presents a problem for a leader expected to explain how her or his school is improving performance, but there are advantages and disadvantages. Actors in a loosely coupled system rely on trust and presumptions, are often isolated, find social comparison difficult, have no one to borrow from, seldom imitate, suffer pluralistic ignorance, maintain discretion, improvise, and have less hubris because they know the universe is not sufficiently connected to make widespread change possible. (Weick, 2001, p. 44)

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The problem of providing an orderly explanation for dis-ordered processes falls to someone such as the principal, whose behavior Weick describes vividly: It matters less what particular order is portrayed than that an order of some kind is portrayed. The crucial dynamic is that the prospect of order lures the manager into ill-formed situations that then accommodate to forceful actions and come to resemble the orderly relations contained in the [manager’s] cause map. The map animates managers, and the fact of animation, not the map itself, is what imposes order on the situation. (Weick, 2001, pp. 48–49, emphasis in the original)

Consistent with the more general concept of sensemaking, principals and other leaders strive to bring order out of chaos, at least rhetorically. As they do so, they deliberately insert some structures into the school while others emerge separate from the leader’s volition. Further rationalization of outcomes may well generate descriptions consistent with perceived goals and bureaucratic rules. Principals who seek to structure their schools differently compared to others in their districts appear likely to employ politically motivated rationalizations that also appeal to institutional norms.

A MODEL TO EXPLAIN SOURCES OF SCHOOL STRUCTURE Our discussion of alternative approaches to organization structure is at this point quite brief and a bit abstract. We present a short sketch that helps to make sensemaking more concrete and leads us toward proposing a model for structural origins in schools. After presenting the model itself, we explain how it might be applied to ongoing research. A high school principal we have known, determined to create a sense of community in a troubled school within a high-performing district, instituted site-based management and small learning communities. Fifteen years

later, his school remains an anomaly that persists in the district because the structure is rationalized as having turned the school around as it has generated greater satisfaction for families indicated by decreased transferout rates. Over time, within-school structures and processes have adapted to shifting student demographics and numerous superintendents and board members in a manner that preserves core values embedded in site-based management and small learning communities. Recognizing that principals respond to external influences as they take forceful action in the name of order and structures emerge more serendipitously than planned, analysts and practitioners can understand structure as more fluid, less postulated, and possibly more useful to leadership focused on continuous improvement than classical theorists would have predicted. The question persists: Where do structures come from? Organization theorists collectively have several different answers, and all but Weick postulate an answer. Candidates for the origins of structure are thus far: the quest for optimization, employee motivation, organizing contingencies, political interplay to resolve conflict, and invocation of institutional rules and norms. Weick stands alone, however, by leading us to the twin notions that we do not know where structure comes from and we do not need to know prospectively. Structure in the moment is driven by individual and collective sensemaking that rationalizes whatever structure is in place as most appropriate to current circumstances. The principal in the example above participated in distributed leadership as a teacher in two very different schools and embraced distributed leadership as a core professional value. He also adopted other important values, such as educational equity, personalized learning environments, and emotional well-being for students. During his career as principal, he has been striving to enact these values and foster them among all teachers,

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administrators and students in his school. The twin structures of small learning communities and distributed leadership were prospective for him in concept, but developed over time in practice with specific features of the overall concept emerging and understood in retrospect. Other theorists embed prospective decision-making into their arguments about the origins of structure. For example, a superintendent may choose to make the political decision of aligning his policies with one faction of a split board, or a principal may invoke the institutional norm that schools must regiment student behavior to ensure safety. Weick, on the other hand, sees decisions as less important than action because decisions, in his view, are retrospective rationalizations of actions. Individual and collective actions that appear successful coalesce into a paradigm (such as small learning communities) that then justifies a structure that appears to work. In a way any old paradigm will do. As long as the paradigm improves prediction, allows a higher level of agreement on cause-effect relations and/or preferences, and encourages people to act as if their prophecies are valid, then the result will be more environmental stability, a more favorable setting for mechanistic structures, and a setting in which application of a rational model will be more appropriate. … Stability comes from tight coupling between action and cognition that is created by the necessity to explain behavioral commitments to oneself and to important peers. … Persistent action that is backed by a supportive paradigm can stabilize environments and make reasoning and formalization more successful. (Weick, 2001, p. 80)

Embracing the notion that ‘any old paradigm will do’ may be troubling to many, but we believe that this kind of flexible thinking illuminates how structures develop. Argyris and Schön (1974, 1978) add to this discussion with their concept of governing variables – the rules and norms that support the status quo. For organizations to ‘learn’ (i.e., make lasting, important changes), governing variables must change. Collectively,

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governing variables are loosely analogous to creating one of Weick’s paradigms. Argyris and Schön argue that meaningful change occurs when organizations reveal how status quo governing variables have become problematic and subsequently change their governing variables, or paradigm. Doing so would be an example of Weick’s (2001) conception of leaders taking bold action to see what happens. These actions at the heart of organizational learning likely lead to changed structures and thus may serve as an origin of structure, such as the re-making of a comprehensive high school into a more humane and supportive community. From the status quo to enactment to retrospective interpretation, changed structure is likely to be rationalized as sequenced decision-making.

The Model Explained We propose a model that employs multiple structural influences and imperatives to explain how principals and their leadership teams might balance leadership and management and determine where they wish to focus their attention and energy. Our model is intended to approximate the world in which school leaders operate (Lave & March, 1993) with specifics that permit visualization. We do not claim it as a precise facsimile. There are many kinds of actions principals take that cut across a wide spectrum of issues in any given school. For the sake of simplicity, the representation of sensemaking as a source of structure in Figure 8.1 defines two types of actions – management and leadership – and two foci – instructional and non-instructional. Management involves maintaining school systems in support of the status quo while leadership means making change for organizational improvement (Cuban, 1988). Instructional actions focus on teaching and learning and noninstructional is everything else. We combine the actions and foci in four different ways to show where principals (or their administrative

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Figure 8.1  Sensemaking as a source of structure

teammates) might spend their energy, listing sample task categories in the cells. Our intent is to illustrate sensemaking as Weick (2001) defines it to posit a major source of structure in schools. The arrows around the outside of the cells are labeled with sensemaking outcomes we imagine to describe principal behavior as one set of tasks becomes dominant over another in response to perceived opportunities and threats. For example, principals who recognize opportunities to improve instruction may shift their emphases from managing the supports for instruction to leading instructional improvement by focusing on adult and organizational learning, among other activities. Principals who attend to environmental threats such as declining reputation or perceived school failure may move toward a more defensive posture in which they tighten student discipline, make sure the school and grounds are clean, or pay special attention to avoiding state sanctions related to service of special populations. Principal volition in

terms of their management/leadership posture is an important influence on structure. A principal positioning herself in the bottomleft cell may adopt a more bureaucratic, hierarchical approach to action as compared with a principal in the upper-right quadrant who seems more likely to support collaborative decision-making and team structures of various types. Claiming that structures are influenced by perceptions of environmental opportunities and threats combined with leader (principal) preference or response weakens the rationalist ‘form follows function’ maxim. Making this claim, we move ourselves into Herbert Simon’s non-rational camp, borrowing from his notion that organizational goals are postulated (Simon, 1993). Presumably our principal archetypes all want to optimize student learning, but in their uncertainty about how to do that they take very different pathways and likely foster very different organizational structures. Similar to goals, organizational structure may be rational for the organization

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in that it is effective and efficient, but for what? The emerging consensus on what effective school leaders do, best represented in the work of Wahlstrom et al. (2010), attests to the import of leaders ‘redesigning the organization,’ but the authors say very little about what this work entails. They, like other prominent thinkers on instructional and transformational leadership (Robinson, 2011; Robinson et  al., 2008), appear ambivalent regarding leader volition in designing the organization. The description of what re-designing the organization means seems to come out of the rational, functionalist tradition (i.e., form follows function) as Wahlstrom et al. (2010, p. 14) assert that leaders: … establish workplace conditions that will allow staff members to make the most of their motivations and capacities. The organizational setting in which people work shapes much of what they do. There is little to be gained by increasing peoples’ motivation and capacity if working conditions will not allow their effective application.

They also acknowledge, however, that structure is emergent: The bureaucratic allocation of responsibility does not necessarily result in the transfer or development of influence. Less formal patterns of leadership distribution can be enacted through bureaucratic structures that appear, on paper, remarkably similar. For example, the case-study schools in our sample all had multi-stakeholder school-leadership committees, and they all had similar teacher-leader positions; however, the actual distribution of leadership influence varied. (Wahlstrom et al., 2010, p. 12)

Weick (2001) may hold the key that unlocks the door on this confusion. Leaders take actions and look at results. If results appear positive and a socially-constructed paradigm takes shape, that paradigm rationalizes a particular structure. When suspensions are noticeably reduced after introducing school uniforms, a stricter tardy policy and frequent communications with parents, then the discipline system and the hierarchical structure that enables it are preserved. By the same

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token, such a structure may do nothing to improve student achievement, in which case a more learning-focused structure (for both adults and students) may emerge; one that has less command-and-control and allows for more innovation assessed by outcomes. From this perspective, Wahlstrom et  al.’s (2010) vacillation regarding leader volition in structuring becomes less problematic – structure comes from multiple sources, only one of which is the principal’s intent to design the organization. At this point our model is an untested hypothesis about why structures in schools that are subject to similar bureaucratic, human resources and institutional influences look different. To begin to answer some of the questions we raise in this chapter requires a great deal of field-based evidence-gathering in schools in varied settings. We propose to see if the model we present is descriptive and to what degree. Our recent research for a different purpose provides some tantalizing clues (Bauer, Brazer, Van Lare & Smith, 2013; Van Lare et al., 2013). In a large metropolitan school district, structural ambiguity was embedded in a mandate for all schools to have teacher collaborative teams, a mandate that was supported by recommended meeting structures and professional development. Nevertheless, within school sites and across teacher collaborative teams there were both similarities and differences in the structures teachers experienced on their teams and in their schools. Structure appeared to be both postulated (time set aside during the school day, a common agenda format) and emergent (variations in roles on teams, deviation from a weekly meeting schedule to address school site contingencies) with few instances of unitary control. Nevertheless, structure mattered for what teachers learned and were able to do (Bauer et al., 2013; Van Lare et al., 2013). The above-cited research revealed a management–leadership continuum in principals’ approaches to teacher collaboration, but we were not looking for structural variation

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based on principal/school foci because we asked questions about teacher collaborative teams specifically. A new phase of research requires a wider net for participating sites and a broader perspective within participating schools to find out where they might fit in the quadrants of Figure 8.1 and how different structures persist within different schools.

CONCLUSION What is structure and where does it come from? Structures contain a set of vocabulary – bureaucracy, contingency, power, institution, etc. – that form a frame for viewing and for explaining (Donaldson, 1996; Morgan, 2007). When speaking of bureaucracy, structure will look like rules, roles and positions. When imagining a political system, the vocabulary will include power, coalitions and conflict. So, who is right? We do not presume to anoint one best analytical frame for structure. Each frame reveals something, but not everything. Instead, our intent is to add notions of organic, flexible growth or emergence of structures to the mix, with a debt of gratitude to Weick for helping us to see through this different frame. On a practical note, Wahlstrom et  al. (2010) couldn’t have been definitive about exactly how effective leaders re-design their organizations because they probably do it very differently, depending how they perceive their environments and what frame the analyst is using to describe their work. Perhaps our question about where structure comes from ends with a mealy-mouthed answer from the insecure, uncoordinated kickball player turned organization theorist: it depends. It may depend on more than we originally thought, which leads us on a path to reconsidering structure – what it is, what it means, how it emerges, and why one type or another persists.

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Pfeffer, J. (1981). Power in organizations. Marshfield, MA: Pitman. Pugh, D. (1997). The structure of organizations. In D. Pugh (Ed.), Organization theory (4th ed., pp. 1–2). London: Penguin Books. Robinson, V. (2011). Student-Centered Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Robinson, V., Lloyd, C., & Rowe, K. (2008). The impact of leadership on student outcomes: An analysis of the differential effects of leadership types. Educational Administration Quarterly, 44(5), 635–74. Scott, W. R. (1975). Organizational structure. Annual Review of Sociology, 1(1), 1–20. Scott, W. R. (2003). Introduction to the transaction edition: Thompson’s bridge over troubled waters. In J. Thompson (Ed.), Organizations in action: Social science bases of administrative theory (pp. xv–xxiii). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Scott, W. R. (2008). Institutions and organizations: Ideas and interests. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Scott, W. R. & Davis, G. (2007). Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural and open systems perspectives. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice-Hall. Selznick, P. (1949). TVA and the grass roots. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Shafritz, J. M., Ott, J. S., & Jang, Y. S. (2011). Classics of organization theory (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth/Cenage Publishing. Sharpe, F. (1996). Towards a research paradigm on devolution. Journal of Educational Administration, 34(1), 4–23. Shedd, J. & Bacharach, S. (1991). Tangled hierarchies: Teachers as professionals and the management of schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Simon, H. (1993). Decision making: Rational, nonrational, and irrational. Educational Administration Quarterly, 29, 392–411. Smith, R. G. & Brazer, S. D. (2016). Striving for equity: District leadership for narrowing opportunity and achievement gaps. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Spillane, J. (2012). Data in practice: Conceptualizing the data-based decision-making

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9 Too Legit to Quit: Institutional Perspectives on the Study of Schools as Organizations Ebony N. Bridwell-Mitchell

INTRODUCTION: ON THE STUDY OF SCHOOL INSTITUTIONS Schools are institutions. Whereas an organization is almost any social collective coordinated by relatively formalized goals, routines and structures, and controlled by endowments or endorsements from external environments, an institution is something different (Scott & Davis, 2007). Being an institution means schools, as an organizational form, operate based on a set of beliefs, practices and structures that are long-held, value-laden and widely accepted as appropriate even when they may no longer accomplish desired functions or outcomes (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott, 1991; Selznick, 1957).1 Consider how most K-12 public schools in the United States still have an agrarianoriented calendar when only a small proportion of families still farm. Schools continue to rely on curricula segmented into discrete subject matter – mathematics, language arts,

social studies, science – when interdisciplinary, project- or problem-based work more closely matches the world of work. Pedagogy is often centered on direct instruction and rote memorization when critical reasoning and creative thinking may have more bearing on real world outcomes. Disciplinary policies and expectations about student performance often enact historical systems of race-based privilege and discrimination. That these beliefs, practices and structures persist despite regular efforts to change them reflects the depth of their institutionalization and why schools have for so long been the exemplar case for researchers studying institutions (Rowan & Miskel, 1999; Zucker, 1977). My aim in this chapter is to explain what existing research on institutions tells us about how institutions work – exactly why they are long-held, value-laden and widely accepted as appropriate even when they may no longer accomplish desired functions or outcomes. In particular, researchers across three key fields – organizational sociology, organization and

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management theory, and the study of schools as organizations – have generated a deep and broad cannon of work examining the nature of institutions. Taken together, insights from existing research offer a working theory for the expectations or predictions one should have for how schools operate and what outcomes will result given underlying institutional process. Consider one key insight of institutional theory, which is the fundamental role legitimacy plays in determining beliefs, practices and structures in organizations (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Suchman, 1995). This insight suggests that insufficient attention to the role of legitimacy in school operations can undermine policy makers’ efforts to formulate effective educational reforms, school leaders’ efforts to implement them and researchers’ efforts to evaluate or explain their effects. The formal study of institutions is typically attributed to the 1948 publication of Philip Selznick’s ‘Foundations of the Theory of Organizations.’ In this work, Selznick explained a theory of organizations that veered away from the then conventional wisdom of organizations as being merely sets of formal structures that were mechanisms for goal coordination. Instead, Selznick focused attention on the role of power, politics and values inside organizations in what some describe as the ‘old’ institutionalism (Hirsch & Lounsbury, 1997; Selznick, 1996). This is in contrast to the ‘new’ or ‘neo-’ institutionalism evolving in the 1970s, which focused more on actors’ taken-for-granted cognitions and where the actors of interest were less often individuals inside organizations at the micro level but organizations in a field or sector at the macro level (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991; Scott & Meyer, 1991). In this chapter, I do not attempt to comprehensively cover 70 or more years of research on institutional theory. Instead, I synthesize and leverage existing research from organizational management and organizational sociology to offer a set of arguments about how institutions work. In brief, I argue that institutions work the way they do because

actors, meaning organizations and the individuals within them, make decisions and take action based on motives that are not always instrumentally rational (Weber, 1922/1968). Instead of maximizing stated organizational outcomes, such as school performance or student learning, actors maximize perceptions of legitimacy (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Actors perceive their decisions and actions as legitimate because of three forces undergirding institutions and which also make institutions very difficult to change (Scott, 2008; Zucker, 1977). I develop this argument in the remainder of the chapter by examining three ideas that are central to institutional theory: (1) the role of different forms of rationality, (2) the dynamics of legitimacy maximization, and (3) the key forces or pillars undergirding institutions. Then I explore the implications of these insights for education and schools, paying special attention to issues of school reform. I conclude by briefly exploring the areas for future research in studying school organizations from an institutional perspective.

INSTITUTIONAL THEORY’S MAJOR INSIGHTS Instrumental Rationality Versus Other Forms of Rationality: How Actors make Decisions One common view about decision making is that actors rely on what Max Weber termed instrumental rationality (Kalberg, 1980). Instrumental rationality is a mental calculation about the means by which to achieve some valued outcome or desired end ideally at minimal cost (psychic, social or material costs). Instrumental rationality is the basic premise of economic arguments about how markets operate and how individuals maximize their preferences. Notably, the logical extreme of such arguments would suggest organizations need not exist (Coase, 1937). This is because instrumental rationality suggests people who want

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goods and services, such as families who want education for their children, and people offering goods and services, such as educators trained to teach, would engage in transactions that make both parties better off. One problem with this formulation is that there are many costs built into searching for the right transaction partners and then agreeing on the price and terms that would make the transactions mutually beneficial. For example, families would need to know which educators have the expertise that best meet their children’s needs. Educators would have to be able to specify the term over which the outcomes for children would be realized. Together families and educators would have to figure out exactly how much the outcome was worth and how large of a payment would secure the educator’s commitment but also preserve some proportion of the outcome’s value (i.e., rather than paying educators, families could simply give this money directly to children for their future well-being). Figuring out all of this takes time, energy and information that is not easily available. Thus, there are transaction costs to the market mechanism (Williamson, 1981). In the case of schools, if families choose not to bear these costs, there are also costs to society because a well-functioning society depends, to some degree, on educated citizens (Dewey, 1916). It is the need to minimize costs associated with the market mechanism that explains why organizations, and especially schools, exist. What this means, however, from an economic perspective, is that organizations, including their specific practices and structures, only make sense if they generate a net value that could not otherwise be captured by the market. This is to say that the goal of organizations should be to maximize this net value. Organizations that do not accomplish this goal, and likewise organizational practices and structures that do not accomplish this goal, should not exist, which is the foundational premise of most market-based education reforms (Chubb & Moe, 1999; Ladd, 2002).

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The above economic logic on why organizations exist is elegant in its parsimony and deductive logic. Yet, anyone who has ever been inside a real organization – in contrast to an economic abstraction of one – knows many organizations, as well as their practices and structures, exist despite having no identifiable link to valued outcomes. This is true in most sectors, including the business sector. One key insight of institutional theory is that such structures and practices exist because actors’ decisions and actions are not always instrumentally rational. Decisions and actions can result from any number of other forms of rationality (Kalberg, 1980). Some mental calculations driving decisions and actions are based on certain values or convictions, including convictions about one’s self or identity; some calculations are made or arguably compelled by emotional states (Kalberg, 1980). Some mental calculations are made because alternative decisions and actions that would result in more desirable ends cannot be conceived of or attempted because there are constraints preventing the best decisions and actions (March & Simon, 1958). Some mental calculations are made because actors feel social pressures – recognized or unrecognized – to pursue certain decisions or actions (Asch, 1951). Some calculations might not be considered calculations at all because they are so routine or habitual (Cohen, 2007). All of these mental calculations might be made independent of – and sometimes even to the detriment of – maximizing desired organizational functions or stated outcomes. This does not mean that decisions and actions based on these other criteria are not rational. They are just not instrumentally rational. In the case of schools, for example, one stated outcome is maximizing student learning. The expectation, from an instrumentally rational perspective of organizations is that school staff’s beliefs, the practices they use and the structures enabling these practices (i.e., having certain positions/roles, policies, departments, scheduling) should result in decisions and

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actions that generate the most student learning. Yet, the beliefs driving teachers’ instructional decisions do sometimes undermine learning, especially for certain student groups (McKown & Weinstein, 2008). Practices school leaders use, such as routines for problem solving or top-down decision making can be based on preferences for a particular leadership style or some other more random set of factors rather than learning outcomes (Cohen & March, 1986). School policies, procedures, scheduling and the configuration of administrative roles are frequently counterproductive (Chubb & Moe, 2000). Moreover, any number of schools that do not demonstrate satisfactory performance do not close – this is true of even of charter schools, which were promulgated expressly for the purpose of enabling market forces in education (Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2015). The fact that many decisions and action in schools can be counterproductive does not mean teachers, school leaders, district administrators or state policy makers are disinterested in maximizing outcomes, such as student learning. It means that in pursuit of such outcomes, the decisions and actions required to attain the outcomes may be hijacked by other forms of rationality even while being rationalized as maximizing stated organizational outcomes (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). In other words, teachers, principals, district superintendents, state education commissioners and a host of other actors in the education sector might tell themselves, and truly believe, their decisions and actions are maximizing student learning. Yet, what they are ultimately maximizing is something else entirely. They are maximizing legitimacy. This, as discussed further in the next section, is the second key insight of institutional theory.

The Role of Legitimacy in Institutional Processes When decisions and actions are motivated by instrumental rationality, actors judge the

worth or efficacy of decisions and actions based on how much they maximize some valued, and usually material and measurable, outcome or desired end. More money, more leisure time, more student learning, for instance. How do actors know the worth or efficacy of decisions and actions when they are based on other forms of rationality? What exactly are actors maximizing? The answer to this question is legitimacy – a socially constructed and so ostensibly much more subjective end.2 By way of definition, ‘legitimacy is’, as explained by Suchman (1995, p. 574) in his widely-read synthesis of a large body of prior research on the subject, ‘a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions.’ Said more succinctly by others, legitimacy is a logic of appropriateness or a perception of social fitness (March & Olsen, 2008). Consider, for example, the different bases of rationality described in the previous section. Greater legitimacy might result when decisions and actions are more consistent with one’s identity, values or convictions. Greater legitimacy might result when decisions and actions generate emotional displays that match expectations in a given social situation. Greater legitimacy could result when decisions and actions are undertaken quickly, boldly or resolutely in the face of widely acknowledged limits on preferable alternatives. Another way greater legitimacy might result is when decisions and actions conform to the expectations or pressures of certain social groups. Greater legitimacy might also result when decisions and actions do not deviate too noticeably from routine or habitual decisions and actions that are made. The reason legitimacy is so important is because legitimacy, like ends maximized under instrumentally rational motives, is a resource, namely a social resource (Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975). When possessed, the resource of legitimacy allows actors to

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accomplish a variety of other desirable aims and ends; when lacking, actors are constrained in accomplishing desired aims and ends. For example, research on the role of legitimacy for organizational actors demonstrates that when organizations are perceived as legitimate, organizations gain greater participation in and commitment to a variety of organizational endeavors, including change efforts (Dornbush & Scott, 1975). What is more, commitment gained by securing legitimacy often comes at a lower cost than commitments gained through monetary inducements (Tyler, 2006). Greater legitimacy also guards against the scrutiny or sanctions of regulatory actors and gains organizations relationships and support through partnerships or alliances in both the public and private sector (Dacin, Oliver, & Roy, 2007; Weiss & Piderit, 1999). And, legitimacy results in greater material resources, such as investment dollars or increased student enrollments and therefore greater tuition receipts (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001). In contrast, a lack of legitimacy tends to result in the inverse of the above-described positive outcomes – namely less support, less participation and commitment, greater regulatory scrutiny and sanctions and fewer material resources (Meyer & Scott, 1992; Rao, 1994; Zuckerman, 1999). Indeed, the ultimate cost of a lack of legitimacy is what organizational researchers refer to as organizational mortality, which is to say organizations fail and have to close down (Singh, Tucker, & House, 1986). The costs associated with a lack of legitimacy helps explain why organizations go through so many pains to manage legitimacy, meaning how to gain, maintain and repair legitimacy (Ashforth & Gibbs, 1990; Bridwell-Mitchell & Mezias, 2012; Golant & Sillince, 2007). The costs of a lack of legitimacy is also one reason that beliefs, practices and structures in institutions tend to be long-held. New beliefs, practices and structures, especially ones that do not conform closely to existing ones, tend to be perceived as less legitimate (Deephouse, 1996). Thus, organizational change threatens

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legitimacy and the social resources an organization has at its disposal. This means organizational change is much less likely; this is especially so in highly institutionalized organizations, of which schools are a prime example (Meyer, 1977). Indeed, the importance of legitimacy has been a major focus of research on schools. Some have argued that in the pre-standards and accountability era, the emphasis schools placed on having certain processes and structures could be explained almost entirely by the need for schools to secure legitimacy from government authorities, professional bodies and local constituents. This includes the size of district bureaucracies, the presence of certain professional groups in schools and the extent to which actual classroom practices were decoupled or not closely related to formal structures that exist in schools (Meyer & Rowan, 1992; Meyer, Scott, & Strang, 1987; Rowan, 1982). There are others who would argue that schools’ current emphasis on conforming to standardized performance metrics, for both teachers and students, is intended to secure legitimacy from other audiences with more market-oriented or neoliberal concerns (Ladd, 2002). That legitimacy is a resource motivating actors’ decisions and actions is of clear importance in institutional theory. Indeed, despite cautions by some that institutional theory might evolve into a loosely related set of concepts that is not a theory at all, there is a core theory in institutional theory (Scott, 1987). A theory is a general principle that can be used to explain a set of interrelated outcomes (Sutton & Staw, 1995). For institutional theory, the outcomes of interest are organizational operations and outcomes, at the individual, organizational and field level, and the general principal is legitimacy. Thus, the core theory of institutional theory, particularly neo-institutional theory is that organizational operations and outcomes are explained by actors’ legitimacy concerns. Yet, the importance of legitimacy for understanding institutional processes raises important

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questions about why some decisions and actions are legitimate and others are not. This is the third and final major institutional theory insight I address before discussing how these insights relate to central issues in education, such as school reform.

The Three Pillars or Forces Undergirding Institutions One widely accepted answer to questions about why certain beliefs, practices and structures are legitimate is provided by W. Richard Scott, who is considered one of a quartet of forbearers of modern institutional theory (Scott, 2008). The others are Paul DiMaggio and Walter (Woody) Powell, best known for their work on institutional isomorphism, along with John Meyer and Brian Rowan, best known for their work on myth and ceremony, and also Lynn Zucker, best known for her work on institutionalization (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Zucker, 1977). Scott argues that institutions are undergirded by what he terms three ‘pillars.’ As described further below and as illustrated in Table 9.1, there is the regulative pillar, the normative pillar and the cultural-cognitive pillar. Together, these pillars respectively define and reinforce what actors (1) accept as the proper rules and

resource allocations, (2) perceive as socially desirable or normative, and (3) take for granted as true and appropriate.

The regulative pillar The regulative pillar refers to formal laws, regulation, rules or policies which determine how actors can behave. At every level of the education sector, indicators of the regulative pillar abound. At the federal level, there is legislation, such as the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and its various reincarnations, including No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001 and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015. At the state level, there are regulations determining curriculum standards – the most recent and widely recognizable example being the Common Core. States also have regulations determining student assessments, teacher certification, principal licensure and local schools’ ability to operate independently or to be run by the state education agency (Education Commission of the States, 2002; Toye, Blank, Sanders, & Williams, 2007). At the local level, there are union contracts that delimit teachers’ working conditions and pay, school board policies determining school funding, facilities usage and the hiring of top leaders, such as superintendents (Kirst, 1984; Rogers, 1968). At the building level, there are rules and policies about student conduct, the

Table 9.1  The three pillars of institutions Regulative pillar

Normative pillar

Cultural-cognitive pillar

Basis of legitimacy

Legally sanctioned

Morally governed

Basis of order Basis of compliance

Regulative rules and resultant resources Expedience, pragmatism

Mechanisms Logics Indicators

Coercive Self-interest, instrumentality Rules, laws, sanctions

Affect

Fear, deprivation

Binding expectations of social groups Social obligation and desirability Normative Appropriateness Certification, approval, membership Shame, honor, pride

Culturally supported, comprehensible Constitutive schema and scripts Taken-for-granted, shared understandings Mimetic Orthodoxy Common beliefs, meanings

Note: Adapted from Table 3.1 in Scott, 2008.

Certainty, confusion

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scope and monitoring of teachers’ work, building maintenance and security, parent and family involvement and more (Bidwell, 1965). This complex nexus of regulations, rules and policies determining school operations is frequently a focus of both supporters and detractors of the current public education system (Chubb & Moe, 2000). The regulations, rules and policies constituting the regulative pillar determine the legitimacy of certain beliefs, practices and structures. Rules are perceived as desirable, proper and appropriate partly because powerful actors who issue the rules are widely recognized and accepted as having the authority to do so (Dornbush & Scott, 1975). So, the regulative pillar tends to legitimate the beliefs, practices and structures of those with the power and authority to enforce compliance. Yet, the regulative pillar also legitimates the beliefs, practices and structures of those with resources to induce certain decisions and action. Regulations, rules and policies do not only stipulate sanctions, they determine the tangible resources available for certain activities. This includes the money, time, materials, facilities and labor needed to accomplish goals. So there is a self-interested incentive for conforming to the rules and there is a risk associated with not doing so. Hence, legitimacy associated with the regulative pillar is sometimes described as pragmatic legitimacy (Suchman, 1995). In the same way that it is pragmatic to secure resources or prevent their loss, it is also pragmatic to avoid the penalties associated with violating rules. These penalties include explicit sanctions, such as fines, loss of authority, position or freedoms. Think, for example, of students who are suspended for not following rules, teachers who receive formal reprimands that compromise their positions, principals whose authority is removed by state intervention, districts forced to pay fines for violating union contacts, state education agencies that lose federal funding because of failed compliance. Because actors depend on resources and fear sanctions

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associated with regulations, rules and policies, the mechanisms by which the regulative pillar supports and reinforces institutions is sometimes described as coercive (DiMaggion & Powell, 1983). Thus, the presence of both coercion and inducements make it wise for actors to maximize pragmatic legitimacy, which requires conforming to existing regulations, policies and rules.

The normative pillar Whereas the regulative pillar undergirds institutions through coercion and inducements, which legitimate the beliefs, practices and structures of powerful, well-resourced actors, the normative pillar undergirds institutions through social rewards or penalties (Scott, 2008). The root word ‘norm’ in normative pillar refers to the expectations of the social groups of which actors view themselves as being a part. Thus, identity and identification with particular social groups play an important part in institutional processes for both individual and organizational actors (Lok, 2010). These social groups can include an actor’s peers, colleagues, professional associations and any number of demographically defined communities, such as those defined by specific beliefs, cultural backgrounds, generational experiences or individual characteristics. For example, for teachers in a school, certain instructional practices may be legitimate because the practices are used by most of their peers or by the particular community of colleagues to which they feel most closely tied. Because peers’ practices are viewed as legitimate, these are the practices teachers tend to use – a phenomenon documented repeatedly in studies of social influence among peer groups, including among teachers in schools (Coburn, 2001; Frank, Zhao, & Borman, 2004; Friedkin, 1993). Likewise, school leaders might schedule the school day, departmentalize staff, or solve problems in a particular way because this is what other principals they know are doing and so they rely on a kind of ‘collegial rationality’ (Leithwood & Steinbach, 1995, p. 96). Alternatively, principals might have learned

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about certain structures in their principal training or certification programs. Even at the organization level, such as among district offices or state education agencies (SEAs), there are other districts and SEAs to which they compare themselves and so whose approaches to school reform, for example, are the ones they view as most legitimate (Tolbert & Zucker, 1983; VanGronigen & Meyers, 2017). The social rewards of conforming to the norms of a given social group maximize what Suchman refers to as moral legitimacy because legitimacy tied to the normative pillar ultimately rests on endorsements of a particular social group’s values or beliefs about what is good, right or important (Suchman, 1995). These social rewards include attributions of status, conferral of honor or prestige, feelings of satisfaction or pride in fulfilling one’s social obligation or in doing what’s expected. These social rewards might even be formally documented, such as receiving official membership status, certification or accreditation. The ability of the professions to formally confer such social reward and their role in socializing and training individuals to undertake certain kinds of decisions and actions is one reason the professions are seen as playing such an important role in institutional processes (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Russell, 2010). Of course, not receiving any of the above rewards – formal or informal – is a social penalty, which actors hope to avoid. Social rewards and penalties are one reason that beliefs, practices and structures comprising institutions are value-laden. They are valueladen because conforming to them reinforces and amplifies actors’ sense of social identity, acceptance and importance. Social rewards and penalties also help explain why institutions tend to persist. When actors follow along with what others believe and are doing, this results in a self-reinforcing mechanism for existing beliefs, practices and structures. Importantly, the spread and reinforcement of beliefs, practices and structures depends partly on patterns of interaction among

actors; this is why the structure of social networks is increasingly understood as playing a key role in institutional processes (Battilana & Casciaro, 2012; Bridwell-Mitchell & Sherer, 2017). Still, it is not only through social interactions that actors come to understand what is expected of them; they also gain such understandings through a broader set of cultural experiences.

The cultural-cognitive pillar The most elusive of the three pillars – because it is the least tangible – is the culturalcognitive pillar. The cultural-cognitive pillar refers to actors’ understandings about ‘what makes sense’ and ‘how things should be’ (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Scott, 2008). Notably, understandings about what makes sense and how things should be often come from actors’ broad cultural experiences in the wider society, such as experiences in families, bureaucracies, markets, democracies and religions (Friedland & Alford, 1991). When beliefs, practices and structures match broadly shared, cultural understandings, beliefs, practices and structures have more legitimacy – which is to say, in Suchman’s words, they have more ‘cognitive legitimacy’ (Suchman, 1995, p. 577). In its most powerful form, the cultural-cognitive pillar prohibits actors from questioning current arrangements or even imagining alternatives because existing arrangements are assumed or taken for granted as the way things are supposed to be (Zucker, 1983). The mechanics of the cultural-cognitive pillar can seem abstract. Yet, these mechanics are rooted in more tangible phenomena from social psychology, which often help explain the micro-foundations of institutional process (Powell & Colyvas, 2008). And, it is important to note that psychological phenomena are, in turn, rooted in the even more tangible neurological processes of human cognition, whereby neurons and the synaptic connections between them encode information and meaning from which human psychology arises (DiMaggio, 1997; Patterson,

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Nestor, & Rogers, 2007). The most relevant psychological phenomena for understanding the cultural-cognitive pillar are schemas and scripts. Schema are mental models, which organize stimuli or information to which actors are exposed; scripts are sets of actions that follow from a given schema. Schema and scripts explain why, when there are books, desks, a chalk board and children present, most people immediately understand they are in a classroom. Knowing one is in a classroom, in turn, activates scripts for learning or teaching, depending on one’s role schema. Relatedly, schema and scripts are why most people’s image of ‘teaching’ is someone standing at the front of a classroom lecturing well-behaved students seated in rows. This is in contrast to someone who is barely observable in the classroom because they are engaged in light-touch facilitation of an intellectually raucous groups of independent students working on collaborative projects in a so-called flipped classroom (Edwards-Leis, 2010). Schema are why it seems natural for students in public schools to be divided into age-based, grade cohorts rather than by self-paced learning cohorts as is the case in many Montessori schools. Widely shared schema also explain why it just makes sense to have school districts organized into hierarchical bureaucracies with a superintendent at the top, resulting in what DiMaggio and Powell refer to as mimetic isomorphism, which is to say, schools having the same structures because they mimic each other (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). If it seems hard to even imagine other ways of organizing school districts, teaching students or designing classrooms, or if you have strong doubts about how well alternative arrangements might work, this reflects the degree to which these current arrangements are cognitively legitimate and so highly institutionalized. Cognitive legitimacy and the cognitive pillar have special standing in institutional processes because some would argue that cognitive forces, exclusive of normative or

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regulative ones, can be sufficient to maintain institutions (Zucker, 1977). Cognitive legitimacy makes institutionalized beliefs, practices and structures especially value-laden because actors have a strong preference for certainty over uncertainty (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). This means beliefs, practices and structures that match already existing, well-understood ones are preferred to ones that do not, even if the latter may be more effective for accomplishing desired ends. Consequently, new beliefs, practices and structures are less likely to take hold so that existing beliefs, practices and structures become long-held. As a result of their longevity, existing beliefs, practices and structures become further taken for granted as appropriate. So, the cognitive pillar tends to promote mass agreement and the status quo. This, along with the normative pillar’s social endorsements and the regulative pillar’s material inducements leads to some widely recognized issues in the case of school organizations, and especially in the case of school reform. An issue taken up in the penultimate section of this chapter.

INSTITUTIONAL THEORY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR SCHOOL ORGANIZATIONS Institutional Processes and Expectations of Persistence If schools are highly institutionalized, as some have argued, then they are especially susceptible to the institutional process described throughout this chapter (Meyer, 1977; Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Consider that instrumental rationality depends on some sense of confidence that identified means, which is to say specific decisions and actions, will results in desired functions or stated organizational outcomes (Pollock, 2002). In the education sector, it is not always clear which means lead to desired ends, which is

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to say which specific decisions and actions in classroom, schools or districts have causal effects on student outcomes (Kim, 2008; Schoenfeld, 2004; Tyack & Cuban, 1997; Weick, 1976). Even if the means were well known, the appropriate ends or outcomes are often up for debate: intellectual/academic growth, social and emotional development, human enlightenment, workforce preparation, socialization for civic engagement. Some have argued that increased monitoring and measurement in the education sector by way of the accountability movement has resulted in tighter linkages or coupling between means and ends (Spillane et  al., 2002). However, it does not help to better monitor means if it is not clear they lead to desired ends; it does not help to better measure ends if it is not clear how they result from certain means. Indeed, some would argue this is why there tends to be extensive means–ends decoupling in education organizations and policy contexts (Bromley & Powell, 2012). If instrumental rationality that maximizes desired ends is problematic or impossible, then relying on other forms of rationality, which maximize legitimacy may, in fact, be the most rational choice. Given expectations of legitimacy maximization and institutional processes in schools, more broadly, it is essential to understand the implications of this, especially for some of the most important issues in education, such as school improvement and reform. One of the main implications of institutional theory for schools is well captured in Lynn Zucker’s seminal experimental study testing a fundamental prediction of institutional theory (Zucker, 1977). This prediction is that the stronger the degree of institutionalization, the more likely it is that ‘social knowledge’ will be transmitted and maintained over time and will resist attempts at change. In this case, ‘social knowledge’ refers to beliefs, practices and structures that are widely understood and agreed upon as proper, desirable and appropriate, in other words, legitimate. For Zucker, transmission, maintenance and

resistance resulting from institutionalization could be accomplished on the strength of the cognitive pillar alone since, she argued, these outcomes did not depend on internalized norms, social control or sanctions. So, one would expect that the effects of institutionalization would be even greater when supported by all three pillars – cognitive, normative and regulative. These arguments and the evidence supporting them suggest that institutions tend to persist – they are more likely to stay the same than to change. That institutionalized beliefs, practices and structures will be both persistent and pervasive (i.e., across actors and across time) means one should not expect school reform to succeed. This expectation is certainly consistent with considerable evidence documenting the challenges of successfully implementing widespread, deep-level changes in the educational system (Payne, 2008; Ravich, 2000; Sarason, 1990). However, institutional theory does not only provide explanations about the mechanisms and process of institutional persistence. The tenets of institutional theory also offer important predictions about the possibility of institutional change and so also the possibility of overcoming so-called ‘failed reform.’

Institutional Change in the Education Sector and Inside School Organizations If resistance to change in beliefs, practices and structures results from taken-for-granted and widely shared understandings (i.e., the cognitive pillar), the endorsement of social groups (i.e., the normative pillar) and material inducements or sanctions (i.e., the regulative pillar), then institutional change can come from changing actors’ understandings, social groups and dependence on certain rules and resources. Such changes may emerge endogenously over time as changing environments make old understandings, relationships and rules/resources obsolete (Oliver, 1992).

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Indeed, over the long span of history, many institutions that once existed no longer do. However, this kind of gradual and perhaps even eventual change in institutions does not satisfy the requirements of dramatic school improvement that is typically sought by educational reforms. The alternative to emergent endogenous change is either an unanticipated exogenous shock or some form of agency, meaning choices made by some actor motivated by particular identities, insights or interests, which effect change (DiMaggio, 1988). The unpredictability of the former makes it a poor choice for the hopes of educational reformers. And, until recently, many researchers studying institutions would have said the latter was also a poor choice but for the paradox of embedded agency (Battilana & D’Aunno, 2009). This is to say, that the very existence of institutions constrains how actors think, with whom they identify and interact, and the resources and rules that are important to them. As a result, most actors think in the same kinds of ways, have the same normative social identities and interactions, and have the same resource dependencies and so are similarly risk-adverse. Thus, few actors would be expected to conceive of making changes to existing institutions, to have social relationships that would support changes or would be willing and able to bear the risks or acquire the resources needed to put changes into effect. Yet, paradoxically, sometimes such agents do appear – both at the macro level in organizational fields or sectors and also at the micro level inside organizations.

An example of macro-level changes in the organizational field Prior to 1983, the notion of instruction determined by unifying curriculum standards and that learning would be measured by regular standard testing of almost all students was uncommon in US public schools (Tyack & Cuban, 1997). This changed with the publication of A Nation at Risk, the report that was a call to arms around the country’s global

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competitiveness through education (National Education Commission, 1983). It was also the codification of the effects of embedded institutional agency. Specifically, actors who had some ties to the K-12 education sector but who also were embedded in the business and higher education administration sectors brought to prominence, through the report, beliefs, practices and structures that were largely institutionalized and legitimate in their own sectors but new to K-12 education. Over time, some have argued that the business-minded or market-based beliefs, practices and structures seeded by the report’s authors have re-shaped underlying beliefs and assumptions about education, changed how people interact and construct their identities, and have influenced resource allocations and ‘rules of the game’ in ways that have fundamentally altered the character of K-12 public education (Ravich, 2010). The story of how new market-based beliefs and practices – or what some describe as logics (i.e., Thornton & Ocasio, 2008) – diffused and came to dominate the K-12 education sector is well explained by any number of studies documenting institutional emergence and change at the field level. This includes explanations about the key role of peripheral actors, of individual, small group and collective entrepreneurship, and of the unobtrusive embedding of new logics – all of which can support a shift in specific practices and structures in organizational fields (Dorado, 2013; Lawrence & Phillips, 2004; Leblebici, Salancik, Copay, & King, 1991; Smets, Morris, & Greenwood, 2012; Wijen & Ansari, 2007).

An example of micro-level change inside organizations Institutional change instigated by embedded agents not only occurs at the field or sector level. It also occurs inside organizations to result in so-called micro-institutional change, meaning changes in the institutionalized beliefs, practices and structures inside particular organizations (Bridwell-Mitchell, 2015;

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Kellogg, 2009). Micro-institutional change is especially important for understanding school reform and improvement that requires innovation or the implementation of changes at the building level. Studies of microinstitutional change demonstrate how actors such as principals and teachers enact forms of institutional agency that help erode existing cognitive, normative and regulative pillars in order to legitimate new beliefs, practices and structures. This can happen through individual or group agency that is intentionally directed at affecting institutional outcomes. Micro-institutional change can also happen through agency directed mainly at solving practice problems; yet, as actors make judgments between alternative courses of action required to solve practice problems, they ultimately privilege some bases of institutions over others and so effect institutional change (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). One example of this is collaborative institutional agency. Collaborative institutional agency refers to ‘numerous, diverse, typically non-elite individuals working together to construct shared understandings, aims, and practices to execute new work routines in uncertain, ambiguous, or otherwise problematic institutional contexts’ (Bridwell-Mitchell, 2016, p. 184). For example, Bridwell-Mitchell’s study of school turnaround has demonstrated how teachers’ working together in collegial communities will reject institutionalized instructional practices in favor of new practices associated with increased student learning and overall school improvement (BridwellMitchell, 2015). This happens when there are certain conditions present in communities which delegitimize existing work practices by eroding their normative foundation. Yet, at the same time, these conditions – a balance of cohesion, informational diversity, socialization and innovation opportunities in communities – also help legitimize new practices through creating shared understandings and strong pressures for conformity. Such findings reinforce other research demonstrating the potential effects of teachers’ collaborative work (e.g., Ronfeldt, Farmer, McQueen,

& Grissom, 2015). Yet, the institutional lens also clarifies the mechanism by which positive effects of collaborative work might arise – namely, by way of conditions that influence the cognitive and normative pillars of institutions.

CONCLUSION There are some who might argue that institutional theory and education research are worlds apart in their objectives (Burch, 2007). An alternative interpretation is that institutional theory and educational research, especially educational research concerned with school reform and improvement, have a common objective but one that is sometimes viewed through different lenses. This objective is understanding the pervasiveness and persistence of certain beliefs, practices and structures in organizations and the extent to which they might vary or change across actors and over time. Institutional theorists tend to approach the objective from a starting place grounded in general principles of social knowledge, cultural norms and regulatory constraints. The intent is to explain and predict the pervasiveness or persistence of certain beliefs, practices and structures in a broad set of organizational cases, of which schools might be one example. In contrast, educational researchers tend to approach the objective from a starting place of the specific issues, situated problems and emergent activities in particular educational contexts. In this case, one possible outcome – but not necessarily the intent – is to explain or predict the pervasiveness or persistence of certain beliefs, practices and structures more broadly. Given the two approaches, both institutional theory and educational research could be used to answer a question such as, ‘to what extent will an instructional reform intended to improve classroom practice be adopted by many schools or be used by many teachers in a particular school?’ As demonstrated by a robust body of research combining institutional theory and educational research, the

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marriage of the two approaches can yield important insights about both institutional processes and educational outcomes (Rowan & Miskel, 1999). For some, institutional theory’s conventionally more macro-leaning approach, meaning its focus on the larger society, broad cultural patterns and field-level phenomena, impose an unnecessary level of abstraction. One result is that institutional theory can seem less applicable to the real world and work of micro-level actors in schools (Burch, 2007). Ironically, it was the real world and work of micro-level actors in organizations, including their messy politics, inexplicable processes and unpredictable outcomes, that was the beginning of Selznick’s old institutionalism (Selznick, 1996). Recently, researchers have returned to institutional theory’s roots to examine its micro-foundations (Powell & Colyvas, 2008). This has resulted not only in studies of institutional agency but of the institutional work – the specific practice and activities – in which agents are engaged and how this work is performed (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). Doing so has directed attention to the importance of factors such as logics, network interactions, identity, emotions, and the body in institutional processes (Battilana, 2006; Heaphy, Locke, & Booth, 2016; Lok, 2010; Voronov & Vince, 2012). So, now, perhaps, more than ever, insights from institutional theory provide an important lens for examining educational phenomena in classrooms, schools, districts, state education agencies and in the sector, more broadly. There is, however, one important caution to be heeded in the micro-turn in institutional theory and the promises it might hold for better understanding educational issues, such as the implementation of instructional reforms in school organizations. A focus on micro-level phenomena can unintentionally result in the metaphorical loss of the forest for the trees. This is to say that the larger macro-processes that organize and help explain micro-level phenomena can become obscured in ways that remove the institutions from institutional theory and so make

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it difficult to see how the so-called ‘grammar of schooling’ influences decisions, actions and outcomes in school contexts (Tyack & Tobin, 1994). The translation of macro-level phenomena to micro-level processes and outcomes and the reverse has been described by some as ‘the holy grail’ of social science research (DiMaggio, 1991). Still, this pursuit remains the responsibility of researchers with an interest in applying institutional theory to important educational questions. Otherwise, researchers – and the policy makers and practitioners who heed them – may settle for seductively easy answers, which, while seeming straightforward, do not reflect the complex reality of improving schools in ways that result in substantive and long-lasting institutional change.

Notes 1  A useful visualization for the distinction between organizations and institutions is a Venn diagram. One sphere is the full set of institutions, which includes the family, religion, markets and bureaucracies, to name a few. the second overlapping sphere is the full set of organizations, which include family-owned businesses, law firms, hospitals, restaurants, tech start-ups and schools, to name a few. So, while not all institutions are organizations and not all organizations are institutions, there is a subset of social phenomena which are both. Indeed, while not all institutions are organizations, the maintenance of institutions often requires an organizational apparatus 2  There are some who would argue that maximizing material ends also maximizes legitimacy because the market – and so assumptions about instrumental rationality on which the marketmechanism is based – is just another institution; further, which material ends are valuable is also a social construction (Friedland & Alford, 1991). Likewise, there are some who would argue that legitimacy maximization is instrumentally rational because legitimacy, itself, is the desired end. I can appreciate both points of view. However, for conceptual clarity, in this chapter, I use the terms ‘valued’ or ‘desired’ outcomes to refer to material outcomes that might reasonably be measured or monetized and so are to some extent fungible. I reserve the term ‘legitimacy’ for ends that are primarily perceptions or judgements and so are not easily measured or monetized and depend more on a particular audience or social context.

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Lok, J. (2010). Institutional logics as identity projects. Academy of Management Journal, 53(6), 1305–1335. Lounsbury, M., & Glynn, M. A. (2001). Cultural entrepreneurship: Stories of legitimacy and the acquisition of resources. Strategic Management Journal, 22(6), 545–564. March, J., & Simon, H. (1958). Organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (2008). The logic of appropriateness. In R. E. Goodin (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of political science (pp. 478–497). New York: Oxford University Press. McKown, C., & Weinstein, R. S. (2008). Teacher expectations, classroom context, and the achievement gap. Journal of School Psychology, 46(3), 235–261. Meyer, J., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremonies. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340–362. Meyer, J., & Rowan, B. (1992). The structure of educational organizations. In J. Meyer & R. Scott (Eds.), Organizational environments: Ritual and rationality (pp. 71–96). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Meyer, J., & Scott, R. (1992). Centralization and the legitimacy problems of local governments. In J. Meyer & R. Scott (Eds.), Organizational environments: Ritual and rationality. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Meyer, J., Scott, W. R., & Strang, D. (1987). Centralization, fragmentation, and school district complexity. Administrative Science Quarterly, 32(2), 186–201. Meyer, J. W. (1977). The effects of education as an institution. American Journal of Sociology, 83(1), 55–77. National Education Commission (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. A report to the nation and the secretary of education. Washington, DC: National Education Commission. Oliver, C. (1992). The antecedents of deinstitutionalization. Organization Studies, 13(4), 563–588. Patterson, K., Nestor, P. J., & Rogers, T. T. (2007). Where do you know what you know? The representation of semantic knowledge in the human brain. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, 8(12), 976. Payne, C. M. (2008). So much reform, so little change: The persistence of failure in urban

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10 School Organization: Authority, Status and the Role of Love as an Integrative Power Philip A. Woods

INTRODUCTION The value of greater flexibility and fluidity in organizations and their leadership has been a major focus of study and change for over two decades. The advantage of blurred boundaries, even the boundaryless organization, has been explored and advocated. Co-production, in which boundaries between producer and citizen are crossed in order to work together to design services, has generated an immense literature. The idea and practice of leadership distribution in organizations – replacing steep, rigid, traditional leadership hierarchies – attracts continued interest, reflecting changes in leadership practices. Schools are envisaged as more open organizations with ‘fuzzy boundaries’ and interacting networks (Harris, 2008: 150). A range of studies illustrates the attraction of the organization with blurred boundaries, active boundary spanning and leadership distribution (e.g., Bolden, 2011; Gratton, 2007, 2011; Hirschhorn and Gilmore,

1992; Schlappa and Imani, 2012, 2018; Western, 2013). Such changes have implications for power. The critical exploration of these implications is a theme running through this chapter, recognizing that there is a dual aspect to power. Agential power, for the purpose of this chapter, I define as the capacity to effect change. To express it more fully, as a dimension of human agency, power – by giving ‘those who possess it greater freedom from constraints and control over their own outcomes’ (Guinote, 2007: 1076) – is the capacity of a person or group to do valued things and influence others. There is also the power and influence exerted by structural and institutional factors. Agential power is shaped by this emergent structural power, which in turn is affected by people’s deliberations and actions that constitute agency, a process described as analytical dualism by Archer (1995). An underlying thesis of this chapter is that boundaries are ubiquitous even in the most open of organizations. Boundaries separate

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features of the social and internal personal landscapes that make up organizations. These features include personal characteristics (such as ethnicity, gender, occupational identity, qualifications, experience, and so on), roles (such as headteacher, dean, teacher, technician, student or middle leader), organizational spaces that position people and give them an organizational home (happy or otherwise) (such as a class, team, department or educational programme), and networks, loose groupings of interconnecting individuals, communities, friendship groups and other relational configurations. Taking the perspective of analytical dualism, these features and the boundaries they forge are emergent social properties that arise from the interplay of individual agency and cultural, social and institutional structures (Archer, 1995). Among these boundaries are those integral to authority and status distinctions, which are the focus of this chapter. The chapter begins by setting up the context in which traditional organizational boundaries are challenged, describing this as the openness discourse. It then explores the concepts of authority and status and their continuing relevance in more open organizations, setting out multiple authorities and examining the impact of distinctions of esteem. Both the negative features of differences in authority and status – division, conflict and injustice – and their benefits in legitimizing boundaries in expertise, capabilities and experience are recognized. Negative aspects can threaten goals of integration, innovation and mutual learning, as well as social justice. In response to this, the notion of love as an integrative power lessening or transcending power distances embedded in authority and status relationships is examined. The chapter concludes that love as an integrative power is capable of fostering critical evaluation of authorization and status attribution and their resultant boundaries and of nurturing integration that aids innovation, learning and values of shared humanity and social justice. Love is presented as a capability for agency that can be developed and

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exercised in critically navigating the numerous and diverse authority and status divisions in more open organizations.

THE DISCOURSE OF OPENNESS PROMOTING FLEXIBILITY AND FLUIDITY IN ORGANIZATIONS For the purpose of the discussion in this chapter, I refer to the sweep of attention given to greater flexibility and fluidity in organizations as a discourse of organizational openness. The latter projects an influential focus on free-flowing communication, cooperation and trust within and between organizations and the limitations of centralized direction to achieve organizational goals, particularly innovation and improvement. There are resonances with the idea of emergence in complexity theory: systems, organizations and leadership are increasingly understood as emergent phenomena, characterized by complexity and self-organizing qualities. Complexity theory views systems and organizations as the product of innumerable local interactions (Boulton et al., 2015; Hawkins and James, 2017; Stacey, 2012). Three key themes of organizational openness can be identified (Woods et  al., 2018 forthcoming). The first is diversity of participation. This is the idea that it is beneficial to organizations that the widest range of stakeholders have opportunities to generate innovations and participate in their development. Sometimes referred to as democratic or distributed innovation, this process involves firms and industries adapting in response to the pressures they face by dismantling traditional staff structures and divisions (von Hippel, 2005). Co-production, an approach to change in public services which puts the service user rather than the policy-maker or professional at the heart of innovation, is another expression of such diversity (Osborne et al., 2013; Schlappa and Imani, 2012, 2018). Diversity of participation reflects a shift of

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focus from individualistic e­ntrepreneurship to distributed agency (Miettinen, 2013: 113). In schools, innovation has been found to flourish where teachers, school leaders and learners are active participants, as well as families and communities (Timperley et  al., 2014). The second is collaboration. If diversity of participation emphasizes the wide spread of people and agencies that it is beneficial to involve in innovation, the collaborative feature highlights the nature of the interaction: it emphasizes the importance of cooperation and exchange, and that innovation benefits from being undertaken through collaborative processes, rather than through top-down procedures. Research and practice concerning innovation suggest that individualistic behaviour (by individuals and organizations) is not conducive to innovation. Miettinen (2013: 130) draws attention to the importance of both individual and collaborative agency. Collaboration is seen as integral to creating innovative cultures in all kinds of organizations (Gratton, 2011), including schools where collaborative enquiry, undertaken in a disciplined way, creates the conditions for ‘dramatically more innovative approaches to learning and teaching’ (Timperley et al., 2014: 4). The third is institutional reach. Innovation is not only about incremental change but can enhance its value by seeking out the potential for institutional reach – that is, the wider scope for benefits across the organization, with implications for culture (values and ideas), institutional arrangements (roles, organizational structures, resource allocation) and social relationships. Such radical innovation is about ‘discontinuous change’ and is complex, with challenges that are different from those of ‘incremental organizational change’ (Osborne and Brown, 2011: 1338). It is argued that a new kind of organizational actor – institutional entrepreneurs – forge ‘new inter-actor relations to bring about collective action’ (Kisfalvi and Maguire, 2011: 152). Openness facilitates the initiation and progress of innovation (Chesborough, 2006).

In relation to higher education, for example, Peters et al. (2012: 12) analyze the growth and knowledge benefits of ‘open knowledge production’, which is based on collective intelligence, participation through peer networking and new relationships among societies, enterprises and individuals. They argue that ‘we are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning where educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use’ (Peters et al., 2012: xiii–ix). Everyday changes in much of education may appear less revolutionary but nonetheless, arguably, together and over time they constitute a larger trend posited by the openness discourse. There are diverse ways in which the three themes just discussed are given practical expression. They include cultural fluidity, which refers to mindsets and ideas circulated in organizations that lessen the perceived rigidity of boundaries, and boundary-spanning, which refers to practices of moving across or around boundaries that nonetheless exist. Partnerships may be seen as a specific kind of boundary-spanning and blurring, which has garnered a great deal of interest in education and can be seen as including practices labelled as co-production or co-creation, such as collaborative educational work with students and teachers (Healey et  al., 2014; Schlappa and Imani, 2018). A further kind of practice is leadership distribution. This refers to the diffusion of leadership authority so that actors in nondesignated leadership roles as well as designated leaders are able to initiate change and engage in pro-active agency. It takes diverse forms and is given different names, such as distributed, shared, democratic or collaborative leadership as well as teacher leadership (Woods and Roberts, 2018). In schools, teachers’ professionality and agency are enhanced by ‘the power of collegiality, collaboration, networking, community building and other forms of collectivity’ (Frost, 2017: 3), and in higher education, ‘new forms of collective behavior, that are enabled by social

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media, encourage and promote collaborative problem solving’ (Peters and Heraud, 2015: 10). Traditional barriers tend to obstruct the flow of ideas, information, feedback and creative thinking. In a review of power, status and learning in organizations, Bunderson and Reagans (2011) conclude that differences in power and status hinder organizational learning. Such differences ‘throw gravel’ into the process of learning by hindering a focus on shared goals, reducing willingness to experiment and take risks and decreasing the inclination to share knowledge (2011: 1183). Diminished barriers of hierarchical authority, together with collaborative working that brings together different experience and perspectives (such as students, support staff, teachers, parents, and so on in schools), challenge the rigidity of traditional barriers and enhance the organizational capacity for learning. For leadership distribution, there is evidence of positive impacts for innovation and learning (Woods and Roberts, 2018).

Thinking Critically about Openness The openness discourse explored in this section might be taken to mean that power is diffused. More organizational members, arguably, are able to take initiatives, participate in change as partners, fulfil their ambitions and work in fairer and more collaborative arrangements that enhance learning and innovation. Yet, the reality of practice is that some boundaries and power differences retain an enduring solidity. All that is solid does not necessarily melt into air. Conflict and micro-politics do not disappear. Individuals’ interests do not necessarily coincide. For example, in a cooperative school operating collaborative professional development, while in many respects working very well, tensions were apparent: the wish to work cooperatively could be in conflict with competition between teachers for materials and rewards (Jones, 2015). People may also

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have differing values and conceptions of education. While recognizing the value and potential of new open forms of social innovation that emerge from collective networks and learning, Peters and Heraud (2015: 20) caution that ‘there is no one cultural- or world-view, and there are many competing narratives that frame and structure social problems’; what is required is ‘a transformation of the way power is administered in the university for students to be actors in social innovation’. Bunderson and Reagans’ (2011) conclusion that differences in power and status hinder organizational learning is instructive. However, rather than taking it on as an absolute outcome of power and status, it leads me to consider different types of power and status. Not all may hinder organizational learning and innovation. A more sophisticated analysis of power and status is needed. To advance such an analysis, the remainder of the chapter explores aspects of boundaries and differences through the concepts of authority, status and love as integrative power. The most familiar form of authority is that which accords different powers and responsibilities according to where posts are placed in hierarchically ordered levels. Such formal authority constitutes a fundamental set of boundaries and differences and exists in the vast majority of modern organizations. Yet formal authority is only one kind of authority (Woods, 2016a). There are numerous authority boundaries. But it would be unwarranted to see these as necessarily fixed. Authorities are socially constructed in everyday organizational life, indeed coconstructed, which means they are based on legitimacy granted, or withheld, by organizational actors. Multiple authorities and the nature of social authority are explored in the next section. That is followed by an examination of status. The concept of status, like authority, has long been used in the study of organizations. In recent years interest in the topic has increased (Piazza and Castelluci, 2014).

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The notion of status points to the differences in esteem and the relative positioning of individuals and groups in organizations. There is much debate and variance in defining status. However, it alerts us to another significant kind of demarcation that is important to recognize in understanding organizational openness, namely status boundaries which affect the practice of organizational fluidity, boundary-spanning, partnership and leadership distribution. The third concept – love – does not seem, perhaps, to follow so obviously from the first two. In the words of the title of an article discussing organizational leadership, ‘what does love have to do with it?’ (Miller, 2006). The relevance of the concept of love lies in its integrative power (Boulding, 1989). Themes of fluidity, boundary-spanning, partnership and leadership distribution represent an impetus to work together in innovative ways unobstructed by inessential barriers and divisions. However, understanding differences of authority and status, into which differences of interest are mingled, is essential in order to have a better grasp of the practicalities of openness. Such differences can provide positive energies and stimuli and essential ingredients that enable the practices of openness to be creative and successful. On the other hand, some differences can entail hierarchies of power that restrict openness and learning. They can mean the opposite of openness and act to generate or fuel conflict. Love as an integrative power in relation to these conflictual differences is explored following the discussion of status.

MULTIPLE AUTHORITIES Boundaries and differences are necessary. Openness values the diversity of ideas, expertise and experience that are brought together through more open and fluid organizations. Such diversity implies the existence of important, if evolving, boundaries and hierarchies that underpin the very notions of difference

and diversity. This section concentrates on the concept of authority. It is based on an analysis of social authority and an exploration of multiple authorities as a way of better understanding power in distributed leadership (Woods, 2016a). Authority is defined as legitimized power. It is based in the legitimacy enjoyed by a person or group, which is grounded in a rationale for their exercising power and influence in the particular context and for the particular purposes circumscribed by that rationale. The legitimacy of the rationale consists in the agreement between all concerned of the rationale’s truth and rightness. The product of the agreed legitimacy is a specific kind of hierarchy – a hierarchy of legitimized power and influence. To be precise, the product is a hierarchy among organizational actors that orders them according to whether, or the degree to which, they have legitimized power and influence in relation to others. Hierarchies of legitimized power and influence will be distinguished analytically from status ranking in the section that follows. Multiple authority hierarchies exist in an organization alongside each other. They are numerous in a quantitative sense. Different sets of people may have their own hierarchy: there may be a hierarchy that exists between just two people, one within a group, team or department, as well as an authority hierarchy across the whole organization. They are numerous in a qualitative sense too. There are different types of authority that differ according to their rationale and the kind of legitimacy in which they are rooted. It is the qualitative variations in authority that this section is chiefly interested in exploring. I begin with a discussion of the notion of social authority which provides a conceptual setting for the exploration of multiple authorities.

Social Authority: The Conceptual Setting for Multiple Authorities Social authority is the idea that authority in a society or organization stems not from a

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single source but is made up of negotiated and contested authorities that emerge from numerous and ongoing interactions. Social authority and related issues are explored by writers on authority, such as Blencowe (2013) and Kirwan (2013).1 The notion of social authority is particularly helpful in understanding societies, and organizations, where there is no one, taken-for-granted ultimate authority and source of direction as to what is good and right. The context being highlighted is that of societies which are dominated by instrumental and economistic values and where traditional sources of authority – such as religion or fixed social ranking – become degraded, resulting in a loss of transcendent authority ‘grounded in stable structures of meaning’ (Kirwan, 2013: 75). In such contexts, there is no single and uncontested hierarchy. Yet, authorities and the legitimation of power and decisions are not absent. The notion of social authority encapsulates the idea that meaningful authorities are nevertheless constructed through everyday practices and relationships. There is a continual process of negotiation and contestation involving different forms of authority and multiple hierarchies that reflect these authorities. Authority, as defined above, is legitimized power. Here I am following Weber’s (1978: 212)

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conception of authority as the construction of social actors who accept as justified a rationale for leaders’ exercise of power, and who may conceivably withdraw that acceptance and hence their legitimization of power. However, I do not restrict, as Weber does, authority or power to being concerned with domination (Woods, 2016a). Authority may be constructed that legitimizes shared power and cooperative activity (Woods, 2003).

TYPES OF AUTHORITY Authority arises from the legitimacy accorded to a person or group, and consequently constitutes grounds for the holder of that authority to decide or significantly influence policy and practice. There are multiple authorities which differ according to the grounds for their legitimacy. Formal authority, which accords power on the basis of a systematized ordering of seniority associated with organizational levels and posts – the bureaucratic ideal-type of authority – is but one type. Table 10.1 indicates some of the types of authority that are likely to be present in educational organizations, providing a concise definition for each one.

Table 10.1  Types of authority (Woods and Roberts, 2018) Types of authority

Definition

Formal

Bureaucratic, legal-rational authority in which the holder of a post has authority in a hierarchy of posts Rational authority based on claims to knowledge and capabilities gained through recognized programmes of education and training and command of a body of knowledge An acknowledged authoritative character which a person gains through their personal and/ or professional history and the responses and actions they have gone through in facing challenges Authority accorded to a person because of some special characteristic they have or their force of personality Authority distributed according to communally legitimized criteria such as gender, ethnicity, age or social class Authority of a person and the decisions and actions they enact gained through the legitimacy given by an accepted process of participation, dialogue and consent Authority for decisions and actions being carried out derived from the legitimacy accorded to the forces of competition and the perceived need to respond to these

Professional expertise Experiential

Charismatic Traditional Democratic Market

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Two things are important to note in relations to multiple authorities. The first is that they are not in any inherent order of prestige or power. Among multiple authorities there is no essential, pre-ordained hierarchy that holds true in all circumstances. Formal authority, for example, does not necessarily carry greater legitimacy than professional or experiential authority. The second, which relates to the first point, is that authorities are bounded. That is, the rationale for legitimacy in exercising power and influence is bound to a context and circumscribes the extent and purposes of that legitimate exercise of power. For example, a senior leader in a school may have line-management responsibility for a teacher who is a specialist in special educational needs (SEN). That is, they have formal authority. This form of authority carries with it certain rights and responsibilities with regard to, say, allocation of resources and organizing such matters as the evaluation, support and duties relating to that teacher’s work. However, the senior leader’s formal authority does not give to them in SEN matters the authority of professional expertise accorded to the teacher where it is based on attainment in a recognized programme of education or command of a specific body of knowledge relating to SEN education. Formal authority is specific to the systematized allocation of specified rights and duties: it involves a hierarchy of legitimate power to direct those in certain posts or organizational levels and to make certain decisions consequent on the bureaucratic allocation of powers associated with a designated leadership or management position. Others may be accorded authority in areas of professional expertise, as in the example in the previous paragraph. Yet another form of authority (experiential authority) may arise from experience gained by an educator or learner, including their responses and actions in facing challenges, and from the respect given to this experience as a basis for exercising power and influence. For example, experience of actually going through a process or

activity, such as teaching in a school in a challenging inner-city area or being a student coping with a family breakdown and poverty, may be seen as itself warranting respect for the insights and knowledge it gives, hence according a person experiential authority. Democratic authority is associated with legitimacy gained through an agreed process of participation, dialogue and consent. It is not necessarily about voting. In schools, decisions that flow from a group of staff or students working collaboratively – on, say, curriculum or pedagogical innovation – derive some of their authority from the way everyone has been able to contribute. Other authorities may influence who is heard and the weight given to certain ideas. As well as professional, experiential and formal authority, forms of authority that may be influential include traditional authority (based on communally legitimized criteria, which can include attitudes to gender and social background, for example), charismatic authority (which derives from a special characteristic a person may be perceived as having) and market authority (where an appeal for changes that improve the competitive position of the school is given weight, which is recognized and accepted, and consequent decisions are given legitimacy on the basis of market-orientated considerations).

Distribution of Authorities People may hold multiple authorities. A middle leader in a school has some degree of formal authority, as well as the professional expertise of being a qualified teacher and perhaps specialized professional expertise and specific kinds of experiential authority. A newly qualified teacher may develop professional expertise in innovative forms of practice and may have an inspiring manner of reaching colleagues (a kind of charismatic authority). There are, therefore, numerous individual configurations – that is, the mixes of types of authority that can be carried by individuals.

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In addition, there are endless social configurations – that is, the distribution and interplay of multiple authorities within groups or teams of organizational actors. How these different authorities relate to each other, the relative degrees of influence they have and how they impact on each other and are drawn upon will depend on circumstances and how the kinds of authority and their holders are judged in relation to each other. The relationship and relative influence and standing of different organizational actors and their respective authorities may change over time. A crucial factor influencing the interaction of multiple authorities is the esteem of different organizational actors and their granted authorities, which takes us to the issue of status.

POSITIONING THROUGH STATUS The evaluation and positioning of people in organizations is an everyday process. In a study of a school’s distributed leadership culture, for example, it was suggested that social positioning affected participation in leadership: that is, organizational actors evaluate and place themselves and other actors in some kind of hierarchical ordering, through a process influenced by societal valuations as well as individuals’ own interpretations (Woods and Roberts, 2016). This positioning affects the extent to which actors are welcomed and facilitated in leadership participation. In this section I explore in what ways differences in esteem, and hence status, are a factor in such positioning.

Defining Status Status valuations occur alongside and interrelate with processes of according (or withholding) authority. In the previous section, the view was taken that the defining feature of authority is the legitimation of power. Authority is rooted in acceptance of the

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truthfulness and rightness of a rationale that legitimates the exercise of power and influence in the particular context and for the particular purposes circumscribed by that rationale. Definitions of status can overlap with this notion of authority. The proposition, appearing in a review published in the Psychological Bulletin, that people afford ‘higher status to another individual by voluntarily complying with that individual’s wishes, desires, and suggestions – a compliance unaccompanied by threat or coercion’ (Anderson et al., 2015: 575), is a description of legitimized power. The concept of status is not defined in this way here. The value of the concept of status for the purposes of this chapter is that it stands for an attribution of esteem and a ranking by the respect that high esteem entails. Attribution of esteem gives some organizational actors greater standing than others and is distinct from according legitimate power (though it may coincide with and encourage the attribution of authority). Certain forms of status may tend to be more enduring than some authority attributions in the complex negotiations and contestations of power and influence. In an early sociological formulation, Weber (1978: 305) defines status as ‘an effective claim to social esteem’ with which privileges are associated, and a status group as a ‘plurality of persons’, within a larger group, who successfully claim social esteem (1978: 306). Status is about where the actor is located ‘relative to other actors’ (Parsons, 1991: 15). As well as sociology, fields such as management studies and psychology have utilized the concept of status and conceptualized it in ways that arise from their particular academic perspectives. For example, in management theory one definition of status has been the perception of product and producer quality – status as a ‘signal of quality’ (Piazza and Castelluci, 2014: 291). My focus here is on the status as a socially created location of organizational actors in relation to each other as a result of attributions of esteem. Hence, while Weber’s

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definition placed emphasis on the claim to social esteem, it is important also to draw to the fore the role of social and organizational actors in according social esteem, and hence status, to others.

Complexities of Status Attribution and Interrelation with Authority According esteem may be based on different rationales. For example, relatively high status may result from a person’s performance and achievement in a role, or from qualities and attributes possessed by them: that is, achievement-orientated status as compared with ascribed status (Parsons, 1991 [1951]: 42). Achieved status may arise for a member of staff who is seen as outstanding in the exemplary consistency and success of their students’ learning, or for another, whose ability to work with others to complete innovative changes or projects to the highest standards under pressure of tight deadlines: such perceptions of exceptional quality can result in positive reputations for their work that bring them a high status as members of the organizational community. Ascribed status concerns qualities or attributes that do not necessarily have a bearing on performance or achievement. An example is gender. There is evidence in corporations (controlling for non-gender variables) of a tendency for males to be accorded higher status (Piazza and Castelluci, 2014: 297). Such positioning results from the interpretative work people do. An insight into the processes involved is given by a study of status, anger and gender. The study examined reactions to viewing videotaped job interviews and found that men’s expression of anger could heighten their status: men ‘who expressed anger in a professional context were generally conferred higher status than men who expressed sadness’, while professional women ‘who expressed anger were consistently accorded lower status and lower wages, and were seen as less competent, than angry

men and unemotional women’ (Brescoll and Uhlmann, 2008: 273). Ascription of status is not a passive procedure. What we see in the study is how an attribute (in this case gender) is part of a process of evaluation in which explanations are constructed for an occurrence (in this case the expression of an emotion, anger): the angry woman was seen as being out of control, except where she was able to offer an explanation of an external cause for her anger, in which case she did not suffer the same loss of status. The following is interview data from a study that I cited in my discussion of multiple authorities in Woods (2016a). The school, located in the US, had introduced teacher leadership and the female teacher is explaining why the female teachers defer in disciplinary matters to their male counterparts. I think [Adam, Steven, and Carl] have stronger personalities than the females here. Not that the females aren’t capable of it. I’ve run a school myself but I just think that everybody is in their comfort zone and really none of the women here have a problem with it. They like it. The guys will run the office if [the principal] is out. … Absolutely nobody disagrees. In fact, we’ve even talked about it saying, ‘Thank God that we have three strong male figures in the school.’ It has really helped out a lot. … It has cut down on discipline problems. You can scream out about trying not to be sexist or anything, you can make a stink out of the roles of male and female but you even see with students, the guys are more dominant than the females, usually. Why wouldn’t it fall into the teachers’ roles too? I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t think [Barbara or Meghan] do either. I think it just fits really well. It’s more difficult for women to get respect from the boys. I think it has to be kind of earned. [Steven] walks into the classroom and he has this big booming voice and so does [Adam]. [Carl] is more quiet about it but you can still tell he has that, he has been an administrator so he knows. He has that air about him. It just makes it a lot easier. (quoted in Scribner and Bradley-Levine, 2010: 510)

In my reflections on the school’s reported teacher leadership practice, I suggested that one of the things that could be seen was the attribution of traditional authority (Woods, 2016a). Traditional authority is legitimatized

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power accorded on the basis of communally shared criteria such as social class, gender and ethnicity. In this instance it is the granting of authority in relation to disciplinary matters to the male teachers, in part because of qualities that are claimed to be general male characteristics: for example, males being ‘more dominant than the females, usually’, even among students. The rationale in the quote above brings in several characteristics, including previous experience, and there is a passing recognition that it is not an inevitable granting of authority: the teacher makes a point of saying, ‘Not that the females aren’t capable of it’. Apparent also is a status distinction in the rationale. The claim is made that ‘It’s more difficult for women to get respect from the boys’, and examples are given. A status hierarchy is thus posited. Male teachers, due to a significant degree to their gender, claim and are granted esteem with the privilege of attention and respect from younger males. The gendered attribution of esteem has important implications, according to this teacher, for the practice of the school and the distribution of authority. What it also illustrates is that elevated status can come with responsibilities and expectations as well as privileges. There is an expectation to be met in this example, namely that the dominant male status in relation to younger males will lead to better discipline. Status and authority, while conceptually distinct, interrelate and influence each other. There is evidence that in group task settings those with higher status tend to be given more power and influence in the group, which means they make more suggestions and have more opportunities to make suggestions, their suggestions are more positively evaluated, and they have more influence over other members (Barnum et  al., 2016). In the example just discussed concerning teacher leadership, status associations with gender had important consequences. Professional status can also be important. If a profession attracts high social esteem, it is possible that, as a result, members of that profession are more likely to be seen

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as being a source of authority (professional expertise) who should be listened to and their pronouncements acted upon. In a study of a school with an avowed distributed leadership culture, it was evident that the goal for senior leaders and many others in the school was for shared, pro-active leadership that everyone could be equally involved in – teachers, students and support staff as well as designated leaders (Woods and Roberts, 2013, 2016). One of the barriers was differences in status. Examples were found of perceptions of significant organizational boundaries dividing the school population, such as ‘the placing of students outside the main, adult-defined school organisation, or younger students having lower status as compared with the higher status of older students’ (Woods and Roberts, 2016: 152). A teacher interviewed for the study was concerned that only certain students became involved in leadership activities – the ones who are confident, have status in the school and are more academic (Woods and Roberts, 2013: 42). Two of the support staff talked about ways in which they felt valued and supported, but also explained how they could be hurt or sidelined by some in the school. One felt that she tended to be positioned by others in a way that made assumptions that she would not be the kind of person interested in developing in her work role and that she was ‘constantly fighting against it all the time’. While she felt that the majority of the senior leadership team gave her a great deal of respect, she explained that some in the school think that if a person is low down in the pyramid (her representation of the school’s leadership) they are far less intelligent; there had been situations where ‘I’ve had remarks’ that were hurtful. Another member of the support staff described how she felt she was at the bottom of the ‘pyramid of power’ and was told that the rules meant that she could not be in senior support staff meetings. A senior leader in the school considered that support staff see themselves as ‘second class citizens’ (Woods and Roberts, 2013: 28, 39), which could be

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associated with their not being members of a degree-based profession and the consequent absence of professional status (Woods and Roberts, 2016: 152). Differences in status do not necessarily entail hurt for those with lower esteem. There may be a shared and positive understanding of the appropriateness of status difference and consequent practical relationships. It is unexpected status distinctions or inappropriate or demeaning expressions of such that may lead to feelings such as hurt and resentment on the part of those with lower esteem.

Status Variables Drawing the discussion of status together, four pairs of variables are put forward related to different aspects of status attribution (Table 10.2). Identifying these variables is intended to be helpful in considering status and its complex and multifaceted manifestation in the practice of educational organizations. They are not mutually exclusive variables, but are features that may be more or less apparent in the construction and expression of status. The first pair of variables concerns the subject of status attribution. Both the individual

and the group can be the subject of evaluations and carry attributes of esteem. The second pair concerns the kind of attribute on which the status distinction is based. The classic conceptual distinction between ascribed and achieved status discussed earlier has continuing relevance. Both doing and being can be grounds for status evaluation. Status may be attributed according to perceived quality of performance. Status may also be formed or shaped by evaluations of an ascribed feature. Such an ascription could consist of a factor characterizing their educational background (such as the university a teacher attended), the place they live (a neighbourhood with a poor reputation which stigmatizes students from it, for example), or a characteristic such as gender, ethnicity, social class, and so on. The third pair concerns the source of status distinctions and the dynamics of their construction. Status distribution, as with authority granting, is a dynamic, everyday process of social construction leading to relative positioning. The status ordering related to a particular characteristic may have its origins beyond the school, college or university in the communities and the wider society. That is, the status distinction is exogenous to the organization. Features such as neighbourhood

Table 10.2  Status variables Aspects of status

Variables

Explanation

Subject (to whom esteem is attributed)

individual

Individuals and groups can be the subject of evaluations and carry attributes of esteem

group Attribute (basis of attribution)

performance Status may be attributed according to quality of performance or evaluations of an ascribed feature ascription

Source (where attribution arises from) exogenous

Status ordering may have exogenous origins (beyond the organization), be endogenous (emerging from within the organization), or arise from the interplay between the two

endogenous Fixity (degree to which status persists) enduring

fluid

Status divisions may be longstanding and have staying power, hence are enduring, or they may be, or become, subject to change and hence are fluid

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reputation or ethnicity, and ideas about what constitutes performance, are shaped socially. They are emergent social properties in the parlance of analytical dualism (Archer, 1995). Status distinctions may also be the product of interpretations and relationships within the organization. That is, status ordering is in some ways endogenous to the organization. The professional status of teachers and the non-professional status of others in educational organizations are to some degree a reflection of societal evaluations of occupational esteem, hence to that degree exogenous. However, the status distinctions in the day-to-day context of, say, a particular school are not the simple and fixed reflection of a larger, abstract status picture. The support staff discussed in the example above, for instance, were at pains to point out that they felt they were highly respected for their work by many senior leaders and teachers in the school, while some others, as we saw, positioned and treated those support staff very differently. There is interplay between organizational actors on the one hand and emergent social properties on the other, through which status rankings are reinforced or altered and perpetually co-constructed. Fourth, the boundaries created by status attributions vary in their fixity and persistence. Status divisions such as gender and ethnicity in certain contexts and societies are enduring. They have staying power. Yet they are not inevitably so. Status divisions may also be subject to change and become fluid. There is a fluidity of status relations in precisely the organizational contexts that reflect the openness discourse with which the chapter began. The school support staff mentioned above and who felt in many ways valued and respected are an example.

LOVE AS AN INTEGRATIVE POWER Boundaries of authority and status are ubiquitous in organizations, including those seeking

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to be open in the sense envisaged by the openness discourse. The convergence and creative interaction of multiple authorities, and of organizational actors with or despite their differing status levels, is a valued characteristic of openness. Yet multiple authorities carry boundaries that define legitimized power distances as well as differences in rationales for legitimacy. Multiple authorities, and the people positioned unequally in authority hierarchies and status evaluations, may interconnect, complement each other and generate new ideas and better practices; but such differences may also lead to tensions, divisions of interest, conflicts and obstructions in communication. While the aim of openness is to blur or set aside such boundaries for larger purposes of creative change and improvement, they can nevertheless act as subtle, enduring and powerful factors in distracting people from cooperative and creative working. They can promote exclusion and diminish inclusion among organizational actors (Stacey, 2012: 31). Hence, it is not surprising to find evidence, as indicated earlier, that differences in power and status hinder collaboration and learning. The boundaries created by power and status differences ‘throw gravel’, to use Bunderson and Reagans’ (2011: 1183) term, into the practice of openness.

Responding to the Challenges of Boundaries One conclusion would be that boundaries of power and status need to be radically diminished or abolished. This is what happens to formal authority in organizations that drastically reduce the sharp hierarchy of bureaucratic levels or work as a form of direct democracy, as some schools do (Gribble, 1998; Woods and Woods, 2009a). However, except in the most radical form of direct democracy, some kind of formal authority hierarchy is present. In addition, the presence of multiple authorities, of which formal authority is but one, is both inevitable and to

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be welcomed. As argued above, multiple authorities bring different and valuable forms of knowledge that help to construct new knowledge, inform decisions and generate innovations in practice. (This is not to say that all claims to authority are to be valued; that is a judgement to be made in the local context on the basis of the specifics of each case.) Alongside multiple authorities, there are likely to be status distinctions as a result of both exogenous and endogenous influences (Table 10.2). If boundaries of authority and status are persistent features, the possibility of conflict is ever-present. Authority may be based on a shared legitimacy, but a subordinate may feel the need to give attention to, even prioritize, protecting his or her own interests, detracting from the energies available to working together for the common purposes of the organization. Superior status may be conferred, but this can also be accompanied by unfair or demeaning treatment of those with lower status and resentment over status privileges and their consequences. Numerous factors – allocation of rewards, everyday treatment, opportunities for development, differences in cultural assumptions and language between authority and status levels, and so on – can fuel tensions and conflict. Hence, where there are boundaries and difference, tensions between tendencies towards conflict and tendencies towards unity and integration have long been a matter for exploration. Lockwood’s (1964) classic sociological article, for example, proposed an analytical distinction between social and system integration as conceptual indicators of the weakness or absence of, respectively, conflictual relationships and contradictory institutions; and in a different scholarly setting, increasing pressure on organizations to innovate, requiring both differentiation and integration, led to the study of how there could be both differentiation and integration (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967). One of the ways that integration can be achieved, or at least sought, is through an

overarching, dominant force. Such a force could be a dominating figure or clique wielding charismatic or authoritarian formal authority. It can involve the use of fear and threats: getting people to do what is wanted by threatening the use of destructive power to their detriment (Boulding, 1989). lt can involve the exercising of coercive persuasion that leads to subordinates thinking in ways that suit the dominant leadership (Stacey, 2012). To the extent that coercive persuasion succeeds, legitimacy is forced as a result of subtle forms of manipulation. This dominative route eclipses, or aims to eclipse, social authority – that is, the dynamism (and challenges) of negotiated and contested authorities. It promotes assumptions that organizational actors are reliant on a superior authority to know what to do and think – a philosophy of dependence (Woods, 2016b). Another power that can be exercised is exchange or transactional power, through which others do what is wanted because they are given in exchange something that they value (Boulding, 1989). The senior leadership may offer inducements to overcome divisions of interest or resentments consequent on authority and status hierarchies. I want to examine a different kind of practice in response to boundaries and hierarchies of authority and status. This examination is based on an appreciation of the agential capabilities of organizational actors for critical questioning and moral transcendence. People have capabilities to question, even replace ‘societies’ rules’, and the impetus to do this ‘originates in people themselves, from their own concerns’ (Archer, 2004: 66). They are capable of developing relational freedom, discovering their own meaningful way to live as individual and social beings (Woods, 2017). In consequence, more specifically, they are able to evaluate critically boundaries of authority and status as contingent social constructions. Such evaluations may be fuelled by a desire to protect or advance the interests of groups defined by these boundaries; or they may be impelled by

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an intention to transcend boundaries. It is the latter transcendence of boundaries that I wish to explore further. My pathway into this is the concept of love as an integrative power.

Love and Connectedness In a discussion of three different kinds of power, Boulding (1989: 110), writing as a social scientist, drew attention to what he termed the power of love as a ‘fundamental form of integrative power’. The other kinds of power were threat and exchange, mentioned above. The power of love as an integrating feature is greatest where it is mutual and the relationship is characterized by ‘pure benevolence’ (Boulding, 1989: 111). Miller (2006) emphasizes the cognitive aspect of Boulding’s concept of love. She sees this love as a deliberately chosen cognitive scheme for dealing with the world in which the leader develops followers, and then creates a mutually beneficial relationship, not out of a perception of the follower as a means to an end but as an integral part of their vision. It is a deliberately chosen path. There are similarities in this conception with the notion of transformational leadership (Burns, 1978). It is clear from Boulding that there is a wider, affective dimension to love as an integrative power. For him, the most important source of integrative power is the capacity to live in a generalised sense, which means a capacity not only to be aware both of the broader and the narrower environment around a person but also to find these environments attractive and interesting, and to put a substantial value on them, especially in terms of benevolence. This means … that the person perceives an increase in his or her own welfare in some sense in the surrounding world. (Boulding, 1989: 115)

This conceptualization of love is putting to the fore a sense of connectedness. I see it as placing the concept of love as an integrative power within a wider body of literature and understanding concerning connectedness. For example, the importance of such

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connectedness is highlighted when Freire (2001: 65) asks how it is possible to be an educator ‘if I do not develop in myself a loving and caring attitude toward the student’ and allow teaching to be dragged down by ‘a lack of esteem toward myself and the student’. The importance of connectedness is apparent in this account of belongingness in a democratic school where a pedagogy of belonging was observed which involved negotiated learning, collaborative approaches, shared responsibility for learning. The atmosphere in lessons is different from most classrooms and in fact was described by one student as ‘it’s more like a big group of friends who learn stuff from each other than a stressful education’. (Hope, 2012: 746)

Connectedness is a compassionate, loving relationship with oneself and the context in which we live of other people, nature and spirit (all that evokes spiritual feelings and meaning). It is a pervading theme in alternative education that fosters opening up to the ‘creative life force, love, that is within and between the people’ and creating ‘the grounds for action and change that respects, involves, and nurtures people in their full humanity’ (Woods and Woods, 2009b: 247). A ‘selfemptying openness’ (Dallmayr, 2007: 38) towards nature, spirit and our fellow human beings has both religious and more secular expressions. The notion of relational consciousness, for example, denotes an area of human experience, regardless of belief, in which a heightened sense of connection with all things is experienced (Hay with Nye, 1998); spiritual awareness is reported by agnostic and humanist headteachers as well as religious believers, for example (Woods, 2007). The point of relevance here is that the emanation of love is relational. Love is not simply the feeling of an individual but the fruit of being interconnected and being aware of existing in interrelation with all life and matter. It is not a strong attraction or affection towards a specific object, but a feeling of profound goodness and identity embedded in that sense of interrelation – what can also be

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called transcendent love. The absence of such love, argues Archer (2004), damages a person’s potential for fulfilment; consequently, a person’s ultimate concern – what most influences the personal impetus they give to their agency – ought to help in orientating them to experience transcendent love. To summarize, then, love as an integrative power is a sense of connectedness evoking profound feelings of goodness through that awareness of interrelatedness. What follows from this proposition is that we can and ought to distinguish between boundaries and hierarchies of authority and status according to their consequence for such love. Boundaries and hierarchies that position people unfairly, treat them as a means to an end and tend to prioritize and encourage orientations to lesser concerns – such as individualistic interests and conflicts – are not the most beneficial for human development. More conducive to the latter are boundaries and hierarchies that tend to foster a concern with a connectedness and unity between people – that is, an ultimate concern with love – and are characterized by non-coercive relationships and reciprocal learning, essential features of collaborative leadership (Woods and Roberts, 2018). These boundaries and hierarchies are likely to be co-constructed fairly and in a participatory way through a shared respect for humanity, and to reflect needs arising from the exigencies of practice in achieving shared purposes. An example would be teachers, support staff and students working cooperatively to advance students’ learning and giving equal respect to each other as people: they have multiple authorities – different kinds of professional and working expertise, experiential authorities, personal capabilities, and so on, as indicated in Table 10.1 – which they learn about through dialogue. Each member of the group is able to take initiatives and work with others to co-lead activities as appropriate to the needs in hand. As a result, hierarchies are varied and contingent. Some endure, such as a teacher’s overall responsibility and authority in relation to the class of students, or a

technician’s knowledge of certain IT matters: these may result in enduring esteem attribution on the grounds of both performance and ascription (Table 10.2). Some hierarchies shift or emerge, as students lead an activity or a teacher becomes a learner about the community in which students live: in the latter, the students have an experiential authority. Some aspects of status may be more fluid (Table 10.2) as new roles are taken and new insights emerge about those in the group.

Structure and Agency This argument has taken us to a recognition that boundaries and hierarchies have an effect upon love. Boundaries and hierarchies that position people unfairly and deploy them as functional units of labour encourage a narrower view of our humanity – namely, that advancing our interests to get a better deal for one’s self or one’s own group is, or should be, our most important concern. The proposition that organizational structures impact upon love is, seemingly, a different point of arrival than expected by the earlier proposition that organizational actors have agency to overcome differences through love. However, it is only a staging post, not a point of arrival. Through the perspective of analytical dualism (Archer, 1995), one would expect that social properties, like authorities and status distinctions, both shape and are shaped by agency in perpetual interaction. Love is, then, both shaper of and shaped by circumstances. If we are best served by an ultimate concern with love, our aim with others is to create the circumstances where this is more likely to be the case. As a shaper – a power shaping circumstances – love is a feature of agency. It feeds into intentionality, that is, the conscious deliberation and willingness that gives rise to pro-active actions and interactions (Woods and Roberts, 2018). Its concern in relation to authority and status is with the negotiation and co-construction of beneficial hierarchies.

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These are the more desirable boundaries and hierarchies in the argument above – that is, boundaries and hierarchies of authority and esteem that are co-constructed fairly and in a participatory way through a shared respect for humanity and that, rather than preserving authority and status distinctions as individual possessions, bring authorities together so as to create a practice that achieves shared purposes and values.

An Analytical Framework of Love as an Agential Power The nurturing of love is a part of a human potential for ‘fully embodied learning’, as argued in Woods and Woods (2010: 82–93): fully embodied learning encompasses cognitive, emotional, physical and spiritual growth, fostering an ‘inner state that is harmonious and in tune’ with ‘the supreme value’ of ‘connectedness and compassion’. It is arguably an evolving consciousness which will help bring about human-centred futures (Gidley, 2016: 39, 2017). The love that characterizes this consciousness carries responsibility and involves critical thinking (Gidley,

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2016: 192). I conclude the discussion of love by suggesting an analytical framework that pinpoints key features of love as an agential power (Figure 10.1). Gidley’s (2016: 121) four themes of evolutionary discourse, constructed as a process of ‘delicate theorising’, as she describes it, have been helpful in my formulating this framework. The first, overarching aspect of love as an integrative power is connectedness, as discussed above. Connectedness is the affective and experiential phenomenon of closeness with people, nature and experiences often referred to as spiritual. It is something that can grow as ‘conscious, compassionate, spiritual development’ and involves ‘cultivating spiritual, contemplative and compassionate qualities’ (Gidley, 2016: 122). In challenging unfair and harmful boundaries, love can be said to have the character of jouissance, as discussed by Clayton et  al. (2009: 378), a term used by Lacan ‘to connote the pleasure gained from the transgression, rather than subordination, of social norms and other external restrictors’; it is ‘not simply a flow experience or a pure physiological state, but a pseudo-psychological, socially embodied feeling of gratification’ (2009: 379).

connectedness

integrative thinking

critical reflexivity

Figure 10.1  Love as an integrative power, showing connectedness as defining feature that encompasses integrative thinking and critical reflexivity

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Perhaps the term ‘gratification’ is not exactly right, with its connotations of indulgence and taking. But I would say that transcending borders and divisions with a sense of love brings a kind of profound but quiet joy. Another aspect to the feeling is the sense of responsibility. Bauman (1993) argues that proximity to the other evokes a moral charge of responsibility, which is a feature of what I term the human interaction sphere and analytically distinguish from the social interaction sphere (Woods, 2016c): the latter is the arena of social constructions, such as authority and status, which shape people’s identity; the former is where there is the potential for connectedness, a ‘suppression of distance’ which presupposes ‘humanity’, as Bauman (1993: 87) puts it. The second aspect – integrative thinking – has a strongly cognitive character, though it intermingles with the experiential and compassionate character of connectedness. Hence it is shown within the encompassing ‘connectedness circle’ in Figure 10.1, rather than as a separate concept. The affective and cognitive are inherent dimensions of love as connectedness, bringing together ‘analytical and organising capability’ and affective ‘navigational feelings’ which direct attention beyond ‘arbitrary passions and self-interest’ (Woods, 2005: 40, 41; see also Clegg and Rowland, 2010, on kindliness). Integrative thinking appreciates the complexity of organizations and systems (Boulton et al., 2015; Hawkins and James, 2017) and the need to draw upon and combine different capabilities of the mind – logical as well as intuitive. It embraces fluid, organic, life-enhancing thinking, and its nonbinary character gives rise to a focus on ‘creativity’ and ‘intuitive wisdom’ (Gidley, 2016: 122). A determination to deliberately adopt an integrative, fluid and compassionate way of thinking, as Miller (2006) suggests, is an important part of the intentionality of love. The third aspect – critical reflexivity – is a part of the integrative process of thinking, hence it appears in Figure 10.1 within the ‘integrative thinking circle’. It is shown

as a distinct aspect because the questioning and challenging approach it brings is important to distinguish and make explicit. Critical reflexivity is integral to the kind of collaborative leadership based on values of co-development, holistic learning and social justice, and is essential to the critical intentionality that brings about pro-active change in the service of these ideals: critical reflexivity is ‘an intensified sense of the need and desirability for making choices and devising innovative practices and policies’ as well as the ‘commitment to seek in practice’ expression of the values of democracy and social justice (Woods and Roberts, 2018: 69). Reflexivity that is critical thrives on seeing things from differing viewpoints. Gidley (2016: 121) describes it as involving ‘multi-vocal awareness’ and ‘boundary-crossing’ across different ideas, frameworks of thinking and terminologies. Bertrand Russell’s discussion of philosophic contemplation captures the cognitive and affective dimensions which are expressed in the representation of love as an integrative power in Figure 10.1. The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus contemplation enlarges not only the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with all the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man’s true freedom, and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes and fears. (Russell, 2012: 126)

CONCLUDING REMARKS The focus of the discussion in this chapter can be distilled into three actions that are integral to the social formation of any educational organization. First is authorization. This is the conferring of legitimacy to exercise influence and power. The withholding of authority can be as significant as authorization. Second is status

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attribution. This consists of conferring esteem which positions people or groups in relation to each other. Organizations that develop practices and relationships consistent with the openness discourse, so as to enhance innovation and learning, are replete with boundaries and hierarchies that arise from multiple authorizations and status attributions. Which are more beneficial than negative is a contingent matter. Some are predominantly about empowering certain people unfairly, serving their interests to the detriment of others and potentially fuelling division, conflicts and preoccupation with the protection of narrow interests. Some are more about authorizing differences in power, influence and esteem on grounds that serve shared goals and values, and work in ways consistent with a shared humanity and ideals of promoting social justice. The third action, loving, is the cognitive and affective appreciation of the essential connection between oneself and people, nature and all that evokes spiritual feelings and meaning. Love as an integrative power fosters evaluative and critical agency. It evaluates boundaries and hierarchies from the perspective of human interconnectedness, cultivating the resolution to challenge these where they chiefly serve the unfair accumulation of power and privileges and helping to discern where and how authorities and status attributions may serve shared goals and values of democracy and social justice. The agential power of love is not a substitute for tackling structural inequalities. Reay (2017: 5) explains that when she started as a school teacher she thought that she could provide all her students ‘with positive, enhancing educational experiences through sheer force of my love, dedication and hard work’; but it became clear that systemic inequalities in education and society have powerful effects and her work as an academic is focused on exploring and revealing how these inequalities and effects work. In the transcendent love articulated in this chapter, feelings of connectedness are bound up with the pursuit of better understandings of the whole and its complex dynamics. Love helps us see and act

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differently. Even in the most open of educational organizations, authorities and status distinctions emerge and grow. Love drives questioning that helps in two ways: in discerning and transcending those that fuel division and conflict and in nurturing integration across productive boundaries co-constructed and legitimated through participatory, shared social authority. If love in the way discussed in the previous section is an evolving consciousness, its progression among humanity is not necessarily assured. In futures studies, Gidley (2017: 101) recognizes that the choices people make over time could lead to ‘technotopian futures which are dehumanising, scientistic and atomistic, based on a mechanistic, behaviourist model of human beings, with a thin cybernetic view of intelligence’. Further back, Weber’s (1978: 182) analysis of advancing rationalization and instrumentalization in modern societies led to a deep-seated concern that people will work solely for ‘mundane passions’ in a culture of ‘mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of compulsive self-importance’ – ‘specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart’. Critical research in education seeks to throw light on how blurred boundaries and leadership distribution can act to narrow professional identities in the service of performative policy (e.g., Hall et al., 2013). Yet many educators in contemporary educational organizations find the space to exercise relational freedom and feel a real sense of authenticity and meaning; they bring about changes that advance holistic learning and social justice and they do this collegially, working across authority boundaries (Berry, 2016; Frost, 2017; Woods and Roberts, 2018). An ultimate concern with love in the transcendent sense – of education, of students and fellow educators, of cocreating relationships that nurture the best of everyone – can trump mundane concerns with interests and privileges. It can turn a critical eye on authority and status distinctions from a larger perspective concerned with human flourishing through interconnectedness.

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Note 1  See also www.authorityresearch.net.

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Osborne, S. P., Radnor, Z. and Nasi, G. (2013) A New Theory for Public Management? Toward a (Public) Service-Dominant Approach, American Review of Public Administration, 43(2): 135–158. Parsons, T. (1991 [1951]) The Social System. London: Routledge. Peters, M. A. and Heraud, R. (2015) Toward a political theory of social innovation: Collective intelligence and the co-creation of social goods. Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics, 2(3): 7–23. Peters, M. A., Liu, T.-C. and Ondercin, D. J. (2012) The Pedagogy of the Open Society: Knowledge and the Governance of Higher Education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Piazza, A. and Castelluci, F. (2014) Status in organization and management theory. Journal of Management, 40(1): 287–315. Reay, D. (2017) Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes. Bristol: Policy Press. Russell, B. (1912) The Problems of Philosophy. London: Wiliams and Norgate; New York: Henry Holt and Co. Schlappa, H. and Imani, Y. (2012) Leadership and Structure in the Co-production of Public Services. University of Hertfordshire Business School Working Paper. Available at: https:// uhra.herts.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2299/5549 Schlappa, H. and Imani, Y. (2018) Who is in the lead? New perspectives on leading service co-production. In T. Brandsen, B. Verschuere and T. Steen (eds), CoProduction and Co-Creation: Engaging Citizens in Public Services. London: Routledge. Scribner, S. M. P. and Bradley-Levine, J. (2010) The meaning(s) of teacher leadership in an urban high school reform. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46: 491–522. Stacey, R. (2012) Tools and Techniques of Leadership and Management: Meeting the Challenge of Complexity. London: Routledge. Timperley, H., Kaser, L. and Halbert, J. (2014) A Framework for Transforming Learning in Schools: Innovation and the Spiral of Inquiry. East Melbourne, Vic., Australia: Centre for Strategic Education. von Hippel, E. (2005) Democratizing Innovation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society (Vols I & II). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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11 Organizational Culture in Schools: A Review of A Widely Misunderstood Concept Michael Connolly and Sharon D. Kruse

CULTURE, LEADERSHIP, PERFORMANCE, CLIMATE, CULTURAL INFLUENCES, AND CHANGE: AN INTRODUCTION As a theoretical construct, organizational culture continues to be subject to controversy and debate. Generally defined as the assumptions, values, and beliefs that guide appropriate workplace behaviour, organizational culture has long been a major area of interest in academic research, management and policy practice, and education. While we broadly accept this definition, we recognize that the very notion of culture is itself open to debate, a topic we will explore later. Theories concerning how organizational culture are created, overseen, directed, and changed permeate the leadership and management literatures (see, for example, Alvesson, 2013; Bass & Avolio, 1990; Deal & Kennedy, 1988; Erculj, 2009; Hogan & Coote, 2014; Peters & Waterman, 1982; Schein & Schein, 2017; Trice & Beyer, 1991). This attention has been warranted in

large part because researchers and practitioners tend to view organizational culture as an important feature of organizations, one that is related to the ways members interact, create individual and shared meaning, and ultimately contribute to organizational success. But the very nature of the concept has been the subject of much debate. In addition, and adding further complexity, practitioners, policy makers and academics have not always agreed upon a definition of the term. Our purpose here is to clarify some of these debates and to examine a range of the key aspects of organizational culture. We begin by tracing the roots of organizational culture in the literature, surfacing contradictions and inconsistences of definition and purpose. The next section discusses the rise of culture as a management issue in education. We then move to a discussion of approaches to organizational culture research and practice and conclude with a discussion of ethical concerns and challenges present in the organizational culture literature.

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EARLY CONCEPTUAL ROOTS There have been a number of important and interesting studies (e.g., Jacques, 1951; Schein, 1985) in the post-Second World War period that surfaced the notion of culture as an organizational attribute. As Van Houtte (2005), in a review of the literature notes, early organization scholars revealed the importance of norms, values, and social interaction in describing the nature and functions of the informal organization. Arguing that attention to culture within schools is not a new notion, Deal and Peterson (2016, p. 7) assert the importance of understanding school cultures by citing Willard Waller (1932): Schools have a culture that is definitely their own. There are, in the school, complex rituals of personal relationships, a set of folkways, mores, and irrational sanctions, a moral code based upon them. There are games, which are sublimated wars, teams, and an elaborate set of ceremonies concerning them. There are traditions and traditionalists waging their world-old battle against innovators.

Despite this early interest in cultural studies, the use of culture as a salient variable in management and organizational studies only became popular in the 1980s. While organizational scholars drew on the literature on culture, which has been long in use and significant in anthropology (Geertz, 1973, 1993), an important trigger for this upsurge in popularity was the Peters and Waterman 1982 book, In Search of Excellence, which sparked an interest, especially among consultants and managers, in culture as a management tool. This applied not only to the private sector but was also adopted by public sector organizations, including education organizations (Prosser, 1999). In Search of Excellence was taken up by a number of other authors, including some academics (e.g., Deal & Kennedy, 1988). A hallmark of this writing was the attention to culture as a significant and predictive variable of organizational success, though, as Parker (2000) indicated, it remained trapped in an

increasingly dominant managerialist ideology (see Exworthy & Halford, 1999; Flynn, 1999; Halford & Leonard, 1999) and arose in significant part because of the growth of neoliberalism (see, for example, Brown, 2015; Plant, 2010). In turn, as the literature embraced a managerialist philosophy, attention to the practice of organizational culture leadership arose. Importance was placed on developing organizational culture(s) for the attainment of managerial, as opposed to collective, goals.

THE RISE OF CULTURE IN EDUCATION As a result, we saw an emphasis on the weaknesses of the public sector (Connolly & James, 2011) and the hollowing out of the state (Bell & Hindmoor, 2009). An important strand in this literature was the argument that schools and colleges, as well as other public sector agencies, were inherently inefficient and that they ought to adopt private sector models of management. Hence, public sector organizations were pressured ‘to legitimize their operations by adopting the management initiatives of private sector organizations’ (Baird & Harrison, 2017, p. 312). In addition, this trend included the privatization of the public sector organizations and the opening up of what traditionally was determined as the public domain to private sector organizations. Thus, in education, we see, inter alia, Free Schools and Academies in England and the rise of charter schools in the US, whose stated goals were to improve educational outcomes for children from lower socio-economic groups while challenging the role of professionals in schools and enhancing the role of educational ‘managers’. And as part of this venture we saw a determined effort to replace the loosely coupled, professional nature of schools to a more tightly coupled, bureaucratic organization (Weick, 2001). Within many education systems, however, the scope for managerial action is limited.

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School income, and hence expenditure, including salaries, is frequently determined externally, as a result of national policy (e.g., legislation) or local decision (such as voted community levies and bonds). Hiring and firing decisions for public and government teachers are controlled by union agreements across much of the US, UK, and Europe. Similarly, school calendar, start and dismissal times, and curriculum and instructional programmes are controlled centrally rather than at the building or regional level. Yet, the call for school improvement and change has been audible and resilient. Furthermore, as a feature of transformational leadership (Bass, 1985), cultural management was posited to be a powerful device within the control of principals and head teachers to secure desired improvement. In turn, education discovered the culture concept (see, for example, Prosser, 1999; Van Houtte, 2005) as a response, in part, to external pressures for improvement.

SCHOOL CULTURE, LEADERSHIP, AND PERFORMANCE A great deal of the managerialist rhetoric drew on popular notions of culture. First, it was normative in nature, seeking to focus on approaches which would enhance organizational performance. Hargreaves (1995, p. 25) argues that culture’s ‘analytic power in understanding school life’ facilitated its use in understanding school organization. And as Deal and Peterson (2016, p. 2), suggest, ‘the culture of an enterprise plays a dominant role in exemplary performance’. Therefore, by managing the organizational culture a leader would be able to orchestrate actions of employees towards activity and goals aligned with corporate growth, effectiveness, and success (Deal & Kennedy, 1988; Grey, 2013; Schein & Schein, 2017). Inasmuch as culture management was within the control of those in formal leadership positions, it was posited that savvy managers could employ managerial

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tools with the intent of shaping employee behaviours towards choices that would increase a business’s competitive advantage. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that, in a more recent study, Baird and Harrison (2017) reversed that direction of influence, suggesting that managerial culture influenced the type of management tool. In essence, they suggest that the direction of causation runs from culture to managerial practice, and not the other way (see also Connolly, James, & Beales, 2011). Second, popular notions of culture tended to assume that ‘strong cultures’ (i.e., those that were long established and widely accepted within the organization), were essential to enhanced performance (see James & Connolly, 2009). Thus, Deal and Kennedy (1988) state that ‘[s]trong schools have strong cultures’. The assumption of this widelycited literature was that a strong culture was unavoidably a culture that supported shared values and beliefs that were productive and moved the school organization in a positive and equally beneficial direction. That strong cultures, as they resist change, might inhibit performance didn’t seem to arise. Finally, the central assumption of the popular literature, was that leaders could – and implicitly should – create the appropriate culture to ensure organizational success. As Schein puts it, ‘the unique and essential function of leadership is the manipulation of culture’ (Schein, 1983, p. 317, quoted in Trice & Beyer, 1991, p. 149). In this way, leaders serve as both moulders and transmitters of organizational culture with the explicit aim of performance improvement. This logic indicates that performance is essentially a function of culture, which, in turn, is solely generated by leadership (for an interesting perspective on principals in school with a positive school culture, see Engels et  al., 2008). A subsequent consequence of this orientation within the larger leadership literature was the rise of transformational leadership – where leaders bear primary responsibility for organizational direction and production – as a

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complimentary and progressive ideal. Weese (1995) expresses it almost prescriptively suggesting that, high transformational leadership and strong organizational cultures have been posited to go together. In response to the growing popularization of organizational culture as a management tool, a number of academics offered a more critical perspective. These included Alvesson and Willmott (2002), Alvesson and Sveningsson (2008), Bhagat and Steers (2009), Parker (2000), and Smircich (1983). These writings introduced a more complex reading of culture, challenging the conceptualization of culture as monolithic (see Connolly, James, & Beales, 2011; Martin, 2002) and under the sole control of those in formal positions of authority. Instead, this literature introduced the idea that organizational culture can be evidenced within the medium through which people experience their environment. In this conception, organizational culture is formed by workplace social interaction and shaped by the development of meaning within those environments (Alvesson, 2013; Grey, 2013). As such, from a leadership perspective, reading the broad indicators of organizational culture matters. However, attending to local experiences may prove more productive if leaders are to understand an organization’s culture in ways that contribute to overall organizational wellbeing. When viewed as something generated from within the organization, rather than imposed as a result of leadership choice and action, the construct becomes more nuanced and, as opposed to the broader, blunter understanding and uses, increasingly important.

DEFINITIONS OF CULTURE Deal and Peterson, and others (Deal & Kennedy, 1988; Hargreaves, 1995; Schein, 1985; Schein & Schein, 2017), simply define culture as ‘the way we do things around here’. Martin (2002, p. 3) elaborates on this notion, explaining that organizational culture

includes ‘the ways in which offices are arranged and personal items are or are not displayed, the jokes people tell, the working atmosphere … the relations among people (affectionate in some areas of the office and obviously angry and perhaps competitive in another place) and so on’. In this way, understanding what culture is and how it functions in school organizations has been suggested as key to understanding the underlying beliefs and assumptions of organizational members, but also explains the actions and ways of doing that are acceptable within the school. However, a number of other writers have suggested that definitions of culture abound (see Alvesson, 2013; Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2008; Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Parker 2000). Allaire and Firsirotu (1984) identified 164 definitions of organizational culture, neither clarifying research into nor our understanding of culture and its impact on organizations. Martin (2002) traces this variety to differing ontological and normative underpinnings. However murky the definitional terrain, researchers have pressed on in their efforts to define the term. A widely-used definition of organizational culture in the academic literature is that of Frost et al. (1985, p. 17), who argue that ‘[t]alking about organizational culture seems to mean talking about the importance for people of symbolism – of rituals, myths, stories and legends – and about the interpretation of events, ideas and experiences that are influenced and shaped by the groups within which they live’. Similarly, Brown (1995) offers the definition of culture as the ideas, values, and activities that are specific to a given organization and have special relevance to its members. Braga Rodrigues (2006) argues that these are manifested through symbols, beliefs and the like, giving meanings to individuals in the organization. Furthermore, Braga Rodrigues (2006, p. 538) suggests that these can be shared widely through the organization or, quoting Alvesson and Willmott (2002), ‘can be nurtured in specific groups, such as professional or subject groups’.

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Alvesson and Willmott (2002, p. 3) support this definition and include organizational values and assumptions about social reality, though values matter less than meanings and symbolism in cultural analysis. We are sympathetic to this approach and hence see culture as rooted in the interaction between narratives and action, with narratives providing the understanding of actions. That interpretativist connection is important, both because organizational action needs justification located in narratives and narratives by themselves, without the possibility of action, seem irrelevant in the context of organizations. As Alvesson and Willmott (2002, p. 4) argue, culture is not simply in people’s heads. Jermier, Slocum, Fry, and Gaines (1991, p. 172) argue that ‘[i]t is important to understand that an organization’s culture consists of both shared beliefs and more tangible manifestations of those beliefs’. Further problems arise because there exists a number of synonyms and related terms for culture, for example, ethos, traditions, atmosphere, and climate. Ethos, for example, is frequently used by religious organizations to support the existence of their schools, justifying their existence by expressing the value of, for example, Catholic ethos, Muslim ethos, and so on. Many schools, especially private schools with a long existence, point to the importance of the school’s traditions. The problem here is that, while the various words indicated above can be seen as synonyms for culture, it might be that each term offers a slightly different emphasis. Schools, especially those founded some time ago, frequently speak of their traditions. Thus, the head teacher of Eton School in England – a school founded in 1440 by King Henry VI – points out on the school webpage that ‘tradition is important here and still shapes some of our guiding principles’. The notion of tradition as a synonym for culture raises an interesting point, in that some traditions are unspoken. Perhaps the most significant example is the position of women in schools. Certainly, in the past women,

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particularly but not exclusively married women, were not considered for promotion as that went to ‘the bread winner’ (assumed to be men). Indeed, in the not too distant past women had to resign when they were married. While in many countries that justification no longer is acceptable, and women’s position in the hierarchy has improved, equality has not been achieved. Yet, the issue remains significant for a range of other cultural groups and tradition, as a cultural marker, is both foundational and contested ground. This point about tradition reminds us that culture and power are linked, in many ways a classic case of Lukes’ (1974, 2005) third dimension of power, where power can be exercised without the awareness of the powerless. This, in turn, raises ethical issues about culture to which we will turn later. In addition, as Christensen, Laegreid, Roness, and Rovik (2007, p. 45) have argued, this attention to tradition suggests the growth of path dependency as a vehicle for understanding change and development in organizations. An awareness of the organizational history becomes important in understanding its cultural features.

CULTURE AND CLIMATE Within the educational leadership literature, climate and culture have been used almost interchangeably, with attention directed towards those aspects of each with the potential to impact school improvement efforts. Nonetheless, there has been a debate about the differing emphasis and focus of each concept (see Schön & Teddlie, 2008; Van Houtte, 2005). Within this literature, one sees climate defined as including ‘patterns of people’s experiences of school life and reflects norms, goals, values, and interpersonal relationships, teaching and learning practices, and organizational structures’ (Cohen, McCabe, Michelli, & Pickeral, 2009, p. 182). Others (e.g., Hoy, 2002, 2012; Thapa & Cohn, 2013) argue that climate is composed

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of specific, measureable aspects of the school organizational environment. Thapa and Cohen suggest five dimensions of school climate, including safety, relationships, teaching and learning, institutional environment, and school improvement processes. Hoy argues for larger conceptual themes, including academic press, organizational trust, and enabling structures as contributing to positive school climates. Yet, Louis and Lee (2016) include both academic press and trust as key components of strong school cultures. Denison (1996) offers an important critical review of the literature seeking to distinguish between cultural and climate studies. He recognizes that the distinction owes much to the perspective of researchers, but he suggests that a clear distinction between the two literatures is difficult to articulate. The differences stem ‘from their respective theoretical foundations … climate research growing out of Lewin field theory’ (Lewin, 1951), and culture research growing out of social construction theory (Berger & Luckmann, 1965). Denison’s view suggests that the two research traditions should be seen as differences in interpretation rather than differences in the phenomenon of the creation and influence of social contexts in organizations (Denison, 1996, pp. 644–645). We note, however, a different emphasis in Van Houtte (2005) and Schön and Teddlie (2005), all of whom argue that culture and climate are intrinsically linked, though both papers conclude that culture is the concept which is more likely to offer the more useful insights. We should note finally that culture, however defined, is a fuzzy concept, shifting and changing as a result of various factors. It is noteworthy that much of the literature, especially the managerialist literature, emphasizes the importance of changing culture. In this way, culture is, in a sense, a conservative force. As Hatch (2004) suggests, ‘cultures change; but they also remain the same’. These changes may be incremental but culminate in something significant. Equally, the changes may be radical, due to a crisis.

APPROACHES TO EXAMINING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Given these debates, it is not surprising that academics, in particular, have developed a range of approaches to understanding and exploring organizational culture. A crucial model was articulated by Smircich (1983), who distinguished between culture as an organizational variable (something that the organization has, similar to a structure) and culture as a root metaphor (something the organization is) (see also Martin, 2001). The importance of this distinction is that the former approach suggests a functionalist epistemology and the latter an interpretativist one. While the former is generally the approach taken within the managerialist literature, the latter has dominated the academic literature. Meyerson and Martin (1987, p. 623), for example, declare that they ‘take the position that organizations are cultures’ (emphasis in original). They go on to elaborate, saying that ‘we will treat culture as a metaphor of organization, not just a discrete variable to be manipulated at will’ (Meyerson & Martin, 1987, p. 623). While we see the significance of the distinction, we note that almost all managerialist studies (i.e., those interested in explaining and improving performance), employ interpretativist as well as objectivist methodologies to explore cultural phenomena.

IMPLICATIONS FOR LEADERSHIP DEPENDING ON THE NATURE OF CULTURE Furthermore, one’s understanding of leadership influences how one defines organizational culture. If culture is something an organization has, it falls to leadership to create, manage, and sustain the features of the school that support culture. In this way, culture is something leaders (e.g., superintendents, principals, heads, and the like) can manipulate towards valued performance

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outcomes (see Connolly, James, & Beales, 2011; Deal & Kennedy, 1988). When defined as something an organization has, culture is then an extension of management control with the aim of influencing the hearts and minds of organization members. It becomes a variable with which leaders can influence organizational practice. Leaders, then, are tasked with simultaneously maintaining those aspects of the existing culture that serve current goals and changing those aspects that do not. Maintenance requires that leaders exercise control in a way that enhances organizational outcomes. Innovation, and culture change, requires that leaders adapt existing aspects of the culture in ways that are responsive to new stimuli and challenges. Furthermore, if culture is something an organization has, it then follows that it is integrated across the organization as a whole, to employ the language of Martin (2001), who drew a distinction between differing degrees of integration and differentiation in an organization’s culture. This suggests that one would find widespread agreement concerning the principles and teachings that guide an organization’s activities. Leadership’s role is then to disseminate those principles and teachings in ways that transmit appropriate organizational behaviours. In schools, this suggests that it falls to school heads and principals to guide the ways in which new challenges are framed, problems are outlined, decisions considered, and solutions implemented. As such, policies and practices are considered holistically – that is, how functional they may be for the organizational whole – rather than how they might function for any one grade level, group of students, or faculty. Thus, the integration perspective of organizational culture privileges that which is common across members and downplays that which is not. Furthermore, the integration perspective naively credits formal, named leadership with the power to influence and achieve consensus across units and members. However, others (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Erculj, 2009; Hogan & Coote, 2014)

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suggest that cultures are suffused with difference. Consensus may not exist and therefore culture cannot be managed in any meaningful way. The differentiation perspective suggests that attention to cultural diversity across the organization offers deeper understanding into how an organization functions. It is understood that within a larger organization alternative subcultures exist and function, each able to address the complexity of the work with which they have been charged. Therefore, even within school organizations that may, for example, have common expectations for dress code or uniform, it is understood – and accepted – that individuals within the school may tailor the policy to best meet the needs of their students. In this case, a larger cultural tradition of professional or scholarly dress is upheld but is practically altered for local purposes. Whereas, the differentiation perspective surfaces and honours the ways members may alter cultural expectations and practices, while still retaining some features of the larger whole, the fragmentation perspective suggests that ambiguity and fluidity permeate the modern organization. Within this perspective, the role of leadership is decentred and holds little, if any, sway over how organizational culture is experienced or how sense is made from it. It is worth noting that distributed leadership theory (Rogoff, 1995; Spillane, 2006; Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2001) has been education’s major contribution to debates on leadership models and is both a normative as well as a positive theory. As such, any leadership effort to influence organizational culture is tenuous and equivocal since all meaning is fashioned and understood at the local level, even in cases where the larger impetus for change derives elsewhere, as in the case of national performance indicators. Taken in sum, research studies that treat culture as a variable seek to predict organizational outcomes (e.g., productivity, performance), whereas studies that define culture as a metaphor focus on context-specific

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(often internal) knowledge generation. That is, if culture can be managed, if it is something an organization has, it can be manipulated in ways that enhance managerial goals. If culture is something an organization is, the logic suggests it is less able to be influenced by managerial efforts. Consequently, research may be productively directed to understanding how culture functions within a given organization or society with the hopes of discovering something interesting. We argue that the field might be better served by considering a redirection of cultural understanding. Our argument suggests that current work (Connolly, James, & Beales, 2011; Hino & Aoki, 2013) has privileged definitions of culture that favour broad studies of organizations and has focused those understandings on the tandem foci of symbols of the organizations and the activities in which organizational leaders engage. In turn, researchers have employed these data in an effort to uncover how organizational symbols and activities align with stated beliefs and values, suggesting that alignment has the potential to produce intended and valued outcomes. Instead, we suggest that more fruitful terrain might be located within studies of subcultures and communities within the larger organization. Understanding how members work together in real time and on real work, and in specific contexts, may well provide researchers with deeper understandings into how organizational culture is constructed, socially reproduced, and lived. In turn, understandings concerning the evolution of organizational culture within organizations might be better understood.

chief executive, to ensure the appropriate culture. We shall explore this issue first, including examining strategies that chief executives can adopt. We will then turn to other sources of organizational culture. These include national and social cultural pressures: the governance literature, for example, emphasizes that schools are embedded in a ‘proliferation of complex horizontal forms of societal relations’ (Bell & Hindmoor, 2009, p. 3). In addition, the institutional literature (see the classic paper by Meyer & Rowan, 1992, and the application to education by Meyer, Scott, & Deal, 1992; for more recent papers, see Deephouse & Suchman, 2008) stresses the importance of legitimacy for organizations in determining their structure and strategy. This in turn suggests that external elements can impact on culture. Equally, the specific situation of a school may affect its culture: small versus large, primary versus secondary, unionized versus non-unionized, located in a deprived area versus located in an affluent area, private versus public, expanding versus contracting, and so on. These factors are often ignored and yet may be important. Furthermore, as we shall see, the various tendencies may pull in different directions. Donnelly and McKevitt (2016) examine the tensions around managerialist and Catholic education values, drawing on empirical work from two Catholic post-primary schools in Northern Ireland. In short, cultural debates may lead to conflict, as individuals and groups confront issues from differing viewpoints (see Imai & Gelfand, 2009, for an interdisciplinary perspective in conflict, culture, and negotiation).

CREATING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

LEADERS’ STRATEGIES AND DEVICES FOR CREATING CULTURE

As we have noted, the dominant focus of the managerialist cultural literature is that school culture is crucial for successful performance and it is the role of the school principal, as

As we have suggested, the widespread expectation is that leaders can secure the appropriate performance from schools by designing and implementing the relevant cultural

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change. In Connolly, James, and Beales’s (2011) case study of the impact of a principal on school culture, the head teacher felt that ‘change was urgently needed’ and set about this as a matter of priority, although he was aware of how difficult it would be. Conflict was inevitable. Many members of the staff felt that the school had been doing a good job and that relations among staff were friendly, calm, and comfortable. In another school, in which one of the authors undertook some consultancy, there was a marked division between a new head teacher and some supporting staff, but with a significant number of other staff, mostly long-serving members in opposition. In summary, the division was over the central purpose of the school, as to whether the key stakeholders of the school were the students or the staff. In these various struggles, the principal/ head teacher/chief executive can determine the official narrative of the school, including its aims and values. He/she can impose these and determine the process by which these are generated, for example, by encouraging participation and (hopefully) securing support from within the school. Hence, he/ she can hold staff seminars, encourage, or even compel colleagues to attend specified courses. The chief executive may also draw support from governors and significant others in local and national education networks. However, such support may also present limitations. As institutional theory reminds us (see Deephouse & Suchman, 2008; Lawrence, 2008; Meyer & Rowan, 1992), there is a need to secure organizational legitimacy. Thus, it is very unlikely that a head/ principal/chief executive would be appointed who did not support the dominant narrative articulated by that network. This, of course, would be recognized by staff – recognized but not always supported. A substantial literature has developed which equates change with cultural change (see, for example, Burnes, 2012; Dawson, 2003). Clarke (1994, quoted in Burnes, 2012, p. 139) declares that the essence of

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sustainable change is to understand the culture of the organization that is to be changed. In addition, a number of authors have argued that the essence of cultural change is to manage the complexity that organizations, including schools, confront (Magala, 2011). The change literature is substantial and varied (see, for example, the papers in Boje, Burnes, & Hassard, 2011) and this is not the place to explore them. But it is worth stating that new theories (e.g., processual theories) argue that one-off, planned change initiatives inevitability fail and the constant shifting of organizational life and its resultant interpretation means that change, including cultural change, permanently alters. Nonetheless, the perspective offered in the previous paragraph is supported by a range of official documents – in the UK, the various inspectorates as well as various government reports all emphasize this narrative. In turn, a chief executive can draw on these official directives to support his/ her position if necessary. Moreover, the widely-accepted view within the managerialist literature further substantiates this position (see Deal & Kennedy, 1983 Peters & Waterman, 1982). This integrationist view has, as discussed above, been challenged. A range of scholars, (e.g., Greenwood & Hinings, 1996) have pointed out the essentially pluralistic nature of organizations. As Braga Rodriques (2006, p. 537) points out, ‘[i]t may … be difficult to attain a cultural consensus beyond the scope of particular groups or specific issues’ and hence ‘cultural change is a multifaceted and multilevel process’. For Braga Rodriques, cultural change has an essential political nature and change towards either cultural integration or differentiation depends on the legitimacy of internal coalitions and their capacity to sustain integrative ideals. In our view, legitimacy is heavily influenced by the relationship of the internal cultural dynamics with the external network, a process that reflects competing narratives as well as structural forces.

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MANAGING CULTURAL CHANGE In education, school culture studies have largely focused on culture as a variable to be employed in the endeavour to ‘improve’ (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Hoy, 2012; Leithwood, Leonard, & Sharratt, 1998; Murphy, 2002). Additionally, the business and educational literature has also demonstrated a recent preoccupation with organizational failure (Cannon & Edmondson, 2001; Ford & Andersson, 2016; Hino & Aoki, 2013; Oertel, Thommes, & Walgenbach, 2016), suggesting that not all change can be mitigated, and responses do not always produce the intended results. However, common to all these studies is an emphasis on the role organizational culture plays concerning the success or failure of planned change efforts. Planned change, as a management tool, is suggested to be the by-product of a cycle of activity that often starts with an evaluation of an organization’s existing state and goals and ends with the implementation of new practices, policies, and procedures that are designed to address the gaps between the current state and a future desired position (Hino & Aoki, 2013). Attention to how organizational members need to be socialized into accepting new values, beliefs, and directions are often salient features of such efforts (Alvesson, 2013). In schools in the US, continuous improvement planning (Smylie, 2010) has received much attention for its utility in helping school leaders orchestrate change. In particular, the continuous improvement planning literature has promoted constructs such as organizational learning (Leithwood et al., 1998; Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004; Louis & Lee, 2016) as a practice in which organizational members (teachers) can learn together that which enhances changed practice. In the organizational learning model, the alignment of new cultural practices underscores the implementation of changed work foci and tasks in a normative fashion, changing not only the work accomplished but the social structures that support it. In this way, culture is acknowledged both as a social construction

within the school and as a regulative framework to assure outcomes. Doing so, positions cultural change efforts as a managerial tool with the potential to reposition members’ (teachers’) meanings, ideals, and identifications (Deal & Peterson, 2016). This literature also runs counter to a critical literature which positions organizational change as a political phenomenon, operating in an uncertain and complex world (see, for example, the work of Pettigrew (1973, 1979) and Poole (2004). In this literature, change has to negotiate with a number of groups, some of which may well be hostile. Much of the cultural change literature also suggests that ‘because of its embedded nature any culture … is resistant to change’ (Hendry, 1999, p. 563. Bate (1997, p.1155) puts it even more strongly, arguing that ‘debilitating cultural hangovers from the past’ challenge attempts for cultural change. This view is challenged by Hatch (2004), who sees process as a key variable within cultural studies. Clearly, the educational literature acknowledges that organizational change requires more than cultural shift (Louis & Lee, 2016 Murphy, 2002; Smylie, 2010). Organizational size, age, the resilience of existing structures and routines, and pressure to alter existing work and work patterns have all been identified as confounding factors for change (Hannan & Freeman, 1984). Furthermore, in schools, the association between, for example, size and resistance to change has been well documented (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Hoy, 2012; Leithwood et al., 2004). Yet, the general thrust of the literature suggests that if attention to a school’s culture is absent, other initiatives are unlikely to gain traction. Moreover, researchers conclude that it is the task of leadership to provide the motivation and cultural direction that leads change efforts (Deal & Peterson, 2016).

EXTERNAL CONTEXT IMPACT ON CULTURE Studies that have focused their attentions on cultural change tend to do so with the intent

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of determining how organizations might productively respond to environmental shifts and crisis (Alvesson, 2013; Bhagat & Steers, 2009; Hofstede, 2001; Hogan & Coote, 2014). A number of such studies have sought to identify the nature of varying social and economic structures on organizational culture (see, for example, Hall & Hall, 1990; Hofstede, 2001; Kluckholn & Strodtbeck, 1961; Nardon & Steers, 2009). Most of these studies seek to develop a taxonomy and apply that to a number of different countries. Hofstede is perhaps the most widely used model (Nardon & Steers, 2009, p. 4), derived from a study of employees from various countries working for a major multinational company. The study explored the differences placed on alternative values. He distinguished a range of cultural values, including: • Power distance, beliefs about the appropriate distribution of power in society; • Uncertainty avoidance, the degree of uncertainty that can be tolerated and its impact on rule making; • Individualism–collectivism, relative importance of individual versus group interests; • Masculinity–femininity, assertiveness versus passivity and material possession versus quality of life; • Long term versus short term, orientation, outlook on work, life, and relationships.

It might be thought that, however imaginative some of these criteria are, actually determining them in practice would pose considerable challenges. And, not surprisingly, some of criteria, especially the masculinity–femininity one, have been subject to criticism (see Dickson, Den Hartog, & Castano, 2009). Nevertheless, Dickson determines that, for example, Ireland and Sweden have a low power distance, meaning that in these countries leaders do not need to have substantial amounts of formal power compared with others, whereas in Mexico and Saudi Arabia they do. The work is interesting and challenging, but sadly, for our purposes, has not been applied to educational institutions.

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In addition, research has been undertaken into leadership across cultures. Dickson et al. (2009) raise specific problems for this work. For example, the term ‘leader’ is problematic in certain countries, for example, in Germany it would be translated as ‘fuhrer’, which has negative connotations, as has the word ‘jefe’ in Spain. Further, leadership is not the same across cultures. Institutions vary and hence so does leadership. Dickson et  al. (2009, p. 238) state that work on cross-cultural leadership research has occurred for ‘many years’, but they are less sanguine about its results than some colleagues. But the more important point is that this work (and other work) suggests that the social context may well play a part in constructing the culture within schools. A recent special edition of Educational Management, Administration and Leadership (2017, 45(5)) has a number of interesting papers that examine school leaders’ professional identities. Johnson and Crow (2017, p. 748) argue that the papers in that edition illustrate the impact of context on professional identity development, where context includes history, geography, gender, and race. They argue that school leaders socially construct and negotiate multiple identities that are changing. In short, leaders will, to some degree at least, influence the creation of culture but are themselves, in part, created by the social, political, and economic cultural environment. Schools also face diverse social and economic environments facing the school. Schools in poor or ethnically diverse areas present – or are perceived to present – different challenges from those in more affluent areas. This can represent an interesting case in which the school in a poor area may develop a culture in which there are low expectations of children’s performances, which in turn becomes self-fulfilling. A key aspect of policy in a number of countries, including the UK, is to challenge these preconceptions. Thus, in one case, a new head teacher determined that the school was characterized by a ‘culture of complacency’, with an emphasis on keeping the kids in

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order (Connolly, James, & Beales, 2011, pp. 426–427). Ainscow and Sandill (2010) point out that, despite widespread international agreement on inclusive education, this is defined differently in different countries and implemented differently in different countries. Thus, they declare (Ainscow & Sandill, 2010, p. 402) that in countries of the South, inclusion is often seen as a Western concept, although it is being increasingly embraced on the grounds of social justice. In addition, schools are increasingly understood to be embedded in inter-organizational networks. These will reflect local, regional, and national dimensions. Thus, for example, schools may seek to reach out in various ways to local communities. In turn, this may raise issues, as, for example, in Birmingham, England, where local communities were dominated by members of the Muslim religion. Given the hostility to aspects of that community, this can present national concerns based on perceived challenges.

POLICY ENVIRONMENT The policy environment in many countries, as we have noted above, has shifted towards a more performance-based, managerialist culture, reflecting other national policy concerns. This is augmented by a range of techniques, including formal inspection reports, tables outlining school performance, and the like. Furthermore, the rise of managerialist and neoliberal thinking has had a profound impact on education in general, and schooling in particular. This has manifested itself in what has been termed ‘the cult of efficiency’ (Gross Stein, 2001). A key debate emerging from this is the increased functionality of education. That schools are judged by their performance therefore becomes increasingly important. In addition to the outcomes and implications for school culture already described, the governance of schools has come under scrutiny. In England, for

example, as Ranson (2008) has argued, new governance arrangements have empowered parents and school leaders over professionals. This process has continued with parents and others empowered to create new schools – in England, Free Schools and Academies – and there has been a challenge to the traditional make-up of school governing bodies by removing teachers and parents and replacing them with experts, especially those with a business background (see Connolly, Farrell, & James, 2017; Young, 2017). All of this enhances the continuing emphasis on performance, with school leaders under pressure to explain and justify school results. In turn, this enhances the official school culture.

SUBCULTURES Differentiation of culture within schools is an important feature of current research (see, for example, Friedman, Galligan, Albano, & O’Connor, 2009; on subcultures more generally, see Jermier et al., 1991). As Riley (1983) asserts, schools are not monolithic in nature. Nor are they entirely rational. They are a complex mixture of political, game playing, and self-seeking behaviours. Hence organizational subcultures have many sources (Jermier et  al., 1991, p. 172). These may include a number of structural characteristics, for example, the size of the school, the geographical spread of the school, the significance of trade unions in the school, the range of disciplines in the school, and the age, ethnicity, and gender balance of the school staff, and their personal histories (Jermier et  al., 1991; Van Houtte, 2005, p. 80). The notion of subcultures, in turn, raises the prospect of competition among these subcultures. Departments and separate geographical sites may compete over resources, or individual staff may seek to define the criteria for promotion. And, importantly, as a number of examples above suggest, subcultures may conflict with the official culture

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of the school, especially when there is an attempt to replace the previous culture. To transfer the remarks of Jermier et al. (1991, p. 173) to education, the primary purpose of the official culture is to gain and maintain control over the symbolic communities attached to education. Subcultures may not seek a direct conflict with this official culture, but may pay lip service to it, while adhering to their own view of education.

SOME ETHICAL ISSUES CONCERNING SCHOOL CULTURE Organization scholars have become increasingly interested in ethical issues, and a number of scholars have articulated the notion that culture is a tool for social control created by the senior managers/leaders of an organization (see, for example, Pettigrew, 1979). Wesse (1996, p. 200) states that ‘the presence of a strong, positive culture is important to quickly indoctrinate new employees and preserve a culture of excellence’ (emphasis is ours). As a result, staff may be required to undertake tasks in a particular manner and/or additional tasks through moral suasion rather than receiving additional monies. Willmott (1993), in an important article, develops a critique of the corporate culture literature. In essence, he argued that the literature builds on earlier efforts to generate a self-disciplining form of employee subjectivity by asserting that the employee will have ‘autonomy’, but the price is buying into the corporate culture. He draws the analogy that corporate culture resembles the philosophy of control favoured by the Party in Orwell’s Nineteen EightyFour. The teacher who does not accept the official culture may find him or herself penalized in various ways, for example, by being refused promotion, asked to teach ‘difficult’ classes, or have a teaching programme that does not reflect their wishes or expertise, or being the subject of constant criticism.

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This in turn leads to another aspect of this argument, namely the relationship between strong cultures generated by transformative leadership and cultures of bullying. The notion of a ‘bullying culture’ is one that is increasingly heard. There has been a growth in concerns about and literature focusing on bullying (see, for example, the special edition of Public Money and Management, 37(5), July 2017). Mawdsley and Lewis (2017) point out, for example, that this growth is related to New Public Management (NPM), and in their case study on disabled employees, NPM has contributed to this group (and others) being subject to increased bullying. Omari and Paull (2017, p. 315) argue that there is a fine line between what can be called ‘robust performance management’ and workplace bullying. Hence, fear may become part of the school culture.

CONCLUSION While culture remains a significant concept in managerialist and popular discourse, it has become less so among academics. We note that in a recent prominent handbook on organizations, no chapter is devoted to exploring culture, although the term does crop up in some of the chapters (Stewart, 2009). As long ago as 1996, Denison wondered whether ‘culture research was falling short of its promise’. Martin (2001) has suggested that a number of colleagues argued that cultural studies had, by the end of the 1980s, become dominant but dead, a comment driven by a critique of functionalist cultural studies. Martin rejects this claim as premature. Nonetheless, it appears that academic interest in the concept has waned, although it remains popular in managerial and policy circles. This paradox may be traced to a certain fuzziness associated with the concept – for example, is it a determining or dependent variable? Can its nature be clearly traced in an organization? While that fuzziness may concern academics, it provides

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policy makers and managers with a handy tool to explain organizational failures, as well as a useful concept to recommend as a remedy. Our argument hence is that, while cultural references in managerial and political narratives remain as a critical factor in explaining and encouraging improvements in schools, the academic literature has become more sceptical. This is not the first time this trend has occurred, but culture as a problematic for academics continues. A substantial literature exists, as we have demonstrated, which offers a wide range of definitions and frameworks for understanding culture. Part of the tension, as Van Houtte (2005) suggests, lies precisely in this issue of culture as something a school has as opposed to something a school is. Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the apparent clear boundary between each is, in practice, breached. There remains nonetheless a demand for ideas and concepts which reach beyond such structural features as organizational plans, financial concerns, and pupil numbers. The experience all of us have of organizational life is not captured by such concepts. Hence, there is a need to reify the invisible, to adapt Mark Cocker’s (2010) remark. And as a result, cultural studies will continue to attract scholars and managers.

Note We wish to thank Carol Mullen and Christopher Pollitt for their helpful and astute comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

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12 Inter-Organizational Networks in Education Priscilla Wohlstetter and Angela Gargaro Lyle

INTRODUCTION Inter-organizational networks are a relatively new form of organization in education based on reform in the business sector, which has increasingly been dominated by teamwork and decentralized management (Lawler, Mohrman, & Benson, 2001). Scholarship in the public sector identifies the increasing role of inter-organizational networks in governance and policy (Peters & Pierre, 1998) and the role of inter-organizational networks in educational governance structures in the United States and abroad (Burns & Köster, 2016). Different from networks of individuals, inter-organizational networks are a set of similar organizations (e.g., schools) working together to increase organizational productivity and innovation. Related through common affiliations or exchange relations (Jones & Van de Ven, n.d.), inter-organizational networks emphasize group processes, collaboration and collective action, as opposed to the

networking of individuals, to achieve their own specific goals. A range of terms has come to describe inter-organizational networks in education: strategic alliances, collaboratives, partnerships, clusters, consortia, to name a few (Cropper, Ebers, Huxham, & Ring, 2008). We distinguish networks here from strategic alliances or partnerships, which typically attract different types of organizations with varied resources that come together to achieve complementary goals. Such strategic alliances partner, often with non-system actors, to gain access to particular resources to advance their goals. For example, a charter school that needs space to educate its students partners with a church interested in furthering K-12 education whose space is mostly dormant during the week. Although inter-organizational, this strategic alliance lacks the structures and incentives for practical collaboration around issues of teaching and learning.

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In this chapter, we focus on reformoriented, inter-organizational networks that are regarded as ‘a new construct for conceiving of education provision and a new strategy for achieving reform’ (Chapman & Aspin, 2003, p. 2). By this we mean interorganizational networks are comprised of members who actively collaborate to develop and advance strategies for improving teaching and learning in schools. Examples of reform-oriented, inter-organizational networks include charter management organizations (CMOs), comprehensive school reform designs (CSR) and certain district-based networks, among others. The intent of this chapter is to discuss the role of inter-organizational networks in school improvement efforts across a range of contexts, to highlight leading interorganizational networks engaged in the work of school improvement and to provide an analytic scheme to support more systematic approaches to studying inter-organizational networks. To do this, we begin by discussing the key dimensions of inter-organizational networks in education. Following this, we examine how inter-organizational networks typically operate through: (1) collective responsibility and commitment, (2) collaboration, and (3) capacity building, and 4) coordination. We then discuss the benefits and challenges inter-organizational networks face in carrying out their work. We conclude by highlighting emerging areas of research on interorganizational networks in education.

CONCEPTUALIZING INTERORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS IN EDUCATION The emergence of reform-oriented, interorganizational networks came during a time of increased enthusiasm for innovative models for school improvement. A combination of private funding, favorable policies, and a desire to effect large-scale school

improvement, particularly for the country’s most vulnerable students, created the conditions under which inter-organizational networks rose in popularity. In education, one focus on inter-organizational networks stemmed from the investment of $100 million by Walter Annenberg (founder of TV Guide, among other ventures) in the Annenberg Challenge, which funded school reform efforts in nine urban areas and one rural district. In all localities, Annenberg stipulated that funding must go to locallydesigned networks, effectively introducing school networks to public education. In the Los Angeles metropolitan area, for instance, Annenberg networks, ‘School Families’, of high schools and their feeder elementary and middle schools, worked alongside school districts in Los Angeles County. The problem reformers tried to tackle was beyond a single school district – the mobility of families and students within Los Angeles County. Networks across Los Angeles County identified student literacy as a focus area and worked to build capacity, mainly among teachers and principals, spanning grade levels K-12. Through collaboration, School Families produced new knowledge about how to teach reading and used this knowledge to inform classroom practice across primary, middle, and secondary schools. Subsequently, school improvement networks have emerged in three broad areas of school reform: comprehensive school reform designs (CSR), charter management organizations (CMOs), and certain district-based reform efforts. In this section, we describe how researchers have conceptualized interorganizational networks. We present here a set of five distinguishing features that are most central to inter-organizational networks. We do this for two reasons. First, this set of features helps to build conceptual understanding of what inter-organizational networks are and what it is they do. Second, it provides a framework that scholars and others can use to understand and compare across inter-organizational networks.

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The five features are: 1 Genesis refers to the reasons and motivations behind the creation of the network and the factors that led members to join (de Lima, 2010). Many inter-organizational networks in education develop in response to some external push, such as policy initiatives or external funding. Fewer develop as organic systems. 2 Purpose refers to the substance or mission driving the work of the network. Networks in education maintain a central focus on teaching and learning. Network purposes may vary in scope, ranging from a broad focus on increasing educational opportunities for all students to a narrower focus on improving literacy instruction, for example. 3 Independence refers to the network and its relationship with schools or school districts, which can be independent of, yet attached to, traditional schools or school districts. Networks offer members an opportunity to work across schools, districts and state lines. 4 Composition refers to the collection of actors within a network and the specific resources they bring to their work (Russell, Meredith, Childs, Stein, & Prine, 2015). 5 Structure refers to the set of connections among actors in a network. Network structures vary in the degree of network centrality. Network centrality refers to the extent to which central actors mediate connections between members (Russell et  al., 2015). Inter-organizational networks vary from highly centralized, hierarchal structures to more decentralized, flatter structures.

We argue here that the five key dimensions, identified above, might serve as an analytic tool to support scholars in conceptualizing networks. First, this set of dimensions can improve understanding of the broad features of inter-organizational networks and can provide insights into how networks operate. Second, the dimensions can enable scholars to compare inter-organizational networks for the purposes of identifying similarities and differences in network design and categorizing inter-organizational networks. Finally, these five dimensions can serve as heuristics with which we begin to understand the conditions under which some networks thrive and others are challenged.

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TYPES OF INTER-ORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS In the following section, we apply the five key dimensions of inter-organizational networks to conceptualize school improvement networks in CSRs, CMOs and district-based reform efforts. The purpose of this section is to identify and describe the broad types of reform-oriented, inter-organizational networks and to provide examples of specific networks within each type. In doing so, we seek to illustrate how these networks operate in practice, and how the five key dimensions can support scholars in conceptualizing interorganizational networks.

Comprehensive School Reform Designs Comprehensive school reform designs represent an early example of reform-oriented, inter-organizational networks focused on improving the work of teaching and learning across systems of schools. Broadly speaking, CSR is an approach to school improvement that is intended to foster school-wide change affecting all aspects of schooling, including curriculum, instruction, organization, professional development, and parent involvement (Desimone, 2002). CSR models emerged in the early 1990s in an effort to improve the education of low-income students by encouraging school-wide improvement (Rotberg, Harvey, & Warner, 1993). CSR differed from earlier reform efforts in that their purpose was to provide comprehensive, robust designs and practical methods to develop the organizational and human capacity necessary to improve schools. Leading examples of CSR models include Success for All, Accelerated Schools Program, and America’s Choice, among others (for example, see Datnow, 2005; Wohlstetter & Mohrman, 1993). Founded and developed by a research group at Johns Hopkins University in 1987/88, the Success for All program, one

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of the pre-eminent CSR models, sought to improve the literacy of struggling readers through a comprehensive set of school-level supports. At its genesis, program developers Robert Slavin and Nancy Madden designed the program around research-validated evidence, as well as pragmatic approaches to educational improvement (Peurach, 2011). Early on, Success for All benefited from favorable environmental conditions that enabled a rapid scale-up of design (Datnow, Hubbard, & Mehan, 2002). Increased funding and policy support for CSR models drew many schools to adopting the Success for All model. As a result, Success for All emerged as one of the leading CSR models. The underlying purpose of the Success for All program is to support schools in reaching on-grade-level reading achievement in grades K-6. At one point, Success for All supported 1,200 schools using their comprehensive school reform program, as well as provided technical resources and assistance to an additional 2,500 schools (Peurach, 2011). Comprising the network is a set of member schools connected to one another through a strong central hub. Network schools span across multiple states and are mostly chronically underperforming. The large network hub of designers, specialists, and support staff, along with classroom teachers, school leaders, reading tutors, family support coordinators, and reading facilitators at the school level, comprise the network. Success for All’s structure represents a more centralized network where a strong, central hub directs action across the network. Under the network design, the network hub is responsible for program design and ongoing refinement of the design in response to local implementation (Peurach, 2011). The network hub designs specific guidance for directing instruction, including a K-6 reading curriculum, which specifies the methods, moves, and steps for effective teaching (Cohen, Peurach, Glazer, Gates, & Goldin, 2013) and seeks to develop collegial environments to support professional development.

Undergirding this design is the belief that through the enactment of a specified program design, practitioners will build professional capacity to improve practice. The 1990s presented particularly conducive political and funding environments that encouraged the rapid expansion of the CSR movement. Through generous private donations from corporations and foundations, the New American Schools Development Corporation (or New American Schools as it came to be known) funded a series of ‘break the mold’ school models, including Success for All, that focused on school reform (Slavin, 2008). At the same time, the federal government and state governments passed legislation promoting schools to use CSR designs, further encouraging school adoption of these programs.1 Despite researchbased support for the effectiveness of CSRs, the fervor for CSR waned in the early to mid 2000s as Congress eliminated funding, resulting in a dramatic slow-down. Nevertheless, CSR models continue, and the models share similar structures. In particular, these networks are structured with strong central hubs that are responsible for designing and revising the education program and providing support to member schools. Member schools collaborate with the hub to enact the education designs. CSRs typically work with public schools, but the network itself exists outside traditional school districts. Similar to CMOs, independence from the traditional K-12 structure enables network members to connect with other likeminded collaborators outside the geographic boundaries of their local districts.

Charter Management Organizations Charter management organizations were an unexpected consequence of the charter school movement (Wohlstetter, Smith, & Farrell, 2013). Advocates had touted that charters would reform school systems school-by-school, but this process was

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slow-going. With funding assistance from the federal government, CMOs emerged as a way to accelerate reform by creating networks of high-performing charter schools. Thus, their purpose and vision were to expand the charter school theory of action beyond changing systems one charter school at a time to changing the public school landscape through systems or networks of charter schools (Farrell, Wohlstetter, & Smith, 2012). From the early 2000s to the present, the US Department of Education encouraged CMO development by allocating grants devoted to expanding and replicating successful models of charter schooling (Farrell, Wohlstetter, & Smith, 2012). CMOs typically united affiliated schools under a particular education program, popular among them were ‘no excuses’ charter schools, such as Uncommon Schools (Teh, McCullough, & Gill, 2010) and the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) (Gleason, Tuttle, Gill, Nichols-Barrer, & Teh, 2014; Henig, 2008). But in contrast to CSRs, CMOs defined their own network focus, including the target student population served, faculty recruitment and professional development, the education plan, and student assessment protocols. As an example, Achievement First began at one school, Amistad Academy, in 1999 in New Haven, Connecticut. At its genesis, the school was founded by a small group of educational reformers with the purpose of closing the achievement gap and providing high-quality educational alternatives for traditionally underserved populations. This founding school quickly showed significant gains in achievement scores, and four years later Achievement First opened as a non-profit CMO to support the founding of additional schools. Since then Achievement First has scaled up their network in Connecticut and has also expanded to New York and Rhode Island. Across the network, Achievement First schools typically surpass local and state averages on standardized measures of achievement, and as a result the network has gained notoriety as a leading CMO (Center

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for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO), 2017). The broad purpose of the Achievement First network is to create high-quality, college preparatory schools in urban areas that are capable of outperforming more affluent districts. As of 2017, the Achievement First network was comprised of 34 public charters located across the three states. Managing the network is a strong network hub staffed with instructional specialists, curriculum developers, and network leaders. The network hub provides a set of core supports to schools, including developing core curriculum, training leaders and teachers, budgeting, staff and student recruitment, marketing, and facilities management (www.achievementfirst.org). The Achievement First network is structured as a centralized hierarchy, with the network hub positioned at the top of the organization, and member schools connected to the hub through regional superintendents. A core responsibility of the network hub is developing and implementing a robust educational infrastructure to be used across the network (Duff, Lyle, Flack, Wohlstetter, & Massell, 2018; Rosenberg, 2012). The Achievement First network provides its teachers and leaders with strong guidance about the aims, content, methods, and organization of teacher and leadership work, as well as explicit structures for monitoring and learning from practice (Duff et al., 2018; Rosenberg, 2012). In particular, the network directs teaching and learning across the network through explicit instructional guidance in the form of curricula and lesson plans, resources and network-wide assessments, and supports the implementation of instructional guidance through ongoing professional development and coaching. The network actively monitors the local implementation of instructional guidance through networkwide assessments and uses this monitoring to set instructional goals and to make changes to the overall network instructional design (Duff et al., 2018; Rosenberg, 2012).

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As an inter-organizational network, CMOs exist outside the traditional K-12 public school structure. Although CMO members are public schools receiving federal, state, and local funding with responsibility for meeting accountability standards, CMOs are free to set up networks of schools that extend outside the geographic structure of traditional school districts. This independence allows CMOs to organize their networks in ways that enable members to work across schools, districts, and state lines. As a result, likeminded schools focusing on similar goals work together to meet the particular needs of their students despite geographic location. CMOs are of mixed grade levels, running the gamut from K-3, K-6, K-8, 6-8, 6-12 to K-12. Some CMOs tend to be structured as a hierarchy with decisions coming down from the network office to individual schools; other CMOs strive to encourage communication and sharing of practices across schools. While still other CMOs actively manage the school network, they tend to be less prescriptive in their dealings with member schools, giving the schools, themselves, more autonomy. All the various types of CMOs are considered networks in that they link up schools horizontally to share promising practices. As the research has evolved, we have observed some CMOs striving toward efficiency, implementing reforms from the top-down. Other CMOs continue to value reforms bubbling up organically from the bottom.

District-based Networks Large urban school districts across the US face a daunting challenge: How to support schools with widely different needs to achieve rigorous college and career-ready standards? Under the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and School Chancellor Joel Klein from 2003 to 2012, the public school system in New York City moved from a traditional bureaucratic structure to one featuring school networks – clusters of K-12 New York City

schools self-arranged in what were known as Children First Networks (CFNs). The purpose of CFNs was to provide instructional and operational support to their member schools in the roughly 60 networks developed across the city. This reform turned accountability on its head: CFNs were accountable directly to schools; if schools were dissatisfied with the network they chose, principals could ‘jump ship’ and select a different network (Wohlstetter, Smith, & Gallagher, 2013). At the same time, networks were beholden to school principals who were imbued with autonomy, not only to select their network, but also to determine how students would be taught, how money would be spent, and who would work at the school (Wohlstetter, Houston, & Buck, 2015). New governance models moved the system from a centralized structure to a more decentralized structure. Characteristic of these governance models were three basic principles: (1) decentralizing decision-making, (2) cutting out the middle layer of bureaucracy, and (3) creating markets of competition. The purpose of CFNs was to support the operations and instructional work of schools undergoing reform. The New York City Department of Education appointed network leaders and the leaders assembled their teams. Staffing of CFNs were standardized across the city, although CFNs were expected to compete with one another to attract principals and their schools. As a result, principal decisionmaking was strengthened; at the same time, the middle layer of the Department of Education (DOE) was dismantled. Bloomberg and Klein expected CFNs to develop different ‘brands’ of services, as is common in a marketplace, but social capital, not expertise, tended to propel how CFNs were created and operated. Staffing decisions by network leaders were largely based on with whom the leaders had worked previously in the New York City DOE system. Likewise, several CFNs differentiated themselves according to an education program or educational philosophy, but the vast majority

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of CFNs drew principals with whom the network leader had worked previously or school principals whose social network overlapped with that of the CFNs. Bloomberg and Klein wanted principals to decide the CFN from which their schools received operational and instructional services. The new CFN structure reorganized the city from a hierarchical, bureaucratic system to a flatter, more decentralized one. As schools affiliated with CFNs, they became connected with others outside the traditional boundaries of their geographic districts. Schools were now connected to a network comprised of members with similar educational goals and/ or professional relationships. This decentralization enabled a level of independence from the geographically-based district structures to which schools had been historically connected. Decentralization also emphasized the strength of principal decision-making autonomy. As the CFNs evolved, each supported between 25 and 30 schools. Because CFN staff tended to respond to school requests, it turned out that the high-performing schools that were good at diagnosing their problems, and

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what they needed, were the schools CFN staff tended to serve. Lower-performing schools that voiced fewer requests for help from the CFN office tended to get repetitive professional development at best (Hemphill & Nauer, 2010; Wohlstetter, Buck, Houston, & Smith, 2016). In 2015, under Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina, Chancellor Farina announced a new systemic policy that dissolved the Children First Networks and made community superintendents once again responsible for supporting schools and holding them accountable for results. In her reform announcement, Farina found it difficult to identify who was accountable to whom in the CFN structure. In a bureaucracy with supervisors and supervisees, she argued, it is clear where the buck stops.

HOW INTER-ORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS OPERATE As described above, inter-organizational networks in education that are focused on school

Table 12.1  Key dimensions of networks in education

Genesis

Purpose

Comprehensive school reform designs

Charter management organizations

Based on individual CSR model, aided by favorable policy funding initiatives To provide comprehensive, robust designs for schoolwide improvement

Based on individual charter Dependent on district intentions. model, aided by favorable Based on broad system federal and state policies restructuring in New York City To improve the public school To develop new networks of schools landscape through based upon educational philosophy systems or networks of or educational program, and schools focused on a to provide instructional and charter model operational support to member schools Work within traditional K-12 systems, Operate alongside, but but network decentralizes the independent from structure away from district-level traditional K-12 school authority system CMO network hubs and CFN hubs and member schools, across member schools across geographic regions in the city geographic regions CMO dependent, can Tend to have more decentralized hubs be centralized or with more school level autonomy decentralized

Independence Work with traditional K-12 schools and districts, but networks expand across schools, and districts Composition Network hubs and member schools across geographic regions Structure CSR model dependent, but tends to have strong central hubs

District-based reform (Children First networks)

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improvement represent a set of like organizations working together to improve teaching and learning. These networks focus on collaboration between and among organizations (and those within them) to increase the effectiveness of the network as a whole. Scholars can distinguish and compare these networks based upon the five key dimensions presented previously: genesis, purpose, independence, composition, and structure. Table 12.1 summarizes the key dimensions of networks in education, as discussed in this section. The key dimensions presented above serve to distinguish networks from one another in important ways. In particular, distinctions in genesis show CSRs and CMOs as positioned in the federal and state policy environment and CFNs positioned more centrally in the local policy environment. Differing views guide their purpose and models for supporting instructional improvement in their schools. Networks vary according to the level of independence from the traditional K-12 system and in the schools they serve, with CSRs and CMOs connecting members across geographic regions and CFNs connecting schools locally. Differences in underlying structures, including the level of centralization/decentralization, create different organizational conditions under which these networks design supports. Although the five key dimensions provide analytic fodder to support scholars, in conceptualizing inter-organizational networks, more substantive analysis on how these networks operate in the field is needed. Scholars have begun to identify commonalities about how networks function – the processes by which they operate (de Lima, 2010; Russell et al., 2015). In this section, we offer a second analytic tool – a typology depicting how networks operate through: (1) collective responsibility and commitment, (2) collaboration, (3) capacity building, and (4) coordination. The main focus of this section is to highlight network operational processes – that is, how networks engage in instructional improvement in practice. Subsequently, we illustrate

how Success for All (a CSR), Achievement First (a CMO), and the Children First Networks (a district-based network) operate.

Collective Responsibility and Commitment Network members take collective responsibility for student learning. The notion of ‘network’ stresses the ideas of community and trust. Members are seen as overtly associated with each other through connections and relationships that are deliberately established to pursue common interests, concerns, and goals. Participants drawn from different schools learn on behalf of colleagues within their own and other schools in the network. As a CMO, Achievement First has developed a network-wide commitment and collective responsibility for supporting student learning across the network. Through the network structure, members are explicitly connected with one another through professional development opportunities, cohort meetings, and other intentionally designed opportunities for connections. Beyond network structures, network members are more implicitly connected through common goals, initiatives, and missions that drive the organization. As a result, the Achievement First network fosters a network-wide community focused on the success of the network as a whole. They pursue common aims and interests and support one another in this pursuit through structured opportunities for learning (Duff et al., 2018; Rosenberg, 2012).

Collaboration Collaboration is identified as important to networking (Katz, Earl, & Jaafar, 2009; Lieberman & Grolnick, 2005), although collaboration alone is insufficient to create school change. Collaboration is about sharing power, knowledge, and influence. In addition, collaboration involves members in

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activities that have consequences for more than one person or organization. Networks typically feature a variety of collaborative structures. Leading networks is about brokering resources and people, creating public spaces for people to learn and work together, and building structures that encourage collaboration as the norm. CFNs worked alongside traditional school district boundaries. Reformers planned that schools would sort themselves into networks that shared like-minded approaches to education reform – college prep, progressive education, or schools with a focus on international students, for instance. Networked schools then could share professional development and showcase promising practices with one another. But this did not happen. As a consequence, CFNs worked to attend to member schools’ needs individually in a hub–spoke like network. There was little collaboration among network members.

CFNs the areas in which they needed greater proficiency. Past research on principal autonomy typically concludes that for decentralization to succeed, principals need not only the power to make decisions, but also the knowledge and skills to be able to diagnose what is impeding school progress (Mohrman, Wohlstetter, & Associates, 1994). Therefore, it is not too surprising that principals of higher-performing schools were better able to diagnose their challenges and ask for help to ameliorate them. Principals of lower-performing schools were less likely to ask for help and, as a result, such schools received routine offerings from the CFN office which tended to be generic and not specific to the schools’ particular concerns. The economies of scale built into the network structure were also lost as CFN offices tended to work school-by-school (a hub and spoke model) to deliver operational and instructional services.

Capacity Building

Coordination

Networks offer teachers and other educators opportunities to both consume and generate new knowledge. Networks build capacity, in so far as they are able to produce new knowledge and mutual learning that can feed back and inform policy and practice. Success for All had clear ideas about how to build capacity in their network. Their approach focused on providing strong instructional resources that teachers would implement with fidelity in their classrooms. Through faithful use of the Success for All program, it was expected that teachers would develop the knowledge and capacity for strong literacy instruction. An important challenge that related to the work of the CFNs concerned the networks’ original theory of action. Capacity building in the CFN context rested on the idea that principals who requested professional development and other supports from the CFNs were able to diagnose the areas in which they were having difficulty and to articulate to

Coordination refers to the level of and strategies for connecting members, resources, and knowledge in a network. As described above, the degree of centrality and broad organizational design likely contributes to the level of coordination within a network. Particular attention should be given to identifying areas of fragmentation and integration within networks. Coordination strategies might include systems of information flow, methods for collaboration and interaction, and strategies for developing collective knowledge. The Achievement First network, a CMO, has a highly coordinated design, as evidenced by explicit instructional guidance, ongoing training and professional development, and data use to monitor student outcomes (Duff et  al., 2018; Rosenberg, 2012). The network’s explicit instructional guidance sets a vision for teaching and learning across the network and provides the tangible resources to support enactment of that vision. Ongoing

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professional development and coaching supports the implementation of that vision of teaching and learning by providing opportunities for sense making around the instructional guidance and helping to normalize teachers and leaders to the vision. Network-developed assessments aligned to Achievement First’s vision of teaching and learning hold network members accountable to that vision. Strong centralization within the Success for All network, along with their explicit design for instructional improvement, resulted in a high level of coordination across the network. The main agent of coordination across the network is the explicit and comprehensive instructional guidance that is foundational to the Success for All design. Through the faithful use of explicit routines, resource use, and guidance embedded in the program design, Success for All was able to coordinate and replicate their instructional design across a range of schools that expanded across geographic regions (Peurach & Glazer, 2012). Yet coordination in this network went beyond fidelity of program use and included coordination amid the ongoing refinement of the program design. The Success for All network hub found ways to learn from local implementation and to use that knowledge to refine and improve the overall program design. As improvements were made, they were embedded within the Success for All model. Through continued enactment of the refined model, improvements were replicated at the local level.

BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF NETWORKS Previous research has noted that nothing is inherently positive or negative about a network. Networks can be flexible and organic, or rigid and bureaucratic, and they may also be dominated by particular interests (de Lima, 2010). In this section, we touch on the benefits and challenges of networks.

Benefits Resource and knowledge sharing. A key benefit of inter-organizational networks is the possibility for resource and knowledge sharing across the network in ways that build individual and collective capacity. Network members bring with them particular resources and expertise that may be formally or informally shared across the network (Firestone & Pennell, 1997; Lichtenstein, McLaughlin, & Knudsen, 1991; Lieberman, 2000) and used to improve practice at the network and member levels. As in the case of Success for All and Achievement First, the network hub offered a unique set of technical and human resources – such as curriculum, assessments, and coaches – that the network schools accessed and used to improve practice at the school level. These resources were critical to capacity building and instructional improvement as they provided the direction and means for reform within the network. These resources also functioned as the substance around which member schools connected, communicated, and collaborated. Moreover, inter-organizational networks enable knowledge sharing as they connect individuals with different knowledge and expertise in ways that promote learning across the network. For example, Achievement First connected principals together via professional communities of practice where knowledge and expertise could be shared around problems of practice. While resource and knowledge sharing provide opportunities for network learning, a consequence of this sharing is a potential loss of autonomy and proprietary information (Barringer & Harrison, 2000). As resources and knowledge disseminate across the network, authorship rights are at risk as the collective (as opposed to the individual) assumes ownership over innovations. Moreover, the partial loss of autonomy over decision-making may occur, particularly for those networks where the hub takes up much of the technical design work, as in the case for Success for All and Achievement First.

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Economies of scale and specialization. Inter-organizational networks have the potential to benefit from economies scale and specialization. This is most evident in those inter-organizational networks that are more centralized, such as CMOs, or in networks where the hub is explicitly responsible for program design and technical resource development, such as CSRs. In both Success for All and Achievement First, a key function of the network hub was to develop, monitor, and refine the overall program design and technical resources central to that design. As a result, the hub specialized in curriculum and program design, and its members specialized in the implementation and daily management of that curriculum. Collaborating as an inter-organizational network and empowering the network hub to specialize in design work enabled an economy of scale. The network minimized cost by pooling resources hub for design and development work and spread these resources across the network. In the context of the CFNs, the hub regularly offered professional development for educators in job-alike positions. Through these sessions, principals, math, and literacy coaches, to name a few, received professional development on designing assessments for the Common Core State Standards, for example. CFNs relied on the train-the-trainer-model, with educators who attended professional development returning to their schools to train teachers. Reconstituting traditional boundaries. Finally, inter-organizational networks benefit from the ability to reconstitute traditional boundaries. As is the case with Success for All and Achievement First, the network spanned across states, developing networks different from that of traditional local education authorities (LEAs). Similarly, CFNs reconfigured the geographic-based New York City DOE structure to span schools across city regions. This flexibility in network boundaries allows inter-organizational networks to develop a more homogeneous composition of members who are working on

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similar problems of practice. For example, the Success for All network is comprised of mostly underperforming elementary schools focused on improving literacy instruction, and Achievement First is comprised of urban-based, college preparatory schools. The networks reconfigured traditional geographic boundaries by connecting likeminded and like-purposed schools that could collaborate around similar challenges and goals. Similarly, schools affiliated with CFNs based on their educational philosophy or social network, enabling them to connect with schools with similar goals or intentions, even if they were outside the traditional district boundaries.

Challenges Sensitivity to external environments. Depending upon their position and ties to the external environment, inter-organizational networks may be more or less sensitive to the external environment. In the case of Success for All, the network was highly sensitive to the external environment. Despite measured results across the Success for All network, lack of continued political and financial support for the model at the federal level resulted in a significant decline in network affiliation. Similarly, CFNs dissolved in the wake of a new political administration in New York City as mayoral control shifted from Bloomberg to de Blasio. Both networks exhibited a level of sensitivity to the external environment that, at least in part, contributed to the broad decline of the network. Achievement First, on the other hand, has seemed to remain less sensitive to the external environment. As a CMO, Achievement First has been uniquely buffered from some of the local political environment. Member schools are not under the direct purview of LEAs and thus have been able to avoid some local changes in the environment. Steady support for charters at the state and federal levels has created a relatively stable external

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environment for Achievement First and other CMOs. However, should state or federal charter policy shift, Achievement First could become more sensitive to the environment. As long as political support for CMOs remains intact, Achievement First is likely to continue to be less affected by the external environment. Exacerbating insularity. While susceptible and sensitive to the external environment, inter-organizational networks might also find themselves facing an insularity challenge. Networks struggle with when to focus on problems of practice – the questions and challenges that arise from members’ daily experiences – and when to focus instead on knowledge from research and reform, which may raise entirely different questions and challenges. In the beginning participants’ needs dominate, but eventually a network may play a brokering role by bringing in knowledge and ideas from research. Insular networks that do not actively seek to access and utilize external knowledge from research and reform risk missed opportunities for innovation. Inclusivity/exclusivity of membership. Every network must decide how big it should be. Should it be teachers in a region? Anyone who believes in progressive education? Only those committed to a particular reform effort? Most important is that national and regional efforts often have principles, and/ or particular ways of working together, that build over time. Networks flourish when the core work they do can be learned by others. They decline when only the pioneers (the founders) experience the meaning of the network and haven’t been able to build ways for new members to experience, in some way, the nature of commitment, learning, and the excitement of being in a community. As CFNs developed, they were typically comprised of schools from several different boroughs. This fact curtailed the ability of CFN staff to work frequently with some far away schools. It also impeded the ability in many networks of schools to share resources and promising practices. In sum, geography mattered.

Inter-organizational networks must also make decisions about the roles and responsibilities members play in the networks’ work stream. A risk that networks face is overburdening members by adding additional roles and responsibilities onto already full workloads (de Lima, 2010; Wohlstetter, Malloy, Chau, & Polhemus, 2003). Specialization of roles and responsibilities within interorganizational networks may also lead to increased divides among members and power imbalances, particularly between leaders and teachers, and between network management and members. Centralization/decentralization. The governance organization of a network is extremely important. Often, there is a steering committee, liaisons to schools, a board of directors, or some small group that runs the network. New leadership roles are sometimes created along the way, so the network need not rely on members performing their own jobs plus the job of facilitating the network. The important idea is to keep the leadership group small, differentiating responsibilities as the network grows and deepens while keeping communication open and flexible. At the same time, participation needs to be deep into the organization, so that the network is not challenged by transitions in leadership (Russell et  al., 2015; Wohlstetter et  al., 2003). Interorganizational networks can result in added complexities of management as the network seeks to coordinate across and within various organizations (Barringer & Harrison, 2000). Coordinating action across a network often requires ongoing conversations and multiple cross-level meetings that can result in costly delays and feelings of frustration (de Lima, 2010). Both centralized and decentralized networks are at risk of management complexity. Centralized networks are at risk given the need to coordinate across various levels of the organization, and decentralized networks are at risk given the need to coordinate across more disparate organizations within the network.

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CONCLUSION: EMERGING AREAS OF RESEARCH In this chapter we have taken a deep dive into the topic of inter-organizational networks in education, with a particular focus on networks that aim to improve teaching and learning. Networks have only recently emerged as a popular strategy for education reform. There is now a need for in-depth research to study inter-organizational networks in a way that moves beyond the descriptive. In pulling together research on inter-organizational networks, we noticed that research in education has focused on the positive potential of networks, primarily through a qualitative lens (de Lima, 2010). At the same time, research on networks in other fields, such as health, tend to apply quantitative methods to map out the spread of disease, for example. To move the research agenda forward in examining inter-organizational networks that are focused on improving teaching and learning, we propose studies with both qualitative and quantitative components. Moving beyond single case studies of inter-organizational networks engaging in school reform will help to push scholars’ understandings of how different types of networks approach improvement. While much research on networks in education has focused on the positive potential of networks, we see a need for a more balanced perspective in research to identify the challenges networks face in organizing and actualizing reform. We also believe in the importance of typologies – Can researchers use the key dimensions of networks we propose here (genesis, purpose, independence, composition, and structure) to guide more systematic analysis, and work towards developing a classification system for networks? Particular emphasis should be placed on how these key dimensions might interact in practice, in addition to the application of quantitative and qualitative methods (de Lima, 2010). Other possibilities for research include studies of public impacts and the outcomes of

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networks: How are networks building capacity to learn from individuals and organizations? Are there feedback loops? Finally, we ought to be giving consideration to the ways in which networks contribute to systemic change including improved student outcomes, and the ways in which policy can support networks.

Note 1  At the federal level, the Obey-Porter legislation provided funding for schools adopting comprehensive school reform. At the state level, funding decisions such as New Jersey’s Abbott v. Burke school equity ruling provided funds for the most impoverished schools in the state. These schools had to choose a comprehensive school reform model from a list provided by the state (Slavin, 2008).

REFERENCES Barringer, B. R., & Harrison, J. S. (2000). Walking a tightrope: Creating value through interorganizational relationships. Journal of Management, 26(3), 367–403. Burns, T., & Köster, F. (Eds.). (2016) Governing education in a complex world: Educational research and innovation. Paris: OECD Publishing. Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO). (2017). Charter management organizations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Chapman, J., & Aspin, D. (2003). Networks of learning: A new construct for educational provision and a new strategy for reform. In B. Davies & J. West-Burnham (Eds.), Handbook of educational leadership and management. London: Pearson. Cohen, D. K., Peurach, D. J., Glazer, J. L., Gates, K. E., & Goldin, S. (2013). Improvement by design: The promise of better schools. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Cropper, S., Ebers, M., Huxham, C., & Ring, P. S. (2008). Introducing inter-organizational relations. In S. Cropper, M. Ebers, C. Huxham, & P. S. Ring (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of inter-organizational relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Datnow, A. (2005). The sustainability of comprehensive school reform in changing district and state contexts. Educational Administration Quarterly, 41(1), 121–153. Datnow, A., Hubbard, L., & Mehan, H. (2002). Extending educational reform: From one school to many. London: RoutledgeFalmer Press. de Lima, J. A. (2010). Thinking more deeply about networks in education. Journal of Educational Change, 11(1), 1–21. Desimone, L. (2002). How can comprehensive school reform models be successfully implemented? Review of Educational Research, 72(3), 433–479. Duff, M., Lyle, A., Flack, C., Wohlstetter, P., & Massell, D. (2018). Approaches to instructional change in the era of common core. In Angeline Spain (Chair), How standards, curricula, and school policies influence instruction and student outcomes. Symposium conducted at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, April 2018. Farrell, C., Wohlstetter, P., & Smith, J. (2012). Charter management organizations: An emerging approach to scaling up what works. Educational Policy, 26(4), 499–532. Firestone, W. A., & Pennell, J. R. (1997). Designing state-sponsored teacher networks: A comparison of two cases. American Educational Research Journal, 34(2), 237–266. Gleason, P. M., Tuttle, C. C., Gill, B., NicholsBarrer, I., & Teh, B. R. (2014). Do KIPP schools boost student achievement? Education Finance and Policy, 9(1), 36–58. Hemphill, C. & Nauer, K. (2010). Managing by the numbers: Empowerment and accountability in New York City’s schools. New York: Center for New York City Affairs, The New School. Henig, J. R. (2008). What do we know about the outcomes of KIPP schools? Boulder, CO, and Tempe, AZ: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved from http://epicpolicy.org/ publication/outcomes-of-kipp-schools Jones, S., & Van de Ven, A. H. (n.d). Interorganizational networks. In Encyclopedia of Management Theory. Retrieved from http:// dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452276090.n123

Katz, S., Earl L. M., & Jaafar, S. B. (Eds.) (2009). Building and connecting learning communities: The power of networks for school improvement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Lawler, E. E., Mohrman, S. A., & Benson, G. S. (2001). Organizing for high performance: The CEO report on employee involvement, TQM, reengineering, and knowledge management in Fortune 1000 companies. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Lichtenstein, G. D., McLaughlin, M. W., & Knudsen, J. (1991). Teacher empowerment and professional knowledge. New Brunswick, NJ: Consortium for Policy Research in Education. Lieberman, A. (2000). Networks as learning communities shaping the future of teacher development. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 221–227. Lieberman, A., & Grolnick, M. (2005). Educational reform networks: Changes in the forms of reform. In M. Fullan (Ed.), Fundamental change (pp. 40–59). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Mohrman, S. A., Wohlstetter, P., & Associates (1994). School-based management: Organizing for high-performance. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Peters, B. G., & Pierre, J. (1998). Governance without government? Rethinking public administration. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 8(2), 223–243. Peurach, D. J. (2011). Seeing complexity in public education: Problems, possibilities, and Success for All. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peurach, D. J., & Glazer, J. L. (2012). Reconsidering replication: New perspectives on largescale school improvement. Journal of Educational Change, 13(2), 155–190. Rosenberg, S. (2012). Organizing for quality in education: Individualistic and systemic approaches to teacher quality. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan. Rotberg, I. C, Harvey, J., & Warner, K. E. (1993). Federal policy options for improving the education of low-income students /Iris C. Rotberg, James J. Harvey with Kelly E. Warner. [Santa Monica, Calif.]: Rand’s Institute on Education and Training. Russell, J. L., Meredith, J., Childs, J., Stein, M. K., & Prine, D. W. (2015). Designing

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inter-organizational networks to implement education reform: An analysis of state Race to the Top applications. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 37(1), 92–112. Slavin, R. E. (2008). Comprehensive school reform. In C. Ames, D. Berliner, J. Brophy, L. Corno, & M. McCaslin (Eds.), 21st century education: A reference handbook (pp. 259– 366). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Teh, B. R., McCullough, M., & Gill, B. P. (2010). Student achievement in New York City middle schools affiliated with achievement first and uncommon schools. Final Report. Washington, DC: Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. Wohlstetter, P., Buck, B., Houston, D. M., & Smith, C. O. (2016). Common core, uncommon theory of action: CEOs in New York City. In A. J. Daly & K. S. Finnegan (Eds.), Thinking systematically: Improving districts under pressure. Washington, DC: AERA. Wohlstetter, P., Houston, D. M., & Buck, B. (2015). Networks in New York City:

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Implementing the Common Core. Educational Policy, 29(1), 85–110. Wohlstetter, P., Malloy, C. L., Chau, D., & Polhemus, J. L. (2003, September). Improving schools through networks: A new approach to urban school reform. Educational Policy, 17(4), 399–430. Wohlstetter, P., & Mohrman, S. A. (1993). School-based management: Strategies for success. Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) Finance Briefs. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ ED356524.pdf Wohlstetter, P., Smith, J., & Farrell, C.C. (2013). Choices & challenges: Charter school performance in perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Wohlstetter, P., Smith, J., & Gallagher, A. (2013). New York City’s Children First Networks: Turning accountability on its head. Journal of Educational Administration, 51(4), 528–549.

13 Feelings, Moods, and Emotion in Schools: Affective Perspectives Izhak Berkovich and Ori Eyal

Emotions, moods, and other affective concepts are an integral part of all human and social experiences. Emotions are defined as multifaceted, short, and intense experiences that arise when one identifies events as having the potential to cause harm or promote one’s goals (Scherer, 2005). They are often accompanied by physiological arousal and facial expressions, and even tendencies for action (Berkovich & Eyal, 2015). In addition to emotions, individuals may experience longer and less target-focused affective reactions, which are generally referred to as moods. Moods operate in the cognitive background, with no specific target, and generally persist for long periods (hours to days) (Gooty, Connelly, Griffith, & Gupta, 2010). Describing organizations, leadership, work, and learning without accounting for emotions and moods is like describing how cars drive without accounting for ignition or fuel. This basic understanding is widespread today in both the research community and among the public at large, but the centrality and

importance of emotions in organizations has not always been acknowledged. For most of the 20th century, emotions were considered to be irrational and illegitimate in the workplace (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995). During this period, in educational thought and practice, the value of emotions was acknowledged only in a limited way, mostly with respect to character building and religious education. For example, Bragdon (1944) discussed the idea that ‘if you want to change a person, you can try to scare him, shame him, habituate him, inspire him, or enlighten him’ (p. 91). The status of emotions in organizational behavior and educational thought dramatically changed during the 1970s and the 1980s. At this time, pioneers promoted the de-stigmatization of emotions at work, as employees began to discuss their emotions, and as researchers started to explore emotional experiences. In education, the rise of new theories, such as the learner-centered paradigm and the humanistic psychological approach impacted the field (Peters, 1970)

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and promoted a new openness regarding the role of emotion in schools. Feminist educational research on care (Noddings, 1984), and the flourishing psychological and sociological research on emotions at work (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Hochschild, 1983) made emotions a key topic in any discourse on work and education. Nevertheless, the growth of interest of the educational research community in emotions was slow, and many questions remained unanswered (Sutton & Wheatley, 2003). The first two decades of the 21st century mark a new era in the exploration of emotions in schools, having produced novel insights published in reviews, special issues, and books (e.g., Berkovich & Eyal, 2015; Hall & Goetz, 2013; Schutz & Zembylas, 2009; Uitto, Jokikokko, & Estola, 2015; Zembylas & Schutz, 2016). In this chapter, we aim to present some of the established and the emerging theories and concepts in the 21st century that are relevant to understanding emotions with regard to leadership, work, and learning taking place in schools. Specifically, we wish to do so by addressing different images that people use when thinking about organizations. In our opinion, these fundamental metaphors are the ones that shape how we think about emotions in organizations and in schools.

MORGAN’S IMAGES OF ORGANIZATION AS A LENS FOR UNDERSTANDING THE MULTIFACETED NATURE OF ORGANIZATIONS AND THE DIVERSITY OF AFFECTIVE PERSPECTIVES IN SCHOOLS For the purpose of understating how different organizational conceptualizations shape the way we think about emotions in organizations and in schools, we draw on Gareth Morgan’s (1998) revolutionary work on ‘images of organization.’ In his work, Morgan laid out the key metaphors framing our understanding of the world of organizations.

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‘By definition, a metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them’ (Cleary & Packard, 1992, p. 230). Metaphors are projections that serve as conceptual building blocks in organization theory, enabling us to imagine entire scenes of how organizations operate, their symbolic nature, making it possible for us to capture core ideas in a concise manner (Cleary & Packard, 1992; Cornelissen & Kafouros, 2008; Oswick & Grant, 2016). Each metaphor has its meta-theoretical assumptions about the nature of the social phenomenon at hand (Morgan, 2011). Morgan (1998) outlined eight metaphors frequently used to describe organizations: (1) organization as machine, (2) organization as organism, (3) organization as a system of flux and change, (4) organization as brain, (5) organization as culture, (6) organization as psychic prison, (7) organization as political system, and (8) organization as instrument of domination. These metaphors will serve as the structure of our overview of the field.

Affective Perspectives of School as Machine This metaphor suggests that organizations are stable systems that, above all, strive to promote clarity, regularity, speed, and efficiency in their operation through reliance on hierarchy, supervision, detailed regulations, and division of tasks. The machine image is often associated with Taylor’s (1911) principles of scientific management and Weber’s (1946) concept of organizational bureaucracy. According to Morgan (1998), thinking about an organization as a machine requires ‘keep[ing] one’s emotions decently in check’ (p. 187), because in a ‘rational’ organization, emotions are often viewed as a threat to rational actions and processes (Dougherty & Drumheller, 2006). A mechanical focus is often placed on recruiting and on developing

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certain affective traits and abilities among the leadership and the staff, aimed at minimizing emotional shocks during work and learning. Thus, a personality better suited for Tylor’s work model is likely to achieve increased productivity (Morgan, 1998, p. 187). Several affective theories and concepts are consistent with this metaphor: (a) trait affect, (b) emotional intelligence, (c) emotional knowledge, and (d) emotional adjustment. • Trait affect is a personality characteristic representing one’s general emotional tendencies (Watson & Tellegen, 1985). A positive trait affect is said to improve organizational performance and job satisfaction, whereas a negative one enhances the effects of stressors (Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011). For example, Eren (2014) found that prospective teachers’ hope predicted students’ motivation and achievements positively, whereas teachers’ anger and anxieties predicted these negatively. Similar claims about the importance of positive trait affect, such as hope, emerged also with regard to principals (Walker, 2006). • Emotional intelligence. The most popular model of emotional intelligence (EI) in the psychological and organizational behavior research is Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso’s (2000) abilitybased model, which outlines the fundamental affective abilities: (a) perceiving emotions in self and others, (b) using affective information in cognitive functioning, (c) comprehending the role of emotions, and (d) managing emotions and applying them in decision-making. Another notable EI model is by Goleman (1995), who proposed a mixed-trait model. The research community, however, considers this model as having less conceptual clarity than the ability-based model (Gooty et  al., 2010). EI is often considered to predict positive trait affect. For example, Brackett, Palomera, Mojsa-Kaja, Reyes, and Salovey (2010) found that teachers’ emotion-regulation ability positively predicted positive affect, principal support, and job satisfaction. In a piece of qualitative research about head teachers in the UK, the head teachers acknowledged the importance of EI for fulfilling their role, especially in emotionally charged circumstances (Cliffe, 2011). • Emotional knowledge. In the domain of education, traits and abilities not only promote general

productive intra- and inter-personal attitudes and behaviors, they are conceptualized as affecting teaching and learning as well. Zembylas (2007) suggested that teachers’ emotional knowledge about teaching and learning, which may be regarded as a form of practical application of EI abilities, can be integrated into the teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to promote students’ learning. • Emotional adjustment. In the domain of education, we also note an emphasis on the social emotional adjustment of children to schooling, as they develop positive bonds with teachers and the school. This perspective is echoed in early works on emotions in education. For example, Collins (1938) argued that ‘Strong emotional shocks, [which] interfere with some of the normal visceral functions, are detrimental to health especially if of frequent occurrence. Schools must be on the watch for these, and so adjust their work that all exciting causes may be eradicated’ (p. 126). Consistent with this emphasis on emotional adjustment, Murray and Greenberg’s (2001) study indicated that students with certain disabilities are expected to form a lower quality bond and to show higher dissatisfaction with teachers than do students without disabilities. They suggested that this may be problematic.

In sum, the machine metaphor treats emotions as one of the factors that can promote or hinder efficient schooling. Using the machine metaphor as a point of origin reveals several of its strengths and weaknesses. Among the strengths of the machine metaphor are its appropriateness to describe consensus about affective aspects, its fitness to describe the harmonious affective integration and functioning of multiple actors, and its suitability to describe the stability of affective characteristics. The weaknesses of the machine metaphor include its legitimatization of structural inequality and its negative affective outcomes, its failure to account for the root causes of affect, or to explain radical changes in schools and their link to emotions, and its lack of context specificity in the explanation of affective aspects. Thus, within the machine metaphor emotions are treated as a means to an end. Although such a mode

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of operation can promote the productivity of schools, it may simultaneously constrain teachers and organizational adaptability. In this sense, emotions represent some of the underlying tension between different dimensions of school effectiveness (Uline, Miller, & Tschannen-Moran, 1998).

Affective Perspectives of School as Organism The organism metaphor suggests that organizations are living organisms that, above all, wish to survive and adapt to their dynamic environment. Organizations have a life cycle that is affected by their external environment. This image is often associated with the opensystem approach (Scott & Davis, 2015). Thinking about school as organism emphasizes ideas such as coping with the external environment and evolutionary patterns in a given ecology. This metaphor stresses affective concepts such as emotional instincts and emotional containment. • Emotional instincts are strongly linked with decision-making under conditions of environmental uncertainty, where information is limited. Sayegh, Anthony, and Perrewé (2004) argued that in such conditions emotions play a key role in intuitive decision-making. The authors contended that managers’ emotional memory of past successes and failures influences their present affective response and sense of efficacy, which in turn affects the manner in which their tacit knowledge is used in decision-making. In education, Lakomski and Evers (2010) similarly argued that educational leaders’ emotional intuition can affect decision-making, especially when decisions are complex and ambiguity is high. • Emotional containment. In organizations, negative emotions must be contained so that they do not threaten organizational survival (Davis & Stern, 1988). The term ‘emotional containment’ (or ‘affective containment’) describes ‘the strategies and processes that enable feelings to be fully experienced and used productively during unwelcome organizational change’ (Dale & James, 2015, p. 93). The need for affective containment is

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most pressing during changes that result in substantial reorganization of educational practices in schools, which causes anxiety and nervousness (James, 2010a). Dale and James (2015) argued that affective containment of feelings during a period of change is a challenge for teachers that requires self-containment, and a challenge for leaders, who act as containers for the staff. Educational leaders reported that they often function as ‘receptors’ of the staff’s negative emotions in conversations (Crawford, 2007). Gronn and Lacey (2004) indicated that aspiring educational leaders also described themselves as becoming ‘containers’ for their peers’ feelings. The burden of emotional containment was found to sometimes harm the well-being of ‘containing’ leaders (Crawford, 2007).

In the organism metaphor, emotions are key to ensuring the sustainability and resilience of the school and its staff. We identified several strengths and weaknesses in the organism metaphor. The organism perspective offers two main advantages in explaining affect in schools: it is suitable for describing the effect of the environment on school dynamics, as well as the long process of accommodation with affective aspects until the formation a new homeostasis in schools. In contrast, the shortcomings of the organism metaphor are its legitimization of any change regardless of objective, and its explanations, which are often too context-specific, lowering its universal applicability. From the perspective of the organism metaphor, emotions seem to serve as degenerating elements, a ‘multiplicity of pathways supporting the same function’ (Eyal, 2009, p. 488). This process may be associated with sustainability, but it may also increase the dysfunctionality of the school, as the school departs from its moral and social goals.

Affective Perspectives of School as a System of Flux and Change This image suggests that organizations are sites of ongoing change, manifest as a dialectical

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dynamic of action and counter-action, or as a positive and negative feedback loop that maintains a dynamic equilibrium. Thinking about school as a system of flux and change emphasizes concepts of dynamism, transformation, and proactive adaptation. This perception is reflected in many works addressing school turnaround or systemic reform. These situations often stress the link between emotions during organizational change and the sensemaking (generation of meaning) it triggers. • Emotions and sensemaking. Emotion is a basic dimension of sensemaking in organizations. Maitlis, Vogus, and Lawrence (2013) suggested that individual sensemaking in organizations involves unexpected events that trigger emotions, which in turn mobilize sensemaking processes. They further contended that emotion also fuels sensemaking, and that emotions even affect the type of ensuing sensemaking (individual or interpersonal). The literature focuses on leaders’ role in the emotional meaning-making of organizations, especially in times of crisis and transformation (Bruch, Shamir, & Eilam-Shamir, 2007). For example, Leithwood, Harris, and Strauss’s (2010) book on leading school turnaround described one school in which the principal countered the teachers’ negative emotions and quickly restored routine communication, as a result of which teachers changed the meaning and emotions they attached to efforts to institute changes in school. Blackmore (1996), who explored Australian reform efforts, referred to the principals’ role in addressing the teachers’ negative emotions during periods of change as that of ‘emotional middle managers.’ One important aspect related to the emotional and sensemaking processes during reforms is their role in shaping changes in teachers’ professional identity (Geijsel & Meijers, 2005).

The system of flux and change metaphor suggests that organizational transformation is related to the school leader’s ability to help teachers reframe their emotions in (positive) meaningful way. This, in turn, may facilitate school renewal. Note, however, that the system of flux and change metaphor highlights mainly the role of the leader in the followers’ construction of meaning (Bean & Hamilton, 2006). This emphasis overlooks two complementary

components of sensemaking, which are fundamental in the reconstruction of teachers’ individual and collective professional identity: their ability to break sense, or disconnect from previous narratives (Pratt, 2000), and to take sense, or interpret others’ perceptions of the circumstances and incorporate these into the self (Boal & Schultz, 2007). Although the system of flux and change metaphor portrays emotional transformation as a positive top-down process, its agent-based nature may go unnoticed.

Affective Perspectives of School as Brain Thinking about school as brain emphasizes information processing, learning, and problem solving. Information and learning are considered to be focal points of organizational processes, often emphasizing knowledge generation, treatment, distribution, and control. Knowledge and learning are also viewed as instrumental resources in organizational success. This perspective is manifested in theories of organizational learning that are said to be necessary for schools that wish to succeed in the present information age (Schechter, 2008). Several affective domains are related to this metaphor: (a) emotions and creativity, (b) emotions and risk taking, and (c) abusive supervision. • Emotions and creativity. Empirical evidence suggests that emotions play a key role in individual and collective creativity and learning. Positive emotions are known to enhance creativity through different mechanisms (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011). In education, Geijsel, Sleegers, Stoel, and Krüger (2009) contended that emotional support for teachers promotes their critical reflection, experimentation, and learning. Nevertheless, negative moods and emotional ambivalence (i.e., the coexistence of negative and positive emotions) have also been reported to increase creativity and knowledge creation (Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011). Some scholars offer a more complex view of creativity in a

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group context, according to which both negative emotions (anger) and positive ones (love) are needed to promote innovation to optimally balance harmonic and conflict tendencies in group settings, together with the different stages of innovation (Yang & Hung, 2015). • Emotions and risk taking. One fundamental aspect linked with generating and implementing new knowledge is risk taking. For example, Vince and Saleem (2004) explored how emotional aspects in public sector organizations are related to tensions between individual and organizational learning. The researchers found that caution and blame inhibited reflection and communication within the organization and harmed the implementation of change processes. According to Ponticell (2003), teachers tally up the negative emotions associated with potential losses, as well as the potential emotional benefits, which guides their risk-taking behaviors. • Abusive supervision. One of the supervision patterns with affective outcomes that is linked to employees’ creativity is abusive supervision. In general, abusive supervision is negatively associated with employee creativity (Zhang, Kwan, Zhang, & Wu, 2014), but some evidence shows that a moderate level of abusive supervision can produce the highest creativity (Lee, Yun, & Srivastava, 2013). In educational research, abusive principals have elicited negative emotions, such as depression, anger, powerlessness, distrust, guilt, and shame, in teachers (Blase & Blase, 2006). Blase and Blase (2006) reported that teachers’ accounts of abusive principals described principals as using pressuring, rigid, outdated, and traditional methods of teaching, and suppressing teachers’ creative ideas.

In sum, using the brain metaphor, we find that exploration (organizational learning through creativity and innovativeness) is closely related to teachers’ positive emotions. We contend that the brain metaphor has two strengths and one weakness. One strength is its ability to describe affects linked with the professional ethos of development, and another is its suitability to describe emotions linked with collegial dialog. Its main weakness has to do with it not taking into account that learning and the affective aspects related to it also reflect power relations.

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Affective Perspectives of School as Culture The culture metaphor suggests that organizations are perceived as micro-societies, characterized by unique values and rituals. Thinking about school as culture emphasizes that organization is a collectively constructed reality that is at times institutionalized in organizational routines. For the sake of simplicity, we integrate here both organizational climate and organizational culture, as the two are often discussed interchangeably, and the commonly perceived main distinction between the two is the stability and duration of the phenomenon (Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011). The school as culture metaphor directs attention to two central affective concepts: emotional climate and emotion-based routines. • Emotional climate. De Rivera (1992) defined emotional climate as ‘an objective group phenomenon that can be palpably sensed – as when one enters a party or a city and feels an attitude of gaiety or depression, openness or fear’ (p. 197). As such, it is related to the collective mood of organizational members, mainly toward the jobs, peers, management, and the organization (Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011). In schools, a negative socialemotional climate was found to predict children’s alcohol use and psychiatric problems (Cohen, McCabe, Michelli, & Pickeral, 2009). A multilevel mediation study found a positive relationship between an emotionally supportive classroom climate and students’ grades, which is mediated by the students’ engagement (Reyes, Brackett, Rivers, White, & Salovey, 2012). • Emotion-based routines. Collective emotions are cultivated through organizational emotional routines (i.e., focusing on recognizing, monitoring, discriminating, and managing emotions) with the aim to promote organizational outcomes (Ashkanasy, Humphrey, & Huy, 2017). Ashforth and Kreiner (2002) argued that there are several ways in which organizations handle extraordinary situations and feelings, including cultural means, such as ritualism, which are used to generate a sense of control. For example, with regard to schools, research has acknowledged the role of routinized venting exchanges in the teachers’

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lounge to produce an emotional catharsis that allows teachers to continue their work (BenPeretz & Schonmann, 2000).

To conclude, using the culture metaphor, we find that emotional climate and routines in schools can mitigate uncertainty and thereby enhance outcomes and increase school effectiveness. The culture metaphor has several strengths and weaknesses. Among its strengths are its appropriateness to describe emotions linked with the acquisition and transmission of shared symbols, and its appropriateness for explaining shared affective meaning. Its shortcomings include overemphasis on the collective cohesiveness of affective aspects, and under-emphasis on individual agency with regard to emotions, and to environmental influences on affect in schools. Thus, a strong emotional culture defines the emotional trajectory of the school, which may encourage group thinking and cause school staff to reject the misaligned emotions.

Affective Perspectives of School as Psychic Prison The psychic prison metaphor suggests that organizations are systems that act as mind traps, with conscious and unconscious elements that satisfy basic hedonic needs (pain, pleasure, etc.), and shape fears, anxieties, deviant inclinations, and obsessions. These mechanisms activate defense mechanisms such as repression and denial, and cultivate dysfunctional tendencies and behaviors. This perspective naturally draws heavily on a critical sociological point of view that seeks to uncover societal power relations and their effect on individuals in schools. Consistent with the psychic prison metaphor, several affective theories and concepts must be mentioned: (a) emotions and gendered work, (b) emotional capitalism, (c) making a choice to care and emotional work, and (d) fears, anxieties, and obsessions.

• Emotions and gendered work. One fundamental mind trap, relevant to this perspective, is the claim that schools are male-gendered organizations, but teaching is a female-gendered profession (in a Western context). Acker (1990) argued that organizations are not gender-neutral, but their basic hierarchical and bureaucratic structure seeks to serve and justify male dominance. In contrast, scholars have suggested that teaching is a feminine profession related to it being perceived as care-oriented (Acker, 1995). The intersection of these sociological characteristics shapes the widespread emotional identities of principals and teachers. For example, the construction of teachers’ identity is often seen as a primarily emotional process, and teachers’ emotions are considered key elements in frequent resistance (Isenbarger & Zembylas, 2006) against systemic changes instigated by male policymakers. Principalship is still a male-dominated profession, and the percentage of men in school leadership positions is by no means proportional to their percentage in the teaching force (Berkovich, 2018). Principalship also adopts mainly the masculine work model (Celikten, 2005; Oplatka, 2001), which causes educational leaders to assume an emotionless version of professionalism, in which they silence their emotions to be ‘appropriate’ and legitimate (Beatty & Brew, 2004). From this perspective, it is important to acknowledge that this outcome is not spontaneous but socially guided, as training and socialization convey to school professionals that emotions are illegitimate in the workplace (Johnson, Aiken, & Steggerda, 2005). • Emotional capitalism. Another mind trap concerns the neoliberal agenda. As this agenda becomes more prevalent in educational policymaking, and is embraced by the public, we witness the formation of a ‘corporatized education system’ (Bates, 2017), in which economic goals and psychological discourse are fused into a culture of ‘emotional capitalism’ (Illouz, 2007). As a result of this fusion, a complex dynamic is established between interpersonal relationships and economic relations: on the one hand, interpersonal relationships promote economic relations; on the other hand, economic values shape socio-emotional relationships. This is strongly associated with the rise of service accountability in education (Ranson, 2003). The focus on positive interactions with clients is regarded as necessary for ensuring a successful customer

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experience (Bates, 2017). Hanlon (2017) suggested that the capitalism causes individuals to view themselves as ‘subjects of value’ at work, rather than celebrate their authentic self. • Making a choice to care and emotional work. The outcome of these structures at the individual level is that caring and the processing of emotions in accordance with the hegemonic schemes is often perceived as an extension of one’s professional identity and agency. For example, a study by O’Connor (2008) indicated that teachers consider caring to be linked with both their self-philosophy and a professional demand, which in their own view is deeply rooted in their professional identity. Similarly, Oplatka’s (2007) phenomenological study indicated that teachers perceive certain non-prescribed affective extrarole elements in their function (e.g., caring, compassion, and emotional displays) as discretionary and voluntary in nature. Oplatka used the term ‘emotional work’ to describe the phenomenon of workers autonomously choosing to manage their emotions. • Fears, anxieties, and obsessions. Teachers’ anxieties are said to be related to three aspects (French, 1997): fear of incompetence, fear of losing control, and fear of student idealization of the teacher. Keavney and Sinclair (1978) argued that low quality of teacher–student communication can increase teachers’ anxiety, which in turn can promote dogmatism and anxiety on the part of the students. Principals also experience anxieties related to their role. Carr (1994) explored principals’ life stressors using direct narrative accounts and indirect analysis of dream recollection, and found that the vast majority of stressful situations that emerged in the analysis were associated with work (80%). Similarly, evidence shows that obsession with work by school principals (i.e., workaholism) greatly contributes to their burnout (Guglielmi, Simbula, Schaufeli, & Depolo, 2012).

In general, within the psychic prison metaphor, it appears that teachers’ emotions are manipulated, ‘normalized,’ and disciplined in schools (Foucault, 1977), which in turn restricts their discretion or at least confines it to marginalized functions falling outside their regular roles. We suggest that several strengths and weaknesses emerge from the

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psychic prison metaphor. Its strengths consist of the ability to delve deeply beyond the surface meaning of affect and its ability to describe how macro socio-political factors shape affective life. Its weaknesses include its failure to explain who controls affective meanings, its over-deconstruction of common affective meanings, and its difficulty in establishing conclusive links between macro socio-political processes and micro affective processes. Although the psychic prison metaphor stresses mainly the disciplinary modes by which socially-based emotional regulation is incorporated into the self, de facto it acknowledges the existence of the abnormal.

Affective Perspectives of School as Political System Thinking about school as a political system emphasizes the fact that the organization is affected by intra-organizational power relations. According to this image, organizations are arenas for competing interests and power differences, often hidden, which cause individuals and collective actors to make deals, create alliances, start conflicts, and apply conflict management strategies to promote their interests. This perspective is reflected in studies describing the micro-political agendas of stakeholders in schools. Micro-politics include the use of formal and informal power by individuals and groups to achieve their goals or protect their interests (Blase, 1991). Micro-politics in educational organizations differ from those in businesses, because in addition to traditional political complexity, schools involve yet another layer of political complexity having to do with the centrality of values, the multilayered organization of schools resulting from the composition of the community in which they are embedded, and the geographic, historical, social, ethnic, linguistic, economic, and cultural diversity of individuals who make up the population of the school. This metaphor brings into

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focus several affective domains and concepts: (a) organizational politics and emotions, (b) emotional geographies, and (c) emotional understanding and empathy. • Organizational politics and emotions. Emotions are both drivers and outcomes of organizational politics. Often workplace politics in schools involving interests, ideologies, and influence move from the rational into the emotional domain (Ball, 2012). Fleming and Spicer (2008) argued that fears serve as the emotional drive that shapes workplace politics, and that resistance to powerful organizational actors often comes at a high emotional price. A highly political environment may also have adverse effects. For example, Rosen, Harris, and Kacmar (2009) found that the employees’ perceptions of politics can result in frustration and can affect job satisfaction, which in turn affects their performance and intentions to withdraw from the workplace. In educational research, teachers reported being saddened by political conflicts that have turned ugly in schools and by the emotional price that peers have paid (Riseborough, 1981). In another study, teachers resisting change in schools described that they derived happiness from being a thorn in the head teacher’s side (Child, in Ball, 2012). • Emotional geographies. Emotional geographies in schools are ‘the spatial and experiential patterns of closeness and/or distance in human interactions and relationships that help create, configure and color the feelings and emotions we experience about ourselves, our world and each other’ (Hargreaves, 2000, p. 815). Hargreaves (2000) noted five emotional geographies relevant to schools, which capture both the traditional and the unique political complexity of educational organizations. The five emotional geographies are: (a) socio-cultural differences in culture and class, (b) moral conflicts between stakeholders, (c) the perception of the profession as a formal classical masculine occupation, (d) political hierarchical power relationships that shape interactions between teachers and others, and (e) fragmented and infrequent personal encounters taking place in schools. For example, Zembylas (2011) explored a school in a conflicted society and found that the teacher and student emotions related to race and ethnicity produced emotional geographies of exclusion in school. Nairn and Higgins (2011) argued that

the mainstream traditional educational model of schooling is different in emotional geographies from alternative educational models (e.g., Waldorf schools), as the former, which is heavily influenced by neoliberal education reforms, is more likely to foster alienation. • Emotional understanding and empathy. Emotional understanding is a key component in overcoming emotional geographies emerging in education and human interactions (Hargreaves, 2000). Empathy is recognized as a particularly important skill when working in diverse socio-cultural school settings. Teachers’ empathic communication skills have been reported to be used as a pedagogical instrument to foster better understanding of students’ alternative viewpoints (Cunningham, 2009), build trust, and bridge socio-cultural divides between teachers and students (Warren, 2014). Teachers’ empathy is said to be most valuable in emotionallycharged situations, such as incidents of aggression between students, which occur against a racial background (Tettegah & Anderson, 2007). Slater (2005) found that not only principals recognized the importance of educational leaders’ emphatic listening, but so did assistant principals, teachers, and parents. Jansen (2006) explored how two white South African principals acted to transform their white high schools into racially diverse communities, and found that leaders’ empathy made it possible for them to touch others and be touched, and in this way balance continuity and change.

Using the political system metaphor sheds light on the fact that emotions are fundamental for defining distance between educational stakeholders and for managing the conflict or cooperation dynamic between opposing parties in schools. The political system metaphor has several strengths and weaknesses. Among the strengths are its fitness to describe emotions associated with conflicts over power and resources, its suitability to describe the affective outcomes of structural inequality, and its ability to explain emotions related to radical change. One key weakness of this approach is its over-emphasis on power as the motivation for affect. The political system metaphor portrays a recursive cycle in which power and negative emotions

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reinforce each other. Although empathy has been suggested as a mechanism for diffusing clashes, it is not viewed as driving events, and therefore stresses the constitutive nature of power relations in schools.

Affective Perspectives of School as an instrument of Domination This metaphor suggests that organizations are systems that are coercive, exploitative, and discriminatory in nature. This conduct often leads individuals to feel alienation and to retreat in the face of exhibitions of power and mistreatment. The metaphor of the school as an instrument of domination focuses attention on two affective theories and concepts: (a) emotional display rules and emotional labor, and (b) emotional manipulations. • Emotional display rules and emotional labor. Hochschild (1983) argued that many organizations have emotional display rules, obligating employees to display certain emotions to clients and considering these to be part of their job responsibilities. Hochschild addressed two types of emotional labor that workers experience as a result of these rules: (a) surface acting, in which employees are encouraged in the workplace to display emotions that do not represent their internal emotional state, and (b) deep acting, in which employees’ emotional experiences match the emotional displays encouraged in the workplace. Emotional display rules and emotional labor are known to be frequent in service organizations and occupations that mandate routine interactions with stakeholders, and where supervisors regularly act as ‘mood managers’ on behalf of the organization (Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011). From a sociological viewpoint, emotion management is a complex phenomenon that integrates aspects of personality, social relationships and context, such as personal attributes (e.g., serious), definitions of social roles (e.g., principal), social behaviors (e.g., listening), and settings of managed events (e.g., classroom or hall) (Lively & Weed 2014). Sachs and Blackmore (1998) argued that socialization to ‘emotion rules’ occurs when newcomers enter the teaching profession and are exposed to emotion norms that cause them to

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suppress expressions of ‘inappropriate’ emotions (e.g., frustration and anger). Educators often pay a price in well-being for this emotional labor, and become exhausted and ill. Emotional labor is also said to promote work alienation (Berkovich & Eyal, 2015), which has been found to be related to principals’ lower sense of efficacy (TschannenMoran & Gareis, 2004). • Emotional manipulations. The ability to manipulate other individuals is considered vital for survival and prosperity because it allows manipulators to obtain resources from others while maintaining functional relationships with them (Buss, Gomes, Higgins, & Lauterbach, 1987). There are two types of emotional manipulation (Berkovich & Eyal, 2017): (a) negative, which stimulates fear, shame, and guilt, and harms others’ self-assurance, self-esteem, and self-efficacy to promote the manipulator’s objectives, and (b) positive, which stimulates pride and confirms the target’s ego to promote the manipulator’s goals. Because principals have few formal means to mobilize teacher support for their goals (Oplatka, 2007), they use both negative and positive emotional manipulations in their dealing with teachers and students. For example, Eden (1998) found that at times principals, in managing the daily affairs of the school, create an indirect threat to inspire fear or humiliation in teachers, and in this way pressure teachers to comply with their demands. Blase and Blase (2003) described several principals conducting shaming conversations in public, in which they blame teachers for problems in front of students. Research indicates, however, that in general principals’ positive emotionally manipulative behaviors are more common than negative behaviors (Berkovich & Eyal, 2017). Principals are known to use charm, praise, and flattery in an instrumental manner. For example, Blase and Blase (2000) reported that principals use praise as positive reinforcement aimed at increasing the recurrence of certain teaching behaviors. The literature acknowledges that principals’ emotional manipulations of teachers trickle down to students. An experimental study of the effects of various feedbacks given to teachers (instructions, feedback, or feedback plus social praise) on teachers’ praise of student behaviors, found that teachers receiving feedback with social praise are more likely to praise student behaviors (Cossairt, Hall, & Hopkins, 1973). For years, common strategies for classroom management have been

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based on negative emotional manipulations that stimulated fear of failure and shame to promote the desired students behaviors (Stanley, 1998, p. 245).

In closing, the instrument of domination metaphor highlights the way in which teachers are emotionally manipulated to adapt their feelings and behaviors to the organizational requirements. We identified two strengths associated with the instrument of domination metaphor: its fitness to explain the social construction of affective life and its appropriateness to explain the dynamics of structural inequality. Its one key shortcoming is being over-critical of followers’ agency and social utility, which leads to disregard of ‘free’ choice and of one’s affective motivation to contribute to the common good. The instrument of domination metaphor reflects emotions as mechanisms for gaining power, and therefore this perception fails to account for the moral aspect of leadership, work, and the role of personal authenticity in organizations. Based on Morgan’s eight organizational metaphors (the organization as machine, organism, system of flux and change, brain, culture, psychic prison, political system, and instrument of domination) we showed that metaphors can help educational researchers obtain a richer appreciation of the role of emotions in schools (Table 13.1).

SUMMARY Educational research at the start of the 21st century is in the midst of an affective revolution, as more and more researchers acknowledge that our understanding of occupational or educational processes is not complete without accounting for the central part emotions play in them. In this chapter, we offer insights into the role of feelings, moods, and emotions in schools. Following Morgan’s work, we argued that educational organizations are complex and that they comprise multiple and diverse processes and aspects.

Green (1996) suggested that ‘the “reality” of any organizational situation does not exist independently of the theory which the actors use to understand it’ (p. 163). Metaphors, therefore, are often viewed as the foundation of organizational studies (Jermier & Forbes, 2011). In our view, organizational situations usually have numerous causes, and frequently there is more than one way of viewing them and acting on them. The range of affective perspectives of schools that we have presented shows the important part that emotions play in multiple processes in schools. Each metaphorical lens grants different affective insights on what organizing is and on what organizations do. Using organizational metaphors to shed light on the role of emotions in schools we exposed the double-edge of emotions. On the one hand, the metaphors discussed above stress that emotions are related to school adjustment, resilience, exploration, and effectiveness; and on the other hand, the metaphors elucidate the possible dark side of emotions in schools when they are used for control, harming the well-being of staff and students. The framework we proposed in this chapter creates a strong foundation for future explorations, as each metaphor describes not only the role of emotions but the complete scene in which they act. Note, however, that some of the affective theories and concepts presented here under a certain metaphor can and have been associated with others. For example, emotional labor fits not only with the metaphor of school as instrument of domination but also that of school as a machine and a culture. We sought to situate each affective theory and concept in the category that best suits it, but theories and concepts can be borrowed, particularly when some metaphors are close to each other in the way they portray organizations and their dynamic. We contend that organizational metaphors can help educational practitioners understand their environment and work based on the way in which they apply the metaphors to their

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Table 13.1  Summary of the affective perspective of schools by metaphor Metaphor

Key ideas

Affective theories and concepts

Machine

– Stability – Speed – Efficiency – Hierarchy – Bureaucratic rationality – Survival – Dynamic environment – Adaption – Life cycle – Open systems – Ongoing change – Dialectical dynamic – Feedback – Equilibrium – Information processing – Knowledge creation – Learning – Knowledge distribution and control – Micro-society – Values – Rituals – Socialization – Mind traps – Basic hedonic needs – Fears – Anxieties – Obsessions – Defense mechanisms – Interests – Power conflicts – Alliances – Conflict management – Coercion – Exploitation – Discrimination

– Trait affect – Emotional intelligence – Emotional knowledge – Emotional adjustment

Organism

System of flux and change

Brain

Culture

Psychic prison

Political system

Instrument of domination

own school. This chapter provided a compressive review of the vocabulary and afforded a glance into empirical findings framed by common affective perspectives of schools. The affective perspectives of schools based on metaphors may be useful, as they stimulate reflection on the manner in which the individuals involved in educational research and practice portray schooling. We hope that this chapter will encourage discussion among principals, teachers, and other stakeholders about the role of emotions in the teachers’ work and the students’ learning in schools.

– Emotional instincts – Emotional containment

– Emotions and sensemaking

– Emotions and creativity – Emotions and risk taking – Abusive supervision – Emotional climate – Emotion-based routines

– Emotions and gendered work – Emotional capitalism – Making a choice to care and emotional work – Fears, anxieties, and obsessions

– Organizational politics and emotions – Emotional geographies – Emotional understanding/ empathy – Emotional display rules and emotional labor – Emotional manipulations

FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR THE AFFECTIVE RESEARCH OF SCHOOLS After outlining the diverse affective perspectives on schools using the eight metaphors, it is in order to reflect on the challenges facing the field of research dealing with affect in schools as a whole, because these challenges touch upon many of the metaphors. Three challenges (theoretical, methodological, and practical) are apparent toward the end of the second decade of the 21st century in this field of research.

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First, there still remain important theoretical paths that must be followed. As we showed in this chapter, and as others have previously suggested (Zembylas & Schutz, 2016), research on affect in schools is multi-disciplinary, involving psychological, sociological, political, philosophical, cultural, and historical aspects. Several phenomena remain underexplained, despite being widely regarded as central to educational practice, and these phenomena could stimulate interest in multiple disciplines. Among them are: (a) the understanding of empathy, care, and hope in schooling, (b) the link between affect and ethics, and (c) the effects of teacher, classroom, and school heterogeneity on affect and learning (Berkovich & Eyal, 2015; Meyer, 2014). Second, by its nature, the multi-disciplinary character of this research field generates methodological pluralism. A few methodological tasks, however, are relevant to multiple disciplines: (a) adopting designs (e.g., triangulation) that minimize the validity and generalizability limitations of perceptual exploration, and (b) adopting designs (e.g., longitudinal) that can be used to infer causality or ones that account for reciprocal relations (Berkovich & Eyal, 2015; Frenzel, 2014). We suggest that rigorous and complex methods are needed to enhance the ecological validity of research on affect in schools. Third, the practical challenge is perhaps the greatest of the three. We believe that the community researching affect in schools must find ways to integrate the epistemological and methodological pluralism needed to capture the complexity of practice, at the same time keeping the insights communicative and applicative enough for educators and policymakers. Negotiating these issues in post-design synthesis efforts is much more difficult. We join other scholars’ recommendation to design research that also takes into account applicability and regards practitioners as part of its audience (Meyer, 2014). In general, we consider these challenges to be linked with the maturation of the field, as it moves from an initial to a more developed stage

(see Edmondson & McManus, 2007). The field of research dealing with affect in schools is highly dynamic and constantly evolving, as its community and influence are growing.

CONCLUDING REMARKS At present there is growing acknowledgement by the general public, policymakers, and educational professionals that emotions are central in schools and in educational processes (Berkovich & Eyal, 2015; James, 2010b; Sun & Leithwood, 2017). Increased attention is being paid to principals’ and teachers’ emotional abilities and skills (e.g., Corcoran & Tormey, 2013; Platsidou, 2010; Wong, Wong, & Peng, 2010), to the socio-emotional aspects involved in school change, and to socioemotional learning (e.g., Collie, Shapka, & Perry, 2012; Day & Leitch, 2001; Hargreaves, 2005; Kelchtermans, 2005). We showed that the exploration of emotions in schools is a broad, multifaceted domain. Therefore, new psychological, administrative, and sociological insights on emotions in educational organizations are welcome. Although, much has been accomplished, what we know is still a drop in the sea, and much effort is still needed to cover the emotional aspects of working and learning in schools. We call on others to join this important effort, and hope that the next decades of the 21st century will produce new and existing insights that will assist practitioners in their work.

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14 Boundary Perspectives on Schools as Organizations David H. Eddy-Spicer and Chris James

INTRODUCTION Schools are complex networks of interdependent systems, the boundaries of which overlap one another and are continually being reinforced and transgressed. A boundary perspective on schools is thus highly relevant to understanding schools as organizations. The notion of boundaries has been used increasingly within a wide variety of theoretical traditions. In response to the increased use of the concept, some organizational theorists have called for the development of the idea of boundary processes as an explanatory programme in its own right (Heracleous, 2004; Hernes, 2004a, 2004b; Paulsen & Hernes, 2003). By ‘explanatory programme’ these authors seek to promote a boundary perspective as not only a useful analytic construct but most important as an essential property of organizations and organizing, moving beyond ‘boundary’ as noun and metaphor to boundary as verb and foundational construct of organizational ontology.

The intention of this chapter is to consider the notion of organizational boundaries and to develop a synthetic boundary perspective on schools as organizations that aims both to take apart and reassemble current scholarship. This chapter aims to survey key perspectives on organizational boundaries and also to propose a framework for assembling diverse perspectives in ways that clarify the emergent phenomenon of organizing and organizational change through boundary formation, deformation and transformation. Following this introduction, we set out some preliminary thoughts on boundaries and schools as organizations before exploring in depth the ‘reality’ of boundary as concept. Invoking reality is meant to signal our adoption of a realist perspective on boundaries, and we spend some time establishing definitions and exploring methodological issues that condition such a realist analysis. In the subsequent substantive section, we present three existing perspectives on boundaries in relation to schools: systems psychodynamics,

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sociocultural theories, and Hernes’ integrative framework. We then elaborate an emergentist perspective on boundary work and propose a framework for the analysis of organizational boundaries with particular attention to schools but potentially applicable to all organizations. We discuss that framework and the chapter ends with a section summarizing the analysis we have undertaken and future directions for boundary research and perspectives on schools as organizations.

BOUNDARIES AND SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS: PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS The work of schools shapes and is shaped by organizational boundaries. There are physical boundaries within school walls, for example between classroom and staffroom, and beyond school walls, between school and community. There are social boundaries between different role groups, such as pupils and staff, leaders and teachers and parents, and so on. There are also task or practice boundaries that distinguish what is legitimate work in the school and what is not. Is student voice promoted and thus included within a boundary of acceptability or frowned upon and outside such a boundary? There are also boundaries around knowledge, such as curricular boundaries that delineate what students should know at what age and in which sequence, and for the staff, boundaries between different sorts of professional knowledge and situated knowledge. As with any work organization, schools function through the interaction of myriad boundaries. It is difficult to think of an educational change that does not involve a reconfiguration of individual and organizational boundaries at several intertwined levels. A change to the teaching task means a reworking of the task boundaries – what is now encompassed and what is now excluded by the task boundary? A change in practice demands a change

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in the role boundaries – which capabilities are now within the role boundary and which are not? A change in organizational responsibilities will require a similar redrawing of role boundaries. Altering the school timetable shifts time boundaries and varying a teacher’s regular teaching room requires a change in physical boundaries. Changing the balance between a teacher’s pastoral care responsibilities and teaching responsibilities will require a change in a boundary that has a psychological dimension. Given that boundaries have a conservation function and given that existing boundaries are frequently points of conflict, it is no surprise that unwelcome educational change (and therefore unwelcome boundary change) can be so problematic. Schools have been viewed as among the most stable of institutional forms and have been the object of social theorizing because of the durability of that form (Bidwell, 2001). Contemporary views of social life in schools and of the place of schooling in the wider society have revealed that what has been taken as static is composed of multidimensional, dynamic processes that are constantly unfolding (de Lima, 2010; Penuel et  al., 2010). New forms of organizational life and increasing pressures for change in schools and school systems have led to what might be considered a proliferation of boundaries and an intensification of boundary processes through diffuse networks that are far more complex and interwoven than boundaries associated with the relatively stable organizational structure of traditional hierarchic bureaucracies that have historically defined the organization of schools and school systems since the inception of mass education in the 19th century (see Duke, this volume). The polymorphous nature of modern schooling, for example, multi-academy trusts in England or state-wide ‘performance districts’ comprised of a state’s lowest-performing schools in the United States, necessitates a move from a static to a dynamic view of organizing and organizational process. These dynamics are evident in relations inside the

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classroom, for example, the reconfiguration of teacher–student roles; the reconstitution of teacher–manager relations through distributed leadership; or the dissolution of the autonomous administrative structure of schools, as illustrated by management across chains of schools in England or charter management organizations in the US. Moreover, even what society has traditionally defined as ‘school’ and what was held to be ‘outside school’ is increasingly in play with schools taking on a wider orbit of community services (e.g., the community school movement, combining education with health and social services to meet community needs) or obliterating school walls altogether through the structured organization of experiential learning within other organizational forms (e.g., farm and wilderness schools, apprenticeships). These dynamics entail boundary reconfigurations of a range of kinds. The above dynamics call for replacing the imagery of ‘organization’ as static entity with that of organization in continual formation, deformation and transformation, that is, ‘organization’ as an emergentist phenomenon (Hernes, 2004a, p. 10). Institutional perspectives on the school have emphasized the ‘isomorphic’ or copy-cat qualities of organizational structuring within the institution of schooling. Boundary perspectives, however, draw attention to the notion that organizational isomorphism is contingent, not inevitable; that the status quo, in organizational terms, requires just as much effort to explain as does change and development. Boundary perspectives emphasize that the form of organization and the processes of organizing that go into maintaining or changing that form are open to question, not foregone conclusions.

BOUNDARY DEFINITIONS AND AN EXPLANATORY METHODOLOGY That ‘boundary’ as a term so richly and easily evokes social reality makes the task of

analyzing the work the term accomplishes especially difficult. Scholars have attempted to categorize boundaries in various ways. In the literature, boundary types have been tagged with such characteristics as: authority, political, task and identity boundaries (Hirschhorn & Gilmore, 1992); functional, hierarchical and inclusionary boundaries (van Maanen & Schein, 1979); and behavioural and normative boundaries (Scott, 1998). Leach (1976) distinguishes boundaries as spatial, temporal and psychological, a view supported by others, for example, Stapley (1996) and Diamond, Allcorn and Stein (2004). Hanna (1997) considers that physical boundaries are also important. Ultimately, however, a cataloguing approach to characterizing boundaries is unsatisfactory because it does not embrace the notion of organizations as emergent, a processual view of organizational dynamics. Boundary labels such as the ones listed above perform a kind of sleight of hand, offering a label for what is intended as a depiction of process. Perhaps it is useful to go back to basics to help clarify what we are describing when we stake a boundary claim. To state the obvious, boundaries are, in the first instance, a metaphor when applied to organizational life. Describing social systems as bounded and social processes as bounding is to equate multidimensional social reality with two- or three-dimensional physical place. To take an obvious example, when we use the term ‘school–community boundary’, we can easily conjure any number of elements that might illustrate this particular distinction, from the community members who sit on formal governing bodies to the myriad informal interactions that occur among school staff, community members and children when the final bell clangs at the end of the school day. Simply delineating ‘school–community boundary’ begins to bring into focus ‘school’ as part of a larger social system. Through articulating what is in, what is out and what lies between, the metaphor of boundary deftly fits with our experience of social structure; we ‘get it’ without much elaboration.

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Most of the work done by metaphors, especially those that correspond directly with our everyday language, takes place backstage by removing from view all that is not represented. As Morgan (2007) highlights in the introduction to Images of Organization, ‘The use of metaphor implies a way of thinking and a way of seeing that pervades how we understand our world generally’ (p. 4). To recast the implications in terms that we elaborate below, invoking boundaries conjures particular ways of worldmaking (Goodman, 1978). Akkerman and Bakker (2011) have studied boundaries extensively and define ‘boundary’ as a ‘difference leading to discontinuity in action or interaction’ (p. 133). These authors elaborate, ‘Boundaries simultaneously suggest a sameness and continuity in the sense that within discontinuity two or more sites are relevant to one another in a particular way’ (Akkerman and Bakker 2011, p. 133). Similar to Bateson’s (2000 [1972]) oft-quoted pragmatic maxim that elementary units of information are distinguished by ‘a difference that makes a difference’, boundaries might be at the most fundamental level a way to characterize difference within a more comprehensive totality – characteristic kinds of difference that make up a world. To sum up, we have aimed to clarify what the image of boundaries illuminates – in Goodman’s (1978) terms, the kind of world that boundaries of various types create. What remains, however, is understanding the work that different types of boundaries are meant to do in making a world of a particular kind. Rather than cataloguing types of boundaries, a more fruitful direction might be to emphasize boundary processes. That task is one for which we need a different set of tools, one that helps us understand the work that boundaries do.

FROM BOUNDARY TO BOUNDARY PROCESS For the sake of clarity, we recast our argument: boundary perspectives on schools and

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school systems hold the promise of tracing organizational stasis and emergence at a time of dynamic change in educational systems. For that reason, we move from the notion of boundary as metaphor or curious epiphenomenon to that of boundary as foundational in terms of processes of organizing. Boundary processes are what perform the heavy lifting in any boundary perspective. In approaching the notion of boundaries by taking up the issue of boundary processes, we are rallying to our emergentist allegiance the central claim of the argument put forward by Hernes (2004a, 2004b) that boundary formation in organizations is not incidental but is inherent to the process of organizing and to the organization itself. Boundaries are not therefore by-products of organizing; rather, organizations evolve through the process of setting boundaries. Up to this point, we have emphasized that organizational boundaries are not fixed and static but are dynamic, unclear and, to varying degrees, permeable (Orton & Weick, 1990; Paulsen & Hernes, 2003; Perrow, 1984; Scott, 2013; Weick, 1976). With the claim that boundary processes are inherent to the process of organizing, we have now moved from an assertion of boundaries as an analytic construct to one that makes the case for boundaries as ontological necessity. If we accept that boundaries are foundational to organizing, then we are no longer in the realm of putting the right label on things that already exist in the world. We are claiming that the labels and the processes these labels invoke bring organization into existence. We cannot resist the often useful and sometimes pedantic academic penchant for catalogue, even as we aim to encapsulate process. Essential boundary processes charted in the literature include boundary maintenance, crossing and conflict. The maintenance of boundaries is critical to organizational success (Czander, 1993; Diamond et  al., 2004), contrary to the assertion that in current ways of working in education and other settings boundaries are dissolving (Hirschhorn & Gilmore, 1992). The management and maintenance

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of organizational boundaries is an important organizing practice. Czander (1993) argues that all organizational conflicts are related to boundaries in some way. Organizational boundaries are points of dissimilarity, distinction and interruption (Heracleous, 2004). They are variable, unclear and, to differing degrees, permeable (Weick, 1995), and are thus problematic and difficult to characterize (Paulsen & Hernes, 2003). Analyzing boundary transgressions is significant in understanding organizational development (Long, 2001) and inter-organizational exchange (Kerosuo, 2006). A catalogue of boundary types and processes, although important, is insufficient for charting the dynamic complexity of emergent organization. We do not know anything from typologies of either boundaries, as presented in an earlier section, or boundary processes, as presented here, about the various explanatory programmes – the ways of worldmaking – out of which boundaries and associated processes of particular types derive. Such an explanatory methodology is essential to theory building. Without it, we have no means of developing the ‘explanatory usefulness’ of the notion of boundaries (Layder, 1998, p. 128).

METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK When we move into the territory of boundary processes, as we note above, we need to accept that we are going beyond metaphor into lived reality. Such a view of social reality as dynamic and polymorphous entails a process ontology (Sawyer, 2002), in that these theories focus on the processes through which structure and agency are mutually constitutive. In our analysis of such approaches and the consequence they hold for the use of boundaries in organizational life, we take a relational emergentist perspective (Archer, 1995; Elder-Vass, 2007a; Layder, 1981). We use this perspective as a means of evaluating the prospects for the development of an explanatory programme based on ‘boundaries’.

If we are to take boundaries as entities that are capable of explaining the dynamics of organizing described earlier, several foundational assumptions, or ontological premises, follow. The ones we adopt for our current approach are realist, pluralist and processual. That is, our foundational assumptions are realist in that we take boundaries and their formation to be objective phenomena and central to organizing; pluralist in that the reality is non-reducible either to deterministic (objectivist) structure on the one hand, or indeterminate (phenomenological) interaction on the other (Layder, 1981); and processual in the focus on the inseparability of social action and social system. Such a process ontology embraces boundaries as real in the effects they produce, and as such, aims at charting the mutual constitution of social action and social system. On the one hand, social systems depend upon human activities, continually reproduced, to guarantee the continuity of the system in space and time. On the other hand, inter-subjective experience and social action are powerfully influenced and configured by the same systemic qualities that action replicates through the social routines and interaction in which these occur (Layder, 1998).

Epistemological Implications If we adhere to the perspective that boundaries are entities with causal properties, then the emergentist paradox arises. How can the apparent causal significance of entities be accounted for without succumbing to either eliminative reductionism, the notion that only the parts of the entity have the causal influence; or explanatory dualism, the view that causal influence of items cannot be explained in terms of the effects of and interrelationships between their parts (Elder-Vass, 2007b, p. 414). These contrasting epistemological positions are indicative of explanatory methodologies that foreground individualism, in terms of eliminative reductionism, or collectivism, in

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terms of explanatory dualism. An emergentist perspective on boundaries must have some means of navigating this terrain. Our starting point is Archer’s (1995) characterization of ‘conflationary’ tendencies in social theorizing. Archer labels methodological individualism as ‘upwards conflation’ and methodological collectivism as ‘downwards conflation’. According to Archer, upwards and downwards ‘conflationists’: ‘always advance some device which reduces one [strata] to the other, thus depriving the two of independent properties, capable of exerting autonomous influences’ (p. 6). Archer argues that conflation generates an epiphenomenological explanation in that reduction emphasizes theorizing in one direction – structure, system and form in the case of collectivism and agency and action in the case of individualism – while discounting its opposite. A simple illustration is helpful here. Consider contrasting approaches to school accountability. Proponents of standards-based reform aim to shape the micro-interactions in classrooms among teachers, students and content through the macro lever of articulated curricular standards. This is an instance of downwards conflation, the assumption that structure and system effectively condition agents’ behaviour. Critiques of new institutional theories are, in general, of this sort. On the other hand, market-based or neoliberal notions of school accountability evince a form of upwards conflation, with the claim that system and structure will emerge through the myriad interactions of agents on the ground, including the market-based valuation of educators’ efforts through parental voice, choice, or exit. Critiques of organizational theorizing based on sensemaking, for example, generally point out the upwards conflation, from individual to system, that this involves. Archer (1995) distinguishes a third form of conflation, ‘central conflation’, a way of seeking to transcend the dual character of structure and agency by positing that the two are inextricably linked and mutually constitutive in such a way that, ‘agents cannot act without

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drawing upon structural properties whose own existence depends upon their instantiation by agents’ (p. 13). Layder (1981, p. 73) describes central conflation as ‘the simultaneity model’, which requires an acceptance that objective structures are both outside and determinative of interaction, and simultaneously the product of such interactions. Returning to our sketch of school accountability, an analogy might be the efforts to introduce the voluntary standards known as Common Core in the United States. The legitimation of these standards hinges on ‘instantiation by agents’, leading to adoption at the state or local level, while the standards themselves might be seen as having an existence independent of particular agents. This is a rather crude analogy, but it does offer insight into the central conflationist tendency to view structure and agency as inextricably intertwined. The emergentist critique of structuration theory (Giddens, 1979) highlights its central conflationary tendencies that lack the means of explaining the interrelationship of structure and agency (Archer, 1982). According to Archer (1995), social theory that tackles emergent properties must go beyond the simultaneity model, which holds structure and agency to be mutually constitutive but independent, to trace both the interrelationship and autonomous properties of subjective and objective strata. Archer (1995) argues for ‘theories of interdependence and interplay between different kinds of social properties’ (p. 8), transcending traditional debates that deny two-way causality as well as more recent contributions, like structuration theory, that do not distinguish the autonomous properties of different strata. Analysis of the interplay and interconnection of these properties and powers requires a recognition that the two have to be related rather than conflated. Most important, in order to explain that relationship, the integrity of each needs to be analyzed separately, which Sawyer (2002) refers to as analytic separability. For Archer (1995) ‘Conditions and actions have to be examinable separately in order to talk about conditioned action’ (p. 141).

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Archer (1995) articulates three principles for an emergentist social science that escapes conflation through its adherence to two-way causality and allegiance to analytic separability. • Precedence. Properties and powers of some strata precede those of others because the latter emerge from the former over time. Emergence takes time because it stems from interaction and its consequences that occur over time. • Independence of power and properties. Once emergence has taken place, the powers and properties that define and distinguish strata are relatively independent of one another. • Autonomous causal influence. The autonomous properties of strata retain causal influence independently and in their own right. The identification of these causal powers authenticates their existence, for they may not be apparent through observation.

For the sake of convincing wary readers that they have not just been led down a relational, emergentist rabbit hole, we recapitulate our line of thinking. The claim that started us on this path was that of Hernes’ (2004b) and his advancing the notion that boundaries were foundational, not incidental, to processes of organizing. This convinced us that efforts to catalogue boundaries and boundary processes were insufficient to capture the emergent properties of boundaries that are the foundation of school organization. Moreover, we coupled this insight with our perspective that particular types of boundaries and depictions of boundary processes are ways of ‘worldmaking’, in Goodman’s (1978) terms. In search of an appropriate methodological framework, we then hooked our star to a relational, emergentist perspective. Such a perspective, we claim, offers one way of transcending conflationary tendencies in theorizing, which we have quickly sketched. The principles of a relational, emergentist perspective provide the ontological premises and epistemological implications for an explanatory methodology that identifies boundaries as entities with emergent properties. Using fewer syllables, we might say that these

premises help us to understand how boundary processes comprise the organizational world and enable us to explore the kinds of worlds that different boundary processes make. Below we characterize three prominent boundary perspectives to test against the three realist premises of precedence, independence, and causal influence. The three perspectives are systems psychodynamics, sociocultural perspectives on boundary objects, and Hernes’ explanatory framework. The title of the culminating section reveals our interpretation: we find conflationary tendencies in each, corresponding with the three conflationary tendencies Archer outlines: upwards, downwards, and central. In the concluding sections, we then take up the task of elaborating a relational boundary framework that aims to illuminate the kind of world those invoking boundaries are seeking to make, as well as a means of gauging affinity with relational emergentist principles.

THREE PERSPECTIVES ON BOUNDARIES Below we offer three approaches to viewing organizations through the lenses of boundaries and boundary processes. As readers already know from our efforts to catalogue boundaries and boundary processes, these are not the only perspectives on organizational boundaries. The second framework that we discuss, cultural-historical perspectives, is arguably the most prominent in recent literature about boundaries. The first, systems psychodynamics, is arguably one of the earliest approaches to boundaries in organizational life. The concluding perspective, that of Hernes, is the first effort to our knowledge to put forward a synthetic framework and explicitly advance an emergentist perspective. We present each perspective and then offer a worked example that illustrates the perspective in terms of school organization. Following the worked example, we offer a

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critique of that perspective using the three principles Archer puts forward as required of an emergentist perspective – precedence, independence of power and properties, and autonomous causal influence. The three perspectives and critique of each in this section is followed by a concluding section that puts forward our proposal for a synthetic framework of boundary properties that takes relational emergence into consideration.

System Psychodynamics In system psychodynamics, the boundary represents structural inconsistency and discontinuity (Heracleous, 2004; Lamont & Molnár, 2002) and boundaries can be internal as well as external (Hirschhorn, 1984; Roberts, 1994; Schneider, 1991). Gabriel (1999) asserts, ‘The first boundary we discover is that which separates us from an external world’ (p. 98). This boundary is the ego. Intrapersonal boundaries between the collective unconscious, the cultural unconscious and the personal unconscious also configure what goes on in organizational life. Securing and sustaining the boundary between individuals’ internal and external worlds and between the different parts of the psyche, for example, between the conscious and non-conscious elements, is crucial to survival in work settings. As points where difference is distinguished and experienced (Heracleous, 2004; Lamont & Molnár, 2002), boundaries are places of tension and affective intensity (Douglas, 2005 [1966]; Hernes, 2004a). Boundary violations are articulated and experienced as conflicts and may well escalate into major incidents in individual and organizational life. For this reason, people may be reluctant to protect boundaries, or may protect them more vigorously than might be expected (Czander, 1993). Organizational boundaries from a systems psychodynamics perspective are affectively charged (Douglas, 2005 [1966]; Hernes, 2004b). Thus ‘organizational boundary issues’

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give rise to conflicts that may escalate into major organizational events, which is why boundaries may be under- or over-protected (Czander 1993), and why boundary transgressions may be powerfully experienced.

Example: Affective containment during educational change Dale and James (2015) describe a case of radical organizational change in a further education (FE) college in England (a form of educational institution that is similar to a community college in the US) that the college staff opposed. The college concerned was a land-based college, which taught agricultural and horticultural subjects to students aged 16 years and over, many of whom were resident on the college site. The college had strong and open contact with the local farming community where many of the students had extended work placements. These placements provided local farmers with an additional supply of labour. Working relationships between local farmers and college staff were very close, as were relationships between the staff and the students. The boundaries between the three groups were not distinct and communication across the boundaries was very open. The changes, which were implemented to improve educational quality and the financial viability of the college, were much needed. Importantly, they included abolishing the work-placement and the valuable additional source of labour the placements brought to local farmers. Regardless of any educational quality/financial viability rationales, the changes were experienced very negatively by the staff, calling up ‘a great deal of resentment and even hostility’ (Dale & James, 2015, p. 10). The climax of the case described by Dale and James was an arson attack by a small group of college students on a wooden building at the college, which had been erected as part of the curriculum changes brought in by new the college principal. Dale and James (2015) interpret the case from a psychodynamic boundary perspective. The boundaries between the staff, the

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students and the local farming community were not secure and properly maintained. The staff resented the changes to their task boundary and sought to protect the task boundary, which may in itself be part of the way the staff protected themselves from the institutional primary task (Bunnell, Fertig, & James, 2017; James, 2010). The changes to the curriculum reconfigured changes to the boundary between the college and the local farming community and the changes were also resented. During the changes, the very difficult feelings experienced by the staff further weakened the boundaries between the staff, the students and the local farming community. In addition, the staff experienced the feelings associated with the changes as unbearable and they sought to protect themselves through splitting and projection by projecting them onto the college principal, the instigator of their difficult feelings, who became a ‘bad object’ in their minds. These projected feelings, which were perhaps also expressed and thereby amplified by the members of the farming community, were experienced by the students, who introjected them, probably unconsciously, and through a process of projective identification (James, 2010) were motivated to carry out the arson attack.

Analysis: Upwards conflation The above case offers us a means of evaluating systems psychodynamics in the emergentist terms set forward earlier, in terms of precedence, independence of power and properties, and autonomous causal influence. From the case, we see that precedence is clear: the first boundary is the internal–external one that separates self from other. Once this primordial boundary has emerged, however, does system psychodynamics allow for independence of power and properties? Apparently not, in that the contribution of this perspective is that similar powers and properties are scaled across levels, from the individual to the collective. The collective, in other words, takes on the psychological

struggle of the individual at different orders of magnitude. It would appear that what is happening at the collective level is the product of individual, psychological struggles. Finally, because attribution is scaled upwards in this way, what realist colleagues would characterize as upwards conflation, the psychodynamic perspective does not appear to offer the possibility of autonomous causal influence at the level of the collective. In oversimplified terms, organizational boundaries in psychodynamic terms exist as the aggregate of individual boundaries, which then influence particular individuals but only as a composite, not independent of what the collective may bring.

Boundary Crossing and Boundary Objects Cultural-historical perspectives on learning in institutionalized organizations (Chaiklin, Hedegaard, & Jensen, 1999; Engeström & Sannino, 2010; Hedegaard, 2012) highlight the centrality of boundaries within and between activity systems and the wider social, cultural and historical contexts in which human activity occurs. Culturalhistorical activity theory (Engeström, Miettinen, & Punamaki-Gitai, 1999), as one example of this family of theories, takes an activity system as its first-order unit of analysis. In this view, the collective subject (typically team or role, such as student or teacher) is one among several interconnected nodes that together make up a continuously evolving and collectively constructed system of activity. Learning is inevitable as the subject crosses the boundary of one activity system, for example school, and enters another system of activity, for example work. Such boundary crossing involves entering unfamiliar territory, acquiring new practices and new categories of knowledge (Beach & EddySpicer, 2004; Tuomi-Gröhn & Engeström, 2003). Learning through boundary crossing is a form of social and cognitive brokerage

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that involves the deconstruction and reconstruction of practice across activity systems. The importance of boundary crossing as a means of understanding development has led to an emphasis on the notion of boundary objects in cultural-historical activity approaches. Boundary objects, as introduced by Star and Griesemer (1989), are ‘objects which both inhabit several intersecting social worlds and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them’ (p. 939). These objects can be abstract, including concepts such as ‘bubble kids’, those students on the threshold of failing a consequential standardized assessment (Booher-Jennings, 2005). Or boundary objects can be material artefacts, such as an agenda for a teacher team meeting drawn up by a school’s senior leader. Whether material or conceptual, boundary objects are robust enough to offer a means of translation for an individual yet are also flexible enough for interpretation from multiple individuals within a group. In their article on developmental transfer between school and work, Konkola, TuomiGröhn, Lambert and Ludvigsen (2007) argued that boundary objects are useful tools in creating a learning environment within a ‘boundary zone’, that is, the social, cultural, historical space bordering a boundary. These shared objects create a place of commonality between an activity system on one side of the boundary and that on another. According to Konkola et  al. (2007), boundary zones and boundary objects facilitate learning by defining the shared space between two systems. [The boundary zone] refers to the territory where participants from different activity systems meet. A boundary zone is an area that is free from prearranged routines or rigid patterns. It is also an area where each activity system reflects its own structure, attitudes, beliefs, norms and roles. (Konkola et al., 2007, p. 224)

Konkola et al. (2007) go on to argue that elements from each side of the boundary are in a continual state of interaction in the

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boundary zone, a place where the purpose of each participating activity system can be extended with the creation of a shared object. The activity itself may be reorganized and new opportunities for learning may result.

Example: Learning as boundary crossing from school to work Akkerman and Bakker (2011) examine boundary crossing from school to work by highlighting ‘trigger activities’ as an important component of learning across work and school boundaries. They study Dutch senior secondary vocational laboratory education students between vocational education and work apprenticeships and finds that when students take time off from work and go back to school, the presentations that they make to their classmates about their work experiences trigger them to think about their work and workplace, show pride, and take an expert position. In focusing on the differences between the two learning systems, the study finds that what the students are learning in the classroom is different from what they are actually doing in the workplace. The study argues that there are epistemic differences between what the school is trying to teach the student and what the workplace is trying to teach the student as its employee. Akkerman and Bakker (2011) conclude that students are constantly going back and forth between school and work, which are different and ever-changing systems, and have to adapt continually to both systems. Boundary crossing emphasizes the need to find productive ways of relating different knowledge gains back and forth through differing epistemological systems. In another illustration, Tsui and Law (2007) conduct a study on the effectiveness of boundary objects in facilitating learning by using the development of a lesson plan as a mediating tool between university tutors and mentor teachers in their work with student teachers. The study finds that the process of resolving contradictions around this object (the lesson plan) transforms the

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learning process for the student teachers. The authors state that ‘crossing boundaries [through the use of a boundary object] forces participants to take a fresh look at their longstanding practices and assumptions, and can be a source of deep learning’ (Tsui & Law, 2007, p. 153). Lambert (2003, 2005) develops learning studios as a boundarycrossing place for student-teachers. In these learning studios, student-teachers discuss current projects with other students, teachers and practitioners as a possible shared innovation. Lambert’s analysis suggests that successful boundary crossing and developmental transfer are largely dependent on the employment of boundary objects in these discussions.

Analysis: Downwards conflation Despite the usefulness of boundary objects, researchers such as Akkerman and Bakker (2011), Star (2010), Barret and Oborn (2010), Pennington (2010), and Wenger (1998) warn that their use can be highly contextual. The meanings and usefulness of boundary objects can be different for different groups or individuals. Furthermore, changing the context for which boundary objects are used can enable communication across sites at one time but result in confusion at another (Eddy-Spicer, 2017). Akkerman and Bakker (2011) assert the importance of maintaining other tools for boundary crossing. They write: ‘boundary objects are only partially communicative and, therefore, can never fully displace communication and collaboration’ (Akkerman and Bakker, 2011, p. 141). These critiques of boundary objects as situated and context-dependent highlight the downwards conflationary tendencies of the perspective on boundaries taken in culturalhistorical theories. The time has arrived, once again, for our three principles – precedence, independent power and properties, and autonomous causal influence. Precedence is clear – boundary objects arise through boundary crossing, which in itself is preceded by the

existence of a coherent system of activity. The negotiation of boundary objects in a boundary zone, as elaborated in the worked example, aims at mutuality – the capacity of the object to assume the power and properties of autonomous activity systems. What is lost in such a theorization of object, as critics highlight, are the independent power and properties of the boundary object as a consequence of its integration across boundaries. For example, the communicative properties of the object may shift over time, becoming unintelligible. Akkerman and Bakker’s (2011) critique is that the literature on boundary objects presents these as attached to those activity systems across time without autonomous causal influence. However, they claim that their use is contextualized by elements other than what are contained within the activity systems from which they arise. Where systems psychodynamics view the individual as origin, so representing methodological individualism, cultural-historical perspectives give priority to the activity system, so representing methodological collectivism.

Hernes’ Analytic Framework Hernes (2004a, 2004b) offers a boundary analytic framework that aims to provide an explanatory methodology rooted, on the one hand, in ontological premises from Lefebvre’s (1991) notions of space and, on the other hand, in the epistemological projects of ‘third pole’ social theorists, such as Luhmann (1995), Latour (1999) and Giddens (1979). The ‘third pole’ refers to Hernes’ (2004a, pp. 30–31) own characterization of social theories that seek to ‘circumvent dichotomies’ in the perspectival differences considered above between upwards and downwards conflation. Hernes (2004a) argues strongly for an emergentist boundary analytic stance. He puts forward his argument for supplanting the entity of ‘the organization’ with the notion of space as the ontological premise of his approach. He writes:

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If we let go of the bounded view of organization, we may visualize organization as consisting of fields of spaces that form and interact. Spaces in fields may take on widely different characteristics, ranging from formal organizations to groups and professions. (Hernes, 2004a, p. 84)

Hernes argues for a view of space that is produced incessantly, while at the same time forming the foundation for its own construction. He quotes Lefebvre (1991) in his articulation of this self-referential argument, ‘itself the outcome of past actions, social space is what permits fresh actions to occur, while suggesting others and prohibiting yet others’ (p. 74, as quoted in Hernes, 2004a, p. 68). Hernes equates the self-referential notions encapsulated above with similar notions of circularity in Latour (1999) and recursivity in Luhmann (1995) and Giddens (1979). Hernes (2004a, p. 79) advocates the study of space using boundaries as a lens, akin to an analytic construct to bring the object of study into sharper focus. However, he rejects the view that boundaries are drawn analytically and emphasizes that boundaries are ‘intrinsic and not incidental to organization’ (p. 79). He further elaborates his view of separability by articulating space with mental, physical and social ‘boundaries’. Hernes notes the legacy of these concepts from Lefebvre (1991) and finds resonance in their articulation from Parsons to more recent social theorists. He acknowledges, in particular, the three ‘pillars of institutions’ identified by Scott (1998), the regulative, which Hernes relates to his physical; the normative, related to Hernes’ notion of social; and the cognitive, corresponding with Hernes’ mental (2004a, p. 14). Hernes (2014a) develops a boundary analytic framework by articulating the three types of boundaries, mental, social and physical, with three dimensions: ordering (the regulation of internal interaction by a particular boundary), distinction (boundary demarcation between what is taken to be the external environment and what is internal) and threshold (the degree to which the boundary regulates movement between what

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is outside, external, and what is inside, internal). He further draws on Weick’s (1976) notion of tightly and loosely coupled systems as a means of gauging the extent to which a particular boundary regulates behaviour. Thus, the physical boundary of school and community may be clearly ordered within the school through the identification of specific regulations around expectations of parents and community members when they are inside the school; these in turn may be tightly or loosely followed – loose if the expectations are published in a parent handbook, which is rarely consulted, or tight if parents’ behaviours inside the school closely align with established regulations.

Example: School-to-school improvement in England We draw on one of our own studies of interorganizational relationships among schools (Eddy-Spicer, 2017) to provide a worked example of Hernes’ framework. The study traces the translation of data-informed practice in a formal pairing of two primary schools in England, putting together a school evaluated as ‘outstanding’ paired with a school in ‘special measures’. The supported school was following a programme for school improvement that was heavily monitored by the local educational authority as well as the national Department for Education. The lead school agreed to shepherd improvement initiatives for the supported school, as well as translate best practices and use the most experienced and talented leaders and teachers to help turn the struggling school around. We use Hernes’ boundary types and dimensions as heuristics to reflect on data we collected from observations and interviews with leaders and teachers in both schools (Table 14.1).1 In this instance, we consider three distinct entities, the lead school, the supported school and the inter-organizational relationship. The interpretation using Hernes’ framework reveals the extent to which the external environment shaped the conditions of all three boundary types, mental, social

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Table 14.1  Worked example drawing on data from Eddy-Spicer (2017) and using Hernes’ framework for interpreting boundaries Mental boundaries (core ideas and concepts that are central and particular to the group or organization) Ordering Extent boundaries regulate internal interaction

Clear constructs and expectations for organizational and individual (student, teacher, leader) performance No explicit knowledge base about interorganizational relationships Distinction Explicit demarcation in Extent boundaries constitute distinguishing among a clear demarcation different forms of between the external and knowledge (e.g., content, internal spheres pedagogy, management) and levels within those forms Threshold Highly regulated categories Extent boundaries regulate of knowledge (content flow or movement knowledge of students, between the external and teaching knowledge of internal spheres teachers, management knowledge by role)

and physical. In terms of mental boundaries, the high-stakes accountability structures of the English system ensured a high degree of agreement around various bodies of knowledge, including curricular knowledge and knowledge about teaching and leading. A well-established knowledge base also existed for what school leaders, along with local and national officials, accepted as legitimate approaches to school improvement in challenging contexts (Ainscow, Beresford, Harris, Hopkins, Southworth, & West, 2013; Harris & Chapman, 2002; Muijs, Harris, Chapman, Stoll, & Russ, 2004; Stoll & Fink, 1996). However, the inter-organizational dimensions of the relationship had no similar knowledge base. In terms of social boundaries, the nature of schools as institutionalized organizations

Social boundaries (identity and social bonding tying the group or organization together)

Physical boundaries (formal rules and physical structures regulating human action and interaction in the group or organization)

Well-established roles and role expectations at the lead school. Identity insecurity at the supported school Emergent roles and expectations in ordering social relations across schools

Clear hierarchy of lead school (‘outstanding’) and supported school Emergent structures and regulations around inter-organizational relationship

Social networks across schools growing denser, diminishing separate identity of supported school

Supported school experiences extreme external pressure (‘in special measures’) Dynamic shifts in structuring terms of interorganizational relations Explicit efforts and initiatives Emergent interto depress threshold to organizational foster connections across form with dynamic schools threshold depending on expectations of inspection

ensured that roles and role expectations within each school were consistent, except when these related to inter-organizational functions. For example, new roles for teachers emerged as the relationship between the schools developed. Also, with the intervention of the lead school, the identity of ‘good teacher’ shifted with new expectations introduced by the lead school and supported by the reinforcement of certain professional norms. Finally, the physical boundaries of state regulation, in the form of ‘special measures’, had a considerable impact on all aspects of organizational life at the supported school. Lead school teachers and leaders were certainly aware of these regulations but as their school was not directly affected, their influence was peripheral to day-to-day activities.

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Analysis: Central conflation Once again, we turn to the three principles invoked in earlier examples – precedence, independence of powers and properties, and autonomy of causal influence. The strength of Hernes’ framework lies in its parsing of the second principle, that of independence of powers and properties. We see this in the example in the ways that the framework illuminates the separate contributions of mental, social and physical boundaries. From there, however, no clear guidance exists from the framework around the constitution of the identified boundaries. The principle of precedence would help us identify a priori conditions. In this instance, we know that the high-stakes accountability structures of the state influenced all three types of boundaries but we do not have a clear sense of which type of boundary might have been necessary for shifts in other types of boundaries to occur. Similarly, the framework does not include any indication of causal influence, of how boundaries of one type might influence boundaries of another type. The approach advocated by Hernes is open to critique on two levels. First, in using ‘space’ as a starting position for a ‘third pole’ resolution, the approach inadvertently falls into the central conflationist trap of the simultaneity model (Layder, 1981). Second, despite an allegiance to boundaries as integral (that is, real) in their causal effects on organizational processes, the categories of boundaries he delineates (i.e., ‘mental’, ‘social’ and ‘physical) arise from analytic distinction, not ontological necessity. As such, boundaries as categorical distinctions cannot be considered as integral to ‘boundary’ as entity; such distinctions can only describe, but not explain, causal effect. Nonetheless, Hernes’ framing of the issues and his articulation of the qualities of boundaries in terms of distinction (the extent to which the boundary demarcates between systems) and threshold (the degree to which the boundary regulates movement between systems) offer the impetus to move thinking forward.

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Layder’s critique of central conflation is relevant here (1994, pp. 264–265). Although Layder accepts that action and structure are mutually implicated in central conflation arguments, such as those of Giddens, he contends that the important question is not that action and structure are interrelated; it is how the two are related. The emergentist critique of central conflation is that central conflation heralds the inseparability of system and action but does not provide either the analytic means for understanding the distinctive properties of each or how the properties of different strata interrelate. The spatial argument advanced by Hernes falls into just such a trap. Such an approach lacks a language of description for understanding the relations among elements that would allow us to see how the strata of action condition and are conditioned by the system strata of ‘space’. However, none of Hernes’ categories of mental, social and physical is self-explanatory. Each requires conceptual elaboration within a specific theoretical frame. ‘Mental’, ‘social’ and ‘physical’ constitute very different things in different theoretical traditions. The terms do not have a necessary relationship to ‘boundary’ as an entity. Their delineation varies with the analyst’s intentions. Elder-Vass (2007b) portrays what this idea means with reference to Luhmann’s use of similar constructs: [F]or [Luhmann] systems are not entities but may be described instead as the set of interacting factors that produce the particular phenomenon of interest. In this tradition, systems have no necessary relation to the boundaries of particular entities; their basis is not ontological but rather analytical: as the range of factors affecting some phenomenon of interest varies, so does the boundary of the functionalist’s system. (p. 418)

We are left with two untenable outcomes. If we accept that the boundary processes Hernes seeks to characterize are entities with causal effects, then the boundaries he circumscribes as ‘mental’, ‘physical’ and ‘social’ are examples of downwards conflation in that they treat structure as providing the conditions for

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action. However, if we treat these as analytic constructs only, then what are we to make of Hernes’ (2004a) claim that ‘boundaries are not by-products of organization’ (p. 79)? As Sawyer (2002) makes clear, the crux of the matter here lies in explaining the two-way causal mechanism that links action and system. Hernes’ characterization of boundary elements can be considered emergentist only in a descriptive sense, as they describe the ‘range of factors’ involved from a particular analytic perspective. However, Hernes’ boundary elements do not explain the interrelationship of those factors nor do they constitute factors themselves. Without the help of some other theoretical underpinning, the framework is not capable of explaining emergent properties.

TOWARDS A RELATIONAL, EMERGENTIST PERSPECTIVE ON BOUNDARIES IN SCHOOLS Social theory that tackles emergent properties, according to Archer (1995), must go beyond the simultaneity model, which holds structure and agency to be mutually constitutive, to trace both the interrelationship and autonomous properties of subjective and objective strata. Archer’s three principles of precedence, independence and causal explanation provide the ontological premises and epistemological implications for an explanatory methodology that identifies boundaries as entities with emergent properties. An organizational boundary analytical framework requires consistency among the description of reality, how that reality is explained and the nature of knowledge in that explanation. We have argued for an approach that treats boundaries as an aspect of social reality and as integral to organization, characteristics which we claim are essential for a perspective that aims to develop an explanatory methodology. In addition, the attribution of emergent properties to entities at different

strata depends upon identifying interrelationships between strata and the autonomous causal effect of the strata. We now put forward our candidate for an emergentist framework that attempts to move ‘boundary’ from metaphor to explanatory methodology. We aim to describe a ‘generic’ boundary analytic framework, one which is necessarily incomplete because it requires specific elaboration within a particular theoretical perspective. Thus, our interest here is in drafting general theoretical requirements for the development of an emergentist boundary perspective. Our first step in this direction is to put forward the notion of animator, which is the core emergent phenomenon that provides an underlying rationale for boundary formation. The properties of animator depend on the social theory of which it is a part. Drawing on Blumer (1969), the animator is the central feature of the underlying picture of the empirical world that is used. The animator may not be immediately apparent and may need to be identified through its causal effects, but we argue that it is central to discerning boundary elements that are not analytically constructed yet essential to ‘boundary’ as an entity. For example, a perspective primarily concerned with organizational role would adopt ‘role’ as the animator, and the notion of the role boundary would be of interest (see, for example, Cottrell & James, 2016). In some organizational analytical frameworks, such as systems psychodynamics, the organization’s primary task serves as the animator (James, 2010). In sociocognitive perspectives on organizing, the animator consists of sociallyconstructed and historically-legitimated categories of knowledge (Eddy-Spicer, 2012). Although these theoretical perspectives are widely disparate, the impetus for boundary emergence, continuity and change in each arises from core ontological premises, what we term animator. In relation to the main animator, the system processes, and therefore the process elements of boundaries, are also significant.

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As noted earlier, many of the elements in the frameworks listed in the literature on organizational boundaries – see, for example, those elaborated by Miller and Rice (1975), Hanna (1997) and Scott (1998) – are process-related, such as behavioural, sentient or functional. The notion of process again can be considered from different theoretical perspectives. Process differences will represent points of dissimilarity and distinction in organizations and should feature in an analytical framework. Physical boundaries are included in a number of boundary classifications (see, for example, Hernes, 2004b). Hanna (1997) also distinguishes between physical and temporal boundaries, but we argue that both physical and temporal boundaries differentiate spaces using different notions of materiality. A more thorough distinction would be between temporal and material dimensions. In the analytical framework we propose, animator, process, material and temporal are the main elements. We would argue that the animator is the boundary element of primary significance and that process, material and temporal elements emerge in relation to the animator. Each of these elements can have varying organizational effects, which Hernes (2004b) refers to as dimensions. These elements provide an important additional perspective on boundary phenomena. Hernes (2004b) categorizes the organizational effects of boundaries and identifies three dimensions, as noted above: ordering – the extent to which boundaries regulate organizational functioning; distinction – the degree to which the boundary demarcates the organizational discontinuity; and threshold, which refers to the permeability of the boundary. Hernes’ notion of ordering operates at an analytical level different from distinction and threshold. Ordering is an outcome of organizational boundaries, whereas distinction and threshold describe qualities that result from boundary interaction. Further, Hernes’ notion of boundary threshold does not consider directional differences in movement.

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An Organizational Boundary Analytical Framework From the above discussion, we assemble an analytical framework for the study of boundaries in educational organizations. It is set out in Table 14.2. In the framework, animator elements distinguish the underlying rationale that defines the system and its motive; process elements demarcate processes; temporal elements articulate time-related boundary distinctions; and material elements demarcate physical constraints and the way affordances of the lived world are taken up or not. The dimensions characterize distinction – the extent to which boundaries demarcate one system from another – and threshold – the degree to which the boundary regulates movement between systems and asymmetries in that regulation.

CONCLUSION In this chapter we have: sought to analyze the premises about social reality assumed in current perspectives on boundaries and the implications of these premises for theory development; considered the prospects for the development of a boundary analytic framework as a means of explaining processes of organizing and organization, with particular reference to schools; and developed such a framework. The validity of the framework we have set out can be evaluated by reference to Archer’s (1995) three principles for an emergentist social science. The principles Archer advances – precedence, independence of power and properties, and autonomous causal influence – invoke the interplay of strata through two-way causality while maintaining a commitment to analytic separability as necessary for identifying independent causal effect. The framework accepts that the properties and powers of some entities precede those of others and that there is a temporal dimension to the emergence of

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Table 14.2  An organizational boundary analytical framework for the study of educational organizations Elements of composite boundaries Boundary dimensions

Animator elements Differences in the animators of systems that distinguish between systems in an organization. Cohesion To what extent do Nature and extent differences in of internal the animators homogeneity and/ of systems or heterogeneity of condition internal what is contained homogeneity and/ by boundary or heterogeneity of what is contained by boundary? Distinction To what extent do The nature and extent the animators of of boundary systems distinguish demarcation between systems?

Process elements Differences in the animator-related system processes that distinguish between systems in an organization. To what extent do differences in the animator-related system processes condition internal homogeneity and/ or heterogeneity of what is contained by boundary? To what extent do the animator-related system processes distinguish between systems?

Temporal elements Differences in the animator-related temporal elements that distinguish between systems in an organization. To what extent do differences in the animator-related temporal elements condition internal homogeneity and/ or heterogeneity of what is contained by boundary? To what extent do animator-related temporal elements distinguish between different systems?

Material elements Differences in the animator-related material elements that distinguish between systems in an organization. To what extent do differences in the animator-related material elements condition internal homogeneity and/ or heterogeneity of what is contained by boundary? To what extent do animator-related material elements distinguish between different systems?

Threshold The nature and extent of movement across boundaries

To what extent do To what extent do the To what extent do the To what extent do the the animators of animator-related animator-related animator-related systems regulate system processes temporal elements material elements movement regulate movement of the boundary of the boundary between systems? between systems? regulate movement regulate movement What are the What are the between systems? between systems? asymmetries in this asymmetries in this What are the What are the regulation? regulation? asymmetries in this asymmetries in this regulation? regulation? Embeddedness To what extent do To what extent do To what extent do To what extent do The nature and extent differences in differences in the differences in the differences in of interrelationship the animators of animator-related animator-related the animatorbetween boundary systems condition system processes temporal elements related material and system of interrelationship condition the condition the elements condition which boundary between boundary interrelationship interrelationship interrelationship is part and system of between boundary between boundary between boundary which boundary is and system of and system of and system of part? which boundary is which boundary is which boundary is part? part? part? Outcome Organizational structure and organizing processes Note. The framework comprises elements of composite boundaries in columns and boundary dimensions in rows. The questions posed in the cells of the framework structure the analysis. The outcome is the organizational structure.

boundary phenomena. Moreover, once emergence has occurred, the powers and properties that define and distinguish are relatively

independent of one another and causally influence independently and in their own right. The framework does not privilege an

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understanding of boundaries from one particular ‘direction’ and avoids conflation. Moreover, in seeking to identify the causal powers – the animator – and authenticate its existence, which may not be readily apparent, we have adhered to the principles that provide the ontological premises and epistemological implications for an explanatory methodology that identifies boundaries as entities with emergent properties.

Moving Forward with Boundaries Exploring boundaries and ‘boundary processes’ as an explanatory programme opens up new possibilities for theory elaboration around organizing and organizational processes, as Hernes (2004a, 2004b) and colleagues have so cogently argued (Paulsen & Hernes, 2003). However, for such a programme to achieve its potential demands close attention to methodological rigour. In the preceding sections, we have made an argument for a relational emergentist perspective on boundaries and laid out related principles for what this perspective must entail. The schematic we have proposed accounts for causal effect and offers a framework for elaborating the emergent properties of boundaries. Hernes (2004b) has provided us with a cogent argument for the necessity of new perspectives, but the one he puts forward does not appear capable of meeting the test. Fundamentally, ‘generic’ boundary processes of the sort Hernes proposes through the distinctions of ‘mental’, ‘physical’ and ‘social’ are necessarily analytic constructs and thus can neither exert causal effect nor explain emergent properties. Archer (1995) notes the difficulty of attempting to provide a pragmatic synthesis without conceptual clarity: [S]ome have been tempted to uncouple practical social theory from its underpinnings, to survey the array of perspectives, and suggest an eclectic pragmatism in order to have the best of all worlds. Such ‘perspectivism’ simultaneously denies that there are serious underlying reasons for theoretical variety and slides via instrumentalism into a marriage of inconsistent premises. (p. 5)

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The analysis in this chapter attempts to identify ‘inconsistent premises’ in ways that reveal novel understandings for the elaboration of an explanatory programme that involves boundaries and acknowledges organization and organizing as multidimensional and polymorphous. The development of an emergentist boundary approach is particularly relevant given technological changes affecting schools, organizational change driven by reform agendas, and the increasingly complex responsibilities of schools. Such an approach helps broaden the scope of organizational analysis of schools in times of rapid change.

Note 1  The research did not rely on Hernes’ framework in the design of instruments or the analysis of data. Our interpretations here are intended as a retroactive analysis to illustrate the properties of Hernes’ framework.

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15 Systems Thinking in School Organization Chen Schechter and Haim Shaked

INTRODUCTION Since the 19th century, Taylor’s (1911) principles of scientific management (e.g., division of labor, hierarchy and control, impersonal orientation) have dominated the procedures and structures of state schools in Western society. Sergiovanni (2005) argued that schools have been perceived as rational institutions based on bureaucratic characteristics that developed during the Industrial Age. This mechanistic view, which has been strongly criticized by researchers and practitioners alike (e.g., Fullan, 2016), represented the precursor of what may be called the Machine Age (e.g., Araya, 2015; Peters, 2010), which was dominated by the reductionist approach. Reductionist analysis posited that a prerequisite for understanding the whole is analyzing its parts (Jones, 2000; Lewontin & Levins, 2000). According to this approach, any sort of phenomenon must be comprehended through rational analysis, i.e., by reducing it to its indivisible components (Mazzocchi, 2008;

Rosenberg, 2006). Thus, the reductionist answer to every ‘What is this?’ would always be: ‘“This” is whatever it is made of.’ This reductionist approach, epitomized in Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times (1936), depicting modern life by analogizing it to a factory assembly line, later manifested itself in the fields of educational policy and administration. That is, policy-makers, administrators, and educators, have used the Machine perspective as a core image for individual and organizational growth. Can we envision schools that co-create reciprocal networks based on multiple emerging perspectives? In this fast-changing 21stcentury, schools that merely produce ‘more of the same’ education (the assembly-line metaphor) will not satisfy the need to address the challenges and complexities that will face students in the future (Key, 2010). Rapidly evolving technologies will leave these students no choice but to actively participate in an increasingly diverse, globalized, and media-saturated society. This reality calls for a satisfactory

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response to the present day’s multiplicity of difficulties and expectations, which cannot be provided by the traditional frameworks of school organization. Complementary organizational frameworks accompanied by strategies to guide faculty members toward success are therefore sorely needed. Can we predict a trajectory of schoolwork for the 21st century that will be based on a systemic perception rather than on a linear one? In the present state of school-life complexity, systems thinking is considered to be an effective means of facing real-life situations (Brown, 2012; Jackson, 2010). Thus, it has been proposed as a way of assisting managers in dealing effectively with challenges which often arise in richly interconnected problem situations (Jolly, 2015; Wilson & Van Haperen, 2015). As an approach that advocates the consideration of any given issue as a whole, systems thinking emphasizes the interrelationships between system components rather than the components themselves. Breaking systems down into parts in order to understand them is not its aim; instead, it focuses attention on the dynamic between the parts as it transpires in networks of interactions (Gharajedaghi, 2011; Senge, 2006). Thus, systems thinking can benefit schools as they educate 21st-century citizens who must know how to cooperate at the global level, to solve complex problems, and to negotiate diverse emergent viewpoints through teamwork. Our intention in this chapter is to situate systems thinking as a central concept in viewing schools as complex organizations, thus illustrating the nature of schoolwork from a systemic approach. We claim that a systemic approach can provide deeper insights into various events and phenomena, thus helping to avoid a reductionist and simplistic standpoint, which unduly simplifies organizational complexities, interrelationships, and connectivity. The structure of this chapter mirrors the above intention. Thus, the chapter focuses on systems thinking as it applies to schools, elaborating on its conceptualization, definitions, and characteristics in the general management

literature. The systemic perspective is then transferred to the school context, presenting the characteristics of systems thinking in schools, and suggesting possible applications thereof in teachers’ and administrators’ daily practices. Finally, questions and possibilities for further conceptualization, research, and practice in systems thinking are explored.

FROM REDUCTIONISM TO SYSTEMS THINKING A system is a functionally related assemblage of interacting, interrelated, and interdependent elements forming a complex whole. The variety of systems falling under such a definition is endless, encompassing natural systems such as the digestive system; humanmade systems ranging from tiny hi-tech chips to global commercial conglomerates; social systems like a family or a community; and many more. The traditional approach to understanding and managing such systems is known as reductionism. Since, according to this approach, the whole is no more than the sum of its components, the obvious way to best explain it is to study the smallest possible elements it contains, aiming to provide explanations to macroscopic properties in terms of microscopic components (Jones, 2000; Rosenberg, 2006). This methodology served Descartes (1985, pp. 58–59) when he compared a sick person to a badly constructed clock, and a healthy person to a well-made one: ‘A clock constructed with wheels and weights’, he posited, resembles the body of a man who is ‘as a kind of machine equipped with and made up of bones, nerves, muscles, veins, blood and skin.’ A clock that is badly made and tells the wrong time is like ‘a body [that] suffers from dropsy’. According to Descartes’ view, the entire universe, as well as everything it contains, can be regarded as a clockwork mechanism; thus, understanding it would merely require investigating the parts and then

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putting them together again correctly. In other words, if recognizing the smallest components in isolation from each other makes for knowing the total phenomenon, all that one has to do is contemplate these parts and then reassemble them to recreate the whole. This means, as aforementioned, that the answer to every ‘what is this’ would always be ‘this is what it is made of’ (Lewontin & Levins, 2000; Mazzocchi, 2008). Bertalanffy (1968), in contrast, claimed that in order to understand what differentiates living from non-living matter, one needs to study not only the microscopic particles, but also how they influence one another within the whole. He later reaffirmed this viewpoint as a fundamental scientific approach, claiming that indeed the only way to fully understand why a certain phenomenon arises and persists is to understand its parts in relation to the whole. In other words, every phenomenon must be viewed keeping its totality in mind, as must be done regarding its subsystems and the relationships between their various components (Hammond, 2005). Distinguishing between the traditional scientific method, which was developed by Descartes (1985), as aforementioned, and the new scientific method, Bertalanffy explained: While in the past, science tried to explain observable phenomena by reducing them to an interplay of elementary units investigable independently of each other, conceptions appear in contemporary science that are concerned with what is somewhat vaguely termed ‘wholeness’, i.e., problems of organization, phenomena not resolvable into local events, dynamic interactions manifest in difference of behavior of parts when isolated or in a higher configuration, etc.; in short, ‘systems’ of various order not understandable by investigation of their respective parts in isolation. Conceptions and problems of this nature have appeared in all branches of science, irrespective of whether inanimate things, living organisms, or social phenomena are the object of study. (Bertalanffy, 1968, p. 38)

The essence of systems thinking was described by Bertalanffy as an approach that advocates viewing the issue at hand as a whole, emphasizing its components’ synergy rather than

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their own individual properties, contrary to the traditional approach of understanding a subject by analyzing its parts. This approach may also be termed ‘holistic’ as it considers systems to be more than the sum of their parts. Parts are indeed of interest to those applying this approach, although its primary focus is on the relationship networks between these parts. Accordingly, the only way to fully understand a system is to understand its parts in relation to the whole, because the system’s defining characteristics indeed comprise the characteristics of that very whole, which cannot be found in the isolated parts. Importantly, the systems-thinking paradigm differs from the reductionist paradigm in terms of how parts interact or interrelate within the system. Just as reductionist scientists were of the opinion that everything could be reduced to indivisible parts, they also believed that relationships among parts were reducible to one simple relationship, that of cause and effect, emphasizing the relation between a first event (the cause) and a second event (the effect). According to systems thinking, the many interactions that transpire within each system cannot be reduced to a single cause–effect relationship. The first event is likely to contribute to the second event, but many additional events are also seen as contributing to that second event. Thus, all explanations for the second event should take into account the influence of multiple factors. Systems thinking thereby diverged from the predominant reductionist paradigm by upholding that the explanation for any phenomenon within a system cannot be too simplistic, and that the impact of the environment cannot be ignored. The multitude of variables existing in any system are causally related in feedback loops, which consist of outputs of the system that are routed back into it as inputs, as part of a circuit of causation. The feedback loops themselves interact; it is the very interactions among these feedback loops that constitute the system’s structure and determine its behavior. This notion of feedback loops challenges the

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simplistic concept of the relationship between cause and effect, where the first event is considered responsible for the second one. Thus, according to systems thinking, causation in systems is less straightforward and salient, necessitating a broader understanding of the system as a whole (Senge, 2006). Accordingly, the only way to fully understand a system is to understand its parts in relation to the whole, because the system’s defining characteristics indeed comprise the characteristics of that very whole, which cannot be found in the isolated parts. Importantly, once the system is analyzed – i.e., taken apart – these defining characteristics of the whole get lost (Jackson, 2009). The phenomenon whereby larger entities exhibit properties that their smaller components do not exhibit is called emergence. A property is emergent if it is a novel property of a system that arises when that system has reached a certain level of complexity and that, even though it exists only in so far as the system or entity exists, it is distinct from the properties of the parts of the system from which it emerges (Weinstock, 2010). Systems thinking is of course interested in the parts, but primarily in how they give rise to the new entity that is the whole. Systems thinking does not try to break systems down into parts in order to understand them; instead, it concentrates its attention on how the parts act together in networks of interaction. Inasmuch as the whole is not the sum of its parts, it is a product of the parts’ interactions (Shaked & Schechter, 2017a). The parts of a system operate in intimate interconnections, with the interactions among them creating the whole and shaping its defining characteristics (Gharajedaghi, 2011).

THE SCATTERED LITERATURE AND DEFINITIONS OF SYSTEMS THINKING The literature on systems thinking has two main features: it is scattered among disparate fields and journals, and it includes both books for laymen and scholarly literature. The dispersion

of the literature on systems thinking was noted by Bertalanffy (2003, p. 1), one of systems thinking’s pioneers, who wrote that ‘if someone were to analyze current notions and fashionable catchwords, he would find “systems” high on the list. The concept has pervaded all fields of science and penetrated into popular thinking, jargon, and mass media.’ Systems thinking is currently applied in a broad spectrum of domains as diverse as biology (e.g., Sauer, Heinemann, & Zamboni, 2007), engineering (e.g., Frank, 2012), psychology (e.g., Josephson, 2008), and public health (e.g., Luke & Stamatakis, 2012). For this reason, no one central ongoing discussion about systems thinking has ensued; instead, the literature on systems thinking punctuates disparate fields and diverse publications (Davidz, 2006; Davidz & Nightingale, 2008). The proliferation of scholarly research implementing the systems approach testifies to its wide appeal to researchers in diverse fields. Systems thinking is not a discipline with defined boundaries, but rather a way of thinking about systems of all kinds (Bertalanffy, 1968). Comprising an interdisciplinary conceptual framework that can be adapted to an exceptionally broad range of areas, it possesses the advantages of flexibility and versatility. This may explain the reason for the wide range of definitions it has received. Hence, there is no consensual definition for systems thinking, although over the past decades numerous intellectuals and researchers have been attempting to devise definitions and refine explanations for the systems approach. A few attempts at defining it were made by scholars, presented in chronological order: • ‘A discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” It is a set of general principles. … It is also a set of specific tools and techniques’ (Senge, 1990, p. 68). • ‘The art and science of making reliable inferences about behavior by developing an increasingly deep understanding of underlying structure’ (Richmond, 1994, p. 141).

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• ‘A way of thinking about, and a language for describing and understanding, the forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems. This discipline helps us to see how to change systems more effectively’ (Senge et  al., 1994, p. 6). • ‘Seeing beyond what appear to be isolated and independent incidents to deeper patterns. You recognize connections between events, to better understand and influence them’ (O’Connor & McDermott, 1997, p. 7). • ‘An epistemology which, when applied to human activity, is based upon the four basic ideas: emergence, hierarchy, communication, and control as characteristics of systems. When applied to natural or designed systems, the crucial characteristic is the emergent properties of the whole’ (Checkland, 1999, p. 318). • ‘The ability to see the world as a complex system, in which we understand that “you can’t just do one thing,” and that “everything is connected to everything else”’ (Sterman, 2000, p. 4). • ‘The art of systems thinking involves the ability to represent and assess dynamic complexity (e.g., behavior that arises from the interaction of a system’s agents over time), both textually and graphically’ (Sweeney & Sterman, 2000, p. 2). • ‘Utilizing modal elements to consider the componential, relational, contextual, and dynamic elements of the system of interest’ (Davidz, 2006, p. 119). • ‘Systems thinking is thinking, scientifically, about phenomena, events, situations, etc., from a system perspective, i.e., using systems methods, systems theory and systems tools. Systems thinking, then, looks at wholes, and at parts of wholes in the context of their respective whole. It looks at wholes as open systems, interacting with other systems in their environment’ (Hitchins, 2007, p. 17). • ‘The art of simplifying complexity. It is about seeing through chaos, managing interdependency, and understanding choice’ (Gharajedaghi, 2011, p. 335). • ‘A set of synergistic analytic skills used to improve the capability of identifying and understanding systems, predicting their behaviors, and devising modifications to them in order to produce desired effects. These skills work together as a system’ (Arnold & Wade, 2015, p. 675).

Despite the differences between the above definitions and characterizations, they obviously

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share two common features: Systems thinking may be conceived as involving the following two main meanings, which complement each other: on the one hand, systems thinking views the whole beyond the parts, rising above the separate components to see the whole system, and, on the other hand, it views each separate component as a part of the whole system (Shaked & Schechter, 2017a). These complementary meanings conceptualize a system as a functionally related assemblage of interacting, interrelated elements forming a complex whole.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SYSTEMS THINKING The amount of empirically-based research on the characteristics of systems thinking is meager. Richmond (2000) created a list of seven skills necessary for becoming a systems thinker (it is noteworthy that the term ‘skills’ is not exactly the same as ‘characteristics’, since the skills referred to here may be seen as preconditions for, rather than components of, systems thinking). These skills consist of: (1) dynamic thinking – recognizing dynamics and patterns rather than concentrating on events; (2) closed loop thinking – recognizing a system’s loops (i.e., circular cause–effect relations) to be responsible for the behavior patterns it exhibits; (3) generic thinking – thinking in general terms rather than in terms of specific details; (4) structural thinking – thinking in terms of measuring units, or dimensions; (5) operational thinking – thinking in terms of how things actually work in reality rather than how they should work theoretically; (6) continuum thinking – using continuous rather than discrete models; and (7) scientific thinking – thinking rigorously in terms of quantification and dynamics of variables. A number of specific systems thinking skills were devised by Sweeney and Sterman (2000), including the ability to: (1) understand

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how the behavior of a given system arises from the interaction of its components over time (i.e., dynamic complexity); (2) discover and represent feedback processes (both positive and negative) that apparently underlie observed patterns of system behavior; (3) identify stock and flow relationships so as to outline a system’s structure and behavior (where stock is any entity that accumulates or depletes over time, and flow is the rate of change often graphically illustrated by a diagram); (4) recognize time lags and their impact, create graphs describing particular behaviors over time, and reach useful insights as to the dynamics of the system at hand from the description of its structure; (5) identify non-linearities, i.e., recognize and analyze non-linear relationships between cause and effect; and (6) recognize and challenge the boundaries of existing mental models, which are internal symbols or representations of external reality in a person’s thought process about how something works in the real world. Based on Sweeney and Sterman (2000), reviewed above, Ossimitz (2001) identified four basic dimensions of systems thinking: (1) thinking in interrelated structures – considering complex linkages and multiple effects; (2) dynamic thinking – thinking that is not limited to grasping mere ‘snapshots’ of a situation, but rather considers its evolution over time; (3) thinking via models – being aware of our disposition to deal with a model of a complex situation, although the model usually massively simplifies the appearance of the situation compared with the actual one; and (4) systemic action – the practical ability to conduct systems. A taxonomy for developing and measuring the effect of systems thinking was proposed by Stave and Hopper (2007). The seven systemsthinking components they identified were: (1) recognizing interconnections – recognizing that systems exist and are composed of interconnectedparts;(2)identifyingfeedback–identifying cause-and-effect relationships among parts of a system; (3) understanding dynamic behavior – understanding how feedback is responsible for generating the patterns of behavior exhibited

by a system; (4) differentiating types of flows and variables – understanding how different variables work in a system; (5) using conceptual models – integrating and implementing the concepts of causality, feedback, and types of variables; (6) creating simulation models – describing system connections in mathematical terms; and (7) testing policies – using simulation models to understand system behavior and test systemic effects of changes in parameter values or structures. Also Squires and colleagues (2011) formulated a systems-thinking competency taxonomy within the field of engineering. They claimed that systems thinking is the ability to: (1) incorporate multiple perspectives; (2) work within a context where the boundaries or scope of the problem or system at hand may be ‘fuzzy’ or ambiguous; (3) understand various operational aspects of the system; (4) identify inter- and intra-relationships and dependencies; (5) understand complex system behavior; and, most importantly, (6) reliably predict the impact of change on the system.

UNDERSTANDING SYSTEMIC THINKING IN ORGANIZATIONS Before discussing the manifestation of systems thinking in the school organization, it is important to point out power circulation, system boundary, and organizational members’ cognitive complexity as prisms to understanding systemic thinking in organizations.

Systems Thinking and Power Circulation In systemic interrelationships, power, whether individual, collective, or legitimated, needs to be considered and evaluated. Drawing from the notion put forth by Bourdieu (1977) that organizational practices occur within fields of interaction, we need to consider whether power dynamics originate from the relative

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positions of different agents in the system’s network (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Research supports the proposition that ‘crossfield effects’ may be based on the relationships between practices, or the results of such practices (Rawolle, 2010). Accordingly, organizational members are positioned in a ‘structured social space’ with its own properties and power relations, overlapping and interrelating with economic, power, political, and other factors (Spillane et  al., 2001). We need, therefore, to replace the traditional Western perception of power as a structure of domination, with a perception of power as circulated within the system’s network (Foucault, 1984). Power is diffused and emerged, not possessed. Hence, we need to uncover the continuous power circulation that underlies the delicate fabric of our systemic connectivity, thus exploring power as diffused in networks of interactions.

Systems Thinking and System Boundary Interactions occur within a system core and across the boundary between the system core and other systems in the wider system. The open-systems perspective may provide the theoretical justification for a relationship between boundary-spanning activities and organizational improvement. First developed by Thompson (1967), the concept of boundaryspanning roles involves linking the organization and its environment through interactions among members and non-members (Ng, 2013). According to this perspective, since organizations cannot generate all necessary resources from within, but rather depend on their environment for resources essential for their survival, they must engage in boundary-spanning activities to acquire these resources (Hardy, Phillips, & Lawrence, 2003). These boundaryspanning interactions between multiple systems’ actors is a key framework in exploring non-linearity and emergence in complex human systems (Hawkins & James, in press).

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Systems Thinking and Organizational Members’ Cognitive Complexity A major difficulty in complex human systems is the non-linearity of interactions in the system’s network (Snowden & Boone, 2007). This nonlinearity complicates systems’ players understanding of feedback in interactions (Gell-Mann, 1994) and their ability to anticipate the various effects of interactions (Goldspink & Kay, 2003). To recognize and analyze non-linear relationships between cause and effect we need to consider the structure of human information-processing and examine the ability of organizational members to understand and respond to a host of multiple emergent forces in the system’s feedback circulation (Denison, Hooijberg, & Quinn, 1995). Thus, understanding the nature of complex human systems relies on various levels of cognitively complex individuals who are expected to have the ability to differentiate between and integrate multiple feedbacks/ outcomes that are difficult to predict due to non-linearity and emergence in the system’s circular relations (Stacey & Mowles, 2015).

SYSTEMS THINKING IN SCHOOLS Present-day public schools are very similar to the ones established in the 19th century. This similarity may account for the growing dissatisfaction with schools with regard to their role and relevance for society (Lemley, Schumacher, & Vesey, 2014; Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012). The myriad restructuring efforts that have been invested in attempts to adapt schools to our turbulent times have not had significant effects on teachers’ mental models, and consequently on professional issues of teaching and learning. In other words, fragmented rather than holistic restructuring efforts have not translated into pedagogical and curricular changes that can be clearly sensed at the classroom level (Fullan, 2016). Thus, years of fragmentary educational

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reform initiatives (Hargreaves, Boyle, & Harris, 2014) have resulted in a growing dissatisfaction with schools’ social, physical, and linguistic structures, calling for systemic frameworks of thinking and action to deal with complex situations. The literature on systems thinking in schools is limited. Mostly, it consists of instruction books, offering structured models for successful educational reforms (e.g., Hoban, 2002; Senge et al., 2012). These models usually concentrate on implementing systems thinking regarding a particular issue of a school-life aspect that is essential for effective educational transformation. Only a few researchers have described practical uses of systems thinking in school reality, generally focusing on a variety of specific issues, such as team learning or evidence-based practice, as will be discussed presently. Systems thinking can be used to contemplate and facilitate the improvement of key elements in school life. In the context of educational reforms, systems thinking may provide a frame of reference for comprehensive school reformation and rearrangement, allowing for strategic planning, encompassing the organization’s total resources and purposes (Miller-Williams & Kritsonis, 2009). Focusing on the sustainability of educational reforms, Fullan (2005) asserted that schools’ sustained improvement requires ‘system thinkers’ who address the entire system on three levels: school and community, district or local education authority, and state or national policy. These system thinkers, regardless of their own placement in the system, recognize the fact that all three levels exert some sort of influence on one another. Similarly, King and Frick (2000) claimed that schools cannot be effectively redesigned unless systems-thinking skills are employed, as the latter enable those concerned to analyze existing school systems and design alternative ones by exploring how people and elements in the school environment interact. Thus, the answer to the question of how schools may become places of transformation lies in systems thinking (Zmuda, Kuklis, & Kline, 2004).

Another seminal issue that is related to school life is parent–school relationships. Here too, systems thinking may help reframe parent–school partnerships as learning communities aiming to create new knowledge and innovation by enabling teachers’ and parents’ experiences and capabilities to interact in order to make tacit knowledge explicit (Price-Mitchell, 2009). In the context of the No Child Left Behind federal legislation in the USA, Chance (2005) proposed the use of a systems approach, claiming that systems thinking helps educational leaders to see public relations as a continual, systemic process that is essential for engaging community support to improve students’ learning. Since the systemic approach emphasizes varied goals’ interrelatedness, it may also generate teachers’ joint learning (Cheng, 2011) and sustain it in the long run. Thus, teachers explore the system in the attempt to identify its interconnections and proceed to come up with solutions based on their newly-arrived-at deeper understanding (Wells & Keane, 2008). Assessing curricula and educational programs may benefit from systems thinking as well; curriculum evaluation via systems thinking can ensure district-wide uniformity and consistency in evaluation (Jasparro, 1998). In this specific context, Dyehouse, Bennett, Harbor, Childress, and Dark (2009) compared linear and systems-thinking approaches for evaluating educational programs and demonstrated how systems thinking provides added value by modeling the participant groups, instruments, outcomes, and other factors in ways that enhance the interpretation of quantitative and qualitative data.

CORE CHARACTERISTICS OF SYSTEMS THINKING IN SCHOOL ORGANIZATION The attempt to conceptualize a more holistic framework of systems thinking in school organization (Shaked & Schechter, 2014, 2017a) has

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yielded four core characteristics: (1) seeing wholes; (2) adopting a multidimensional view; (3) influencing indirectly; and (4) evaluating significance. The first characteristic is seeing wholes – the conceptualization of all aspects of school life as one large system, so that when a need to change or improve it arises, faculty members will not dwell on small, isolated parts but will attempt instead to consider a large number of interactions and their mutual influences. Seeing wholes thus permits faculty members to understand that a whole system may present emerging properties that are not explicitly apparent in the properties of its components. The second characteristic is adopting a multidimensional view – the ability to cope with several aspects of a given issue simultaneously, hypothesizing a wide range of reasons for its emergence and continued existence, taking into account a variety of its consequences and predicting various options for its future development. Thus, the multidimensional characteristic considers various issues from multiple relevant perspectives and viewpoints, as well as cognitively switching among perspectives in order to overcome problematic issues. The third characteristic is influencing indirectly – applying an indirect approach when dealing with tasks and challenges, based on the awareness that countless mutual influences are at play among various elements within the

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school, each of which is connected to others, affecting them and being affected by them. Inasmuch as each element within the school functions as an interconnected part of an entire system, with implications for the system’s other parts, school practices can be affected indirectly. Thus, faculty members should examine how their own actions can directly, and more importantly indirectly, contribute to improving the situation. The fourth characteristic is evaluating significance – the ability to evaluate the various elements of school life by level of importance in terms of the entire system, prioritizing them as far as urgency of the need for a solution, and identifying patterns within the system as well as between the system and its environment. These characteristics are presented in Table 15.1. In order to categorize the four characteristics of systems thinking in school organization let us recall systems thinking’s two main complementary meanings: (a) seeing the whole beyond the parts – rising above the separate elements to see the entire system; and (b) seeing the parts in the context of the whole – considering each separate element to be part of the whole system, emphasizing the interrelationships between the elements rather than the elements themselves. Each of the four characteristics relates primarily to one of these two meanings of the systems

Table 15.1  Characteristics of systems thinking in school organization Characteristic Seeing wholes

Components

• Seeing the entire school, including all of its facets, as one large system • Seeing pupils’ parents, the surrounding community, and district officials as partners • Understanding that a group is more than the sum of its parts • Realizing how school properties continuously evolve through constant interactions Adopting a multidimensional view • Conceptualizing many aspects of a given issue simultaneously • Alternating perspectives • Embracing contradictory views • Identifying several causes for a single event/occurrence Influencing indirectly • Looking out for indirect effects when dealing with tasks and challenges • Envisioning circuitous influences and multiplicity of effects within the system Evaluating significance • Recognizing important issues and prioritizing them • Looking for illusive albeit possibly significant occurrences and processes • Identifying patterns within the system as well as between the system and its environment

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thinking approach. Seeing wholes refers to viewing the whole picture in the context of the entire school as well as in relation to various issues that interact within it. Adopting a multidimensional view is a consequence of the deep realization that since each element is part and parcel of the large complex school system, it must have more than one reason, one explanation, one implication, or one answer, thereby requiring faculty members to take various aspects into account simultaneously. Thus, each of these two characteristics reflects the first meaning of systems thinking: seeing the whole beyond the parts. The other two characteristics reflect the second meaning of systems thinking: seeing the parts in the context of the whole. Indeed, the influencing indirectly characteristic is based on the understanding that any given issue constitutes a part of a whole system, so that faculty members do not need to deal directly and specifically with each issue that may arise, but rather have the ability to influence issues indirectly and circuitously. Evaluating significance means identifying and prioritizing patterns within the system as well as between the system and its environment in order to trace illusive albeit significant processes. Thus, the systems thinking in school organization framework has two aspects – seeing the whole beyond the parts and seeing the parts in the context of the whole – each of which is reflected by two characteristics. Figure 15.1 shows the above mentioned four characteristics of systems thinking in school organization: (1) seeing wholes; (2) adopting a multidimensional view; (3) influencing indirectly; and (4) evaluating significance. These four characteristics are divided according to the two meanings of systems thinking: the first two characteristics are related to seeing the whole beyond its parts; and the other two characteristics are related to seeing the parts in the context of the whole. The interrelatedness and interconnectedness among these four characteristics of systems thinking in school organization are implied by the bidirectional arrows.

APPLICATIONS OF SYSTEMS THINKING IN SCHOOLS The current section provides two possible applications of systems thinking when dealing with real-life school situations, through the frameworks of system dynamics and complex adaptive systems.

System Dynamics Coined in the 1960s by Forrester (1961, 1968), the concept of System Dynamics emphasizes the use of models and modeling techniques to contemplate and diagnose complex management issues. Attempting to identify the patterns of behavior being exhibited by important system variables, the modeler proceeds to construct a model mimicking those patterns. Through the use of systemsthinking ideas, Senge (2006) identified certain system archetypes, which are simple sketches of common organizational management problems. The relatively small number of classic system management archetypes that he identified – such as ‘shifting the burden’, ‘escalation’, and ‘eroding goals’ – demonstrates shared patterns that characterize a large variety of management situations. These archetypes provide managers with insights into the feedback-loop structures underlying the changes that occur over time in a system’s behavior. The interrelationships between feedback loops constitute the structure of the system, which is the primary determinant of its behavior. It is precisely these interrelationships that can alert managers to future unintended and unexpected consequences. The following illustration from the domain of school leadership may be instructive of Senge’s ‘balancing process with delay’ system archetype, portraying how managers and/or employees are not aware of time lag’s impact on the process they have begun implementing, which at times brings them to hyper-correct, i.e., to take more corrective

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Seeing wholes Seeing the whole beyond the parts

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Adopting a multidimensional view

Systems thinking in school organization

Seeing the parts in the context of the whole Evaluating significance

Influencing indirectly

Figure 15.1  Four core characteristics of systems thinking in school organization as reflecting the two main meanings of systems thinking

action than needed or, alternatively, to give up on the process entirely (see Figure 15.2). At a certain urban high school, students’ learning problems led to a constant decline in their scores on the national matriculation exams (‘Students’ learning problems’ in Figure 15.2). A desirable indication of school effectiveness improvement would be updated and innovative teaching strategies leading to students’ ameliorated learning and consequently to high scores on national exams – providing better admission opportunities to prestigious higher education programs (‘Desirable scores’ in Figure 15.2); therefore, we can see the school’s problem as a gap between the desired scores, representing its effectiveness, and the actual scores of its students on the national matriculation

exams (‘School scores gap’ in Figure 15.2). In response to the situation at his school, the principal launched a curriculum focused on a special study program, providing more time for staff to focus on pedagogical activities (‘Improving program’ in Figure 15.2). The program consisted of several interwoven components, including professional development for teachers, allocating more time for individual instruction based on students’ particular needs, and structuring more collaborative sessions for teachers designed to focus on improving teaching and learning. A few months after the program had been launched, it turned out that teachers and parents alike were complaining about the fact that students were being called out of class for individual tutoring at the expense

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Students’ learning problems Delay

Improving program

Desirable scores School scores gap

Figure 15.2  Balancing process with delay

of regular classroom hours, and a new and ‘surprising’ national report showed that the school still had not made much progress as far as the national exam scores. Hence, a few months after the new program had begun, the principal decided that it was not achieving its goals; he thus aggravated the situation by introducing new measures – i.e., hiring external professional tutors to instruct staff members. Nevertheless, after another few months, again no sign of improvement was detected, and this was accompanied by resistance and cynicism among the school staff, who claimed that the new change (external tutors) did not suit the school’s needs. Consequently, the principal concluded that the program was ineffective and decided to drop it. This led, a few months later, to a continuation of the downhill trend and even turned into a counterproductive process – which was indicated by even more unsatisfactory scores on national tests. This illustration shows how the principal did not decipher the situation correctly, since he did not understand the reason for the system’s delay in response to the new teaching– learning program. Due to what seemed to him as a lack of progress, the principal took over-corrective action, reflected in bringing in external tutors. This over-correction provoked resistance, which necessitated canceling this much-needed improvement program. From a systemic perspective, a school is a sluggish system that is slow to respond to corrective processes, and it takes

time for the school pedagogy to change and deliver feedback – in this case, better scores on national exams. This ‘balancing process with delay’ archetype involves people (one person, a group of people, or an organization) who, while acting towards realizing a certain goal, must adjust their behavior in response to delayed feedback. In many cases, systems respond to people’s actions only after a while, not immediately. Problems may arise when managers or employees are not aware of the impact of this delay on the process that they have begun, in which case they may take more corrective action than needed or give up on the process entirely. The major determinant of an organization’s behavior is its feedback-loop structure, which is highlighted by the system dynamics approach. Providing a framework enabling faculty members to explore more comprehensive patterns of relationships among the feedback loops that arise in the course of the organization’s routine functioning can help spot the factors that are actually responsible for generating its behavior. It allows both teachers and administrators to hypothesize what the consequences of current policies and initiatives may be, to analyze forces of change in order to improve the system, and ultimately to seek fundamental causes rather than act upon knowledge of symptoms. Thus, system dynamics provides a framework that could enable faculty members to see beyond the surface and to reveal the deeper patterns of relationships among the feedback loops that are actually responsible for creating behaviors.

Complex Adaptive Systems Complex adaptive systems reflect the dynamic, interactive, and interdependent nature of agents’ adaptation to an external environment (Daly, Moolenaar, Bolivar, & Burke, 2010). The complexity in this context refers to the fact that any given system contains many elements that interact in diverse

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ways and are changed by those interactions. ‘An entity is complex when the interactions among its constituent parts are such that it cannot be fully understood simply by describing its components’ (Hawkins & James, in press). Adaptive systems in this context have the ability to alter its behavior and take on new relationships with the environment (MitletonKelly, 2003; Olson & Eoyang, 2001). One of the main characteristics of complex adaptive systems is emergence, referring to the way in which some form of overall order arises out of many relatively simple interactions. These interactions can affect the system in different and unpredictable ways (Hawkins & James, in press). Understanding these interactions is of the essence, as they give rise to patterns of social interaction throughout the system, which may be related to outcomes that are significant for the entire organization. Nevertheless, the new order/outcomes that emerge through interactions are difficult to predict due to non-linearity and emergence in the system (Dooley, 1997; Stacey & Mowles, 2015). Hence, organizations can be viewed and treated as complex adaptive systems since they exhibit the fundamental principles of complexity, adaptability, and emergence (Beeson & Davis, 2000; Chiva-Gomez, 2003). The concept of complex adaptive systems may provide an important framework for educational issues. Newell (2008), for example, recommended that the classroom be considered a complex adaptive system, shifting attention from the individual student to the social collective (i.e., the class) as the focus of learning. Seeing the class as a learning system, dynamic local interactions may enable emergent behaviors to surface; these are indicative of learning that transcends that of the individual students within the class. More specifically, Burns and Knox (2011) described classroom processes as complex adaptive system events, arguing that linear descriptions of such processes could not sufficiently capture the complex nature of classrooms, and therefore would not suffice to explain how they evolve over

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time. They presented a relational classroom model focusing on the relations among various classroom elements, such as the physical, environmental, cognitive, and social aspects, showing how crucial their interactions are for comprehending classroom processes. To illustrate from our research (Shaked & Schechter, 2014), Sarah, an elementary school principal with 12 years of experience on the job, expressed her revelation concerning a group of students that may surprisingly present totally different features from those that would supposedly be expected to constitute the sum of their individual traits: In our school, we divide the pupils into new classes for their third year at school. Many times, in spite of our hard work to create equal classes, eventually the classes become very different. And then after a while someone always suggests that we mix the classes and re-divide them, because now we already know the pupils well and can create equal classes. I explain to my staff again and again that even if you know each student’s personality and abilities very well, you can never foresee exactly what sort of characteristics the whole class will take on. A class as a group is not just the sum of the students comprising it; when you put them together they engage in all sorts of interactions, and influence each other in so many ways that all of them are transformed. This is a very important principle, which is true in other contexts as well.

Sarah’s holistic, systems-thinking claim about classrooms’ features being determined by more than the sum of the individual pupils comprising them – and her generalization of this claim to other contexts too – reflects her orientation toward seeing the evolving characteristics of students’ interactions. In this sense, any school may be seen as a complex adaptive system. A school is made up of multiple interconnected components that interact with each other, having the capacity to change and create newly emerging properties and designs. For instance, when school faculty members meet in various collaborative forums, they often demonstrate unexpected features and behaviors that emerge from their interaction in this specific collective context, unlike their behavior

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as individuals. Similarly, relatively simple interactions among teachers, students, and parents may lead to the emergence of a general atmosphere of caring, or alternatively to strained relations or competitiveness.

EXPLORING SYSTEMS THINKING IN SCHOOL ORGANIZATION While reductionism focuses on what the object is made of, the systems perspective focuses on the interactions and relationships among the object’s components (in the case of a school – students, teachers, administrators, parents, community members, and policy-makers). Thus, systems thinking focuses on human beings’ symbiotic relationships with each other in a particular context, which continuously generates emerging organizational properties. Inasmuch as the systems perspective constitutes a reflection on a possible alternative framework for school organization, further important questions arise: if schoolwork, from the systemic perspective, is evoked through ‘irreducible’ relationships that faculty members maintain (Schechter, in press), does it exist outside relationality? If systemic processes are relational, what criteria would be pertinent for validating these emerging school processes? Embracing a systemic framework requires policy-makers, administrators, and educators to espouse not only a different frame of reference, but also a distinct language that would be sensitive to the dynamic relationships among faculty members. Therefore, the question arises: What is the language of systems thinking in school organization? From a critical perspective, it would be advisable to consider the following questions: Whose interests does the extensive use of systems thinking serve? If systemic capability is nurtured through organizational experiences (Shaked & Schechter, 2017a), how is it influenced by, and how does it interact with, organizational knowledge, power, and perceptions of ‘the truth’? Is administrations’ hegemony strengthened or even secured through

promotion of the systemic school perspective? Can systemic thinking be free of coercion and/ or deception? How can the development of individual systemic capacities be integrated with the development of organizational systemic capacities and what is the nature of their symbiotic relationships and power dynamics? From a cognitive perspective, a wellgrounded conception of systems thinking in school organization should be formulated to explain the process through which individual systemic capability and understanding transforms into organizational property, as this process is not and cannot be self-evident. We cannot assume that systems thinking at the school level is literally or metaphorically necessarily similar to its expression on the individual level. Individual systems thinking can serve as a precursor to group and organizational systemic capacities; however, each can also evolve independently of the other. This paradox of systems thinking at the school level may be the cause for conceptual confusion, as it is not simply the sum of the individual members’ systemic capabilities, even though organizations obviously develop through individual members (Friedman, Lipshitz, & Popper, 2005). From an educational change and policy implementation perspective, ensuring high levels of school performance is contingent on a range of complex and interrelated factors which may be difficult to predict and control. ‘Achieving policy performance objectives may not be under the direct control of the teacher and the appropriateness of annually set objectives may change as a whole-school system evolves’ (Hawkins & James, in press). Systemic thinking may explain the nature of the school organization under challenging reform implementation, illuminating how systemic cause-and-effect models ‘interact’ with linear models of planning and control. How can policy-makers, superintendents, school leaders, and teachers make sense of the inherent contradictions between systemic and linear perspectives in times of policyaccountability demands? Can a reductionist

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policy perspective (control, division of labor, hierarchy) and a systemic perspective (nonlinear cause-and-effect relations, emergence) co-create and nurture each other during processes of change and reform? From a developmental perspective, it would be advisable to understand the trajectory of systemic development through administrators’ career span. Further research should explore how systems thinking can be optimally taught to school leaders, specifically addressing questions such as which teaching methods would be most appropriate for imparting systems thinking, which learning materials can be most useful, and what impact such training may have when implemented along the different stages of school leaders’ career trajectory. In addition, the development of systems thinking can be explored among school position holders other than principals, such as coordinators, educational counselors, or deputy principals (please see our series of studies in these areas, Shaked & Schechter, 2017b, 2018, in press). To conclude, the framework discussed here suggests a change of the dance, thereby shifting from a waltz with the self – in accordance with the reductionist approach – toward a systemic framework, which may be more in line with the current day’s rapidly changing educational scene. Systemic approaches may offer valuable theoretical and practical answers to schools’ noticeable and urgent needs. Nurturing faculty members’ systemic thinking and actions with regard to the array of elements that interact within the complex, changing school environment – including curriculum, instruction, assessment methods, data interpretation, staff teamwork, and policy – may increase schools’ abilities to meet the very high expectations and challenges they face.

REFERENCES Araya, D. (2015). Rethinking US education policy: Paradigms of the knowledge economy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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16 The Interactional Nature of Schools as Social Organizations: Three Theoretical Perspectives Peter Sleegers, Nienke Moolenaar and Alan J. Daly

INTRODUCTION In this chapter, we summarize three distinct theoretical perspectives that have been guiding our empirical research into the extent to which the pattern of social relationships in schools may support or hinder efforts at school improvement. These are social capital theory, social network theory, and complexity theory. In this chapter, we define the concept of ‘school organization’ broadly to complement a more ‘functional’, instrumental approach on school organization. A functional approach to school organization uses vocabulary such as formal structure, centralization and decentralization, planning and control, standardization, and division of labor. We consider a more expansive notion of schools as organization by considering a ‘social’, interactional approach on organizing teachers’ work in schools. In this social approach on school organization, teachers’ interactions are regarded as central to create opportunities for individual and collective teacher learning at the workplace in

support of schools’ ability to change and sustain improvement. As research has shown that student learning depends greatly on the quality of instruction, fostering teacher learning in schools has been identified as a key challenge in improving the quality of education to build school-level capacity to change and to sustain improvement (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002; Kwakman, 2003; Putnam & Borko, 2000; Oude Grootte Beverborg, et al., 2015; Smylie, 1995). While teacher education programs and teacher professionalization initiatives use formal training to address this challenge, researchers and practitioners have also underlined the importance of the school as a social context in which workplace learning takes place. One of the most systematic inquiries on teacher learning embedded in schools comes from research on schools as learning organizations and professional learning communities (Leithwood & Louis, 1998; Mitchell & Sackney, 2000; Sleegers et al., 2013; Stoll et al., 2006;

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Toole & Louis 2002; Vescio, Ross & Adams, 2008). This line of work suggests that intensity of collaboration and learning among staff, as well as the development of the school as a whole, depend on the degree to which schools create informal opportunities for teachers’ professional learning (Sleegers, Geijsel & Van den Berg, 2002; Sleegers & Leithwood, 2010). The social context of workplace learning is a particular focus of research on schools as learning organizations and professional learning communities (PLCs). Studies of schools as PLCs highlight the systemic character of school organization, one in which multiple stakeholders, at multiple levels in the system, interact to build school capacity. Although research on professional learning communities has underlined the importance of teacher collaboration and supportive social structure for teacher learning and school improvement, the concept of teacher collaboration has been interpreted broadly, for instance, as a form of school climate or culture, encompassing norms of collegiality, trust, and social support; a management instrument to enhance school effectiveness; and a characteristic of a (professional learning) community (Mayrowetz, 2008; Nias, Southworth & Yeomans, 1989). Moreover, empirical evidence concerning the nature and quality of the social relations that support teachers’ professional learning and educational change is scarce. Scholars seem to have overlooked what lies at the foundation of the notion of ‘community’: teachers’ interactions in social networks within schools (Sleegers et  al., 2013). As a consequence, we know little about the social fabric that signifies the ‘community’ of a professional learning community. This weak conceptual elaboration is considered a main reason why research on professional learning communities seems to have stagnated at the developmental stage of theory building (Stoll et al., 2006; Toole & Louis 2002; Vescio et al., 2008; Westheimer, 1999). Yet, the three distinct theoretical perspectives – social capital theory, social network theory, and complexitty theory – as

synthesized in this chapter, can provide valuable lenses to elaborate the patterns of social relationships in schools that may support or hinder efforts at school improvement and may offer insights in the interactional nature of schools as social organizations. We will start the chapter by discussing the nature and potential of these perspectives for describing schools as social organizations that offer affordances for individual and collective learning. We will end the chapter with propositions on how these theories may further our understanding of the interactional nature of schools as social organizations.

SOCIAL CAPITAL THEORY Social capital theory offers a theoretical perspective on the interactional nature of schools that builds on a rich tradition in sociology (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1990; Putnam, 1995). Social capital theory postulates that individuals (e.g., teachers) are embedded in social systems that provide access to resources that can be exchanged, borrowed, and leveraged (e.g., to support schools’ ability to achieve collective goals). The popularity of social capital is reflected in the myriad of definitions used to describe the concept (see Table 16.1). These commonly cited definitions of social capital share a focus on some form of social structure, network, or pattern of relationships that play a role in the exchange of resources and the facilitation of collective purposive action. As defined by its principal theorists (Coleman, 1990; Putnam, 1993), social capital refers to ‘the sum of the actual and potential resources embedded within, available through, and derived from the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit. Social capital thus comprises both the network and the assets that may be mobilized through that network’ (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998, p. 243). Social capital belongs to the family of ‘intangible assets’ that can be accrued and leveraged

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Table 16.1  Leading definitions of social capital Social capital is ‘the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 249) ‘Social capital is defined by its function. It is not a single entity, but a variety of different entities, having two characteristics in common: they all consist of some aspect of a social structure, and they facilitate certain actions of individuals who are within the structure’ (Coleman, 1990, p. 302) ‘Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to the properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them’ (Putnam, 2000, p. 19) Social capital comprises ‘the resources embedded in social relations and social structure which can be mobilized when an actor wishes to increase the likelihood of success in purposive action’ (Lin, 2001, p. 24) Social capital refers to ‘features of social organization – such as networks […], high levels of interpersonal trust and norms of mutual aid and reciprocity – which act as resources for individuals and facilitate collective action’ (Lochner, Kawachi & Kennedy, 1999, p. 260)

by individuals, groups, or systems, similar to human capital and intellectual capital. While each of the definitions in Table 16.1 places an emphasis on slightly different elements in social capital, they all focus on the potential of relationships to exchange resources. Comparable to financial, human, or intellectual capital, in which money, manpower, or intellectual resources are the valuable assets, social capital reflects valuable resources that exist in social relationships among linked individuals and can thus be understood as ‘ties with potential’. Many scholars have identified dense social capital as a critical source of organizational advantage (e.g., Adler & Kwon, 2002; Leana & Van Buren, 1999; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Walker, Kogut & Shah, 1997). Social capital is argued to contribute to organizational goals by facilitating the flow of information between individuals and overcoming problems of coordination (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Lazega & Pattison, 2001; Leana & Van Buren, 1999; Lin, 2001; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Tsai & Ghoshal, 1998; Walker et  al., 1997). Tight and stable networks of communication have proven to contribute to the functioning of organizations (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993; Lawler, 1992),

and organizational social capital can add significantly to value creation through innovation (Tsai & Ghoshal, 1998). Moreover, organizations with dense informal network structures within and between organizational units generally achieve higher levels of performance than those with sparse connections (Reagans & Zuckerman, 2001). However, those same densely connected networks may also inhibit performance due to the stability of ties which may limit the introduction of novel information (Szulanski, 1996), reduce flexible organizational response, and primarily move redundant information (Burt, 1992; Hannan & Freeman, 1984). Throughout most social capital literature, two dimensions of social capital can be distinguished: a structural and a relational dimension (e.g., Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1990; Halpern, 2005). The structural dimension refers to the structure of social relationships in which resources can be accrued (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). In terms of school organization, this structural dimension is reflected in teachers’ professional relationships, which offer opportunities for individual and collective learning through the exchange of information, lesson plans, materials, and other resources. Studies into the

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structural dimension of social capital suggest that schools with a dense pattern of teacher relationships support large school reform efforts, an open orientation towards innovation, and overall school functioning, as well as counteract negative phenomena such as absenteeism and low job satisfaction due to teacher isolation (Bakkenes, De Brabander & Imants, 1999). The second component of social capital, the relational dimension, refers to the quality of relationships through which resources can be accrued. This quality is often described in terms of the norms, values, and expectancies that are shared by group members (Bourdieu, 1986; Halpern, 2005; Portes, 1998). Trust among organizational members is identified as the most important affective norm characterizing a community (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Trust can be defined as an individual’s or group’s willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the confidence that the latter party is benevolent, reliable, competent, honest, and open (Cummings & Bromiley, 1996; Hoy & Tschannen-Moran, 2003). In social capital literature, trust and social interaction are often mentioned as interrelated dimensions. Trust is based on interpersonal interdependence, embedded in relationships, and often associated with cooperation and group cohesiveness (Deutsch, 1958; Hoy & Tschannen-Moran, 2003; Rousseau et  al., 1998; Zand, 1972, 1997). Social relationships may influence teachers’ practice by creating a safe environment in which teachers can engage in innovative practices and experiment with new instructional strategies without the fear of being punished or ridiculed (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Daly et al., 2010; Moolenaar, Daly & Sleegers, 2011; Onyx & Bullen, 2000; Penuel et al., 2007 TschannenMoran, 2001). Positive experiences from prior social interactions may foster trust by reducing uncertainty about the engagement and involvement of the other party and decreases vulnerability between individuals (Larson, 1992; Uzzi, 1997). As such, social interactions among teachers may shape the

context in which trust can flourish by providing a blueprint for future interactions, shaping expectations, and conveying information about the norms and values of social interaction within the community.

SOCIAL NETWORK THEORY A second theoretical perspective on the interactional nature of schools is offered by social network theory. Social network theory foregrounds the importance of social ties and network structure for the exchange of resources (e.g., Coburn & Russell, 2008; Daly, Moolenaar & Carrier, 2011; Penuel et al., 2009). At least three assumptions underlie social network theory and the resulting social network research (Degenne & Forsé, 1999). First, actors in a social network are assumed to be interdependent rather than independent (Degenne & Forsé, 1999; Wasserman & Faust, 1997). In schools, for instance, social networks take shape in the interdependencies between teachers. In support of their work, teachers engage in dyadic relationships (e.g., for the exchange of information of lesson materials), and these dyadic relationships are embedded in larger subgroups (e.g., gradelevel, department structures), and, at an even higher level, these relationships form larger network structures of schools and districts. As these relationships are regarded to be interdependent, this means that changes in relationships at a dyadic level (e.g., teachers increase the number of dyadic relationships in which they exchange lesson materials) will influence a higher level (e.g., school level capacity for change) and vice versa (Burt, 2000; Moolenaar, 2012). Second, relationships are regarded as conduits for the exchange or flow of resources such as information, knowledge and materials (Borgatti & Ofem, 2010; Burt, 1992; Kilduff & Tsai, 2003; Moolenaar, 2012; Powell, Koput & Smith-Doerr, 1996). The flow of resources can be described in terms of resource quantity

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(e.g., the amount of resources flowing through a network at a certain intensity) and/or quality (e.g., the value of the resources that flow through a network). Depending on their main focus, network researchers can be characterized as having a structural (main focus on the structure of relationships) or relational perspective on networks (main focus on what flows through the ties). Third, patterns of relationships, captured by social networks, may act as ‘constraints’ and offer opportunities for individual action (Brass & Burkhardt, 1993; Burt, 1982; Gulati, 1995). In schools, the extent to which teachers engage in relationships shapes opportunities for them to achieve individual and collective goals. For instance, through engaging in social relationships with colleagues, teachers may have access to tangible and intangible resources (e.g., lesson materials, expertise) that extend their own, individual resources. Yet, they can only benefit from these resources if they have knowledge and access to these resources (Borgatti & Cross, 2003). In addition, the maintenance of social relationships may constrain teachers’ opportunities, as social relationships may come with ‘strings attached’ (e.g., may cost energy or limit the opportunity other relationships, ‘my friend’s enemy is my enemy’). Moreover, from a school-level perspective, teachers may only have access to those resources that are actually present at schools, and this suggests that school-level capacity is greatly dependent on schools’ ability to accrue and stimulate the exchange of valuable resources (and limit the access to less- or undesired resources). In spite of the potential of social network theory to examine social relationships across a priori boundaries, most social network studies aim to understand phenomena that are situated in a particular group or bounded sample. Therefore, most networks that are examined within education are defined by formal or researcher-imposed boundaries, for instance, school or district networks. Networks, in this sense, can be regarded as patterns of relationships that reflect purposive

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interaction among educators in a bounded group, such as grade levels, subject matter departments, or schools. The study of social networks in education is receiving increased attention. By examining social networks among teachers, researchers attempt to capture the patterns of social relationships among teachers that result from their interactions in practice and that can promote teacher learning and enhance school improvement. Studies have been conducted in a range of contexts, including school and teacher networks (Bakkenes et  al., 1999; Coburn & Russell, 2008; Daly et al., 2010; Moolenaar, Daly & Sleegers, 2010; Moolenaar, Daly, Sleegers & Karsten 2014; Penuel & Riel, 2007; Penuel, Frank & Krause, 2010; Penuel et al., 2009); leadership networks and departmental structures (Friedkin & Slater, 1994; de Lima, 2003, 2004; Spillane & Camburn, 2006); school–parent networks (Horvat, Weininger & Laureau, 2003); between-school networks (Lieberman, 2000; Mullen & Kochan, 2000; Veugelers & Zijlstra, 2002); and student networks (Baerveldt et al., 2004; Lubbers et al., 2006). Recently, studies have suggested that the pattern of relationships among educators in schools matters for a wide range of outcomes, such as the implementation of educational reform (Coburn & Russell, 2008; Coburn et al., 2010; Daly et al., 2010; Datnow, 2012), the perception of innovative climates and the adoption of innovations and new technology (Daly et al., 2014 Frank, Zhao & Borman, 2004; Moolenaar, 2010), and instructional practice and student achievement (Leana & Pil, 2006; Penuel et  al., 2012; Pil & Leana, 2009; Yasumoto et al., 2001). Research on within-school networks conducted so far has yielded a number of fundamental findings on the pattern of teacher relationships within schools. In synthesizing these findings, we draw on Moolenaar’s (2012) review on social network research in education, in which she identified five key findings on schools’ network structure that

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appear to hold across studies. We will now offer these five key findings as they provide a valuable understanding of the social network approach to the school as a social organization. For more information, we point to Moolenaar (2012). 1 Social network structures differ across schools. Research on social networks in education has consistently shown considerable differences between schools with regard to their internal social network structure, both in terms of the quantity and quality of ties among teachers (Bakkenes et  al., 1999; Daly et  al., 2010; Heyl, 1996; Moolenaar, 2010; Spillane & Healey, 2010). 2 Schools’ overall network structure is often fragmented, resulting in subgroups. Studies into teachers’ social networks in schools have shown that teachers’ relationships are often structured in subgroups within the overall pattern of teacher relationships in schools (Bidwell & Yasumoto, 1999; Daly, 2010; Penuel, Frank & Krause, 2010; Penuel et al., 2009). These relatively homogeneous subgroups are based on similarities among educators, such as gender, ethnicity, discipline, and beliefs about teaching (Frank, 1995, 1996; Heyl, 1996; Penuel et al., 2009). 3 Schools’ social network structure often deviates from formal hierarchical structure. Studies that focused on the informal relationships in schools often found that the informal pattern of social interactions among educators in schools is invariably not fully aligned with the formal hierarchical organizational structure (Penuel, Frank & Krause, 2010; Spillane et al., 2010; Tuytens et al., 2014). Educators do not always enact their intended advisory roles as prominently as expected, even though they were formally appointed to support teachers in making instructional changes (Coburn & Russell, 2008; Spillane & Healey, 2010; Struyve, 2017). In some schools, coaches, subject area leaders, and administrators, who were formally appointed to support teachers in making instructional changes, were found to only play a peripheral role in the advice networks of teachers (Atteberry & Bryk, 2010; Coburn & Russell, 2008; Cole & Weiss, 2009; Spillane & Healey, 2010). Moreover, studies suggest that leadership is often distributed over various actors in the school team, such as principals, teacher leaders, and informal leaders, who may or may not have

a formal mandate to lead (Pitts & Spillane, 2008; Spillane & Kim, 2012). 4 Social networks serve multiple purposes and are shaped accordingly. The content of social relationships matters for the layout of social networks. A common distinction between social networks based on the content that is transferred through the network is the distinction between instrumental (work-related) and expressive (personal, affective) networks (Ibarra, 1993). Instrumental social networks describe work-related relationships in which resources are exchanged that can facilitate achieving organizational goals, such as the exchange of instructional materials or reformrelated information. In contrast, expressive social networks refer to affective-laden relationships between organizational members that are not directly aimed at work-related issues but are formed to exchange social resources such as friendship and social support. In general, expressive ties are believed to be stronger, more durable, and trustworthy than instrumental relationships (Granovetter, 1973; Marsden, 1988). Research on the types of social interactions among teachers validate the difference between instrumental and expressive relationships (Daly & Finnigan, 2010; Finnigan & Daly, 2012; Moolenaar, Sleegers, & Daly, 2012). 5 Social networks are shaped by various individual and school characteristics. There is an abundance of evidence that people are more likely to interact with others who are similar to them with regard to gender, age, experience, ethnicity, grade level, subject matter, physical proximity, beliefs about teaching, and prior professional relationships (Bidwell & Yasumoto, 1999; Coburn et  al., 2010; Daly et  al., 2010; Gamoran et  al., 2005; Heyl, 1996; Kochan & Teddlie, 2005; Moolenaar, 2010; Penuel et  al., 2009; Penuel, Riel et  al., 2010; Spillane, 2005; Yasumoto et  al., 2001). For instance, research has shown that female elementary school teachers are more likely to discuss their work with other female teachers than male teachers, and that older and more experienced teachers are less engaged in work discussions than their younger and less experienced colleagues (Moolenaar, 2010). Moreover, the way teams are structured (grade-level teams, cross-grade-level teams, interdependent teaching roles) seems to affect the pattern of social relationships among educators (Moolenaar, 2010; Penuel, Riel et al., 2010).

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By recognizing and conceptualizing the importance of connections and social ties, the social network approach is a powerful approach to explain various social phenomena. As social ties and the configuration of social networks are its focal concern, social network theory has contributed less to understandings of the mechanisms underlying social exhange and the role of mediating variables in the relationship between social networks and school outcomes (Daly et  al., 2011; De Laat et  al., 2007). Moreover, existing studies seldom simultaneously examine networks at multiple levels of analysis, for instance by taking into account individual network characteristics of teachers (e.g., centrality); dyadic characteristics of their relationships (e.g., homophily); and organizational network characteristics of schools (e.g., density) in the prediction of school improvement and improved student achievement. In addition, although work in educational policy implementation suggests the influence of social interactions in which educational reform is understood, shared, and implemented (Coburn & Russell, 2008), much less work has been done on examining the evolution of these social interactions over time during the implementation of reform. One promising lens that may provide some useful conceptual ideas to understand network changes over time during policy implementation is complexity theory (Jörg, Davis & Nickmans, 2008; Dooley, 1997; Lemke & Sabelli, 2008; Seel, 1999).

A COMPLEXITY PERSPECTIVE ON SOCIAL INTERACTIONS IN SCHOOLS Complexity theory has been most closely associated with the natural sciences (Innes & Booher, 1999; Mitchell, 2009) and only within the last few decades has moved into educational research (Goldspink, 2007; Morrison, 2002; O’Day, 2002). Complexity

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theory argues that complexity offers additional layers of insight by endeavoring to understand complex, intricate, and sometimes elusive system-level processes, such as the dynamic interactions among actors (Lichtenstein & Plowman, 2009), adaptive behaviors (Davis & Simmt, 2003), and learning (Sumara & Davis, 2006) that are at play in social systems. The complexity literature most often refers to the concept of complex adaptive systems, a unique kind of complex system that reflects the dynamic, interactive, and interdependent nature of adaption of agents to an external environment (Seel, 1999). Complex adaptive systems are paradoxically moving between chaos and order, freedom and control, and adapting to and influencing the environment (Dooley, 1997; Mitchell, 2009; Waldrop, 1992). As such, complex adaptive systems evolve according to two key principles: (1) order is emergent as opposed to predetermined – the state of the system is often unpredictable and cannot return to its exact original state (Dooley, 1997); and (2) the nature of change is dynamic – not only does a given agent within a system change over time, but so do surrounding agents, the system, and the environment in which they interact (Allen, 2001; Mischen & Jackson, 2008). Complex adaptive systems theory suggests that a system’s movement between change and stability is patterned and that those patterns can be understood as one examines the system over time (Fernandez, 2007). Although the patterns of social interactions in a system may look disordered, these interactions are in fact governed by group dynamics, social movements, open-market economies, and a series of underlying rules, similar to self-organizing behavior patterns of a flock of birds, which become more apparent over time (Choi, Dooley, & Rungtusanatham, 2001; Kelly, 1994; Stacey, 2001). As such, understanding these rules may provide insight into the overall patterns of change across a system and allows one to analyze the organizational system from a more holistic point of view.

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Therefore, complex adaptive systems may be a useful lens to theorize around the formation of ties, emergent social patterns, and dynamic network changes that occur during implementation. Studies applying a complex adaptive systems approach to analyzing the development of social interactions between educators over time during the implementation of policy initiatives are rare. Jennifer O’Day’s (2002) work on accountability is one of the few exceptions in which a complexity lens is used to understand how the accountability mechanisms may help schools to implement lasting and meaningful school reforms. More recently, Alan Daly and his colleagues have started to take a complex adaptive systems perspective to examine the development of complex social interactions between central office and school site administrators implementing a reform policy over time (Daly et  al., 2017). We will elaborate on this study to illustrate how ideas and concepts from complex adaptive systems theory can be applied to better understand the process of school improvement by studying the formation of ties, emergent social patterns, and dynamic network change over time.

District reform and Policy Implementation: An Illustration Drawing on a complex adaptive systems approach, Daly and his colleagues examined the evolution of the social ties between central office and principals in an underperfoming school district over time (three years) during the implementation of reform (Daly et  al., 2017). They used four core concepts related to complex adaptive systems, including equlibrium, feedback, emergence, and fitness landscapes, to better understand the formation and dissolution of social ties between leaders. Before we describe the key findings, we will first briefly discuss these core concepts and the related hypotheses that

guided the inquiry. For a more detailed discussion of these concepts, we refer readers to Daly et al. (2017). According to a complex adaptive system perpective, the concept of punctuated equilibrium refers to the process of an organization moving between chaos and the development of a new order as the system adapts and changes, through the process of selforganization (see also Gould & Eldridge, 1977; Prigorgine & Stengers, 1984). As a system evolves, it moves through periods of equilibrium, returning to a stable pattern of interaction before changing again. Scholars argue that for new structures and order to be created, the system must move away from the exisiting equilibrium state or risk ‘bouncing’ back to existing patterns of interaction, otherwise changes will be temporary (Mischen & Jackson, 2008; Mitleton-Kelly, 2003). Based on this notion of punctuated equilibrium, Daly et al. (2017) assumed that the pattern of social ties among the educational leaders in the district will change over time through the formation and dissolution of ties related to reform policy implementation from an equilibrium state in the first phase of the implementation to increased dispersion of relational resources, and then return to a near equilibrium state at the end of the reform implementation process. The results showed significant relational change in the system with policy networks initially being centralized, becoming more dispersed, and then returning to a more centralized equilibrium state, with district office leaders playing central roles. In order for a system to adapt to its environment, feedback among interacting elements of the system is an important prerequisite for environmental adaptation and organizational change (Marion, 1999; Morrison, 2002). As a system evolves and adapts, it generates information-signaling processes, which provide opportunities for the system to learn and adapt to environmental demands (Andriani, 2003; Cilliers, 2000; Mischen & Jackson, 2008; Morrison, 2002; Stacey, 2001). As a process of information exchange

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is often distributed through a system as a way to increase knowledge, share meaning, and ultimately improve performance through learning, feedback as a process of learning is an important mechanism to facilitate or inhibit adaptation and change (Choo, 2006; Mischen & Jackson, 2008; Morrison, 2002; Spillane, Reiser & Reimer, 2002; Weick, 1995). Research on social networks in education has shown that collaborative interactions and reciprocated ties can support teacher learning (Burt, 1992; Daly & Finnigan, 2010; Moolenaar, 2010; Morrison, 2002) and may provide opportunities for greater adaptation and change of the educational system (Honig & Ikemoto, 2008), all of which may be necessary in implementing reform. Given the literature on the importance of feedback, Daly et al. (2017) hypothesized and, indeed, confirmed that during reform implementation, over time, educators will increase the formation of reciprocated social ties around reform policy implementation to support reciprocal opportunities for feedback. The idea of emergence addresses the importance of patterns of interaction that emerge over time through the interconnected behaviors of actors adapting to their environment (Cilliers, 2000; Morrison, 2002). As these interactions often take place in localized segments of the system (e.g., teachers in subject departments), examining the separate interactions of ‘local’ dyads and triads at the micro-level of the system is important as those interactions give rise to an emerging global pattern of social interaction at the macro-level of the system, which in turn may be related to outcomes for the entire organization (Cilliers, 2001; Miller & Page, 2007; Morrison, 2002). Therefore, examining the locally situated context is important in analyzing the implementation of a policy. Based on this concept of emergence, Daly and colleagues expected that over time district and site leaders will tend toward forming specific ‘local’ micro dyadic and triadic social ties related to reform policy implementation. The findings did confirm that dyadic and triadic

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patterns at the ‘micro-level’ of the system emerged, with leaders in the district tending to form ties based on actor centrality and local neighborhoods. The last central concept related to a complex adaptive system perspective used by Daly and his colleagues, is the notion of ‘fitness landscapes’. The term ‘landscape’ refers to the space of all possible interactions within a complex adaptive system (Kauffman, 1995; Mischen & Jackson, 2008), while the term ‘fitness’ represents the degree to which novel connections are developed and existing resources are searched for and exploited (Stacey, 2001). In their attempts to understand the collective behavior of people, social scientists have examined the behavior of a group of people that ‘climb’ particular peaks in the landscape to gain a broader perspective over the terrain aimed at improving their collective performance (Byrne & Rogers, 1996; Morrison, 2002). As the ‘landscape’ is rugged and the highest peak may have low visibility because of the many local hills and valleys that surround it (Choi et  al., 2001), searching for and climbing a sharper or optimal peak may take significantly more resources. This suggests that enabling different perspectives of the terrain through forming unfamiliar ties with others in the whole landscape (system) may promote learning and change (March, 1994). As actors often choose familiar well-worn paths between peaks (Morrison, 2002), they create a kind of ‘path dependence’, through the established rules and routines of the system (Choo, 2006; Kim, Oh & Swaminathan, 2006). These organizational routines will inhibit the search for optimal peaks in the landscape to open up avenues of higher perfomance and the formation of new interactions. Athough policies are aimed at breaking through existing organizational routines, the implementation of these policies often still results in reinforcing existing practices, routines and well-worn paths of interaction as opposed to new interactions (Coburn, Hill, & Spillane, 2016; Daly & Finnigan, 2010; Kim et al., 2006). Based on the

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idea of fitness landscape and given the intention of the district reform under study to increase the number of novel connections and opportunities to explore new paths, Daly et al. (2017) hypothesized that over time educators will tend toward forming novel social ties around reform policy implementation with others different from themselves in terms of position and experience, as reform (at least initially) stimulates a departure of well-worn paths of interaction. While the findings supported the assumption, they also revealed that administrators choose well-known familiar paths as they also tended to form homogeneous relations with others who were in a similar position/level (district-site). Educators indeed tended to explore opportunities for novel relationships but also exploited wellworn paths of interaction.

CONCLUSION In this chapter we synthesized three distinct theoretical perspectives for describing schools as social organizations that offer affordances for individual and collective learning, namely social capital theory, social network theory, and complexity theory. By discussing the nature and potential of these perspectives, we aimed to provide valuable lenses at the interactional nature of schools as social organizations and the patterns of social relationships in schools that may support or hinder efforts at school improvement. Moreover, research based on this social approach on school organization provided in-depth information about the social embeddedness of teachers in their school environment and has helped us to better understand what lies at the foundation of the social fabric that signifies the notion of ‘community’. In summarizing, Table 16.2 constrasts some of the major distinghuishing features of the interactional nature of schools as social organizations according to the three different theoretical perspectives discussed in this chapter. While each of the perspectives in

Table 16.2 places an emphasis on slightly different elements in the interactional nature of schools as social organizations, they all focus on the interplay between individual behavior and social structure and the potential of social relationships that result from interactions in practice that can promote teacher learning and enhance school improvement. Using a social systems perspective, social capital theory can help us to increase our understanding about how schools as social systems take shape and how they affect social interactions (see Table 16.2). As the properties of social systems and the processes and mechanisms that enable transactions are the major targets of investigation, researchers using social capital theory are interested in trust, shared norms, and sanctioning, and how these properities of the social system (e.g., school) account for social capital-relevant behavior, such as helping behavior, information exchange, and solidarity. Although social networks and connections among people are studied as part of the social system, they are not the primary concern in social capital research. As the major focus of social capital theory is on the collective nature and ability of social systems, it cares less about the benefits or advantages that individuals can gain from being part of the social system. Therefore, social capital theory might be a less suitable framework to model the link between (different types of) social relations and learning in schools. Just like social capital theory, social network theory foregrounds the importance of social ties and network structure for the exchange of resources. While social capital theory focuses on social systems and processes that enable transactions to facilitate collective action, social network theory takes the connections among people or groups as its basic analytic units. In our view, the contribution of social network theory is that it conceptualizes the importance of social ties and the mechanisms through which patterns of social relationships (social networks) may facilitate or constrain the flow of resources

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Table 16.2  Three theoretical perspectives on the interactional nature of schools as social organizations Social capital theory

Social network theory

Complexity theory

Phenomenon of interest Level of phenomenon

Social capital Meso/macro

Social network Micro/meso

‘The school’

The social context in The context in which work which resources can be and learning takes shape exchanged through social in a web of informal relationships social relationships

The process of organization Interaction between multiple levels (micro, meso, macro) The context in which processes of selforganization may emerge as a result of the interactions among school members Co-evolution

Meaning of ‘Social’

Resource exchange, trust, shared norms, social sanctioning Meaning of ‘organization’ The formal context in which social capital can reside or be leveraged by schools’ stakeholders

through the network in support of gaining access to, and leveraging, social resources. Different from social capital theory, which looks at the functions of social systems or processes that enable transactions, the social network approach stresses the individualistic view of social interactions. Looking at the different types and number of connections individuals have through which they claim resources, social network theory focuses on the quality and quantity of social ties, the configuration of a social network (centrality, density, etc.), and the advantages individuals can gain from being part of different social networks. By conceptualizing the importance of social ties and their benefits for individual purposes, social network theory can deepen our understanding of how teachers’ work and learning takes shape in the web of social interactions within schools. The notion of complex adaptive systems may be a useful lens to theorize on the formation of ties, emergent social patterns, and dynamic network changes that occur during implementation. Building on a complex adaptive systems approach, network change

Quantity and/or quality of ties in a network A group of people, bounded by formal organizational membership, that form a web of informal social relationships through which resources may be exchanged

A dynamic process of selforganization

and school improvement may be occurring (and thus should be observed) at different time scales. For instance, minute-to-minute interaction between teachers might lead to increased knowledge of a new curriculum over days and weeks, resulting in new instructional practices over months. Therefore, the co-evolution of social network change and school improvement can be illuminated by examining the interplay of social network structure (network homophily, centrality, etc.) and relevant individual and school-level attributes (attitudes, knowledge, leadership, instructional practice, student achievement, etc.) as joint dependent variables in a longitudinal time frame where network structure and attributes mutually influence one another over a longer period of time. Following teachers’ instructional practice and student achievement over time as educators enact educational reform will increase our insights into how social networks succeed or fail to create, use, and diffuse resources in support of educational improvement. Using a complexity lens can thus deepen our understanding into

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how system-wide changes occur from the inside out, as opposed to reform that is often enacted in a top-down fashion, and thus how a social system is learning at multiple levels. Yet, what continues to be needed are promising lenses and robust empirical research on the interplay between individual behavior and social structure that has remained largely empirically untouched. Therefore, we would like to echo recent calls for the need for new conceptual lenses to examine policy implementation and school improvement (Coburn et al., 2016; Honig, 2009; Radford, 2006). This overview of three perspectives on schools as social organizations (social capital theory, social network theory, complexity theory) may offer a baseline for further conceptualization of social interaction as integral to schools’ organization. Future directions for fundamental research can be derived from the weak spots of the theories. Social capital and social network theory underconceptualize change over time. Little empirical evidence exists for the behavior of schools as social, complex adaptive systems. These weak spots can also be translated into valuable practical research questions. Questions to consider include: How can we support and steer network development over time with concrete interventions during reform implementation? Findings from such studies will help to deepen our understanding of the role that schools as a social organizations may have in promoting teacher learning and change aimed at improving student learning over time.

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17 School Effectiveness and School Organization Jaap Scheerens

INTRODUCTION Within the framework of multi-level educational systems, the school level should be seen from the perspective of creating, facilitating and stimulating conditions for effective instruction at class level. Major vehicles of support to teaching are: • the establishment of action plans, such as school curricula, mission statements and preferred teaching strategies; • coordination of goals, structural arrangements and the primary process of teaching among staff members; • school policies and practices concerning evaluation, assessment and monitoring; • the provision of adequate teaching facilities, such as textbooks, computers, multi-media applications; • external contacts in the service of real-life applications and authentic learning environments; • facilities for the professional development of teachers and in-service training; and • the engagement of parents in facilitating teaching.

In addition, more general organizational and management conditions can be distinguished that do not impinge directly on teaching, but help in creating favourable organizational conditions, such as a safe, achievementoriented and pleasant working climate, external contacts, and clarity and stability of structural and procedural arrangements. Finally, in the case of classrooms, one can discuss the ecology of the school, in terms of the characteristics of the composition of students, the composition of the staff, the local neighbourhood and school size. The purpose of this chapter is summarized in the following points: • To connect the above conception of schooling with the results of empirical school effectiveness research; • To sketch alternative organizational theories and models that can lead to a better understanding of the research results; • To consider this as a basis for a more theorydriven research practice, which is needed to further progress in this field.

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Table 17.1  Effectiveness-enhancing conditions referred to in the review study by Reynolds et al. (2014), as summarized by Scheerens (2014) Educational effectiveness research Effective leadership Academic focus A positive orderly climate High expectations Monitoring progress Parental involvement Effective teaching (time) Staff professional development Pupil involvement

RESULTS OF EMPIRICAL SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH: AN OVERVIEW OF FACTORS In this chapter, the focus is on conceptual and theoretical organization models that are applicable to schools. The developmental history of educational and school effectiveness research has not been particularly theorydriven, and shows rather a more inductive, empiricist approach. In order to enable seeing the connection between empirical research and inductively developed conceptual summaries and maps, on the one hand, and more general theory, on the other hand, this section provides an outline of the key factors in school effectiveness research. Most of the school organizational factors mentioned in the introduction have been addressed in empirical school effectiveness research. Scheerens, Glas and Thomas (2003, Chapter 3, Table 7) provide an overview of reviews carried out in the 1990s. the main effectiveness-enhancing variables mentioned in the reviews by Purkey and Smith (1983), Levine and Lezotte (1990), Scheerens (1992), Cotton (1995) and Sammons, Hillman and Mortimore (1995) are: school climate (achievement-oriented policy, a cooperative atmosphere and an orderly climate), clear goals concerning basic skills,

frequent evaluation, staff professional development, strong leadership and time on task. Other variables that have been mentioned, not in all but in subsets of these review studies are: opportunity to learn, consensus and cohesion among staff, and parental involvement. This set of factors was reconfirmed in an overview by Scheerens, Glas and Thomas (2003, Chapter 12), in which a further specification of each factor into specific components was added. In a recent review study (Reynolds et al., 2014), summarized by Scheerens (2014), a list of key variables emerged (Table 17.1). Again, in the more recent reviews there is almost perfect overlap with the reviews carried out in the 1990s and in 2003. It can therefore be concluded that there appears to be a lot of consensus in the history of educational effectiveness research on the kind of school-level conditions that matter. However, when it comes to addressing the effect sizes of these key factors, consensus breaks down, as meta-analyses show considerable divergence in empirical estimates (Scheerens, 2016, Chapter 12). In the next sections, more theoretical models and theories of the school will be considered as a basis for a deeper understanding of effectiveness-enhancing school conditions. The purpose of this examination is to show more insight into the rationale of each of these factors, by matching them to particular theoretical or conceptual orientations, and to offer inroads to move to a more theory-driven research practice in the future.

MODELS AND THEORIES OF THE SCHOOL Fend’s Basic Theory of the School In his earlier Theorie der Schule (Fend, 1980) and his later Neue Theorie der Schule (Fend, 2006), Helmut Fend presents the school and its societal functions. In the new

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theory of the school, he sketches the school as part of a multi-level education system that is governed by institutional norms and formal regulations on the one hand, and by dynamic interactions that create a certain leeway for self-development and self-reference at each level on the other hand. The two major schools of thoughts behind this analysis are institutionalism (perhaps ‘new’ institutionalism) and system dynamics (particularly inspired by the work of the German sociologist Luhmann). Both dimensions, formal regulation and dynamic acting in a social context, are represented under the themes ‘Plan’ and ‘Praxis’, as shown in Table 17.2 (cited from Fend, 2006, p. 177). Fend’s basic theory of the school should be seen as a foundational description. Subsequent theoretical interpretations of the school put alternating emphasis on the formal institutional dimension as compared to the ‘Praxis’ dimension. To the degree that national educational systems devolve authority to the school level, and schools are autonomous in several functional domains (such as the curriculum, assessment, finance and personnel policy). Formal regulations at higher levels are less prominent and schools have to develop their own identity to a larger degree.

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THE PROFESSIONAL BUREAUCRACY: PROFESSIONAL AUTONOMY The concept of the professional bureaucracy was developed by Mintzberg (1979). The main characteristics of the school as a professional bureaucracy are as follows: • the internal cohesion of the organization depends predominantly on the standardization of the skills of the functionaries – teachers in our case – which is based on long, specialized training; • a large degree of professional autonomy of the teachers, whereby loyalty to the organization has to compete with loyalty to the profession and loyalty to the ‘client’; • a relatively underdeveloped interest in the external environment – the basic assumption in the professional bureaucracy is that the environment may be complex but is, at the same time, stable; • a specific role for leadership and management, which is seen as mostly administrative and not substantive in the sense that school leaders are expected to give direction to teachers, but rather to play a submissive and supportive role; • technology in the professional bureaucracy has, on the one hand, the nature of a ‘well-stocked tool box’, but, on the other hand, holds the challenge of adapting these standard tools and solutions to ever-changing circumstances in the work with clients (in this case pupils);

Table 17.2  Fend’s theory of the school Plan (Gestaltungsformen)

Praxis (Realitaeten)

Society formation: legal context The legal system of a society The formal domain of education School laws Curricula Learning routes Tests Formal determination of work at school Rules Formal rights and duties Formal authority Formal duties of the students Presence Discipline Tasks and homework

Actual political interrelationships The reality of public policy making and political practices at different levels Actual relational structure at school Realized subject matter offerings Teaching methods and study books Selection processes The way marks are given Actual acting of teachers Actual teaching practice Matching of school rules and classroom culture Style of leading the class Actual learning of students Acquiring skills or ‘sitting out’ the school period Relationships with peers Motivated or unmotivated confrontations with subject matter

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• there is little readiness and openness for change and opposition against rationalization of the work and monitoring performance among the professionals; • recruitment of personnel is the most important control measure within the organization – within the framework of the profession as such, adaptation of the initial training is the most important control mechanism.

The concept of the school as a professional bureaucracy is related to Weick’s image of the school as a ‘loosely coupled organization’ (Weick, 1976). ‘Loose coupling’, according to Weick, refers to the relatively small interdependence among sub-systems, such as between teachers themselves, and between head teachers and teachers. At the same time, there is also little cohesion between aspects of the organization’s functioning, such as the coupling of means and goals, and between decisions planned and actual implementation. An example of this last phenomenon is the well-known situation (at least in the Netherlands) where schools used to have a nicely phrased ‘school work plan’, which was safely put away in a cupboard and had little relationship to what was actually happening (cf. Van der Werf, 1988). As far as technology is concerned, Weick emphasizes the ‘fuzzy’ technology of schools, where there is little consensus about goals and means and the evaluation of central means-to-end relationships is difficult. What kind of school management would fit in an organizational structure such as that depicted in the images of the professional bureaucracy and the loosely coupled system? The general answer would seem to be that such structures require only minimal management. In such a structure, little need is felt for long-term planning and strategic development. In the prototype form, there would be no intermediary structures and hence no middle management. Operational management is firmly in the hands of the professionals (teachers) in the operating core (the classroom) of the organization. The metaphor of the teacher as the king/queen in his/her

classroom comes to mind. Monitoring and performance control will tend to be seen as threats to professional autonomy. According to this theoretical image, the most potent management domain, that is human resource management, is in actual practice in most countries strongly limited because of the fixed conditions of labour. In short, the image of a professional bureaucracy is explicit in warning us of the limitations of trying to develop a type of management in schools that touches the primary process of teaching and learning. Interestingly, this orientation is exactly the central focus in the concept of ‘educational’ or instructional leadership, as developed in the context of effective schools’ research.

PRESCRIPTIVE INTERPRETATIONS OF THE ‘EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS MODEL’: THE RATIONALLY MANAGED SCHOOL Empirical school effectiveness research addresses the question of which organizational and instructional conditions explain why some schools have better results, in terms of student achievement, than others, after taking account of differences in the student intake between schools. A summary of school characteristics that have been identified by this research strand has already been given in a previous section. When taken together, this set of effectiveness-enhancing school characteristics provides an image of a more managed school, one that even resembles a business firm with its more pronounced leadership, something like a mission or outcome orientation, and internal cohesion and coordination. The leadership concept associated with the effective schools’ model is instructional or educational leadership, which is a concept that fits very well with the basic query about a cross-level linking mechanism in the analysis of educational systems as hierarchical, loosely coupled systems (cf. Scheerens, 2016, Chapter 1).

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This is so because the central idea of instructional leadership is the facilitation of the primary process of teaching and learning in schools. In this section, a closer look will be taken at the concept of instructional or educational leadership (the two terms will be used intermittently, as they are taken to have the same meaning). In more abstract terms, instructional leadership can be seen as an attempt towards alignment in a context of ‘loose coupling’ (the latter being more prominently highlighted in the previously described image of the school as a professional bureaucracy). In the operational definitions and instruments concerning educational leadership a general division into two conceptions can be made: a General leadership skills applied to educational organizations: • articulated leadership • information provision • orchestration of participative decision making • coordination. b Instructional/educational leadership in a narrower sense, i.e., leadership directed at the school’s primary process and its immediate facilitative conditions: • time devoted to educational versus administrative tasks • the head teacher as a meta-controller of classroom processes • the head teacher as a quality controller of classroom teachers • the head teacher as a facilitator of workoriented teams • the head teacher as an initiator and facilitator of staff professionalization.

Of these two dimensions, the second, namely leadership focused on the school’s primary process, should be considered as central. The other dimension addresses the specific demands required for leading and controlling organizations in which professionals at the operating core need to have a considerable degree of autonomy. As a whole, educational leadership can be seen as a phenomenon that needs to strike a balance between several extremes: direction

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versus giving leeway to autonomous professionals, monitoring versus counselling and using structures and procedures versus creating a shared (achievement-oriented) culture. In this context, Sammons, Hillman and Mortimore (1995) refer to the school leader as the leading professional. The system-theoretical concept of metacontrol is perhaps the most suitable to express the indirect control and influence an educationally or instructionally-oriented school leader exercises on the school’s primary process. Of course, this does not imply that the head teacher is looking over the teachers’ shoulders all the time, but he or she is ‘involved’ in important decisions on objectives and methods, and visibly cares about overall achievement levels and individual pupils’ progress. Given the professional authority of teachers, it is to be expected that the meta-control of the school leader is exercised in a non-authoritarian way, expressing concern about pupils, individual staff members, and team work. Some authors, who define educational leadership, say more about the structural conditions surrounding the instructional process, whereas others are more focused on the cultural aspects. Irwin (1986) belongs to the former category in mentioning the following aspects of educational leadership. According to Irwin, the school leader: • functions as an initiator and coordinator of the improvement of the instructional program; • states a clear mission of the school; • has a task-oriented attitude; • establishes clear objectives; • supports innovation strategies; • stimulates effective instruction; • is quite visible in the organization; • sees to it that pupils’ progress is monitored regularly; • delegates routine tasks to others; • regularly observes both the work of teachers and pupils. (Irwin, 1986, p. 126)

Leithwood and Montgomery (1982, p. 334) mention the following more cultural aspects of educational leadership:

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• stimulation of an achievement-oriented school policy; • commitment to all types of educational decisions in the school; • stimulating cooperative relationship between teachers, in order to realize a joint commitment to the achievement-oriented school mission; • advertising the central mission of the school and obtaining of support of external stakeholders.

A central dimension in concepts of leadership at school is the division of responsibility across the functional domains of the school between leaders, deputy leaders and teachers. The introduction of indirect effect models in school leadership effect studies invites reflection on hypothetical causal associations between leadership variables, intermediary school factors and educational outcomes. Here a connection could be made with integrative or comprehensive, multilevel educational effectiveness models, as introduced above (see also Creemers, 1994; Creemers & Kyriakides, 2008; Huber & Muijs, 2010; Scheerens, 1992; Stringfield & Slavin, 1992). Generally speaking, these models try to define nested structures of

facilitating conditions, teachers facilitating student learning and school organizations and school leaders facilitating effective instruction. In actual fact, the connection to comprehensive educational effectiveness models has not been made in the major empirical leadership studies, until recently (e.g., Bruggencate et  al., 2012; Heck & Moriyama, 2010; Luyten, 2009). An overview of indirect effect studies is given in Scheerens (2012). Scheerens (2012) combines leadership traits, style and behavioural characteristics in a comprehensive conceptual map of leadership and potential intermediary school factors. Table 17.3, which is from Kruger and Scheerens (2012, p. 18), shows a global division between person- and task-related strategies. So far, leadership studies have particularly focused at person-oriented approaches, building consensus and cooperation. A new emphasis on facilitating teaching and learning, not only by people strategies but also by means of ‘technology’ in the broadest sense, might become an additional emphasis in future work.

Table 17.3  Intermediary causal structure of leadership at school (adapted from Kruger & Scheerens, 2012, p. 18) Copyright 2012 by The Authors. Relevant personality traits and competencies Extraversion social appraisal skills Intelligence Motivation Internal locus of control Domain-specific knowledge Conscientiousness Extraversion Social appraisal skills Self-confidence Basic human values General moral beliefs Role responsibility

Leadership style

Leadership behaviour

Effectiveness-enhancing factors Enhanced teaching time

Task-related →

External contacts Buffering Direction setting (goals, standards) Monitors curriculum and instruction (managing the instructional programme)

Person-related → HRM & HRD Coaches teachers Recruits teachers Builds consensus Sets values Creates climate

Clear goals and standards Opportunity to learn Student monitoring and feedback Structured teaching Active teaching Active learning Cohesion among teachers Professionalization Teacher competency Teachers’ sense of self-efficacy Shared sense of purpose among teachers High expectations Disciplinary climate Supportive climate

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flexibility and a more ‘organic’ functioning of ‘learning organizations’.

Organizational learning can be defined in three different ways:

Organizational Learning as Single-Loop Learning

1 As the sum total of individual learning of the members of the organization. 2 In the sense of enhancing the organization’s instrumental effectiveness (single-loop learning). 3 In the sense of enhancing the organization’s external responsiveness (double-loop learning).

The concepts of single- and double-loop learning, as introduced by Argyris (Argyris & Schön, 1978), form the core of the theoretical basis of learning organizations. Single-loop learning rests in an ability to detect and correct error in relations to a given set of operating norms (Morgan, 1986, p. 88). In its turn, single-loop learning should be seen against the conceptual background of cybernetics (‘steermanship’), which sees the self-regulation of organisms and organizations as based on processes of information exchange involving negative feedback. Learning in this sense is characterized as a gradual shaping of behaviour, constantly correcting for mistakes or sub-optimal solutions. In social contexts, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are determined by agreements and norms, hence the qualification of the kinds of norms that are central in singleloop learning. When these are defined as the operating norms, they should be taken as the preferred end-states of an organization’s primary process, or the objectives of the organization’s core business. Single-loop learning takes these objectives as given and concentrates on the optimal selection of means and technology to attain these objectives. This instrumental perspective is quite similar to the approach of school effectiveness research, in which scientific methods are used to find out which organizational and instructional conditions are most effective in realizing key outcomes. In a less stylized form, the day-to-day running of an organization can also be seen as guided by this instrumental approach. In case of organizations with ‘unclear’ technologies, such as schools, such a trial-and-error approach to improving the effectiveness of the primary process appears quite relevant, at least in theory. In actual practice, such organizations

Individual learning Particularly when organizations are knowledgeintensive, as is the case with educational organizations, there is the strong expectation that workers will keep their knowledge and skills ‘up to date’. In the corporate world, rapidly-changing technology and markets are the basic motives for training and human resource development (HRD) activities. In this setting, there is a growing interest in a conception of HRD that depends less on formal training, but situates learning in the working place itself, in ‘learning by doing’, subsequently integrating training responsibilities in management functions throughout the organization. Of course, something ‘extra’ is required to convert individual learning into organizational learning. All coordination mechanisms that are known from the organization literature can play a role in orchestrating individual learning in a way that the benefits for the organization as a whole are maximized. Examples are: a clear mission and result orientation of the organization, organizational structures that enable exchange between units and sub-units, facilitation and supporting technology (i.e., ‘group-ware’) for communication and collaboration between members of the organization, and even standardization of outcomes and processes. However, this latter coordination mechanism does not fit in so well with the expectations of

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are also likely to have quite a few barriers that work against a learning orientation (see the earlier section on schools as professional bureaucracies). Single-loop learning emphasizes the need for information that can shape a gradual improvement of primary and supporting organizational processes in obtaining basic outcomes.

Organizational Learning as Double-Loop Learning ‘Double-loop learning depends on being able to take a “double look” at the situation by questioning the relevance of the operating norms’ (Morgan, 1986, p. 88). So, doubleloop learning does not take pre-fixed operating norms (or objectives) for granted but makes them the object of analysis and reflection. The basic motive to choose this approach is grounded in an open-systems view of organizations, where situational conditions set the stage for defining what organizational effectiveness means. Contingency theory has provided further insight in the kind of situational conditions that matter, with changes in the predictability of the environment and the nature of the organization’s technology being the most prominent types of ‘contingency factors’. The more dramatic the dynamics of these situational conditions, the stronger the need for critical review of the organization’s operating norms and ‘double-loop learning’. The type of analysis and information gathering that is required for double-loop learning cannot stop at an internal review of ‘instrumental effectiveness’, but also needs an external scan of situational conditions. The emphasis on monitoring with an open mind about operating norms and objectives resembles the orientation of ‘backward evaluation’ and ‘retroactive planning’ described in the previous section. Analysis of the organizational structures that facilitate or hinder organizational learning in the sense of doubleloop learning form the basis of further clarification of the concept of the learning

organization. Before doing so, it is important to realize that the relevance of this concept, particularly as far as double-loop learning is concerned, strongly depends on the dynamics of situational factors. Morgan (1986) mentions three types of failures of organizations in implementing double-loop learning. First, formal planning approaches, including organizational goals and objectives, clearly defined roles and bureaucratic structure with pronounced hierarchy, create fragmented structures ‘that do not encourage employees to think for themselves’ (Morgan, 1986, pp. 89–90). Fragmented operation of the organization is further seen as to be encouraged by political processes in which each sub-unit pursues its own goals and means are treated more or less as ends in themselves. It is interesting to note that the author judges highly sophisticated single-loop learning systems in such bureaucratic contexts as actually preventing doubleloop learning, ‘since people are unable or not prepared to challenge underlying assumptions’ (Morgan, 1986, p. 90). Bureaucratic accountability systems, where people are held responsible for their performance within a system that rewards success and punishes failure, are seen by Morgan as a second barrier to double-loop learning. He sees such systems as fostering defensiveness of employees and as an incentive for covering up and ‘impression management’ (making situations look better than they actually are). He also criticizes the tendency to oversimplification as complex issues are difficult to address in such a context. The third barrier to double-loop learning, mentioned by Morgan, is the tendency of organizations to rationalize and meet problems with rhetoric. Organizations develop ‘theories in use’ that may be socially reinforced to constructions that are insufficiently rooted in reality. According to Morgan, these barriers can be overcome by encouraging openness and reflectivity and a divergent thinking approach to the analysis and solution of complex problems,

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which means that the importance of exploring different viewpoints is underlined. Next, rational planning approaches that ‘impose’ goals, objectives and targets should be avoided and instead means where intelligence and direction can emerge from ongoing organizational processes should be fostered (Morgan, 1986). In short, Morgan sees organic structure, a bottom-up participatory approach and less formal ways of planning and reflection as core conditions for double-loop learning. Turning now to the question of the validity and usefulness of seeing schools as ‘learning organizations’, the subsequent interpretations of organizational learning and structural characteristics of the learning organization will be examined one by one. Organizational learning as the total of individual learning in the organization would seem to be a relevant way of looking at schools. The professional skills of the teachers form the core of the image of the professional bureaucracy. Although quantitative indicators are lacking, the impression is that retraining and in-service training of teachers is an important and widespread phenomenon in many countries. Coordination, however, can be seen as the Achilles’ heel of schools. Individual learning can only result in organizational learning if the individual learning efforts are orchestrated, coordinated and brought under a common set of goals or organizational mission. Organizational learning as ‘single-loop learning’ faces the same problem of overcoming individualism. In addition, it presupposes a substantive concern and some degree of analytic thinking about the goals and means of the school functioning as a whole. The former is likely to be stimulated when external demands on the quality and the outcomes of schooling are becoming more pronounced. The latter is not easy to come by and will be dependent on the specific skills and sophistication of school heads. Approaches from educational support structures to help schools in this general field have been of three general types: first, in the sense of proactive

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planning of school activities, for example by developing school working plans; second, by introducing procedures and instruments for a more retroactive and diagnostic approach, by means of specific forms of school selfevaluation; and third, by stimulating forms of professional consultation and cooperation between staff. Organizational learning in the sense of double-loop-learning is the feature that in the fast-moving business world is the key piece of the learning organization. The degree to which this idea fits the reality of schools differs for the various educational levels, and will be higher for forms of tertiary education than for primary education. Particularly at the primary and secondary level, there is likely to be a strong standardization of outcomes, for example in the form of examinations. To the degree that achievement outcomes of schools are standardized, this is a ‘given’ for the school, which means that there is no need for double-loop learning with regards to the key area of the primary outcomes of the school. However, in other areas, such as the pedagogical function of the school, and appeals to the school to stimulate active citizenship of students, some degree of reflection on norms might be considered relevant. Yet, the overall conclusion about the relative relevance of the three forms of organizational learning is that the first two – orchestrating individual learning and single-loop learning – are considered to be the most important for primary and general secondary schools. When considering the more structural features of the image of the learning organization, a few of them can be seen as features that are already present in more traditional images of the school, such as the professional bureaucracy. ‘Minimal critical specification’ or subsidiarity has been present in traditional school organizations in an exaggerated form of a head who is in marginal control over the school’s primary process. In the concept of educational leadership, particularly taken as ‘meta-control’, this principle obtains a clear application in schools.

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The recommendation of an organic structure as a precondition for organizational learning and learning organization, as suggested by Morgan (1986), cannot be accepted uncritically when schools are being considered. The issue touches upon an old debate in education on whether teaching should be considered an art, on the one hand, or a ‘science’ or technology, on the other hand. According to the first view, educational improvement is a matter of improving human resources and human relations in the school organization and of improving cultural aspects. Despite the fact that not all of the features of the construct of the learning organization appear to be directly relevant and applicable to schools, the conclusion is that it is still a stimulating metaphor for effective school functioning, in a context that is partly standardized but also very much in movement. The core of the matter is organizational learning according to the cybernetic principle and negative feedback, which places monitoring and formative as well as summative evaluation at the centre of the idea of schools as learning organization.

DEVELOPMENT OF (IN)EFFECTIVE SCHOOL CULTURE: SELFORGANIZATION AND SCHOOL ECOLOGY School effectiveness research has investigated the school climate in the sense of the general atmosphere at school. The term school culture expresses something similar. The meteorological metaphor is more often used to refer to the school environment as it confronts the students, whereas the anthropological metaphor of culture seems to be applied more generally to describe organizations. In this section, the term ‘culture’ will be used, as it is closer to the central mechanism that is to be highlighted, namely selforganization. When considering the school climate, this is often seen as something that

is planned and created, among others by the actions of the school leader, as well as something that emerges from the interactions among teachers and students, and among students themselves. School culture can be defined as ‘the basic assumptions, norms and values, and cultural artifacts that are shared by school members, and which influence their functioning at school’ (Maslowski, 2001, p.8 and 9). Schein (1985) distinguishes between three levels of organizational culture. The underlying level in Schein’s classification consists of basic assumptions, which constitute, in his view the essence of an organization’s culture. This layer consists of basic assumptions shared by the organization’s members, and which are more or less taken for granted: teachers are often no longer aware of the assumptions that underlie their daily interpretations of their duties. These assumptions are likely to remain unconscious until another staff member, student or parent challenges them. Schein distinguishes five groups of basic assumptions at the underlying level of culture: (1) the organization’s relationship to its environment, (2) the nature of reality and truth, (3) the nature of human nature, (4) the nature of human activity, and (5) the nature of human relationships. For instance, the nature of human nature refers to whether humans are essentially ‘bad’ or ‘good’, and whether humans are basically fixed at birth, or whether they are ‘mutable and perfectible’ (Schein, 1985, p. 132; see also Maslowski, 2001, p. 9). At the second level of awareness, culture is defined in terms of values and norms. Values, such as collaboration or respect, are often translated into norms for behaviour. Such behavioural norms, in fact, are ‘unwritten rules’ according to which others are expected to behave. Norms also reflect what is considered to be not done in school, what is undesirable behaviour. Such norms may exist, for example, with regard to what teachers are expected to wear or not to wear, or what actions teachers are expected to take for their professional development (Maslowski, 2001, p. 10).

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Somewhat related to these levels of consciousness in organizational culture are Argyris and Schön’s (1974) distinction between two types of action theory. A theory of action is defined as ‘a theory of deliberate human behavior which is for the agent a theory of control but which, when attributed to the agent, also serves to explain or predict his behavior’ (Argyris & Schön, 1974, p. 11). The two types of action theory Argyris and Schön distinguish are ‘espoused theory’ versus ‘theory-in-use’. The espoused theory is the theory as communicated to others, the ‘official theory’ one could say. The theoryin-use is more implicit and ‘might be inferred from organization members’ directly observable behavior’ (Argyris & Schön, 1974, p. 11). The espoused theory is formulated at the level of the organization, in the sense of policy plans, the designation of authority, a task system and collectively agreed procedures. The theory of action is based on individuals’ behaviour in organizations and it may remain tacit. A reason for theory-in-use remaining tacit could be that it is at odds with the espoused theory. Nevertheless, according to Argyris and Schön (1974, p. 15), ‘the largely tacit theory-in-use accounts for organizational identity and continuity’. Both concepts, Schein’s conceptualization of the organization’s culture and Argyris and Schön’s distinction of two kinds of organizational action theories, have in common that they distinguish a more explicit, formal level of consciousness of regularities in the organization’s functioning next to a more implicit, semi-conscious, tacit image of organizational functioning. This last level is considered as making up the more fundamental identity of the organization, which goes back to the beliefs, attitudes and cognitive styles of the individual members. A methodological implication seems to be that reconstruction of this deeper level of organizational functioning largely appears as an aggregation (e.g., an average) of the attitudes, beliefs and behavioural maps of individual members of the organization.

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Given the large number of elements in the sense of individual members (sub-systems) and the variety of norms, methods and goals (aspect systems) as well as temporal dynamics (phase-systems) and thus the enormous variety of possible interactions, the ‘coming to be’ of an organization’s culture should be seen as something very complex. Complexity theory (e.g., Stacey et  al., 2000) shows an interest in the informal organization, and elements of unpredictability in the interactions of organization members and the emergence of new patterns of behaviour, which could be functional or dysfunctional. Similarly, self-organization could be used as an interpretation of composition effects, and non-linear developments caused by drastic changes in the composition of student and staff intake.

SCHOOLS AS HIGH-RELIABILITY ORGANIZATIONS: INSPIRATIONS FROM NEO-INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS The development of the latent school culture as a process of internal endogenous development capitalizes on the praxis dimension of Fend’s scheme, which was discussed at the beginning of the section on theories of the school, particularly on the leeway for autonomy at the school level. The exact opposite is the perspective on the functioning of schools as depending on institutional norms and formal regulations. These views are fuelled by neo-institutional theory, which emphasizes juridical norms and fixed definitions on the way things are to be done. In terms of organizational models, this emphasis on formal regulation has correspondence to the classical theory of the bureaucracy. The perfection of formal procedure is also inherent in quality management schemes as the well-known ISO norms. McMeekin (2003) takes neoinstitutionalism as a source of inspiration to define the ‘institutional climate’ at school as

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the key feature of effective schooling. He states that ‘the institutional climate of schools, which includes formal rules, informal rules, mechanisms for enforcing both kinds of rules, clear objectives and an atmosphere of cooperation and trust, has a strong influence on school performance’ (McMeekin, 2003, p. 1). A fascinating piece of conceptual work and related empirical investigation is provided in Stringfield’s description of ‘high-reliability organizations’ (Stringfield, 1995; Stringfield, Bedinger & Herman, 1995). The principles of high-reliability organizations (e.g., nuclear power plants and air navigation systems) are: • the notion that failures within the organization would be disastrous; • clarity regarding goals and a strong sense of the organization’s primary mission held by the staff; • the use of standard operating procedures (e.g., scripts); • the importance of recruitment and intensive training; • initiatives that identify flaws (e.g., monitoring systems); • considerable attention to performance, evaluation, and analysis to improve the processes of the organization; • monitoring is sees as mutual, without counterproductive loss of overall autonomy and confidence; • alertness to surprises or lapses (the notion that small failures could cascade into major system failures); • a hierarchical structure, allowing for collegial decision making during times of peak loads; • equipment is maintained in the highest working order; • high-reliability organizations are invariably valued by their supervising organizations; and • ‘short-term efficiency takes a back seat to high reliability’ (Stringfield, 1995, pp. 83–91).

In both the evaluation of major effectivenessoriented improvement projects in the USA and the evaluation of a highly structured primary school programme (the Calvert-Barclay school project), evidence was found that supported the validity of the high-reliability organization’s image. The Calvert-Barclay project is particularly illustrative. It describes the implementation of a highly structured and traditional academically-oriented private

school programme in an inner-city school. The success of the programme in these two strongly divergent settings provides additional support to the generalizability of this structured approach. Despite well-known criticisms of the usefulness of rational planning and mechanistic structuring approaches in educational organizations (e.g., Lotto & Clark, 1986), these latter examples show that a plea can be made for formalized and highly-structured educational programmes, supported by structures that emphasize order, coordination and unity of purpose. The major challenge seems to be to combine effectively the standardized procedures and partial mechanistic structuring to conditions that nevertheless are sufficiently motivating to educational professionals and likewise keep appealing to the creative insights of all the members of the organization. The formalization dimension is closely related to rules and inputs that are specified at above-school levels; and in that realm the curriculum is particularly important. Some research results appear to suggest that centralization in the domains of curriculum and assessment is more effective than decentralization. Willms and Somers (2001) point at the superior results in Cuba in an international comparative assessment among nine Latin American countries, Bishop (1997) shows correspondence between countries having a standard-based examination at secondary level and student performance, while Wößmann (2000, 2004; Fuchs & Wößmann, 2004) has presented results that point to the superiority of centralized curricula combined with school autonomy in other managerial domains. Systemic ‘alignment’ is mentioned as a core characteristic of highperforming educational systems (OECD, 2010), and there is a revival of interest in ‘common core’ national attainment standards (Schmidt, Houang & Shakrani, 2009), with curriculum alignment and opportunity to learn as being particularly relevant phenomena (Scheerens, 2017). At the school level, the degree of leeway that teachers have vis-à-vis directive

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leadership on the one hand and formally prescribed programmes on the other hand is a contested area as well. Concepts like ‘teacher leadership’ and ‘empowerment’ are an issue in the literature on educational reform, but can also be studied as variables in the dayto-day running of schools and compared for their effectiveness. ‘Expanded teacher leadership roles range from assisting with the management of schools to evaluating educational initiatives and facilitating professional learning communities’, say York-Barr and Duke (2004, p. 255), and they go on to say that ‘The hope for teacher leadership is continuous to the improvement of teaching and learning in our nation’s schools, with the result being increased achievement with every student’ (p. 255). The opposite position is manifested in Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) projects, where ‘externally’ developed CSR models provide a type of top-down direction for designing and supporting the process of school reform (Borman et al., 2003, p. 126). Where the movement for teacher leadership expresses hope for bottom-up reform, the CSR approach also shows rather impressive claims. To quote Borman et al. (2003) again:

The problem is that the complex educational changes demanded by current standards-based reform initiatives, combined with an increasingly heterogeneous student population largely composed of students whom schools traditionally have failed, have pushed the technology of schooling to unprecedented levels of complexity. In many ways, expecting local educators to reinvent the process of educational reform, school by school, is both unrealistic and unfair. (2003, p. 126)

The empirical evidence of the results of CSR programmes points attention at the prestructuring and regulation of teaching by explicit, externally-developed guidelines, and in this way shows a more circumscribed aspiration of the teaching profession than the followers of the ‘empowerment paradigm’ (Muijs & Reynolds, 2001) would have it.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS: WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTORS AND HOW WILL THEY INTERACT? Each of the five school models discussed in this chapter emphasizes certain variables; these are summarized in Table 17.4. The summary table indicates that most key variables that are highlighted in the four other

Table 17.4  School models and key variables School model

Key variables

Professional bureaucracy Effective schools model

Initial teacher training, professional development Achievement, orientation, high expectations Educational leadership Consensus and cooperation of staff Curriculum quality and opportunity to learn School climate Evaluative potential Parental involvement Effective learning time Professional development Evaluation and feedback Characteristics of teachers Student composition effects Teacher composition effects Complex interactions among teachers Externally developed curricula and lesson plans Frequent monitoring Institutional climate of schools

School as learning organizations School culture as a product of self-organization

Schools as high-reliability organizations

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models are included in the effective schools model as well. Another way of putting this would be to say that these four other models – the professional bureaucracy, the learning organization the culture/self-organization model and the model of the school as a highreliability organization – provide a theoretical basis for specific variables that have been incorporated in effective schools’ research. A further question regards the way these key factors of effective schooling are expected to interact. A partial answer to this was given in the presentation of the indirect causation of educational leadership through a set of hypothetical intermediary variables. However, depending on one’s theoretical point of departure, different configurations might be proposed as well. From the perspective of self-organization, one might perhaps see the leadership style more as an effect than a ‘cause’ of organizational culture, which, in its turn, might be strongly influenced by the composition of staff and the predominant attitudes resulting from that. Next, one could look for certain interrelationships and partial overlaps between some variables. Achievement orientation, high expectations and a positive climate share a similar orientation that could be both planned and emergent from the individual and compositional background characteristics of teachers and students. Opportunity to learn and achievement orientation (towards basic subjects) could be seen as manifestations of well-targeted schooling, whereas effective learning time would be associated with both instructional leadership and the disciplinary climate, and perhaps also with coordination and consensus, as a mechanism that optimizes connectivity between grades and classes. With respect to high expectations, one should also be aware of reciprocal causation, in the sense that high expectations could be seen as both the cause and the effect of high performance. When it comes to applying these reflections about theory in school effectiveness to furthering research, three major approaches

can be discerned: the first could look for contrasting descriptions or predictions from alternative theoretical models, leading to critical tests about the potential of a particular model. An example would be to compare a top-down structured approach to school improvement to a more bottom-up, culturally-inspired development. A second approach might take a more holistic outlook and recognize the main theoretical positions as additive and partially integrated components of the complex reality of schooling. A source of evidence for the coherence and synthetic nature of the set of effectiveness-enhancing conditions highlighted throughout this chapter is the finding that highly effective schools seem to do well on all or most of these factors, while failing schools do badly on all or most of them (Stringfield, 1998). A third approach might be to search for more general ‘underlying’ mechanisms and apply meta-theoretical analysis. Examples of such more general factors are proactive and retroactive structuring, and organizational and ‘technological’ levers for school improvement. As, throughout this chapter, the underlying ambition has been to connect conceptualization and theory to empirical results on educational effectiveness research, a final note on the state of the art is to be given. In the author’s current perspective, a reassessment of the knowledge base on educational effectiveness research is in place. The following perspective emerges from a recent review: there is considerable diversity about effect sizes for the key factors mentioned in this chapter, relatively small effect sizes across the board, but particularly for organizational conditions like leadership and staff cooperation and high stability in the performance of educational systems over a period of 15 years (Scheerens, 2016). These results point at incremental change and ‘limited malleability’ and could stimulate study of organizational phenomena associated with ‘ineffectiveness’, sources of stability, and the most efficient mechanisms for improvement (Scheerens, 2016).

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Note 1  This section is based on Scheerens et al. (2003), Chapter 5.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Adapted by permission from Springer from Educational Effectiveness and Ineffectiveness. A Critical Review of the Knowledge Base, Chapter 4, by J. Scheerens. Copyright 2016 by Springer Media+Business Media, Dordrecht.

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Mintzberg, H. (1979). The structuring of organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Morgan, G. (1986). Images of organizations. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Muijs, D., & Reynolds, D. (2001). Effective teaching. London: Paul Chapman. Purkey, S. C., & Smith, M. S. (1983). Effective schools: A review. The Elementary School Journal, 83(4), 427–452. Reynolds, D., Sammons, P., De Fraine, B., Townsend, T., Van Damme, J., Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (2014). Educational Effectiveness Research (EER): A state of the art review. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 25, 197–230. Sammons, P., Hillman, J., & Mortimore, P. (1995). Key characteristics of effective schools: A review of school effectiveness research. London: Ofsted. Scheerens, J. (1992). Effective schooling: Research, theory and practice. London: Cassell. Scheerens, J. (Ed.) (2012). School leadership effects revisited: Review and meta-analysis of empirical studies. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London and New York: Springer. Scheerens, J. (2014). School, teaching, and system effectiveness: Some comments on three state-of-the-art reviews. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 25(2), 282–290. Scheerens, J. (2016). Educational effectiveness and ineffectiveness: A critical review of the knowledge base. Dordrecht: Springer Media+Business Media. Scheerens, J. (2017) Opportunity to learn, curriculum alignment and test preparation. Switzereland: Springer International. Scheerens, J., Glas, C., & Thomas, S. (2003). Educational evaluation, assessment and monitoring. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. Schein, E. H. (1985). Organizational culture and leadership: A dynamic view. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schmidt, W. H., Houang, R., & Shakrani, S. (2009). International lessons about national standards. Retrieved from: http://files.eric. ed.gov/fulltext/ED506947.pdf Stacey, R.D., Griffin, D., & Shaw, P. (2000) Complexity and management. Fad or radical

challenge to systems thinking? New York: Routledge. Stringfield, S. (1995). Attempting to enhance students’ learning through innovative programs: The case for schools evolving into high reliability organizations. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 6(1), 67–96. Stringfield, S. (1998). An anatomy of ineffectiveness. In L. Stoll & K. Myers (Eds.), No quick fixes: Perspectives on schools in difficulties (pp. 209–221). London: Falmer. Stringfield, S. C., Bedinger, S., & Herman, R. (1995). Implementing a private school program in an inner-city public school: Processes, effects, and implications from a four-year evaluation. Paper presented at the ICSEI Conference, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. Stringfield, S. C., & Slavin, R. (1992). Raising societal demands, high reliabilty organizations, school effectiveness, ‘Succes for All’, and a set of modest proposals. Address to the ICO-symposium, Enschede. Van der Werf, M.P.C. (1988) Het schoolwerkplan in het basisonderwijs (The school working plan in Dutch secondary education). Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21, 1–19. Willms, J. D., & Somers, M. A. (2001). Family, classroom, and school effects on children’s educational outcomes in Latin America. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(4), 409–445. Wößmann, L. (2000). Schooling resources, educational institutions, and student performance: The international evidence. Kiel Working paper No. 983. Kiel, Germany: Kiel Institute of World Economics. Wößmann, L. (2004). The effect heterogeneity of central exams: Evidence from TIMSS, TIMSS-Repeat and PISA. CESIFO Working Paper No. 1330. Munich, Germany: University of Munich. York-Barr, J., & Duke, K. (2004). What do we know about teacher leadership? From two decades of scholarship. Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 255–316.

18 Inequality in Education: What Educators Can and Cannot Change Kathleen Lynch

INTRODUCTION: THE CLASS CEILING1 It was widely believed by liberal educators in the post-Second World War period that educational expansion would enable socially disadvantaged groups to advance through education, thereby reducing social inequality. While opening up secondary and tertiary education to previously excluded groups did improve levels of education and enhance participation rates for non-traditional entrants relative to their historical position, inequalities in educational opportunity among students from different social class backgrounds have remained remarkably stable (Blossfeld and Shavit, 1993). The socially inconvenient truth is that the changes that occurred in the educational opportunities for the socially disadvantaged in the late twentieth century have had more to do with changes in the structures of the labour market (namely a rise in the absolute proportion of white-collar or middle-class jobs) than increased opportunities arising from their relative successes

within education (Brown, 2013, p. 681). What remained largely unforeseen by liberal educators is that the expansion of education could not have a significant impact on relative social class dis/advantages, for reasons arising from the dynamic relationship between the structures of a capitalist economy and formal education (Marsh, 2011). This is currently exemplified by what is happening in higher education, as this is where the competition for class privilege is played out most intensely given its proximity to the classstratified labour market in the twenty-first century (Reay, 2017). In the United States, the National Education Longitudinal Study of almost 9,000 students (from 1988 to 2000) found that the odds of completing college for a student from a high socio-economic background were more than six times greater than for a student from a working-class background, even when controlling for test scores, grades and college expectations (Rumberger, 2010). The situation in Australia is equally stark: a study

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of the relationship between socio-economic background and participation in higher education in Australia, France, Finland, Ireland, Norway and the UK found that Australia was the only country in which there had ‘been no reduction in social group inequalities – in this instance over a period of almost two decades [1980–2000]’ (Clancy and Goastellac, 2007, p. 151). In Ireland, while there has been an increase in participation rates for lower-income groups in higher education from 1980 to 2000 (Clancy and Goastellac, 2007), the rise in participation has been predominantly in less prestigious colleges and degree programmes. The relative educational advantages of the professional elite remain firmly in place, confirming Raftery and Hout’s (1993) MMI (maximally maintained inequality) thesis that the relative advantage of the educational elite only declines when their participation rates reach saturation point (McCoy and Smyth, 2011). In Greece, social inequalities in both access to and participation within in higher education persist, despite the substantial increase in participation in higher education (SianouKyrgiou, 2010). Even in strong welfare states, such as France and Germany, there is no indication of substantial changes in the pattern of inequality in access to tertiary education over the 20-year period from 1980 to 2000. There is also a clear social differentiation in the types of tertiary education accessed, with those from more privileged backgrounds accessing more elite institutions and courses (Duru-Bellat, Kieffer and Reimer, 2008). In a mass higher education market, it is the type of university/college attended and the status of the degree undertaken that increasingly determines labour market positioning rather than having a degree per se. To highlight the ways in which class inequalities impact directly and indirectly on educational outcomes is not to underestimate the strong racialized dimensions to inequality in education (Brown and De Lissovoy, 2011; Gillborn, 2008). Race exacerbates inequalities arising within the educational system and is

deeply imbricated with social class (Condron, 2009; Gillborn, 2015). The work of Lipman (2004) shows how the logic of race and capital have worked together to privatize public schools in the US in a way that allows the State to cast off responsibility for educating ‘people of colour’2 while allowing educational investors to profit from privatizing schools. Moreover, racial inequalities outside education impact on students’ experiences within it, most especially through racialized housing and segregation (Condron et al., 2014). Inequality also operates through disability labelling and classifications, labels that are frequently strongly classed (Riddell and Weedon, 2016), but do not necessarily result in better resourcing within schools and colleges for the educationally disadvantaged (Riddell, 2009). More generally, a deeprooted ableism underpins formal education (Hehir, 2002): which intelligences and abilities are classified as eligible for education plays a major role in defining who is excluded or included in different types and levels of education. It predetermines the parameters of educational success for so-called ‘disabled’3 students in particular. Given what we now know about the many faceted intelligences of human beings (Gardner, 1983; Sternberg, 1985), it is extraordinary that most standard educational assessments remain pen-andpaper tests measuring learning through the medium of linguistic and mathematical capabilities. While IQ tests that purport to measure the g factor (general intelligence) have been scientifically discredited, they have been replaced by close correlates, so-called academic aptitude tests, such as the SAT. The latter has many of the features of IQ tests, including relying heavily on ‘reading comprehension and vocabulary items like analogies and antonyms’ in the verbal sections of the test (Lemann, 1995, p. 86).4 Although it is known that aptitude and IQ-type tests are both social class and racially biased, and inherently disablist, given their substance and method of testing, they remain in widespread use across the world.5

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The pre-eminent role that social class and racial inequality outside school exercises over educational outcomes and opportunities is not to underestimate the significant role that schools and educators play in determining educational outcomes. Whether educationalists (and governments) adhere to beliefs in essentialist or developmental presumptions about students’ intelligences impacts on how students are classified and selected for schools and tracks. Teacher biases and stereotypes also play a role in exacerbating inequality (Steele, 2011) as do the designs of examinations and selection systems (Fischer et  al., 1996). Tracking and/or streaming within and between schools, in turn, impinges on the quality of education students receive, and on levels of social class and racial inequalities in educational outcomes (LeTendre, Hofer and Shimizu, 2003; Oakes, 2005; Van de Werfhorst and Mijs, 2010). While schools can and do adopt educational policies to address such biased practices, there are subtle and complex ways in which classed and raced cultural processes impede the promotion of equality through education (Lamont, Beljean and Clair, 2014; Stephens, Markus and Phillips, 2014). And egalitarian policies are frequently undone in an unequal society by the actions of privileged parents protecting the interests of their own children (Ball, 2003 Crozier, Reay and James, 2011; Lareau, 1989).

WHAT SCHOOLS CANNOT CHANGE Although the quality of teaching and the nature of curriculum and assessment procedures can significantly enhance an individual’s capabilities and life chances relative to others, especially in a labour-migratory globalized economy, it cannot overcome economic injustices directly when the generative site of those injustices is not located within the education system in the first instance. It was the political shocks arising from wide-scale war that contributed significantly to

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the reduction of inequality in most developed countries between 1910 and 1950 (Piketty, 2014, p. 20). And it was the restructuring of the economies and occupational structures in Western capitalist states in the post-Second World War period that enabled absolute rates of social mobility to rise, not changes in education per se (Goldthorpe, 2007). In the post-1980 period, it was the deregulation and geopolitics of taxation and finance that contributed significantly to the rise of economic inequality (Piketty, 2014, p. 20). The rise of precarious work, zero hours contracts and the proliferation of low-waged economies in the services sector, in Western capitalist states (Standing, 20116) is not the direct outcomes of actions in the education sector; education cannot prevent powerful employers creating low-paid jobs, or failing to provide pensions for their workers; it cannot alter the structure of the capitalist economy that creates the inequality that contributes to unequal access to and participation in education (Marsh, 2011). The new oligarchic rich are global citizens and increasingly detached from nation states and their policies (Streeck, 2016, p. 28); noblesse oblige does not apply. It is not the educational institutions that enable them to maintain their class advantage through inheritance, low taxes on wealth, deregulated financial markets and the free movement of capital across borders. The latter is a function of mobilized class power, be it in international law, military spending, fiscal policy and/or the legislative and political infrastructures of global capitalist economies. The super-rich can block wealth taxes and buy political majorities through campaign contributions, while maintaining social legitimacy through philanthropy (Streeck, 2016). In determining levels of inequality, ‘inherited wealth comes close to being as decisive at the beginning of the twenty-first century as it was in the age of Balzac’s Père Goriot’ (Streeck, 2016, pp. 28–30). Major class inequalities are not a product of educational policy per se. To the contrary, ‘the main force in favour of equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills’ (Piketty, 2014, p. 22).

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Growing Economic inequality: Implications for Education The rise of neoliberal capitalism and the related growth in wealth and income inequalities, since the 1970s, has, however, presented new challenges for education, challenges that were exacerbated by the financial crisis in 2007/2008 (OECD, 2015; Streeck, 2016; TASC, 2016). Reardon’s (2011) meta-analysis of 19 national studies over a 50-year period found that inequality in education increases as society becomes more unequal. What happens is that rising economic inequality leads to a rise in relative poverty, poorer housing and lower standards of health care, all of which impact directly and indirectly on educational participation. It also reduces the scope for parity of participation as it seriously limits the ability of the relatively poor to access educationallyrelevant cultural activities out of school. Moreover, a rise in wealth and income inequality is generally aligned ideologically and practically with policies of disinvestment in public services that disempowers those who are poorest: as poorer families cannot afford to access private education, they have to rely on a depleted public service where quality is comprised due to declining investment. The impact of disinvestment is felt at all levels of education but is highly visible in the noncompulsory sectors as the move to privatize and commercialize accelerates in further education (Grummell, 2014). Within higher education: a minority of EU countries have increased investment in higher education in real terms since 2008, while investment declined by up to 10% or more in several EU countries during the financial crisis, especially in Southern and Eastern European states (European Parliament, 2015), and in Ireland (Department of Education and Science, 2016). In most Anglophone countries, loans have replaced higher education grants for students, with the attendant consequences of impoverishment through rising debt, and, in the case of England, a dramatic reduction in the intake of mature students (Sutton Trust, 2016).

While access to economic capital impacts on educational attainment, so, increasingly, does access to cultural and social capital in tight labour market situations (Duncan and Murnane, 2013). Employers look for ‘social skills, cognitive abilities and other personal characteristics in addition to, or even instead of, formal qualifications’, many of which are social class-related (Richards et  al., 2016). Employment opportunities and rates of pay for graduates with identical degrees are strongly stratified by social class in a number of European countries (Franzini and Raitano, 2013). Not only are parents from higher socioeconomic backgrounds far better placed to provide their children with the extra forms of social and cultural capital required in highly competitive labour markets (Brown, Hesketh and Williams, 2004), they are also the people who define what is socially and culturally valuable in the first instance (Bourdieu and Passerson, 1977). Through their social networks, the elite can position their children to enter the more lucrative and prestigious fields of employment.

Private Family investment In a global order where most households own no productive wealth, education has become the primary route to economic security and a major determinant of class positioning. While those with most resources cannot ‘buy’ superior educational credentials directly, they can protect their likelihood of acquiring these through investment in private (socially exclusive) schooling and tuition (Smyth, 2009): and private financial investment is advantaging children in high-income households in terms of educational attainment (Duncan and Murnane, 2011). Moreover, research in the US shows that families in the top income quintile (richest 20%) are spending almost seven times as much per child per annum in out-of-school enrichment activities compared with the poorest 20% ($9,000 per child compared

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with $1,300) (Kaushal, Magnuson Waldfogel, 2011). The growing achievement gap by social class is being matched by the persistent achievement gap by race, and all are related to income differentials and economic inequality (Magnuson and Waldfogel, 2008; Reardon, 2011). Rising economic inequality also promotes a climate of fear and distrust that propels anxiety and fear about the future (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009). The fear of being consigned to a life of low-paid, insecure work drives the intense competition for more and more credentials in education. In particular, it drives the wealth-poor middle classes to use education, as they have always done, to maintain or advance their class position in ways that are also strong racialized Ball, 2003; Crozier, Reay and James, 2011). It also keeps the poor in their place as the middle and upper class fight to protect their advantages in education by maintaining the educational status quo. Even though most welfare capitalist states have invested in making education internally more egalitarian in terms of its quality and procedures, this work is increasingly undermined by other fiscal and public policies that allow the rich to get richer and thereby advantage their children increasingly outside school.

IDEOLOGIES OF EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND MERITOCRACY: JUSTIFICATIONS FOR INEQUALITY It would be very difficult for educational (and economic) inequality to be sustained over time in democratic societies unless it was deemed morally justifiable and socially acceptable. The moral justification for unequal outcomes is provided through widespread allegiance to a liberal code of equality of opportunity (EO).7 There is a belief that the EO principle is an acceptable guide to policy in the distribution of social goods: it is encoded in EU treaties, and advanced within

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member states by a variety of legally binding directives. Its legal status adds to its legitimacy as a mechanism for distributing social goods, including education. The principle of equality of opportunity is formally operationalized in education through the practice of meritocratic selection; competition for advantage is regulated by rewarding those who achieve highly. The most ‘meritorious’ (where IQ+Effort=Merit8, see Young, 1958) are given high grades and the least ‘meritorious’ are awarded lower grades; on the basis of these grades, education and social selection for each stage of education and, ultimately, for the labour market, is determined. Given the relationship between educational success, income, wealth and other forms of social and cultural capital outlined above, meritocratic selection is simply unattainable in an economically unequal society (Brown, 2013; Brown, Lauder and Ashton, 2011; Mijs, 2016). What is largely ignored is the false promise of methodological individualism underpinning equal opportunities thinking: the logic of social hierarchy, which is endemic to liberalism, does not permit the election of the few to become the pattern for the many. Because credentialized education is a positional good, its value is always relative; to succeed one must have more of the valued credentials than one’s competitors. In an unequal society, however, those who hold privileged positions protect them, through a variety of means, including altering the rule of entry to professions, lengthening the time it takes to qualify for particular positions, introducing soft (social) skills and as well as hard skills (academic grades and credentials) for selection. All of these increase the cost, time and distance (social, cultural and even geographical) between those who are well resourced and those who are not within the educational competition. Meritocratic policies are also unrealizable for other reasons. The abilities and opportunities to be meritorious are based on nonmeritocratic factors (including inheritance

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and the circumstances of birth); in addition, what is defined as worthy of merit recognition at a given time and in a given culture is quite arbitrary and, by definition, excludes some groups (Mijs, 2016). The key question always remains: who has the power to define which abilities are of merit and how does a society know and measure abilities (intelligences) and/or effort? There is no clear formula for measuring these that is not deeply subjective and numerous studies show that meritocratic traits vary across societies and over time (Mijs, 2016). Karabel’s (2005) study of how the definitions of merit changed in Harvard, Yale and Princeton over the twentieth century in ways that enabled them to exclude unwanted outsiders, be these non-whites, Jews, Catholics or women, is proof of the arbitrariness of merit. The inclusion of large numbers of students within contemporary universities who have dyslexia or other disabilities is also proof of how arbitrary exclusions ‘on merit’ have been historically. The problem remains that those who have the power to define ‘merit’ will always do so in a way that will ensure their own children are meritorious (Mijs, 2016, p. 21). The principle of meritocracy is an ideology that justifies inequality not a means of overcoming it. A further problem with the principle of meritocracy is that it ‘crowds out’ debates about equality and need (Mijs, 2016, pp. 23–26). This is, as Mijs suggests, perhaps its most dangerous characteristic. The belief that one can select and find the meritorious creates a widespread political and educational culture focused on finding ‘the talented few’. It fosters a belief in a neoliberal era that only a minority of talented (market valuable) people exist, propelling the so-called ‘global war for talent’ (Brown and Tannock, 2009). Focusing on the development of the few at the expense of the many overrides and weakens other values in education: nurturing, trust, integrity, care and solidarity are subordinated to regulation, control and competition. Investment in ‘elite’ scholars, athletes, leaders, musicians, actors (the so-called

‘bright’, ‘gifted’, ‘smart’ and ‘able’ students) is prioritized over investment in those with greatest educational needs, who could be equally ‘bright’, ‘smart’, ‘gifted’ and ‘able’ if given the opportunity. As the amoral principle of competition becomes the necessitous in a meritocratic system, documenting scores, educational attainments and ranks becomes an industry in itself. Student and staff idealism to work in ‘the public interest’ is diminished as energy and time must be devoted to documenting institutional and/or personal achievements (Lynch, 2015). Moreover, educating those who are most disadvantaged ceases to be a priority as the vulnerable are a threat to a good performance appraisal. What emerges is a twenty-first century manifestation of essentialist, eugenics-related logic, declaring that only a minority are worthy of investment. This translates into procedures whereby educational resources are redirected to policies and practices that will ensure there is selection of the meritorious few. Resources and research are redirected away rather than towards the socially disadvantaged (Brown and Tannock, 2009). The rise of elite academies, centres for so-called gifted children in schools and merit scholarships in universities are all indicative of this trend.

CONCLUDING REMARKS That education cannot undo economic inequalities, in and of themselves, is a reflection of the general inability of liberal equal opportunities policies to deliver social justice in an economically unjust society. This is something Tawney (1931) predicted almost 100 years ago. Speaking of promoting equality of opportunity in a capitalist society, he stated: ‘Equality meant not the absence of violent contrasts in income and condition, but equal opportunities to become unequal … equality … is encouraged to reign provided it does not attempt to rule’ (Tawney, 1931, p. 103).

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While this suggests that promoting equality as a principle in education is a hopeless exercise, such is not the case. The quality and organization of education matters as it has the capacity to exacerbate or counter inequalities arising from social class, race, gender and disability. What is necessary, however, is to ensure that education is not required to do the socially impossible, namely to reduce economic inequalities directly (Apple, 2015). This is not within its scope (Marsh, 2011, 2015). Economic, social and educational policies need to be integrated in a way that economic inequalities are reduced to the level that they do not impinge on educational outcomes; a tall order, but it is only when there is equality of economic condition that there can be real and substantive equality in education (for a discussion on this, see Lynch and Baker, 2005). Because what happens in education does matter for the promotion of equality more generally, the following section will focus on two key ways in which education can promote equality in ways that would be truly emancipatory.

WHAT SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES CAN CHANGE What is clear from the above is that the liberal view of equality in education, namely that education provides a safe route for relative social mobility for the socially disadvantaged, is actually unrealizable in increasingly economically unequal societies. While absolute social mobility is possible when there are plenty of new, well-paying jobs to absorb the socially mobile within a given society, this is a function of the way the economy and technology develop rather than education. This is not to deny the transnational value of educational credentials, something that is not sufficiently recognized in discussions that focus solely on nation states. If one is compelled or chooses to migrate for employment, it is better to carry a degree than a shovel or an apron. In a globalized economy, the

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highly educated can attain high-status jobs in other countries (especially in less developed countries) where they can outcompete poorly educated others (Brown and Tannock, 2009).

EXPLOITING THE POSSIBILITIES OF EDUCATION In this section, I will explore some of the possibilities education offers for promoting equality more generally in society. First, it is important to recount and address the dystopian view of education as a site of simple class reproduction. From the publication of Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (1977) through The Inheritors (1979). Bourdieu and Passerson’s work has been synonymous with the intellectual tradition that rejects the view that education can be an agent of egalitarian change. Rather than relying on claims of birth or titles of nobility, Bourdieu and Passeron hold that the school, an ostensibly class-neutral and relatively autonomous space, grants legitimacy to the reproduction of class privilege, by conferring titles of academic nobility on the already socially elected (Bourdieu, 1996). Education conceals its true purpose of ‘social selection under the guise of technical selection’. It legitimates inequality and ‘the reproduction of the social hierarchies by transmuting them into academic hierarchies’ (Bourdieu and Passerson, 1977, p. 153). They claim that those who fail come to believe that they are legitimately dispossessed: Thus, in a society in which the obtaining of social privileges depends more and more closely on possession of academic credentials, the School … manages the more easily to convince the disinherited that they owe their scholastic and social destiny to their lack of gifts or merits, because in matters of culture absolute dispossession excludes awareness of being dispossessed. (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977, p. 210)

Bourdieu and Passeron dismiss the idea that education can be reformed from within to

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become emancipatory. They regard attempts at transforming education as a naïve exercise, a utopianism that would not be permitted given the power of those who exercise pedagogic authority (PA), because ‘…quite apart from the built-in inertia of every educational institution, the structure of power relations prohibits a dominant PA from resorting to a type of PW [pedagogic work] contrary to the interests of the dominant classes’ (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977, pp. 53–54).

EDUCATION’S EMANCIPATORY POTENTIAL The claim that education is doomed to failure in addressing class inequality directly is a compelling argument given the empirical evidence available. However, education is not a black box governed only by powerful class interests. Those who work and learn within it have educational and political agency. The work of Ranciere (1991) and Paulo Freire (2000 [1970]), and those who have followed in Freire’s educational and policy footsteps in particular (Apple, 2013; Aronowitz, 2008; Borg and Mayo, 2007; Giroux, 1997; Shor 1992), show that education need not simply be a site of class reproduction. Education has liberatory potential if one believes and trusts in the ‘equality of intelligences’ between students and teachers (Ranciere, 1991). Replacing ‘stultifying’ education with emancipatory education, where the educator recognizes the abilities of all people to come to know and learn, has powerful transformative potential. Contra Bourdieu, Ranciere argues that liberation is possible if education takes place among a ‘community of equals’ and educators recognize the intellectual capacities of all people (Ranciere, 1991, pp. 45–73). For this to happen, there needs to be radical educational change, a change that focuses more on the form of pedagogy deployed, moving it from ‘stultifying’ ‘understanding’ to self-directed emancipation. ‘Only

a man can emancipate a man.9 … And no party or government, no army, school or institution, will ever emancipate a single person’ (Ranciere, 1991, p. 102). Liberatory education is about the educational relationship itself (hooks, 1984, 2010). Working through dialogue and humility, it can be liberatory when it enables people to trust in their own abilities to come to know the world and to frame it in their own terms. It is possible to abandon ‘banking education’, where education has become ‘an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor … [where] the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat’ (Freire, 2000 [1970], p. 72). Liberatory education begins with the resolution of the teacher–student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students (Freire, 2000 [1970], p. 72). Schools and places of education are not without class contradictions, but they can exploit those contradictions to resist injustices when the opportunity arises (Borg and Mayo, 2007; Crean and Lynch, 2011). The power of education to frame social consciousness is proven by the intensity of the political battles that have taken place historically over education. It was evident in colonial times where education was regarded as an effective means of domesticating local populations.10 It is also evident in the early twentyfirst century where it is regarded as a means to realizing the political goals of powerful multilateral institutions, such as the European Commission (which has actively promoted employment-focused competencies among EU citizens through the Lisbon Agreement), and in the move by conservative governments to close a university (in Hungary) and remove politically dissenting academics from their posts (in Turkey) in 2016–2017. Schools and colleges are also places where people work; they are sites of economic activity and as such they are a potential site for cultural organization and enabling and

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protecting political dissent. The mobilization of the American civil rights movement, and, most recently, of communities in the US against television advertising to children in schools, is proof of how schools operate as cultural sites of organization and resistance. Schools and colleges have been at the centre of political movements for egalitarian change through enabling and facilitating social movements (Apple, 2015; Ivancheva, 2017). Althusser, Balibar, Bidet and Goshgarian (2014 [1995]) identified three major ideological apparatuses within the machinery of the state (education, the media and religion). In most countries, both the media and religious organizations are controlled by powerful commercial and/or religious interests that can and do direct ideological formation without democratic regulation. Education remains the principal site of ideological formation that is largely democratically controlled. While the level of democratic control in education varies by country and type and level of education, nevertheless, education, especially higher education and community education, offer many opportunities for the cultural production of ideas and practices to promote social justice. Whether educators avail of this opportunity or not is an open question, but it is not predetermined. If student teachers (as noted by Macedo (2000) in his introduction to the 30th anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed) are never exposed to the ideals of emancipatory education, then it is very difficult to see how they can develop an emancipatory view of schooling and education: the Harvard Graduate School of Education sanctions a graduate course called ‘Literacy Politics and Policies’ without requiring students to read, critique, and analyse the work of Freire. In fact, one can get a doctoral degree from this school, or from others, without ever learning about, much less reading, Paulo Freire. This is tantamount to getting a doctoral degree in Linguistics without ever reading Noam Chomsky. (Macedo, 2000, p. 16)

Whether the revolutionary potential of education can be realized by the common schooling proposed by Gramsci (2007 [1971])

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and endorsed by Burawoy (2012), or the emancipatory dialogical methods outlined by Freire, is an open question. What is clear is that education is not neutral or mechanical; teachers have the capacity to be dialogical, liberating educators both in how they teach and in the curricula they design. To operate in this way, they need to be given the opportunity to study the theory and practice of emancipatory practice in their teacher education programmes in the first instance. What is at issue now is that much teacher education has become mechanical, driven indirectly if not directly to ‘train’ teachers to meet targets. The surveillance and market-led orientation of education is not confined to any one level of education (Lynch, Grummell and Devine, 2012) and this feeds back into teacher education which is becoming more rather than less conservative (Simmie and Edling, 2016). For teachers to be liberated, their own education needs to be liberatory rather than mechanistic (Macedo, 2000).

THE GENDERING OF EMANCIPATORY EDUCATION: EDUCATION FOR LOVE, CARE AND SOLIDARITY There is much truth in Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1977) claim that educational institutions are designed to impose the ‘cultural arbitraries’11 of more powerful groups on those that are subordinate. This has happened in social class terms (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977), in colonial terms (Alatas, 2003; Connell, 2007; Said, 1991), and in gender terms (Harding, 1991; Smith, 1987). The work of Mignolo (1999, 2009) shows how European universities have played a key role in cultural and intellectual colonization across a range of continents that is deeply racialized. The ‘[g]eo-politics of knowledge goes hand in hand with geopolitics of knowing … it is a racially marked body in a geo-historical marked space that feels the urge or get the call to speak…’ (Mignolo, 2009, p. 2). A similar issue arises

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for deaf people, whose differences from hearing people are primarily cultural and linguistic; they are defined by dominant groups as ‘dis’abled (Ladd, 2003). As with others classified as ‘dis’abled, the negative prefix of ‘dis’ frames the perception of the learner in a negative light, focusing on the perceived impairment rather than abilities. The failure to problematize the power of the narrator in science, history, geopolitics, philosophy, literature, art, music, or culture more generally, means that the cultural contributions of the subordinated are identified as ‘other’ and are treated as irrelevant and/ or inferior, not worthy of incorporation. They are subjected to a kind of cultural imperialism that renders them either invisible or, if visible, subject to negative stereotyping or misrecognition (Alatas, 2003; Spivak, 2008). When educational and cultural institutions portray subordinate groups as ‘native’, innocent, inferior, irrelevant, deviant, ugly or threatening, they legitimate acts of disrespect, disdain and violence (Harding, 1991; Said, 1979; Young, 1990). In this scenario, members of oppressed groups have their lives interpreted through the lens of the dominant. Misrepresentations and omissions become ‘common sense’. The principal inequalities that many groups experience in education therefore do not arise from the unequal distribution of wealth per se but from a lack of respect and recognition (although lack of resources and wealth impacts on lack of respect) (see Lynch and Baker, 2005, for a detailed discussion). Status-related inequalities, relating to age, sexuality, disability, language, gender, race or ethnicity, and/or religious/other beliefs, are rooted in the symbolic realm, in patterns of interpretation, definition and communication. Institutionally, they involve practices of denial and misrecognition (Young, 1990). Because it is not possible to examine the status-based injustices that underpin inequalities in education for all groups, this chapter will focus on one major injustice, the neglect of education for relational life, especially education regarding love, care and solidarity.

Women are the primary carers in the world: they do most of the paid and unpaid love and care work for humanity (Lynch, Baker and Lyons, 2009). The neglect of education about care as a concept and a field of human practice (in Bourdieu’s terms, a ‘social field’) is one of the major ways in which gender disrespect and non-recognition find educational expression (Lynch, Lyons and Cantillon, 2007). There is a need to rethink the epistemological basis of what we value in education, because knowing is not confined to reason only, even if Western thinking assumes it to be (Nussbaum, 2001). What we know about the world is learned emotionally, positively and negatively, in many important ways: ‘Emotions are not irrational pushes and pulls, they are ways of viewing the world. They reside in the core of one’s being, the part of it with which one makes sense of the world’ (Nussbaum, 1995, p. 374). Because of this, the deep indifference to education about the place of emotions, vulnerability, and the dependency and interdependency that underpins the human condition, is a major omission. At the root of the problem lies the concept of the ideal citizen informing education and emanating from classical liberal education: the focus is on the development of the autonomous rational actor encapsulated in the Cartesian dictum Cogito ergo sum. The student is educated (and is understood socio-educationally) for living in the public sphere as an economic, political and cultural actor. She or he is not educated for a relational life as an interdependent, caring and solidaristic human being (Noddings, 1984, 2001). To the contrary, contemporary education draws heavily on Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of cognitive objectives, emphasizing the development of logical mathematical intelligence and abstract reasoning (Gardner, 1983) in measuring educational capacity and success (merit). It has inherited from classical liberalism an indifference to the affective domain and an allegiance to the education of the rational autonomous subject (Noddings, 2003).12

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A further problem arises from the separatist view of personhood that informs so much of academic and educational thinking; this generally ignores the reality of human dependency and interdependency across the life course (Kittay, 1999). The idealization of autonomy, choice and self-interest as the overriding orientations of social relations has led to an analysis and development of a human condition that is sociologically naïve (Archer, 2000; England, 2005). The problem is exacerbated by the fact that contractual models of social relations tend to inform dominant moral theories, including those operating within education. As these ‘are built on liberal models of social relations between strangers’ (Held, 2006, p. 80), the care life of people is often ignored. Education for doing love, care and solidarity work13 is generally not part of the formal educational curriculum (Lynch et  al., 2007). Moreover, the very institutions that legitimate what is valid knowledge, institutions of higher education, are deeply disrespectful of care in ways that are highly gendered (Lynch, 2010). Even the growing recognition of emotional and personal intelligence within developmental psychology (see Gardner, 1983; Goleman, 1995; Sternberg, 1985, 2002) has not unsettled the focus of education on the development of the market citizen. Within research on emotional intelligence (EI) there is a strong focus on the relevance of EI for measurable achievement; it is generally defined as a capability that enhances and supplements other marketable capabilities, including academic attainment (Grewal and Salovey, 2005; Lopes et al., 2006; Vandervoort, 2006). While Cartesian rationalism lies at the heart of liberal education, the way in which contemporary education is now largely defined as a preparation for employment is a more recent phenomenon. It is reinforced by the scholarly equation of work with economic selfpreservation and self-actualization through interaction with nature (Gúrtler, 2005). Nonmarket work, human service work, and especially care work, are peripheralized within

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this frame (Folbre, 2001). Employment-led education is strongly patriarchal as it peripheralizes the care infrastructures of society where women are disproportionately working as paid and unpaid labourers. The ways in which patriarchy was embedded in employment-led education was exacerbated in the post-1970s neoliberal era when the value of education became increasingly measured in terms of its market returns to employment. The focus of the EU’s Lisbon Agreement exemplifies this. It prioritizes preparing citizens for the ‘knowledge economy’: knowledge is reduced to the status of an adjective in the service of the economy. At the individual level, the purpose of education is defined in terms of personalized human capital acquisition, making oneself skilled for the economy ‘the individual is expected to develop a productive and entrepreneurial relationship towards oneself’ (Masschelein and Simons, 2002, p. 594). No serious account is taken of the reality of dependency for all human beings, both in childhood and at times of illness and infirmity. While the citizen carer and the care-recipient citizen are recognized in the educational arena, this generally only happens when professionals are being trained ‘to manage’ those in need of care. The inter/dependent citizen is left outside the educational frame. What is surprising about this is that education largely ignores developments in social cognitive neuroscience, which show that humans are not isolated rational actors but are strongly driven by the desire for social connection. Human brains are made for social connection, not just for thinking (Lieberman, 2013). Studies of infants show that ‘the desire for relationship, pleasure in connection and the ability to make and maintain relationship are present at the onset of development’ (Gilligan, 1995, p. 123), while a ‘neurobiology of attachment’ is emerging that is helping to illuminate the importance of love (Damasio, 1994). Nurturing is what produces human beings in their relational humanity as mentally healthy, warm and

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considerate human beings. It has liberatory potential because, as Hill Collins (1990, p. 197) observes ‘…love is active, dynamic, determined and generates the motive and desire for justice’. While the neglect of the affective lives of people represents a very profound form of cultural imperialism in gender terms, it impoverishes education for all students: young people and men and women are deprived of the opportunity to develop an understanding of care, love and solidarity work, work that is central to the business of human well-being (Kittay, 1999).

CONCLUSION Educational institutions alone cannot eliminate social class (or racial) inequalities as the generative site of social class injustices rests on economic rather than educational relations. While the way schools and colleges operate can exacerbate or ameliorate inequality, education is not the sole arbiter of social class production or reproduction. Outside the market economy, culture, politics, civil society, the family, housing, transport, the media, and the arts are all sites that produce and reproduce class, racial, gender and other inequalities. What educators are in a position to do, however, is to challenge the doxas14 of their own educational trade. They can do this by calling out, through emancipatory pedagogical practices, the internal contradictions of the educational system, particularly its classed, raced, dis-ability and gendered contradictions. They can enable students to read the power encoded within educational knowledge, thereby freeing them to rethink it and challenge it. Educators are in a powerful position to exercise agency, especially teacher educators. Challenging the myth of meritocracy, so endemic and problematic in what it promised education can do, would be a welcome way to open up a debate about how economic inequality undermines equality in education.

A re-engagement with critical educators, especially the work of Paulo Freire but also bell hooks and Ranciere, is also overdue. This would enable a rethinking of pedagogical practices that are so often reduced to ‘banking’, when educational value is reduced to test scores rather than being led by critical thinking. If education is to be truly emancipatory it must address the deep structures of gender, class, race, disability and other oppressions within education. It is in the silences that injustices are perpetuated as much as in misrecognition or misrepresentations. In gender terms, this involves moving beyond what Noddings (2001) has termed the ‘add women and stir’ approach to curriculum and institutional change,15 namely enabling or allowing women to enter leadership and curriculum design and assessment positions on male terms. Recognizing the centrality of the love, care and solidarity for the survival and development of humanity, and relatedly the nature of the different care realities that comprise the relational world, is a profoundly emancipatory gendered challenge for education. As with emancipatory education more generally, educators must be given the opportunity to study the theory and practice of emancipatory classed, raced and gender practices in their teacher education programmes. Without exposure to new thinking about liberatory practices in terms of pedagogy and curricula, teachers cannot engage with social change. While it goes without saying that any new pedagogy needs resource investment, what is at stake as much as this is a change of intellectual and pedagogical dispositions.

Notes 1  This term was coined by my UCD colleague Luciana Lolich. I am most grateful for the assistance that Luciana and Margaret Crean gave me in completing this chapter. 2  This is a term used in the US that I find difficult to understand as all people have colour. 3  The word disability needs to be challenged as a category of identification. ‘Dis’ is a negative prefix in English, so to define any person or group

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as disabled or having a disability is to implicitly suggest they are lacking something in human ability terms. Perhaps the word should change to ‘diffability’, thereby recognizing the enormous diversity in abilities within the human condition. 4  As academic aptitude tests like the SAT are validated against school grades, there is complete circularity within the validation system. Aptitude tests do not so much predict attainment in a given field; rather, they confirm what learning the person has already. 5  The Health Professions Admission Test (HPAT) is increasingly being used to determine access to elite professions, such as medicine. The HPAT has been used in the US, the UK and Australia for assisting in the selection of entry to medicine for many years, and in Ireland since 2007. Given that these are privately-run tests, for which one has to pay to undertake and to prepare, they are also deeply class biased in this respect. 6  There has been, and still is, a low-wage economy and poor labour conditions for workers in the global South for a long time. It is not a new phenomenon. 7  Equality of opportunity is a liberal concept. Liberal egalitarians typically define equality in terms of individuals rather than groups; while they vary between conservative liberal and left-leaning liberals, they all subscribe to the view that equality of opportunity means that people should in some sense have an equal chance to compete for social advantages. As they assume that inequality is endemic to society, equality of opportunity is about equalizing the distribution of educational (and life) chances within an unequal society. For a discussion on the difference between liberal ideas of equality and equality of condition, see Chapter 2 in Equality: From Theory to Action (Baker et al., 2004). 8  For Michael Young (1958) this formula was not a principle to be lauded as a fair means of operating social selection; quite the contrary, his book is an ironic critique of the idea, and of the moral judgement that would ensue from its implementation. To fail due to bad luck would be forgivable but to fail because you did not deserve to do well (lacked merit) is be held accountalbe for failure and not so easily forgiven. 9  The exclusive use of the male noun in the text is surprising. 10  In Ireland, Anglicization and religious proselytizing was an explicit goal of National Schooling when first introduced by the British government in the 1830s (Coolahan, 1981). 11  Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) refer to the cultural products offered in school as cultural arbitraries to indicate the highly arbitrary way in which they are selected and assessed. In particular, they high-

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lighted the social class biases in what is taught, to whom, when and how. 12  Yet an analysis of the etymological roots of the word ‘education’ shows it is rooted in the Latin verb educare (which means to bring up, rear or raise up); this implies nurturing and care. 13  For a more detailed discussion of the differences between love, care and solidarity, see Lynch, Lyons and Cantillon (2007) and Lynch, Baker and Lyons (2009). 14  In The Outline of a Theory of Practice (2002), Bourdieu defined doxas as the unspoken assumptions underpinning cultural or political practices. It refers to what is taken as self-evident. 15  Similar issues arise in deconstructing racial, social class, disability, sexuality and other biases in curriculum design.

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19 Theorizing Schools as Organizations from a Feminist Perspective Jill Blackmore

INTRODUCTION This chapter reviews the ways in which schools as organizations have been conceptualized and researched by feminist scholars in education. It begins with feminist critiques of the gender binaries embedded in much of the educational administration, leadership and school improvement literature falsely dichotomizing the public and private, rationality and emotionality, objective and subjective (Marshall and Anderson, 1994; Boler, 1999). Schools, as institutions of socialization, it is argued, are not discrete organizations, but are interconnected with the social relations of power in communities and the gender order of the wider society in which women and girls are often subordinated. Gender is therefore a structuring structure of schooling. The structures, processes, images as well as the policies, discourses and practices of schools convey messages or cultural texts about who and what knowledges and experiences are valued most, with differential effects on student and

professional identities, aspirations, inclusions and outcomes. Feminist pedagogies therefore challenge the social relations of gender and dominant masculinities within and outside schooling, making schools sites of contestation over values and what is taught, how and by whom. The chapter concludes by considering the possibilities arising from digital pedagogies and contemporary gender politics in the context of rising neo-conservatism and rampant market radicalism. A feminist perspective therefore demands analysis of the positioning of the school and school systems within their wider political, social and economic context over time. It explores the changing relationship between the state, work, family and community as mediated by education and questions what this means for social justice. A feminist perspective also demands analysis of the normalizing structures, processes, ‘cultures’ and practices of schools as organizations and how these are gendered. It requires an understanding of how policy works (or does not) to

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provide a language, strategies and justification for gender equity reform. Finally, central to ‘feminism as an administrative project’ is reflexivity – as researchers and activists re/consider their theoretical assumptions, concepts and practical strategies (McLeod, 2017, p. 284). At the same time, it is important to recognize that there is no unitary feminist position. How education, the state/family/community/work relations are theorized and researched have been contested within feminism. Feminism is an assemblage, a broad social, epistemological and political movement with different cultural trajectories and historical legacies littered by debates over strategies to achieve gender equity within specific contexts and with regard to situated knowledges. Furthermore, feminism makes the category of ‘woman’ itself suspect because of differences among women based on race, class, ethnicity, religion and sexuality (Ladson-Billings,2004). Queer theorists, for example, view gender as socially constituted, fluid and not biologically ‘fixed’ (Butler, 1990). This analysis represents one feminist reading, thematic rather than chronological, of schools as organizations in the field of educational administration and policy written by a white heterosexual Western feminist academic from the Global South (Connell, 2007).

SCHOOLING AND GENDER AS ‘STRUCTURING STRUCTURES’ Feminist scholars have always seen schools as integral to the wider organization of society, often described by overarching terms such as patriarchy and capitalism, and the social, economic and political order in which gender is a ‘structuring structure’. Gender is socially constituted through the structures, processes, discourses and practices of schooling with its internal ‘gender regimes’ (Connell, 1987). For feminist scholars, schools are not only sites of gender reproduction and institutionalized

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sexism, but also places of hope from which to produce social change by improving the opportunities and outcomes for girls and women as independent agents. Feminist standpoint theory (Smith, 1987), for example, argues that, through the lens of gender, the social relations of power can be tracked out from schools into wider forms of governance and economic and social relations. Schools therefore cannot be treated as discrete organizational entities distinct from their context as they are integral to any society’s ‘relations of ruling’ (Smith, 1987). While there have always been debates within feminism (Weiner, 1994), feminist academics share the common project of social justice for women and girls and have sought to develop theories and do research that: • have a strong explanatory value of how gender inequality arises historically and contemporaneously; • illustrate how inclusion and exclusion works within both their own theoretical and other lens and in practice; • provide understandings of individual, organizational as well as social change in order to promote more inclusive and democratic schools and societies; • suggest a practical politics underpinned by longterm aims for social justice.

Embedded throughout is the tension between understanding how agency and structure interact in context. While there are multiple feminist positions (liberal, radical, neo-Marxist, Black, standpoint, Chicana, post-structuralist, postcolonial, Indigenous, post-humanist, queer…), common themes emerge (Mendez-Morse, 2003). Feminist critical analyses in educational administration and policy have both informed and been informed by the shifting theoretical terrain of educational research taking up various ontological and epistemological positions within/against dominant ways of viewing schools (Young and Sklra 2003). Over time, feminist research has been appropriated and absorbed into,

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if not domesticated and de-politicized, by mainstream theory, policy and practice in educational administration. This process of appropriation without recognition is indicative of wider social, political, economic change troubling the social relations of gender. A feminist position assumes education is a political issue as it is also about power and knowledge: who has the power, who defines what counts, what is valued, and who benefits most from schooling. The feminist perspective in educational administration and policy has drawn on feminist social and political theorists, philosophers, geographers, psychologists, historians and sociologists. Feminist scholars critique the assumptions underpinning theories of liberalism, which inform Western social theory, and how societies are governed and work is organized. Liberalism associates the masculine with reason, the mind, the objective (‘hard’ sciences) and the public domain of work and politics and the feminine with emotion, the body, the subjective (soft sciences and humanities), nature and the private civic domain of the family and community (Blackmore, 1989; Marshall and Anderson, 1994). These binaries have become historically embedded in the structures, processes and practices of society and their institutions, and how schools are conceptualized as organizations. Feminist critiques in education have therefore focused on the masculine/feminine binaries embedded in the organization of schools and school systems with regard to the • relationship of schools to community and social movements; • the gender division of labour in schools as workplaces and family/school relations relative to the changing role of women; • structural inequalities/equalities arising from school governance and provision, for example, devolution and funding; • symbolic representations and organization of schools – structures, images, cultures; • knowledge hierarchies and the hidden curriculum; • illumination of how power works through the gendered micro-politics of organizations;

• the discursive production and positioning of gendered identities; • gendered processes and practices of selection, promotion and reward, for example, ‘merit’; • normative practices and images of leadership; • politics of difference (race, class, ethnicity, sexuality and gender); • affective economies of teaching, learning and leading; • embodiment and materiality of gender; • role of the state and transnational governing bodies; • power of culture and religion; • alternatives to dominant leadership and school organization (Indigenous, post-colonial and posthumanist); • gendered impact of global policies of neoliberalism and the rise of edu-business; and • policy and feminist interventions.

Methodologically, feminist scholars have addressed systemic structural reform of school systems and the processes of organizational change at the macro (global, regional and national), meso (institutional) and micro (interpersonal and intercultural) levels (Harding, 1987; Young and Sklra, 2003; Weis and Fine, 2004; Fennell and Arno, 2008). Schools are complex organizations as they constitute and are constituted structurally and culturally by the social relations of gender, race, class and sexuality in ways that value some groups more than others (Youdell, 2005). Power, feminist post-structuralists argue, works through the organizational structures, processes, discourses, images and practices of schooling, and can be exercised both against and for equity. Taking a feminist position not only foregrounds the issue of equity of access, experience and success for girls and women, but also seeks a socially just education that benefits all students.

SCHOOLS, SYSTEMS AND THE STATE Feminist scholars in educational administration and policy sociology have argued that schools, what they do and who benefits

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cannot be treated out of context of systems of governance and the role of the nation state, who provides and pays for schooling, the configuration of local, national and global economies, and the changing social relations of gender. Capitalism was premised upon a gendered hierarchy of labour within the workplace and non-paid labour of the family (Acker, 1996). Industrialization in the late 18th century excluded the home as a workplace inclusive of women’s labour, and men were positioned as the primary wage earner, a position consolidated by the emergent male middle class claiming a merit-based system that relied on education, not birth, for employment by the mid-19th century. Universal compulsory elementary education was introduced in most Western nations during the 1870s because of the inadequacies of the free market of church and dame schools run by female teachers in their homes to educate all children. Universal compulsory elementary education was for the emergent middle class, which was critical to young democracies based on male suffrage. State-managed schooling in the early 20th century consolidated liberalism’s public/private binary between paid work and unpaid family work, what had become the ‘natural order’, constructing women as dependent on their husbands, families or the state (Arnot and Weiler 1993). Women were increasingly marginalized in the educational enterprise, positioned as teachers not leaders, as parttime and casual, a residual labour force to be mobilized in times of teacher shortages (Acker, 1996; Jenkins et.al., 2009). Multiple rules of exclusion (married women resigning, lower pay) protected the male wage-earner. School provision was structured along gender and class lines with public systems offering: domestic science and clerical schools, or streams within comprehensive schools for working-class girls; technical schools for working-class boys; and a liberal education in elite private or grammar schools for the middle and upper classes. Indigenous students in settler nations such as Australia, Canada,

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New Zealand and the USA under white custodianship were separated out and placed into ‘protection’. Gender as well as racial, ethnic and class difference was institutionalized in and through schooling (Weiler, 1988). Education had become a nation-state building project post-1945. The Western nation state invested in public schooling in order to promote economic growth as well as citizenship and social cohesion due to post-war reconstruction and migration. The welfare states (Nordic, Anglophone and European) invested in well-resourced public education systems and strong teacher unions, which in many instances meant teaching (and other feminized emergent professions, such as nursing) became relatively well paid, with equal pay for women by the 1970s in the Anglophone nations (Arnot, David and Weiner, 1999). Public sector employment has historically offered greater gender equality, evident in both Scandinavian state-welfarism and European communist states providing childcare provision. Schools were, by the 1970s, sites of unionized professionalism and activism seeking social change in most Western nations, often informed by the women’s movement (Bascia, 2015). The political ethos was of democratic participation within state bureaucracies, informed by the feminist bureaucrats (femocrats) working within/against the state seeking gender equity in Australia, Canada, New Zealand (Blackmore, 1999) and the Nordic states (Moller, 2004) and in English local education authorities. Feminist activists sought to reorganize schools based on the participation of parents, students and teachers in curriculum, assessment and pedagogical reform (Yates, 1993). Specific gender programmes focused on raising gender awareness and institutionalized equal opportunity, governing the ‘conduct of conduct’ and reconstructing gender identity (McLeod, 2017). Any trend towards more comprehensive co-educational schooling with progressive curriculum reforms was cut short by the emergence of neoliberal economism’s impact

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on education policy from the 1980s and the promotion of the self-maximizing individual, parent choice and the self-managing school. The rapid adoption of structural adjustment policies voluntarily by Anglophone nations (except the USA) and mandated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on developing economies led to reduced state expenditure on education, health and welfare and the promotion of market principles of competition and choice – the twin strategies of corporatization and emergent post-welfare statism (Brine, 1999). Structural reforms devolved risk and responsibility down to individual schools during the 1980s and 1990s. Changes in funding based on enrolment increased competition within and between public and private sectors. Public education was reorganized with some Australian states moving towards self-managing schools, the UK and New Zealand introducing selfgoverning schools, the USA funding charter schools and Sweden initiating free schools (Blackmore and Sachs, 2007). At the same time, new accountability regimes focusing on outputs were developed with standardized testing facilitating the state to ‘steer from a distance’, governing through centralizeddecentralization, a trend exacerbated by the global ranking mechanisms of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests post-2000 (Lingard, Thompson and Sellar, 2016). Post-colonial feminist scholars point out how neoliberal reforms have been regressive of gender equity, with women and girls being the main victims of structural adjustment policies due to reduced state expenditure in education, health and welfare (Fennell and Arno, 2008). No policy is gender-neutral. While education has moved from being a nation-building project to becoming a multinational business enterprise, policy borrowing cross-nationally is encouraging moves towards greater autonomy of and competition between schools within public systems (Ball, 2007). In the contemporary market context, with a proliferation of

providers and parental choice, the issue is about attracting and retaining students and maintaining reputations by promoting distinctiveness, often through specialization. High-performing schools are able to attract or select high-performing student cohorts through a focus on academic achievement, the arts, sport or music. Within a market context, this can position other nearby schools as ‘dump’ schools where most parents have less choice and middle-class parents mobilize their resources, usually mothers’ labour, to exercise that choice (Windle, 2015). Class and gender practices are evident from early childhood to adulthood in terms of relationships with teachers, mealtime conversations and family literacies (Lareau, 2003). This has resulted in an increasingly residualized and underfunded public sector in Anglophone nations, which usually deals with a diversity of abilities and backgrounds, and is required to offer a range of welfare services as well as academic and vocational programmes (Millbourne, MacRae and Maguire, 2004). By 2017, with increased privatization and restructuring of public schooling, a multitude of providers and organizational forms now exist in most nations (Musset, 2012). Various models of schools as autonomous organizations are being mobilized cross-nationally as free schools, Independent Public Schools, charter schools or Academies, which are adopted regardless of context (Gunter, 2010; Srivastava, 2013). But privatization driven by profitability has little regard for the public good, with rising inequality between rich and poor schools, students and communities in affluent countries (Raffo et  al., 2010). The 21st-century workplace, changing social relations of gender within the family and society together with post-welfarism have meant women and children constitute the majority of those living in poverty in Western nations (Oakes, 2015). Public schools in high-poverty regions have experienced serial restructuring to meet new expectations and demands placed upon them (Lipman, 2004). Such schools are now

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expected to collaborate with government and non-government agencies in health, welfare and employment, partner with philanthropic organizations, participate in urban and neighbourhood renewal and Education Action Zones (Gewirtz and Cribb, 2002), as well as provide breakfast and after-school programmes (Milbourne et  al., 2004). The size of schools has increased as their services extend over the day to include early childhood in order to create, where possible, supportive environments for many students and their families. Public schools are the social centres of many impoverished communities (Lupton, 2005). In this marketized context, schools are increasingly treated like small businesses in which the individual teacher carries most risk as responsibility for outcomes is devolved. With increased school autonomy since the 1990s, the onus is now on principals to achieve efficiency. Evidence suggests, for example in Victoria, Australia, an increase in teacher contracts and the outsourcing of services to contractors for welfare, maintenance and professional development (Pittard, 2017). Flexibility for schools leads to greater teacher casualization (Gunter et  al., 2005; Mayer et al., 2017). Teacher collective bargaining has, as a result, been weakened at the moment teaching is facing de-professionalization, the consequence of the increased pressure of external accountabilities, professional standards regimes, standardized assessment, school rankings and political and media criticisms of universitybased teacher education (Gunter et al., 2005; Gewirtz et al., 2009; Bascia, 2015). Treating schools as ‘autonomous’ institutions competing for distinction in education markets raises significant gender equity and social justice issues. First, gender continues to permeate education markets, which rely on anxiety, fear, envy and desire (Blackmore, 1996; Lynch, Grummell and Devine, 2012). While many single-sex elite schools are now co-educational in order to maintain competitive advantage but not necessarily

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inclusiveness, girls’ schools are favoured by middle-class parents for their perceived academic benefits or by those belonging to faiths preferring gender segregation (Mabokela, 2007). Yet good academic outcomes are often more a result of self-selection by aspirant parents and students as much as a girlfriendly environment (Ivanson and Murphy, 2007). Thus, gender segregation can reproduce class- and gender-based inequality. Government funding of private schooling has seen the growth of fundamentalist religious schools of all persuasions, for example in Australia, which are excluded from discrimination laws with regard to staff recruitment based on marital status, religion and sexuality (Maddox, 2014). While government funded, these private schools are not held as accountable as public schools for their genderdifferentiated curriculum or pedagogical practices. Marketization of schooling, both public and private, enables greater influence to be exerted by conservatives and the radical right on individual schools in order to promote creationist science and oppose feminist, anti-racist pedagogies inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) students, thus promoting value systems positioning girls and women in traditional roles (Rasmussen, 2006; Miller-Idriss and Pilkington, 2017). Finally, market work is undertaken largely by women, in terms of time and voluntary labour (Reay, 1998; Crozier and Reay, 2005). Market values and school autonomy do not necessarily produce more democratic localized decisionmaking (Musset, 2012). State intervention is often required through policy and regulation to institute and protect the rights of girls and women and other equity groups (Blackmore, 1999). Second, there is little evidence to support the claim that greater school autonomy leads to improved educational outcomes. Devolution in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries has led to greater not less inequality between schools and students with regard to academic achievement (Musset, 2012).

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Competition as a mechanism of organizing schooling within or between public and private systems of education more likely exacerbates inequality based on class and race (Teese, Lamb and Duru-Bellat, 2007). Choice is available to the already advantaged with market knowledge, money and mobility as high-performing schools choose/exclude students and not vice versa (Windle, 2015). Third, there are a range of policy actors promoting school improvement and effectiveness. Multinational philanthropic organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and edu-businesses, such as Pearson, increasingly fill the space evacuated by nation states in education provision (Au and Ferrare, 2015). This often occurs by default due to lack of government funds or policies promoting privatization. Pearson, for example, offers a full package deal, including buildings, staffing, curriculum and assessment. Governments recruit influential members of the global cadre of white male elites and education policy entrepreneurs and management consultants connected to such organizations as McKinsey and KPMG (Au and Ferrare, 2015). The increased role of philanthropic and private enterprise in education raises ethical dilemmas for feminists as the education of girls in countries experiencing war, conflict and economic depression is critical for recovery, regardless of who is the provider. Early studies indicate that privatization of provision again reinstates gender inequality, particularly for young women becoming teachers (Srivastava, 2013; McPherson et  al., 2014). Many private schools, such as free schools in England, now hire unqualified teachers in what is an increasingly feminized profession (Gunter, 2010). While more women move into school leadership in the Anglophone nations, in contrast to the Nordic states, they lead schools experiencing unprecedented work conditions. Teaching is marked by intensified workload (Gunter et al., 2005) and employment insecurity (Charteris et al., 2017), lower professional status and teacher shortages, and greater

external accountability and surveillance by media and management as well as highly anxious parents (Weldon, 2015; Doolan and Blackmore, 2017). Meanwhile, the division of labour is being re/gendered, as curriculum and politicians and management consultants, often in response to populist and media demands or particular ideological positions (Lingard and Rawolle, 2004), are increasingly making assessment policy outside the field of education. With greater cultural diversity, schools continue to be sites of contested values in which changing gender roles challenge what some claim to be tradition or culture, as if these are unchanging (Shah, 2006; Mabokela, 2007). Education as a social field is being weakened at the time that teaching is becoming more numerically feminized.

SCHOOLS IN CONTEXT Feminist scholars have, in rejecting the public/private, personal/political binaries embedded in mainstream educational administration literature, also challenged the epistemological assumptions about the nature of knowledge and knowing (e.g., objective/ subjective dichotomies) that dominate the school effects and effectiveness paradigms and their latest trajectory of school effectiveness and improvement (SEI). The positivist epistemologies underpinning educational administration post-1945 treated schools as discrete organizations, separate from family, community and context, with family relegated to background noise or as a variable to be controlled, thus marginalizing location, community and context factors. Schools were gender-neutral ‘black boxes’ and gender (as race/ethnicity and class) was treated as a variable of input or output. This structuralfunctionalist view assumed that the school’s function was to socialize individuals into their predetermined sex roles. Powerful factors, which impact on students’ experiences and learning, such as family background

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(parents’ education, domestic violence, nonEnglish speaking, etc.), prior academic success and location, are rendered as irrelevant, other than a passing reference in some of the SEI literature to challenging circumstances. Feminist analyses (e.g., Lipman, 2004, for Chicago; Lupton, 2005, for UK) have foregrounded the significance of context for the individual school shaping the possibilities for more equitable outcomes. Context matters when it comes to concentrations of disadvantage resulting, for example in many well-off nations, from de-industrialization. Socio-geographic inequality (outer/inner urban, rural/city) results from declining local community infrastructure, high under- or unemployment, poor community health and well-being, and under-resourced schools (Raffo et al., 2007; Teese et al., 2010). Locational disadvantage can result in greater disparity in educational achievement as residential segregation maps onto educational segregation in global cities (Lipman, 2004; Lupton, 2005). Context shapes the experiences, aspirations, choices and futures of particular class- and race-based masculinities and femininities (Weis and Fine, 2004; Kenway, Kraack and Hickey-Moody, 2006). Context can therefore limit the capacity of schools to enhance all students’ futures if there is no redistribution of funding recognizing locational disadvantage. This invisibility of context permeates the contemporary SEI paradigm. A feminist perspective considers that school effectiveness and improvement: • focuses on the individual school and not systemic inequalities, with the devolution of risk and responsibility to individual schools without resources; • fails to recognize the impact of the increased precarity of teachers’ work; • has been complicit in teacher de-professionalization, with teaching an increasingly feminized profession; • is dominated by white Western male policymakers and advisors; • promotes simplistic solutions (e.g., visible learning) focusing on teachers as the solution while

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failing to recognize context factors such as familial background, location and cultural differences; is instrumentalist in its reduction of educational outcomes to skills, competencies and quantifiable measures of student learning (e.g., standardized assessment); refuses to recognize institutionalized unequal social relations of gender, race and power; promotes managerialism and not democratic process (e.g., teacher and student voice); focuses on leaderism and limited models of leadership as the solution.

In particular, feminist scholars have critiqued the failure of SEI and transnational policymakers for failing to address how the lived experiences of women and girls are shaped by wider socio-material relations of gender in both developed and developing economies (Unterhalter, 2006) and how poverty and violence impact on girls’ attendance and achievements (Oakes, 2015). Because the school as an organization in SEI is disassociated from its location, community and wider economic, cultural, political and social contexts, SEI has been easily mobilized as the policy solution transnationally by edubusinesses such as McKinsey and Pearson, philanthropists such as the Gates Foundation (Ball, 2007) and consultants (Au and Ferrare, 2015) despite SEI’s failure to deliver educational equity over 30 years.

SCHOOLS, PARENTS AND COMMUNITY The feminist position is that schools are porous institutions blurring public and private domains because the ‘public’ domain of paid work, including schools, is reliant on the unpaid ‘private’ domestic labour of women. Parent involvement, feminist scholars argue, usually means calling upon mothers’ voluntary labour (e.g., David, 1974; Vincent, 2000; Crozier and Reay, 2005), although how parents are positioned by class has changed with neoliberal policies of choice. The 1980s was

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a period in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada of social movements in which the first phase of the ‘parentocracy’ became mobilized, informed by the women’s movement which encouraged parents to be actively involved in school decision-making as partners (David, 1974). This democratic discourse of parental involvement as sound educational practice was appropriated by the market discourse of parental choice during the 1990s, redefining the pedagogical relationship between parents and schools into an instrumentalist one within a market context, repositioning parents as consumers or clients and teachers as providers (Gewirtz, Ball and Bowe, 1995; Edwards and Alldred, 2000). As schools have become more like businesses in the 21st century, the parental role has expanded from being fundraiser and canteen worker to being an active market chooser, councillor or governor and often employer of contract staff (Reay, 1998; Deem, 1999). Public schools are increasingly reliant on parental voluntarism in order to raise funds, buy equipment and undertake maintenance. Policies about parental involvement promote normative middle-class images of ‘the good parent’, who is now held responsible for learning in partnership with teachers as family literacy teachers (Comber, 2016). The post-welfare state political and media discourse of shaming also blames ‘failed’ working-class, black or ‘ethnic’, often single mothers (Vincent, 2000). Marketization has empowered some women in their position as consumers relative to women as teachers at a time when teacher professionalism and teacher education in universities are being devalued (Reay, 1998). Gendered discourses therefore permeate school/community relations through the intersectional lens of race, class, religion and ethnicity (Vincent, 2000). Feminist sociologists have charted historically how schools have been sites of community activity for women as mothers and teachers (Acker, 1996). Postcolonial feminist scholars have shown how informal education, often ancillary activity

to mainstream schooling in the form of adult education, language centres, community education and neighbourhood centres, has educated marginalized working-class, immigrant and refugee women, empowering them as citizens and workers in both developed and developing economies (Unterhalter, 2006). Indigenous feminist accounts foreground the close relationship between schools and community through both-way learning and the role of the elders. While this troubles the relationship with white male-dominated education bureaucracies, Indigenous women leaders in remote communities remain invisible (Kamara, 2017). Feminist cultural theorists currently track how neo-conservative religious movements challenge progressivist and feminist advocacy of social justice in terms what is taught and by whom (MillerIdris and Pilkington, 2017).

SCHOOLS AS SITES OF CONTESTED VALUES, CULTURES AND SITUATED KNOWLEDGES Early radical feminist analyses as to how gender worked in and through schools focused on the classroom and how schools were structured in gendered ways. In particular, their attention was on the visibly unequal allocation and use of time and space, highlighting how male students gained most teacher attention and dominated use of playground space and classrooms. They considered the organizational hierarchies implicit in the size, location and furnishing of spaces used by teachers and the positioning of the usually male principal’s office (Yates, 1993). Later analyses examined how the official curriculum lacked examples of women and girls in texts, while the hidden curriculum offered subliminal storylines about the role of girls and women as signified by the artefacts, images and reward systems of schools – which sports and knowledges were valued, who used the most space, whose voice was

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loudest, what tasks boys and girls, teachers (female) and principals (usually male) were expected to do (Kenway et al., 1998). Feminist socio-cultural analyses of leadership and organizational change moved beyond the classroom to critique the dominant SEI notion of a unitary organizational culture because of its assumptions of gender neutrality, homogeneity, shared values and beliefs about ‘how we do things in this school’ (Reynolds, 2002). These studies showed contestation between the official culture as portrayed in policies or vision statements and the subordinate/subaltern cultures of the less powerful (Limerick and Lingard, 1995). The dominance of white men as school leaders embodied masculinist norms, even though the image did not match many individual men, while effectively excluding women and homosexual men (Blackmore, 1989). The 1980s was a period in which cultural feminists found political and strategic strength in the unitary notion of womanhood in their demand for recognition of what women could bring to leadership and the schools (Belenky et al., 1987). The emergent discourse was that of women being more caring and sharing and men being more hardnosed and lacking in empathy (Shakeshaft, 1987). While there were few women in leadership, and most feminist and leadership research was self-reporting, such essentialist positions were valid without contrary evidence. But this essentializing discourse of women’s styles of leadership was readily appropriated by mainstream management and leadership policy and research because positioning women as soft and caring failed to challenge dominant leadership norms that reinforced the rational/emotional, hard/soft gender binaries (Blackmore, 1999; Reay and Ball, 2000). By the 1990s, therefore, the notion of schools as gendered organizations within the feminist and critical organizational theorists had been well established, but ignored by SEI, which still saw school culture as something hero leaders managed. As with

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scientific management earlier, SEI uncritically imported management theory into education, this time Senge’s (1993) notion of the learning organization. In the learning organization, individuals were expected to align themselves and accept the way things work around here while unproblematically accumulating knowledge to enhance organizational learning through teamwork and communication without addressing the relations of power. This notion of a monocultural ethos in schools has normalizing consequences with regard to leadership and organizational change. Recruitment based on ‘best fit’ to a cultural norm, feminist sociologists and psychologists argue, ignores unconscious bias in which recruiters select people like themselves. Multiple feminist accounts exist, such as Blount (1996) in the USA superintendency, Grummell, Devine and Lynch (2009, p. 337) in Ireland, Court (1998) in New Zealand and Blackmore, Barty and Thompson (2006) in Australia, to illustrate how ‘local logics’ of best fit result in ‘safe’ candidates selected for leadership according to familiar qualities embodied with regard to gender, race and class. Homosociability (Blackmore et al., 2006) reproduces sameness in values, orientation and experiences aligned with existing leadership practices, thus excluding any challenges or addressing difference in a period of intense organizational and socio-cultural change (Capper, 1993). This is regardless of policy discourses promoting the benefits of pluralist perspectives and diversity in leadership (Bacchi, 1999).

SCHOOLS, CULTURAL RECOGNITION AND THE PRODUCTION OF GENDERED SUBJECTIVITIES Within feminism, there have been significant debates as to whether the category of woman is valid when understanding the differentiated experience of women with regard to class, ‘race’, ethnicity and sexuality. Feminist

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scholars during the 1990s were challenged to critique their own positioning as to how theories and policies privileged white middleclass feminists and ignored issues of ‘race’ and culture. Black feminist scholars disrupted notions of women as a unitary category, drawing on the work of Collins in Black Feminist Thought (1990) (Mirza, 1993) in their demand for cultural recognition. Arnot et al. (1999) tracked in their historical analysis of gender, schooling and social change how gender works in relation to classed and race-based differences in the UK, contributing to feminist policy studies in the USA (Marshall, 1993). Feminist historicalsociological accounts illustrated how schools mediate relations between community, family and the state through political lobbying, social movements such as the USA civil rights movements with de-segregation in the 1960s, the women’s movement in the 1970s, multiculturalism in Australia in the 1980s (Tsolidis, 2001), anti-racism in the UK in the 1990s (Mirza, 1993; Grogan, 1999) and, in the 2000s, post-colonial (e.g. Shah, 2006) and Indigenous (Battiste, 2005) movements. But the politics of difference by the 1990s became tinged with essentialism as it made claims of recognition and inclusion in schooling based on ‘cultural’ difference (race, ethnicity and religion). This could lead to misrecognition of gender because changing the social relations of gender challenges traditional cultures (Fraser, 1997; Blackmore, 2016). In contrast, feminist post-structuralist perspectives emerging during the 1990s viewed schools as enabling individuals to position themselves or be positioned as agentic. Positioning occurred through the process of the production of racialized, gendered and sexualized subjectivities in everyday interactions in classrooms and playgrounds. Language, culture and gender identity intersected in situated ways, for example, through early childhood play (Davies, 1989). Feminist post-structuralists consider student and teacher subjectivities, experience contradiction, ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty

(Chase, 1995), but also have a capacity to position themselves powerfully by mobilizing particular discourses. In the digital culture of the 2000s, Ringrose (2007) elaborates on how the performative school produces high-achieving middle-class millennial femininities and masculinities working under pressure to both excel academically as individuals and socialize as one of the crowd. The 1990s also saw the focus in SEI and neoliberal managerialist policies on hero leaders in devolved systems working to position their school in the education market as ‘successful’ (Gunter, 2010). Feminist poststructuralism provided theoretical capacity to understand the contradictions, tensions and ambivalences experienced by women as school leaders, many seeking to enact gender reform, as they were discursively positioned as different within schools undergoing radical change and in crisis (Blackmore, 1999). Feminist theory had thus swung from neoMarxist feminist structural explanations of the 1960s and 1970s and cultural feminism of the 1980s and 1990s to more individualized accounts of the lived experience of schooling and identity formation in the millennium (Devine, Grummell and Lynch, 2011). Cultural recognition and subjectivity have been foregrounded, Fraser (1997) argues, to the neglect of redistributive theories as feminist post-structuralists rejected meta-narratives such as class. The politics of difference during the 1990s, with its focus on recognition, coincided with structural transformations globally as fast capitalism exited Western economies to find cheaper labour in Asia, leading to rapid de-industrialization. At the same time, education was being transformed by neoliberal policies of school choice and marketization. These were adopted voluntarily in the Anglophone nations while the International Monetary Fund and OECD structural adjustment policies prescribed reduced public school funding in both developed and developing economies such as Chile (OECD, 2008). In the new millennium, distinctive for issues of climate change, mobile digital

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technologies and online connectedness in virtual worlds, education feminisms are now drawing from new materialist and posthumanist scholars. Nature and technology are from feminist post-humanists Barard (2003) and Braidotti (2013), and Haraway (1991) earlier, agentic in the process of production of subjectivity (Pittard, 2017, p. 28), challenging Enlightenment dualisms between nature/ culture, mind/body and material/human. Yet to be explored is how schools as organizations are considered from a post-humanist/ socio-materialist perspective and what that means for leadership practices and ethics.

SCHOOLS, PEDAGOGY AND POWER Treating schools as relational spaces also focused feminist attention on pedagogy, an area rarely addressed in the educational administration and leadership literature. A feminist pedagogy is one in which the personal is the political. It promotes social action, anti-authoritarianism, discomfort, collaboration, a critical reading of the popular, a language of possibility, working in groups, inclusive practice and student voice among other practices, challenging mind/body dichotomies (Lather, 1991; Luke and Gore, 1992; Murphy and Gipps, 1996). Black and Indigenous feminist theoreticians critiqued mainstream administrative literature and policy for its gender and colour-blindness and its view of instruction as merely the implementation of curriculum and not about relationships (Marshall, 1993; McMahon, 2007). White feminist scholars critiqued the critical pedagogy literature for its view that power was possessed by some individuals who could empower ‘the other’ (Ellsworth, 1989). They argued that inclusive education arises from ‘pedagogies of difference’, which value difference as a pedagogical tool and resource (Boler and Zembylas, 2003). Feminist poststructuralists later argued that pedagogic power, as all power, has both positive and

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negative aspects, and that power is dispersed through networks of relationships within organizations with often unexpected effects. Debates within feminism have led to new ways of theorizing schools as sites in which difference is understood as intersectionality of race, class, ethnicity, gender and sexuality at interpersonal, organizational, national and global levels. Millennial feminists negotiate the dilemmas of pedagogic work: Millennial Black women teachers wrestle with two simultaneous burdens: disrupting the racist and sexist status quo of schooling through curriculum … and employing tactics to survive school politics among their majority white women colleagues. This dilemma is the complicated product of school desegregation, colour-blindness rhetoric, neoliberal ideals and limited exposure to Black women’s educational scholarship in teacher education programmes. (Nyachae, 2016, p. 786)

Post-structuralist and post-colonial feminist theoreticians have recognized that the significance of the body in gender equity reform as control over women’s and girls’ bodies is a contested site (Ryther, 2016). Tensions exist between cultural and gender recognition as the changing role of women is embodied in terms of how women and girls dress and behave, often challenging tradition and religious beliefs. Feminist post-colonial perspectives situate how feminist strategies vary within different cultural contexts, such as religious states like Pakistan (Shah, 2006), where female-only schools offer possibilities for social change by developing agentic gender identities (Mabokela, 2007). At the same time, Unterhalter (2006) argues that educating a girl is insufficient when schools do not recognize the constraints of domestic violence and traditional custom on the opportunities for girls to learn. Indigenous feminists offer alternative perspectives of leadership (Ahnee-Benham and Napier, 2002) and research methodologies (TuhiwaiSmith, 1999), positioning a school leader as being the mediator between community elders based on two-way learning. They are critical of white feminism’s prioritizing of

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masculinity and not race. Schools, feminist academics agree, are nodes in wider networks of power within communities and cultures where progress and tradition (often faith-based) are contested.

SCHOOLS AS AFFECTIVE ORGANIZATIONS Feminist sociologists focused on the affective dimension of schools, teaching (Boler, 1999) and leading (Blackmore, 1999) well before the therapeutic turn in SEI of the 21st century. Feminist academics began with critiquing the false constructions of the rational male leader and the emotional female teacher, arguing that decision-making has rational and emotional dimensions (Blackmore, 1999). Organizations, feminist sociologists argued, have affective economies that are gendered in terms of what emotions can be displayed and when by men and women, as each is judged according to gender stereotypes. For example, Noddings (1992), a philosopher, elaborated on administration as an ethics of care, how different forms of care could and should be learnt by all students and that care is not women’s work through biological destiny. Feminist scholars reject the measurability of emotions assumed in school climate research and human relation’s notions of emotions as an individual ‘problem’ to be managed (Samier and Schmidt, 2009; Devine et  al., 2011). Both perspectives are uncritically assumed in SEI literature, which has drawn from management theories of emotional intelligence and human relations (see Leithwood and Janzi, 2006). Ironically, male leaders are now expected to acquire emotional intelligence, whereas emotional displays in the 20th century were considered a weakness and associated with ‘the feminine’ (Boler, 1999). SEI, as human relations, individualizes any sense of emotionality that is often political, a collective affect arising from anger and lack of trust about the changes in education and not just stress.

SCHOOLS AS UN/SAFE PLACES Feminists have viewed schools as both unsafe/safe places – safe from gender oppressive regimes within society or domestic violence but ‘dangerous places’ where sexual/ gender-based harassment is part of everyday life (Mills, 2001, p. 5). In schools, girls are positioned both as victims due to a sense of ‘moral panic’ and ‘out of control if they position themselves as sexual and desirable’ (Ollis, 2017, p. 462). The new sociology of masculinity (Mills, 2001) from a profeminist stance argues for changing dominant masculinities that treat as natural boys’ harassment of female or homosexual teachers and students (Ferfolja and Hopkins, 2013). Being violent and intimidating is no longer justified by ‘boys will be boys’. Such institutionalized sexist cultures underlying that discourse impart a sense of entitlement and legitimates behaviour that carries over into boys’ adult personal, domestic and work life where certain dominant and aggressive masculinities can be privileged (Francis and Skelton, 2001). Similarly, queer feminists have shown that schools have been dangerous places for students ‘coming out’. While homosexuality was decriminalized in the 1980s, homosexual teachers continue to be at risk or are considered to ‘be risky’ for students. Neo-conservative and religious coalitions have moved on from the ‘what about the boys’ campaign of recuperative masculinity (Lingard, 1999) in the 1990s in Australia, the UK and the USA and moved on to attacking programmes seeking to reduce sexual harassment and bullying of LGBTQ young people (Rasmussen, 2006). This politics is not as evident in the Nordic countries where equity policies have become institutionalized (Öhrn, 2000). Queer theory challenges feminism’s hetero-normative essentialism, although some question whether it has a practical politics with regard to gender-based violence, oppression and economic inequality (Connell, 2010, p. 607).

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SCHOOLS AS DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATIONS

CHANGING ORGANIZATIONS AND GENDER EQUITY POLICY

Feminists as political theorists and activists refuse to accept liberalism’s public/private and civic/civil society dichotomies and argue that schools are critical to citizenship formation. The experiences of the women’s movement premised on collaboration, democratic decision-making in non-hierarchical organizations led to concepts such as feminist ways of organizing, which fused with moves around parent (largely mothers’) participation in school decision-making (Reay, 1998; Vincent, 2000). While feminist political theorists warn that community and voluntary organization practices do not readily transfer into workplaces, a strong current of feminist research investigates how schools can model democratic practices (Arnot and Dillabough, 1999; Seashore Louis, 2004). A feminist politics associated with democratic values assumes that participation is educative and therefore promotes student and teacher voice. Yet debates over comprehensive education in the 1990s concerned with the fostering of democratic values queried how ‘boys are framed both as potential threats to the democratic order and as groups whose needs and requirements should be taken more into account by schools’ (Öhrn, 2000, p. 133). Schools were seen to be more conducive to develop moral/democratic behaviours in girls than boys, again focusing on gender differences rather than differences within gender. The feminist position in general is that schools foster student learning to care for others through democratic processes. This has meant feminists criticize the popular notion in educational administration and policy of distributed leadership as being framed by SEI as more about distributing responsibility down onto teachers, with all the risks without a redistribution of power or resources. Distributed leadership, unless underscored by democratic practices, can be exploitative of teacher collegiality and not always empowering for teachers (Devine et al., 2011; Lumby, 2013).

Feminist policy sociologists and equity practitioners have focused on the power of policy to produce change within schools, across school systems and transnationally (Marshall, 1997). Yet there is always a tension between their desire for teacher professional autonomy and prescribing equity policy strategies. Equity policies as texts identify, name and define a problem, provide a language and legitimate action, which has value for leaders and practitioners (Bacchi, 1999b.) Equity policy has symbolic power for government or schools, as it can signify action has been taken, but can also lead to symbolic violence. Symbolic violence is when the existence of a policy without the political will or resources to implement fully into practice leads many to assume women and girls are now experiencing greater equality when often that is not the case. Equity policy shifted away from treating women and girls as passive recipients of socialization into prescriptive sex roles through schooling in the 1960s, to policies that focused on systematic structural inequality during the 1980s. The focus was on changing women and girls to be more ambitious and to choose non-traditional subjects, changing curriculum and pedagogy to make it more inclusive and changing school cultures to make them more girl friendly. Predominantly white middle-class girls benefitted despite recognition of race and class difference (Yates, 1993; Kenway et al., 1998). Feminists soon realized that no discourse is safe. While the emergent sociology of masculinity was sympathetic to feminism, the focus of gender policy moved way from examining the social relations of gender, which meant changing men and boys back to gender difference during the 1990s. This was a result of a feminist political backlash and the rise of social conservatism and economic neoliberalism during the 1990s, which focused on what about the boys and men (Lingard and Douglas, 1999). The polarized

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debates of the ‘gender wars’ and recuperative masculinity in the UK, Australia and the USA played out in schools but ignored evidence that class, often the proxy for race, was the primary indicator of educational achievement, not gender (Archer, 2003). The rise of neoliberal policies also coincided with the adoption of the management discourse of diversity. Concepts such as social justice, equality and equity that recognized legacies of structural disadvantage were replaced by diversity, a concept that feminist policy sociologists such as Bacchi (1999a) argue superficially recognizes the intersectionality of gender, race, class and sexuality (Ahmed, 2012). Discourses about the diversity of leadership in management discourses argue that diversity is good for business, improves productivity and leads to innovation as well as symbolically responding to the diversity of clients/consumers. But many feminists saw the diversity discourse as regressive, more a descriptor that can be individualized as any group or individual can claim to be ‘different’ regardless of whether the claim is based on disadvantage (Bacchi, 1999a). Diversity was a palatable discourse adopted in the context of the corporatization of schooling through managerialism and marketization. It readily aligned with neoliberal policies of self-maximizing subjectivities and third way post-feminism (Todd, Jones and O’Donnell, 2016), the latter seeking to revitalize the centre-left of politics. This meant resolving the tensions between rampant global capitalism and gender equity by: women taking control of their sexual agency and becoming entrepreneurs of their own image; and re-signifying standardized femininities by actively using ‘consumption power as political tools while remaining within the parameters of capitalism’ (Todd et al., 2016, p. 189), a mechanism now evident in the naming of widespread sexual harassment in multiple industries. Gender equity research shows that context matters in terms of how the feminist movement regards the state. US feminist

researchers are historically more anti-statist, focusing on legal strategies to achieve gender equity, whereas the feminist bureaucrats (femocrats) in Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia viewed the state as a site of contested values and positions and therefore provided a space to achieve social change (Bacchi, 1999a). But in the Anglophone nations in the 1990s, feminists fled or were pushed by neoliberal governments dismantling the welfare state, accompanied by the policy shift away from focusing on the social relations of gender onto boys as victims, thus reasserting, not problematizing, gender binaries (Lingard and Douglas, 1999). Feminist analysis and equity claims have since looked beyond the nation state for policy interventions, analysing how new regional formations such as the European Union and transnational bodies such as the United Nations and the International Labour Organization or philanthropic bodies can exert pressure on recalcitrant nation states (Brine, 1999; Fennell and Arno, 2008). There are now multiple non-government organizations and global gender indicators that exert influence through policy networks and as policies and processes of internationalization connect schools and communities cross-nationally through migration, exchange and online. How organizations change gives rise to the question of the power of policy. The focus in the equity practitioner and change literature has been on procedural justice (for example, around notions of merit) (Burton, 1993) rather than on substance, on incrementalism rather than on the transformation of schools as organizations. SEI ‘change studies conceptualize educational change as the process of improving the means in order improve the outcome’ (Oakes and Lipton, 2002, p. 386). Changing schools as organizations has been the most difficult feminist project as they respond to rapidly changing economic, political and social contexts, which are re-gendering relations among work, family and schooling.

THEORIZING SCHOOLS AS ORGANIZATIONS FROM A FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE

FUTURE POSSIBILITIES/CONSTRAINTS Feminist scholars are acutely aware of contradiction, paradox, metaphor and irony as tools of organizational analysis. One paradox is that women and girls have achieved greater participation and academic achievement in education than their male counterparts at the moment that the configuration of schooling and the nexus between education and work is being transformed. The under-representation of women and girls in science, technology and mathematics or leadership can no longer be attributed to the lack of women in the pipeline. Schools are producing the 21stcentury global worker who is flexible, selfmanaging, agentic and adaptable, but who simultaneously questions their positioning as gendered subjects (Ringrose, 2007). A second paradox is how the education workforce cross-nationally is being feminized at the time teachers are expected to respond to a shift in knowledge economies towards higher-order cognitive skills. The professions, such as teaching, due to populist discourses of ‘we need no experts’ and in the context of more precarious workplaces, are being devalued. A further irony is that global policy discourses expecting schools to produce the 21st-century skills required of the millennium worker reflect aspects of feminist pedagogy promoted over 40 years of collaboration, teamwork, critical thinking, interpersonal skills, intercultural competencies and communication in flat organizational hierarchies. Yet the culture of performativity in school systems, which encourages competition between individual schools, is counterproductive as it leads to the standardization of curriculum and assessment (McNeil, 2007; Lingard et al., 2016). There are also possibilities. In a digital society, schools are porous to multiple modes of communication and connectedness beyond the materiality of place. Schools now work globally online or with offshore campuses or partnerships internationally. Students live their out-of-school online existence

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while in school. On- and offline interconnectedness creates new understandings of place, belonging and hybridity. Cheaper mobile technologies are ubiquitous, offering opportunities for educating girls in developing economies. Family literacy practices are now recognized, with pre-schoolers learning on iPads while gaming offers innovative pedagogical opportunities. Teachers struggle with risks related to cyber-bullying, while seeking to engage students face to face. Feminist researchers studying the development of robotic toys show that young people grow up ‘alone together’, manifesting greater emotional connectedness with material objects than their peers (Turkle, 2012). These trends push the assumptions about the boundaries that mainstream educational administration research has erected between everyday life in communities, families, work and schools. In summary, most feminist scholars have long argued for a relational sociology that recognizes that learning occurs both formally and informally as part of a network of relationships. Feminist theorizing of schools as organizations has moved from neo-Marxist feminist structuralist/materialist accounts, viewing schools as reproducing the gender division of labour, to feminist post-structuralism and queer theory, favouring agentic gendered subjectivities foregrounding affect. Now feminist post-humanists reject old binaries between nature/culture and material/virtual, challenging feminism’s anthropocentrism in recognition that the non-human is agentic. Nature and technology are no longer background but integral to how learning, teaching and leading are embodied in the process of being, becoming and belonging. Yet feminist researchers would not see schools as a physical space and organizations as redundant, not only due to the compulsory nature of schooling, but also due to the importance of relationships in learning. The implications for schools as organizations are considerable as the physical borders are dissolved as to where and when as well as how and with whom learning takes place.

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Automation and wider use of artificial intelligence and big data, for example, will impact on staff selection and the online content of curriculum, who develops the curriculum as well as the pedagogical tools made available to teachers and students both at school and at home. Feminist research on the digital economy shows how search engines personalize searches, drawing from data with invisible algorithms that reflect both the biases of those who develop them (usually males) as well as historical databases from which algorithms are generated, thus replicating old gendered/racialized stereotypes or individualized algorithms that merely confirm one’s beliefs (Botsam, 2017). This trend requires developing the critical capacity of teachers and students as well as administrators to recognize that technologies and digital information are not neutral. Schools and teachers are still one of the few institutions and professions that are still trusted. In terms of the wider gender politics of schooling, the current disruption provides new opportunities and dissatisfactions. Schools are sites in which the wider social relations of gender play out according to an unequal distribution and exercise of power. Neoliberal policies over 30 years have changed the relationship between the state, the individual and education, producing more individualized notions of equity as the right to have individual choice. Social conservatism and market radicalism together endanger the feminist progressive educational project in the 21st century. Feminist theorists argue for a relational and not individualistic theory of social justice that recognizes that schools operate within wider social, political and economic contexts, often outside their control. The ongoing feminist project asks: What types of schools do we want as a society? What values are to be upheld? And who should decide? This chapter argues against current neoliberal policies, assuming that markets and increased school autonomy can educate for a 21st century marked by cultural and

linguistic diversity, precarious workplaces, digitalization of everyday life and multiple citizenships. While these are manifestations of a new era globally, feminist scholars argue that situatededness and context cannot be ignored when it comes to how gender equity can be achieved in schools. Feminist researchers, as illustrated, have produced a significant body of evidence to support the case for more democratic and socially just schooling, highlighting how inclusiveness and a sense of belonging are more important than ever in a period of social fragmentation and alienation. Feminists worry about what future there is for feminism with the production of the neoliberal post-feminist subject (Walkerdine, 2003). Nancy Fraser, a feminist philosopher of social justice in a globalized context, offers three principles to inform both policy and practice shaping schooling (Fraser, 1997). First, redistributive justice requires the primacy of need and a reallocation of funding and resources within and between schools, addressing the materiality of students’ and teachers’ lives and learning. Second, cultural justice gained through recognition of and respect for difference – gender, race, class, sexuality – both in schools and in the local community can create a sense of belonging in and engagement with schools as nodes in networks of learning beyond the school. The dilemmas between whether gender or cultural recognition (the latter often equated to tradition) she argues, can be resolved, through the third principle of representational justice. This means stakeholders participate in schools knowing they can impact on decisions. While there have been multiple feminisms in educational theory and practice, all agree that schools are not discrete entities but can be important social centres of their communities. Bringing communities into schools, while recognizing difference within them, creates a school ethos of inclusivity, which is more likely to nurture engagement with learning. Education is, feminist scholars have

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argued, a relational practice. Pedagogically, they have argued that curriculum beyond literacy and numeracy is enriched through recognition of diverse knowledges and experiences that benefits all students. But to address a core issue for educational administrators and policymakers, the underpinning for socially just schooling is a well-paid and respected teaching profession supported by professional learning and collegiality that focuses on enquiry into practice and that is informed by research. These are the characteristics of high-performing schools for the 21st century, in which the state and other providers must share responsibility for creating opportunities and achieving equity for all.

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20 Queer Theory Perspectives on Schools as Organizations Katherine Cumings Mansfield

INTRODUCTION Queer theory is a form of intellectual tumbleweed, drifting unevenly and taking root within an array of academic disciplines including those where one might not expect to encounter it. (Rumens, 2016, p. 114)

Queer theory has been deployed as a tool for many purposes and has been quite useful in the field of organizational studies. And while theorists vary in their emphases depending on specific contexts, there are similar ways queer theory is presented in the literature. For example, a common concern among queer theorists is their commitment to what is referred to as anti-binary. This specific tenet of queering organizational theory emerged because earlier feminist research did a good job of informing us of the continued stereotypes and discrimination in the workplace based on legally defined sex categories; however, these endeavors ‘served to essentialize male/female differences rather than unpack the complexities associated with gender roles’ (Capper,

1999, p. 7). That is, queer theorists reject the notion that only two sexes (male/female) and only two types of gender expressions (masculine/feminine) exist; rather, identity is considered fluid, something that is learned or performed, instead of something concrete and acquired in the womb (McDonald, 2017). Some theorists have encouraged us to consider gender as existing on a continuum: If people are given the freedom to develop their full potential without constraints, they will develop some combination of interests, strengths, weaknesses, and propensities that are idiosyncratic to the individual based on a combination of physiological, psychological, and cultural factors (Acker, 1992a, 1992b; Blount, 2005; Fine, 2010). Directly related to the anti-binary stance is the rejection of categorical thought (McDonald, 2017). However, there is inner tension involved with taking this standpoint and it begs the question: Can queer theory identify queer as an identity category while also claiming to destabilize identity

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categories (McWilliams, 2015)? Queer theorists are aware of this paradox and have thus committed to acknowledging the existence of categories but also working to deconstruct rather than reify typical categories that could potentially label people as abnormal, immoral, or otherwise inferior (McDonald, 2017). For instance, McDonald (2017) contends that referring to someone as woman has more often than not signified additional identities, such as white, middle-class, and heterosexual. This is problematic because women most likely experience ‘gender’ depending on other contextual complexities, such as race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, and whether a person identifies as queer. This has led queer theorists to embrace Black and Chicana feminist thought that insists on taking an intersectional approach to understanding a person’s experiences (Anzaldúa, 2007; Lorde, 1984). For example, Woodruffe-Burton and Bairstow (2013, p. 362) view lesbians as a ‘double minority’ that presents a particularly powerful ‘threat to the patriarchal status quo of organisational America.’ In order to resist prolonged entrapment in the mire that is patriarchy, queer theorists are committed to questioning what is considered ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ and, relatedly, exposing and denaturalizing the heteronormativity in culture at large and organizations specifically (Bendl, Fleischmann, & Hofmann, 2009; Courtney, 2014; Dumaresq, 2014). Judith Butler refers to the ‘heteronormative matrix’ that is composed of four phenomena, summarized by Bendl, Fleischmann, and Hofmann (2009, p. 627): 1 Most societies are organized along a dualistic sex-model in which every individual must have a defined sex – female or male. Transgendered or intersexual persons who do not fit into the dual sex system are confronted with exclusion and suppression in every-day life. 2 Since the 1970s, gender has been defined as the social construction of femininity and masculinity. Gender has been recognized as the basic but well-established way of doing things in social organizations. It explains the social

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division and hierarchy of sexes in political, social, economic and cultural contexts as well as the gender-related patterns of work division and segregation. 3 Sexuality is a set of social processes, which produces and organizes the structure and expression of desire in a certain society and it is inevitably intertwined with (and even constitutive of) social power relations. 4 Heterosexuality is the unquestioned norm in most social contexts, as the ‘normal’ and hence the normative sexual orientation is based on the dual conceptualization of sex/gender (Butler 1990. Thus, (hetero-)sexuality functions as a social regime (Seidman 1996) setting the social rules and possibilities, regulating not only sexual practices but also social practices.

In a nutshell, patriarchy is threatened by those who do not fit the male/female binary, people who refuse to act out traditional ideals of masculinity and femininity, and, most obvious, same-sex desire. Said another way: Patriarchy is afraid of queers and committed to their obliteration. That knowledge, coupled with the stubborn hold patriarchy has on society, fuels the movement to queer organizational theory. The purposes of this chapter are to answer the following questions: What is queer theory? How might it be useful to those who study educational organizations? Why does it matter? First, I share the historical and theoretical foundations of queer theory and consider the blurred boundaries and paradigmatic tensions between queer and feminist thought. Thereafter, I share interesting features of the landscape by describing how researchers in other fields have used queer theory to better understand organizations and professions such as nursing, accounting, and human resources. Afterwards, I turn my attention to the field of education and how scholars are using it to critique policy and practice in schools. Finally, I offer my perceptions of why queer theory matters for the educational leadership field and how queering schools as organizations might take form.

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HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS The purpose of this section is to share some of the historical turns in organizational studies research that contributed to the emergence of queer theory as a lens to view educational organizations. While it is impossible to give a thorough account of all the elements that came together to make this happen, I do share some of the significant landmarks, such as the shift to more critical ways of approaching research generally, and organizational studies in particular, with a more detailed focus on researchers who brought the concepts of sex and gender to the fore. Historically, educational researchers aimed to increase their perceived respectability by taking a more ‘scientific’ approach to both research and practice (Katz & Kahn, 1966; Scott & Davis, 2007). Similarly, the administration of schools took on the nature of the factory model, opting to follow ‘the one best way’ (Brooks & Miles, 2008). A major shift in research occurred in the 1980s whereby academia no longer viewed quantitative, positivist approaches to research as solely legitimate (Ouchi, 1981). Instead, qualitative research methods – borrowed from anthropology – were now acknowledged as valid approaches, as well. This coincided with the trend of increased interest in cultural explanations of organizational behavior and change as well as the inclination to view organizations as open systems that interact with cultural context (Cook & Yanow, 1993; Mills & Tancred, 1992; Schein, 1993, 2004; Scott & Davis, 2007). Carr (2005, p. 483) reminds us that, ‘at best, the natural sciences can only ever observe and infer, yet the social sciences can actually ask its ‘subjects’ and thus ‘discover’ meaning and intentionality.’ Carr goes on to clarify that explaining phenomena may be easier to do by using quantitative data, but ‘statistical significance is not enough to really understand organizations’ (2005, p. 483). Along with a general swell in critical scholarship across disciplines in academe, the

organizational studies field also faced growing criticism for what had been perceived by some as its ethnocentric and pro-capitalist biases (Acker, 1992a, 1992b; Alvesson & Billing, 1997; Cox, 2001; Gherardi, 1995; Mills & Tancred, 1992; Schein, 2004; Scott & Davis, 2007). Meanwhile, emerging feminist theorists also criticized many aspects of the modern organization, including how: femininity is equated with subordination; power is analogous with masculinity, and; bureaucratic life assumes a strict separation of the professional and personal. However, feminist scholars of the 1970s through the 1990s (e.g., Kathy Ferguson, 1985; and Arlie Hochs­ child, 1983) were not the first to critique organizations and call for transforming the workplace. In 1926, Mary Parker Follett urged approaching the management of people and organizations with a greater focus toward building personal relationships across the organization without strict hierarchical boundaries.

Gendering Organizational Theory Joan Acker (1992a, 1992b), a seminal scholar whose focus was the gendered nature of organizations, outlined essential elements to explore gender in organizations as a variable. While there was an explosion of research documenting women’s persistent difficulties in the workplace, there was yet a lack of research that theorized explanations as to why gender inequities continued in organizational life. In her attempts to remedy this gap, Acker offered what she believed was a viable framework for gendering organizational analyses. These building blocks, which can be utilized by other scholars in various proportions to fit particular research endeavors, included examining gendered processes, investigating gender and sexuality in terms of organizational resources, and uncovering the gendered substructures of an organization. First, Acker (1992a, 1992b) defined gender as socially produced patterns of behavior that differentiated people as either masculine

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or feminine. In other words, a person might be born with the chromosomes that indicated an individual as male or female, but they were not predetermined to exude either feminine or masculine characteristics based on their chromosomal combination. Rather, people were typically socialized to lean toward one binary or the other. One essential element of gendering organizational theory that Acker (1992a, 1992b) forwarded was to look for gendered processes that take place in an organization. For example, researchers might examine the production of gender divisions and identify the ordinary organizational practices that produce/reproduce these patterns. In other words, one might discover and describe whether there is an existing gender pattern of job types, wages, power, and subordination (Acker, 1992a, p. 451). Acker also recognized the importance of speaking directly with men and women to better understand their internal mental work as they made sense of their labor and their place in an organization. Do women and men express that demands are placed on them as far as gender-appropriate behaviors? If so, what were they and what effect did these demands have, if any? In addition to looking at processes that may be gendered, Acker (1992a) also advocated examining gender and sexuality as organizational resources. That is, physical, human bodies – both male and female – can be considered capital. For example, Acker, and later Sangster (2007), both found that the lower a worker was in the organizational hierarchy, the more tightly-controlled the corresponding physical body. Conversely, higher-level employees were rewarded with fewer bodily constraints. For instance, store clerks are rarely allowed to empty bowels or bladder as the body dictates; rather, only when the time clock or boss indicates permission. Meanwhile, managers have access to the executive washroom as a matter of privilege. And Acker urged us to remember the timeworn practice of using women’s sexuality and procreative abilities to objectify or exclude

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them while men’s sexuality overshadows most workplaces and underpins their organizational power (Acker, 1992a, p. 453). Finally, Acker (1992a) advocated the study of the gendered substructure of organizations. According to Acker, a gendered substructure was the foundation for gender discrimination to manifest. Acker described a gendered substructure as the spatial and temporal arrangements of work, the cultural rules prescribing workplace behavior, and perceptions regarding relationships between work and non-work lives. Acker especially took issue with the assumption that work was separate from the rest of life, and that the organization had ‘first claim on the worker’ (1992a, p. 453). Gendering organizational theory might lead to researchers asking questions such as: How does the organizational mission make assumptions about work–home roles and responsibilities? How is company use of time implicated differently for women and men? How is use of space in an organization different for men and women? Who are the organizational leaders? What kinds of gender attributes do they exude? How do they actively influence the culture of the organization? Taken together, feminist theory confronted the existing paradigms of organizational theory and challenged them in ways that gendered thinking in the field.

From Feminism to Queer Theory To be sure, feminist theorists broke new and essential ground, and as Woodruffe-Burton and Bairstow (2013, p. 371) point out, their findings on Lesbian leaders parallel prior research on women, stating: ‘[T]he tensions experienced by lesbians in conditions of heteronormativity may mirror those experienced by women leaders in the context of power relations that are permeated by gender and patriarchy.’ Further, and similar to liberal feminism, queer theorists take a critical approach, looking at power, oppression, and stigma (Adelman & Lugg, 2012; Capper, 1999; Fielden &

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Jepson, 2016; Lugg & Murphy, 2014). Both perspectives also focus on diminishing gender stereotypes and support gender and sexual equality (Adelman & Lugg; Lugg, 2003, 2006; Lugg & Murphy, 2014; McDonald, 2016). Moreover, similar to feminists who assert the need to gender organizational theory, queer theorists advocate queering organizational theory in order to make visible some of the blind spots in the feminist approach to research. It is important to point out that feminist and queer theorists use the words ‘gender’ and ‘queer’ as verbs that indicate purposeful action, rather than nouns that name – or adjectives that describe – specific people (Muhr & Sullivan, 2013; Ruitenberg, 2010; Rumens, 2016). However, while both feminist and queer perspectives share similar interests and concerns, queer theory differs from feminist theory in important ways. These differences are discussed next.

Queering Organizational Theory As alluded to above, queer theory owes a debt of gratitude to those in women’s and gender studies who have come before them. According to Mary Klages (1997): Queer theory follows feminist theory and gay/lesbian studies in rejecting the idea that sexuality is an essentialist category, something determined by biology or judged by external standards of morality and truth. For queer theorists, sexuality is a complex array of social codes and forces, forms of individual activity and institutional power, which interact to shape the ideas of what is normative and what is deviant at any particular moment. (para. 17, as cited in Fusarelli & Eaton, 2011, p. 41)

According to McDonald (2017, p. 131), queer theory ‘is a contested body of thought that is constantly evolving.’ Queer theory has also been described as an unapologetically political (McDonald, 2017), unequivocally subjective (Lugg, 2006; Marshall & Rossman, 2006), and explicitly postmodern or deconstructive (Capper, 1999; McWilliams, 2015) approach to theorizing power relations,

societal structures, the physical body, social identity, knowledge production, and learning. McDonald (2017, p. 131) shared: Teresa de Lauretis (1991) is credited with using the term ‘queer theory’ for the first time, although Judith Butler’s (1990) Gender Trouble and Eve Sedgwick’s (1990/2008) Epistemology of the Closet are widely regarded as having laid the foundations for the development of queer theory. In these texts, both Butler (1990) and Sedgwick (1990/2008) address the key themes that have been central to queer theory’s development: the performativity and fluidity of identity, a rejection of categorical thought, and a political stance that celebrates difference and antinormativity.

In addition, queer theory’s antiassimilationist political stance is more than a theory about queer people. Indeed, according to McDonald (2017), queer theory is relevant for all people regardless of how they identify. Ruitenberg (2010), drawing on the earlier work of Edelman (2004), goes so far as to describe queer as an ‘unidentity.’ While queer theorists abhor categories and strict definitions (Bendl et al., 2009), it is vital to clarify some important terms to aid our understanding before moving forward.

‘Performativity’ and other relevant terms The performativity and fluidity of identity is a theme that is particularly salient in Butler’s (1990) work. Because she argues that gender does not exist except through its (re)enactment, she conceptualizes gender as a fluid and malleable construction that can be disrupted and resisted through subversive performances. Biehl (2008, p. 522) agrees and points out that the performative acts that signal one’s gender are ‘governed by clearly punitive and regulatory social conventions.’ As such, Butler’s notion of identity as performance is quite appropriate to consider in organizational studies as it is related to the professional performativity of executives and other employees regardless of how they identify. For example, when we refer to people with whom we work as ‘wearing a variety of

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hats’ or ‘putting on an “X” hat’ in a particular situation, what we are describing is what Biehl (2008, p. 523) refers to as the ‘theatricality of organizational events.’ That is, how ‘performers’ use ‘mise en pièces’ and ‘mise en scène’ to portray and reproduce certain roles. In other words, workers use their voices, clothing, and body language, responding to other actors’ costumes and performances, as the situation relates to contextual props and scenic backdrop (2008, p. 524). Next, we examine some words that invariably come up (and are quite often misunderstood) when discussing queer theory: sex, gender, and sexual desire.

Sex According to Lugg (2003, p. 98), sex is ‘chromosomal.’ Blount (2005, p. 14) would agree, stating sex is ‘one’s anatomy and physiology.’ But even then, sex is not (or should not be) constructed as binaries because some human beings are born with both male and female genitalia while others are born with ambiguous genitalia. To explain, there are other variations of chromosomal make up. For example, most high schoolers learn that possessing the ‘XX’ chromosomal combination results in the development of a female baby and the ‘XY’ pattern is the formula that leads to the formation of a baby boy. However, most high school biology classes do not share the medical research around other chromosomal combinations such as XXY and XYY, nor is there discussion as to how the human being develops if they possess this combination of sex chromosomes or what happens to babies in particular cultures that are born without discernible sex organs. Thus, queer theorists argue against the binary male/female because it ignores individuals who are intersexed or those who do not identify with their assigned sex. As Lugg (2003, pp. 98–99) describes: [T]here are individuals who are transgendered, meaning that they do not identify with their sex or sex characteristics. Rather, their sense of self differs from their biology in profound and complex ways. A transgendered person who was born a male will

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identify as a female throughout most of, if not her entire, life. Likewise, a transgendered person who was born female will identify as male. Those who elect to pursue sexual reassignment surgery are known as trans-sexual.

Thus, a description of how queer theorists describe sex also leads to a discussion of what is meant by gender.

Gender Muhr and Sullivan (2013) and others (Blount, 2005; Lugg, 2003) point out that while gender and sex are certainly related, one’s sex assignment at birth does not mean one’s performance of gender characteristics directly follow. Rather, these scholars look to Butler’s notion of performativity to help explain the concept of gender stating: Performativity suggests that gender is not naturally strong-armed to sex or the biology of bodies, but instead implies that our perceptions of gender categories are developed on the basis of continuous repetition of certain historical contextualized behavior. (Muhr & Sullivan, 2013, p. 419)

Similarly, Lugg describes gender as an ‘ongoing, lifelong series of evolving performances’ (2003, p. 98) while Blount depicts gender as ‘a set of stories that people tell themselves and each other about what it means to be men and women’ (2005, p. 14). Queering the view of biological sex and gender performance becomes the sticky wicket when it comes to personnel management. Sex is a protected class under US law and policy, whereas gender is not. Thus, organizations cannot discriminate between two employees who identify as ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ whereas a man who exhibits characteristics traditionally considered feminine is not protected by law. Further, men who ‘act stereotypically female’ are automatically assumed to be ‘homosexual–regardless of their actual orientation’ (Lugg, 2003, p. 100).

Sexual orientation Biological sex, gender performance, and sexual orientation are different but interrelated

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constructs. While the expectation in most cultures is that all three characteristics are fixed and predictable, queer theorists point out that biological sex does not necessarily dictate how someone experiences sexual desire (Blount, 2005). For example, a biological man may perform what has been perceived as typically masculine gender characteristics, but this does not necessarily mean his sexual desire is for biological women who exude what has been deemed femininity. Rather, the person under consideration may experience what Blount calls, ‘same sex desire.’ Thus, according to cultural mores, that individual’s sexual orientation does not align with societal expectations. Capper and colleagues (2006) point out that individuals whose sexual orientation means desire for someone of the same biological sex might be referred to as ‘gay.’ However, it is offensive to refer to gay men as ‘homosexuals’ due to its outdated, clinical definition that indicates an abnormal condition (Capper, et  al., 2006; Lugg, 2003; Ruitenberg 2010). In addition, those who experience same-sex desire do not consider their sexuality a ‘preference’ or a choice; thus, using the term ‘sexual preference’ rather than ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘sexual desire’ is to be avoided (Capper et al., 2006).

HOW HAS QUEER THEORY BEEN USED IN OTHER DISCIPLINES? While queer theory has been affiliated with the humanities for decades, scholars in other fields, such as organization studies generally and business, accounting, and personnel in particular, have discovered its usefulness relatively recently (McDonald, 2017). For instance, scholars of organization studies have used queer theory to critique definitions of leadership and management, including how it is performed, who performs it, and how and why they perform it in the ways they do (Courtney, 2014; Muhr & Sullivan, 2013). In addition, queer theory has been

used to deconstruct organizational binaries and identities (McDonald, 2016; Rumens, 2017), expose and critique heteronormative practices (Rumens, 2016), critique policies and practices around ‘diversity’ (Metcalfe & Woodhams, 2008) and human resource development (Rumens, 2017), shed new light on how and why some occupations, such as nursing (Kellet, Gregory, & Evans, 2014) and accounting (Rumens, 2016), are segregated by sex (Bendl et al., 2009; Broadbridge & Hearn, 2008; McDonald, 2016), and challenge postpositivist approaches to research, and the grand narratives that emerge from them (McDonald, 2016, p. 135). In addition, researchers have troubled over messages portrayed via symbols in corporate logos and images in advertising materials (Broadbridge & Hearn, 2008). Similar to early feminist research, most scholarship using queer theory in management and organization studies has been theoretical, consisting mostly of rereading prior studies via a queer perspective (McDonald, 2016). McDonald points to Parker (2001) as a seminal work since it is the first of its kind using queer theory to deconstruct the term ‘management.’ Bendl, Fleishmann, and Hofmann (2009) used queer theory to analyze the codes of conduct of three companies with claimed commitments to creating an inclusive organizational culture. However, since diversity and inclusiveness efforts depend on demographic categories like sex, gender, race/ethnicity, and age, heteronormative values persisted. Treating workers as ‘having one sex, one stable (over the entire life span) sexual orientation and one clearly defined gender, which are congruent with each other’ indicates the organizations’ continued adherence to ‘essentialist divisions to signify diversity’ (Bendl et  al., 2009, p. 628). Thus, while intentions may have been good, choosing an essentialist conception of identity worked to maintain hegemony. In the UK context, Fielden and Jepson (2016) examined the experiences of lesbian and bi-sexual workers and learned that

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working in the public sector was a more positive experience for lesbian and bi-sexual people than working in profit-generating corporations. However, since heterosexist attitudes were still customary in the culture at large, most organizations have continued to be dominated by a heterosexist male power structure. Examples include employee benefits that coincide with heterosexuality but ignore the needs of queer employees. Thus, organizational sexism continues to deny the existence of anyone who is not heterosexual. However, in the public sector, the lesbian and bi-sexual community reported a more positive climate. Participants reported that changes in the law facilitated a culture of change, which then led to career satisfaction and ultimately career progression. The good news is that the situation is improving for queer workers in the UK, but the bad news is there remains a large swath of the working population who do not feel protected by the law and/or experience homophobia in the workplace. Another interesting study, conducted by Muhr and Sullivan (2013), followed the transition of John, a transgendered organizational leader, into Claire. Speaking to Claire’s coworkers revealed that the transformation of the physical body influenced the ways employees perceived the appropriateness of Claire’s (versus John’s) leadership. For example, when John performed leadership, it was viewed as natural and normal. However, co-workers expressed discomfort when similar leadership behaviors were performed by Claire. Even though Claire was the same human being in many respects, the morphing of people’s perceptions was powerfully wrought via the materiality of her transformed body. Thus, while Claire was accepted by her employees as they respected her decision to live as a woman, they were unable to put aside traditional, gendered expectations that seemed to manifest of their own accord. In other words, as Muhr and Sullivan point out, Claire’s employees showed ‘tolerance for queer bodies’ but failed to adopt a ‘queer understanding of bodies and subjectivities’

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(2013, p. 430). Muhr and Sullivan conclude by advocating for a shift in organizations: that we don’t just ‘make room for queer leaders’ but queer our notions of leadership so that any body can perform any combination of customarily-observed feminine and masculine characteristics as the context demands. McDonald (2016) points out that one major limitation of most queer occupational research is its focus on biological gender, presented as a male/female binary. Rarely, do studies also examine identities associated with performing gender and sexuality outside the heteronormative paradigm. Indeed, even if researchers look beyond the male/female binary, there is a troubling neglect of attention to the concept of intersectionality or the idea that social identities are too complex to examine only one axis of difference in isolation. The following year, McDonald (2017) advocates for the expansion of re-reading organizational scholarship via a queer lens, especially strategic management, organizational culture, and corporate responsibility. The hope is that by queering existing research, scholars can more adequately challenge normalized views and advance unorthodox observations on organizational life. For example, questions that queer theory helps us to explore in organizational research include: 1 How are (hetero)normative assumptions embedded into existing organizational theory? 2 How do organizational members reproduce/subvert the gender binary? 3 In what ways does organizational (hetero)normativity discipline organizational members? 4 How do organizational policies and cultures compel the performative re-enactment of organizational and gendered norms? 5 How are certain forms of difference suppressed in organizations? 6 How does the ‘closet’ shape the everyday organizational experiences of non-normative subjects? (McDonald, 2017, p. 143)

I agree with McDonald (2017, p. 143) that exploring these queered questions hold

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potential to contribute valuable insights into organizational studies, especially for ‘nonnormative subjects who must continually negotiate the pervasive ideology of (hetero) normativity.’ Another important contribution of the expansion of queer theory in organizational studies would be its eventual inclusion of queer paradigms in organizational studies textbooks. But, since queer theory continues to be underexplored, it is rarely addressed in university classrooms focused on organizational studies (McDonald, 2016). Indeed, the ‘absence of queer theory from textbooks can thus be read as being reflective of the continued dominance of functionalist and managerial paradigms within management and organization studies (Rumens, 2016, as cited in McDonald, 2016, p. 26).

HOW HAS QUEER THEORY BEEN USED IN THE FIELD OF EDUCATION? Ruitenberg (2010, p. 619) queers the study of education by asking: Can queer families be represented in curriculum materials and discussed in classrooms? Can queer relationships be seen at school? Can queer teachers be ‘out’ to their colleagues and students? Can the word ‘queer’ be used in school? In short: can queerness be shown and seen, spoken and heard in educational spaces and discourses?

Undeniably, the invisibility and silence of queer students, teachers, principals, and families is not a thing of the past. Rather, as long as society is bound by patriarchal values, queer educators and students will continue to strive for ‘visibility, audibility and sayability’ in educational organizations (Ruitenberg, 2010). In addition to being ignored altogether, the mistreatment of queer children and youth in our schools is well documented. Indeed, not only are non-conforming students subjected to bias and discrimination, as pointed out by Adelman and Lugg (2012, p. 45), ‘it is acceptable to denigrate and devalue’

sexual minorities. However, the Safe Schools Movement has drawn attention to the needs of LGBTQ students, such as the necessary roles queer mentors and straight allies play in the lives of queer students (Sadowski, 2010). One example of this movement is the continued growth of Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA) in public schools. However, even this small step toward creating a positive school climate has met with severe opposition. For example, according to Ruitenberg (2010, p. 618), ‘the Salt Lake City School Board (Utah, USA) was so desperate’ to block the development of GSAs, they voted in 1996 to ban all afterschool clubs from their schools. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to remunerate the abundant research evidence documenting the disparate treatment and outright cruelty aimed at non-conforming children and youth in schools. Instead, readers are encouraged to consult manuscripts that I have found useful for additional support: Adelman and Lugg (2012), Allen (2011), Hudson (2017), Ruitenberg (2010), Zacko-Smith and Smith (2010), and Zook (2016). In addition to bringing to public attention the incessant, ghastly treatment of queer children and youth by both peers and educators (Adelman & Lugg, 2012), queering the study of education has also involved drawing attention to historical practices that have had direct and/or residual anti-queer implications, such as hiring decisions and dress codes, to name just two (Adelman & Lugg, 2012; Lugg, 2003, 2006). For example, ‘sodomy laws, in conjunction with morality clauses in public educators’ employment contracts, have been used to keep queer educators either closeted, their identities hidden, or to fire them if revealed or “outed”’ (Adelman & Lugg, 2012, p. 38). Indeed, patriarchal organizations, such as schools, remain committed to heterosexuality and gender conformity as important litmus tests for who is fit to serve as teacher and/or leader (Adelman & Lugg, 2012; Lugg, 2003, 2006; Muhr & Sullivan, 2013; Tooms, Lugg, & Bogotch, 2009). Only heterosexual masculine men and feminine,

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caring heterosexual women are perceived as worthy to work as administrators and teachers, respectively (Muhr & Sullivan, 2013; Tooms et  al., 2009). In fact, educators who do not fit the aforementioned archetypes are marked unsuitable early on in employment processes (Tooms et al., 2009). For example, similar to men who seek jobs as nurses, men who apply for jobs to teach Kindergarten are suspected gay, which poses imagined hazards to young children. Indeed, school personnel are still forced to ‘demonstrate their gender conformity and heterosexuality’ today as they were in the 1800s through the 1900s (Adelman & Lugg, 2012). There are many other fine examples of how researchers have used queer theory to investigate personnel issues in educational organizations. However, since I am limited by page count, I direct readers’ attention to some excellent articles (in addition to those cited above) that I have found especially helpful: Biehl (2008), Capper (1999), Courtney (2014); Dumaresq (2014), Fielden and Jepson (2016), Kellett, Gregory, and Evans (2014), Lugg and Tooms (2010), and Woodruffe-Burton and Bairstow (2013). Finally, I share some of the research that brings to the fore the need to include queer children, youth, and caregivers/families in books, curriculum, and other educational activities, in addition to providing a comprehensive, non-biased sexual development and health program (Hudson, 2017). This seems especially important due to the continued bullying of gay students and the fact that in 2006 there was an estimated 10 million families in the United States with parents who identified as LGBTQ (Bower & Klecka, 2009). Larsson, Quennerstedt, and Öhman (2014) believe gender norms could be challenged in physical education classes involving activities and sports teams. Both boys and girls are stigmatized when boys are said to be physically stronger than girls and girls as weaker than boys. Also, many PE classes are gender segregated based on the type of sport or activity being played. Anderson, Cheslock,

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and Ehrenberg (2006) believe such schools are not in compliance with Title IX of the Educational Amendments within the Civil Rights Act of 1964 since it states, ‘No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance’ (US Department of Education, 2015, para 2). What would a PE teacher do if a student who identifies themselves as a heterosexual female really wanted to play football, but was not allowed to because of her biological sex? What if that female student was so good at football that she could obtain a college scholarship but would not be afforded the opportunity to do so because of her biological sex? Or what if a heterosexual male wanted to play softball but his school only had a team for girls? If not addressed appropriately, according to Snapp and colleagues (2015), childhood/youth development might be thwarted precipitously. It is important for adults to realize that a girl who wants to play football and the boy who wants to play softball is not necessarily taking a political stand to disrupt the status quo. Rather, each student simply wants to play a sport that does not align with typical gender stereotypes. In response, Larsson et al. (2014) suggest that PE classes should be gender-neutral or allow students various sports-related activities to choose from as a way to decrease gender-related discrimination. The few schools that do include LGBTQ issues within a school curriculum consist mostly of learning about civil rights and the history, lives, and contributions of LGBTQ people. According to Snapp and colleagues (2015), while simple and easy to do, the above discussions and lessons go a long way toward creating a safe, equitable, and less prejudicial school climate. In fact, ‘When schools taught LGBTQ-inclusive curricula, students on average reported a greater sense of safety, heard fewer homophobic slurs and experienced less victimization … 67% of LGBTQ students reported that their

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classmates were accepting of LGBTQ people when the school taught inclusive curricula’ (Snapp et al., 2015, p. 581). Other curriculum suggestions that are currently under consideration and/or have been implemented include using children’s literature to teach about gender identity and different family structures and including queer parents in class activities (Cullen & Sandy, 2009; Gerouki, 2010). One example of a children’s book that challenges heteronormative standards is, And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell. The authors tell a story about two male penguins living in a zoo who find an abandoned egg and raise the baby chick together. Cullen and Sandy (2009, p. 145) explain that after reading this story to students, they ‘expanded the repertoire of characters in the book to explore various themes that arose, including the diversity of family structure, relationships, and identities in the zoo. In the adaptation of the story, children included adopted, intergenerational, same-sex and single-parent families.’ In sum, queering schools is fraught with challenges, tensions, uncertainty, and ambiguity. However, queering the study of schools as organizations is ripe for potential and powerful change. The implications of both are discussed next.

DISCUSSION: THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE QUEER CRITIQUE The purpose of this section is to further unpack some of the main points raised in this chapter and discuss some of the implications for schools as organizations. In addition to critiquing particular structures and practices that take place in schools, an attempt will be made to queer what is being critiqued in order to reimagine how schools might become more inclusive of all who learn and work there.

Binary Opposition As explained earlier, a major concern among queer theorists is the use of binaries to

describe people’s characteristics and explain phenomena. This leads to many implications for our consideration. First, labeling people according to their ‘race’ and ‘sex’ is problematic. When we choose to label people as White/Black and Boy/Girl we are automatically making value statements as well as positioning people in opposition. That is, in our culture, we usually use binaries in a particular order, which unconsciously creates impressions in the human mind that the first label designates the normal or superior while the second label generates visualizations of that which is uncommon or inferior. Most people take for granted that the language we use is value-neutral when in fact our choice of words has great significance. In addition, using binaries to name and describe people automatically assumes there are only two possibilities available: one is either a boy or a girl. Ignoring the very real possibility that a person is both or neither is not part of most people’s vernacular; thus, an intersex person is erased altogether. This has implications for how we do school, beginning as early as registering for Kindergarten Round-Up. Since the changes were made to the 2010 United States Census, school registration has queered to a degree in most places. For example, there is greater acceptance that people are more than just white or another race that is not considered white. People self-identify in many different ways and this was finally recognized in our country’s most recent Census by providing 14 different choices in terms of race/ethnicity. And, there has been some progress in terms of indicating relationship status. For example, on the Census, one can identify as more than just single, married, divorced, or widowed. The bureaucratic structure of the US government has finally begun to recognize other living arrangements that are part of our everyday lives – and have been for decades. For example, a gay man could choose to indicate on his Census that he has a husband. However, there is no way of indicating one might be in a same-sex marriage or partnership. In other words, there is no box

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with the words, ‘same-sex married couple’ beside it. Unfortunately, we cannot say there has been any progress in terms of how people can self-identify (or not) in terms of their sex. Similar to the 2010 Census, school registration forms still list two binaries of which to choose: boy, girl. And if one checks the girl box, it must match one’s birth certificate or the sex that was assigned at birth because there are huge implications for how school is done for people identified as boys and girls at birth. Whatever box one checks designates the physical education class to which students are (not) assigned, which sex-ed talk students are (not) allowed to attend, which sports team students may (not) participate in, and the list goes on. Recent news reports and court cases demonstrate that K-12 students’ bodies are so tightly regulated that some cannot choose the bathroom they feel most comfortable using. This is a poignant reminder of how low students rank in the hierarchical order of schools; and further, how trans-gender students do not rank at all. This is important because, first of all, it counts to be counted. Political philosophers, Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth (2003) refer to recognition as being central to our current struggle with identity politics and human rights; recognition is fundamental to justice. Lack of recognition is a type of silencing, erasure, and even death in that it marks human beings as non-existent. One cannot count what is not there. But, we all know queer students really do exist. So why do educational organizations not count them? Why are queer students not recognized? We learned from Seidman (1996) and Butler (1990) that binary notions of sex (and gender) function as a social regime that dictates the rules and possibilities within an organization. To count would acknowledge existence. To acknowledge existence (recognize) would compel doing school differently. So, what would queering schools look like in terms of taking an anti-binary stance? Future teachers, principals, and superintendents would learn in their preparation programs that identity is fluid, learned,

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performed. Education students would discuss in their classes that recognition is vital to achieving a more welcoming school culture and a first step toward social justice. Students in leadership preparation programs would brainstorm ways they could queer their schools in authentic, concrete ways. For example, while educational organizations at the state level dictate data schools must report, it is still within the purview of the local education agency (LEA) to decide which data they will use to develop policies around what are appropriate courses, curriculum, and extracurricular activities. Educators are in the business of developing people. Rather than treating birth sex assignment as the most important characteristic that determines a student’s life course, a school that is queered would consider gender as existing on a continuum, view human development as idiosyncratic to the individual, and structure the school accordingly. Registration forms might ask for sex, but in a modified way. For example, schools might ask for sex assigned at birth in order to comply with state structures. But, the LEA could also ask students how they identify and how they wish to be recognized. In terms of bathrooms, rather than single out trans-gendered students as people who are so dangerous they have to use an adult restroom, student bathrooms would be designated gender-neutral and the faculty bathroom made available to any individual who feels the need for more privacy (determined by the student regardless of how they identify). Queering school might mean students could choose which courses to take and in which extra curriculars to engage. Some people may find that standpoint unusual and impractical to implement and argue that this is a silly ‘PC’ idea that no school district has ever tried. However, I know from experience that this is not the case. I attended my last two years of high school in Bettendorf, Iowa. In 1980, the population of Bettendorf was about 25,000. There were 444 students in my graduating class. In this relatively small Midwest city, Physical Education classes were

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not segregated by sex or by athletes/nonathletes. Instead, every four weeks or so, all students signed up for which unit of study they wanted to attend. I remember signing up for archery, weight lifting, and gymnastics as well as basketball and dancing. The only rule was that students could not sign up for the same unit more than once. Rather, students were encouraged to experience a variety of different sports and ways to keep fit. This meant I learned how to use the balance beam alongside football players and did power lifting with wrestlers. I loved it. We all loved it. This type of learning is not silly PC antics. It is treating young people with respect and affording them the opportunity to grow and develop in an integrated environment and be exposed to different sports and other physical activities they may not otherwise experience due to family belief systems and/or household income. I remember these days with extreme fondness. And now, I realize: I went to a queered school. In Iowa. In 1980. So, it can be done and done well without controversy.

Rejection of Categorical Thought As discussed earlier, eschewing classifications is another major point raised in queer theory. Rejection of categories is an especially pertinent topic for discussion here due to the fact that organizational studies have developed around categorical concepts. For example, organizational theory can be categorized into various schools of thought based on the philosophies of well-known scholars, such as Michael Cohen, James March, Karl Marx, Johan Olsen, Talcott Parsons, and Max Weber. Particularly pertinent to this chapter are relatively recent developments, such as neo-institutional theories, as well as cognitive and cultural explanations of the impact institutional structures have on individual behavior as well as the influence of individuals on organizational change. Considering the implications of queer theory for schools induced

further reflection on neo-institutional theory generally and isomorphism in particular. Schools are characterized by coercive isomorphism in that they react to pressures (e.g., federal Title IX laws) from other institutions they are dependent upon (state legislature for funding) and cultural expectations from society, which is becoming ever more diverse while schools struggle to maintain homogeneity. Recall Fielden and Jepson’s (2016) research that looked at how distinctive queer women’s experiences were in government organizations when compared to the profit sector. Government employers were more likely to build a more positive climate by showing commitment to new civil rights legislation. The power of national policy changes influenced decision making at the organizational level that resulted in greater career satisfaction and progression for the lesbian and bi-sexual people who participated in the study. On the other hand, negatively coercive policies, such as morality clauses for educators, work to create a negative career experience for queer teachers and principals that can even result in being fired for not fitting the descriptive categories that a particular group deems moral (Adelman & Lugg, 2012). Change in schools is also driven by normative isomorphism, or pressures brought about by professional organizations, higher education, and credentialing (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Just as K-12 schools are places where norms are embedded, norms developed during one’s university education are carried into the K-12 setting upon graduation. Much of the discussion on binaries in the prior section is directly related to whether and how people are categorized. But queer theorists are not just interested in categories such as gay/straight and feminine/masculine. Queer thought considers demographic categories like sex and age as being important considerations in the change process. This leads one to think about other ways students are categorized

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that may trap students into a category that is unhelpful, ultimately thwarting students’ developmental growth and maintaining hegemony toward particular groups of students. For example, students are classified into groups with labels such as ‘gifted,’ ‘special education,’ and ‘free and reduced lunch.’ Teachers are categorized as ‘highly qualified,’ ‘troops to teachers,’ ‘Teach for America,’ and ‘substitutes.’ In addition, since schools are bureaucracies, there are clear hierarchies between groups of educators such as ‘principals’ and ‘teachers,’ with structural arrangements tied to who evaluates whom and which group decides how to spend the budget. In addition, there are clear distinctions between those classified as teachers and those categorized as paraprofessionals. And all of these categories and their labels communicate where a person is in the organizational hierarchy and work to develop and/or maintain fissures between groups of people. So, in addition to what’s been discussed before, what might resistance to categorization and/or classification look like in schools that have been queered? First, the queering of K-12 schools would lead one to question: Who is the leader? Who is the teacher? Who is the student? And what those labels mean in terms of power and voice (Bertrand & Rodela, 2018; Rodela & Bertrand, 2018). Likewise, one might wonder what schools might be like if schools organized themselves differently from the typical organizational structure of schools and universities? Put together, it would lead one to ask whether the school principal was the only true leader of a school or whether schools should become more democratic in terms of who has voice and who gets to decide (Bertrand & Rodela, 2018; Rodela & Bertrand, 2018). A school that has queered its leadership practices would recognize and legitimize students (Lac & Mansfield, 2018), parents (Fernández & Scribner, 2018), and community groups (Welton & Freelon, 2018) as co-leaders of their schools.

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CONCLUSION New institutionalism theorizes that we do things the way we do because we can conceive of no other alternative. Add to that the extreme difficulty of attempting to impact bureaucracies, one could conclude that schools are trapped in patriarchy. However, as Elwell (n.d., para. 39) reminds us: While Weber had a foreboding of an ‘iron cage’ of bureaucracy and rationality, he recognized that human beings are not mere subjects molded by sociocultural forces. We are both creatures and creators of sociocultural systems.

This thinking aligns with professional standards that call upon school leaders to participate in political advocacy to influence the governmental institutions they are dependent upon (Carpenter & Brewer, 2014; Mansfield & Carpenter, 2008). For example, educators might write letters to Senators and Representatives as well as federal agencies such as the Department of Education to demand enforcement of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In addition, educators might collaborate across local and regional education agencies to advocate for equitable school funding at the state capital, for instance. To be sure, political advocacy can be risky and may not result in the changes educators are hoping for. But ignoring the options afforded us rarely pressures bureaucrats from reconsidering how things have been done for decades, even centuries. We might also conclude that participating in theoretical critique is useful, as it works toward the descaling of one’s eyes, revealing alternative possibilities. Plus, reimagining concrete ways to work toward change also generates hope and fuels resilience. However, that is not enough; organizations are stubborn beasts! We must recognize, as new institutionalism does, that organizations are influenced by institutional peers. Normative isomorphism is unlikely to occur unless pressures are brought about by the educational leadership professions. As we know from

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the Iron Cage that is Patriarchy, education is a robust and durable norm developer. Thus, queering norms within the profession via higher education, along with queering the credentialing associated with that education, holds the greatest potential to bring about normative and substantive change.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to my student, the newly-minted Doctor, Stefanie Hudson for her support: Thanks, Stef, for providing me with an annotative bibliography to help me find useful articles to read. And, perhaps most importantly (and certainly most fun), thank you for following up with ‘coffee talk.’ Your knowledge and wisdom were instrumental in helping me understand the research around including queer students and families in books, curriculum, and other educational activities, as well as the consequences of neglecting to implement a comprehensive, non-biased sexual development and health program in schools. I so am thankful for your insights, which contributed to my ability to write this chapter.

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PART IV

Organizing in Schools

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21 Organizing in Schools: A Matter of Trust M e g a n Ts c h a n n e n - M o r a n

INTRODUCTION Fostering trust is recognized as an important dynamic across a wide variety of organizations; however, schools are distinctive in ways that make the cultivation of trust especially crucial. First, the primary clientele are children whose attendance is compulsory, making them uniquely vulnerable in comparison to the clientele of other organizations. Parents share this vulnerability, as they send their children to schools, hoping fervently that they will be protected and safe from harm and that the school will act in their child’s best interest. Students are expected to leave school changed from when they entered, in terms of habits of mind, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behavior, in order to be well prepared to construct adult lives that support their personal well-being and the well-being of the community as a whole. Second, schools do not generate the revenue they need to operate, and therefore must earn and sustain the trust of the

taxpayers who sponsor and fund them. And third, schools are essential to the maintenance of democratic societies. They are charged with keeping and promoting a society’s shared values and ideals, such as respect, tolerance, equality of opportunity, civil discourse, and participation in civic society. Indeed, the future of a society rests in large measure with the quality of its schools. It is thus evident why trust has become such a pressing issue for schools. Our society is well served when schools function at their highest level. Students develop the skills, values, and habits of mind that will allow them to become productive and engaged citizens of our democracy. When schools fail to adequately fulfill our hopes for them, when the learning of both students and faculty are impaired by a lack of trust, the well-being of our society suffers. In this chapter, we explore the definition of trust as well as the external and internal contexts of trust in schools, making use of Bolman and Deal’s (2013) four frames as a lens. We then

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raise unanswered questions that future scholars might explore to further our understanding of the dynamics of trust in schools.

DEFINING TRUST AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN SCHOOLS Trust is a complex construct in that it is multifaceted and it operates at both the interpersonal and organizational level. Trust becomes salient when people enter into interdependent relationships, where desired outcomes cannot be met without the involvement and contribution of others. In schools, principals, teachers, staff, students, and parents are interdependent because none can accomplish the complex task of educating young people alone. When making trust judgments, people simultaneously assess many aspects of the potential trust partners’ behavior, and these aspects may vary depending on the context or nature of the trust relationship. Trust is grounded in the roles people occupy and the expectations that accompany those roles. Thus, what a teacher looks for in developing trust in a principal may be quite different from what she looks for in assessing whether to trust a student. In schools, trust has been defined as the willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the confidence that the other party is benevolent, honest, open, reliable, and competent (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2000). Once trust is established, the confidence one holds in the intentions and capacity of others to fulfill one’s expectations results in feeling a greater sense of ease in the interdependence and an increased willingness to take risks. The faithful fulfillment of expectations over time strengthens trust, which in turn acts as a resource in times of transition and change (Mishra, 1996). Trust also is a dynamic construct in that it can change over the course of a relationship, as the nature of the interdependence between parties changes as expectations are either fulfilled or disappointed.

THE CONTEXT OF TRUST IN SCHOOLS The expected and observed behaviors relevant to the development of trust in schools are influenced by external and internal contextual factors that warrant examination. The external context includes environmental factors that have shaped and continue to shape the values, attitudes, and expectations of group members. Finding ways to sustain trust in the midst of the rapidly changing societal expectations and new technologies presents a special challenge for schools. The internal context consists of forces inside the school or school system that shape the values, attitudes, and expectations of groups and individuals within the organization. These may include elements such as the structure and size of the school or system, its history, leadership, mission, goals, facilities, and employee evaluation systems. Trust formation is further complicated in schools by the complexity of the work of educators, as well as by multiple competing goals (Bryk & Schneider, 2002). Let’s now explore the influence of these external and internal contexts to trust formation in schools.

EXTERNAL CONTEXT Schools must garner trust and legitimacy in an era when these forms of social capital are under threat within society at large. Schools that cultivate high-trust environments are in a better position to accomplish the challenging task of educating a diverse group of students in a changing world. As citizens across the globe have become increasingly distrustful of their institutions and leaders, however, the trend away from trust creates a special challenge for schools because trust is so fundamental to their core mission of educating students. As contemporary society has grown more complex, as changing economic realities and changing expectations in society have made life less predictable, as acts of

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terrorism have invaded even the sanctuary of schools, issues of trust have become more salient and more urgent for educators. The increasing diversity of many societies due to increased mobility also presents a challenge for schools in building trust. Schools are places where people from across the societal spectrum come together and have to work out how to engage with one another. Trust is more difficult to foster in situations of diversity because people are uncertain about the cultural norms or values of others. Knowledge of one another’s culture may be limited, and based on partial or misleading images; hence, people may be unsure about what to expect. As people come into interdependent relationships, fears about people of different racial groups, social classes, or religions, or about immigrants and refugees from other parts of the world, may arise (Saunders, 2012). Moreover, in the case of refugees from war-torn regions or regions wracked by violence, children and their parents are likely suffering the effects of significant trauma, making it even more difficult for them to foster trusting relationships. One of the dynamics that has shaped the external environments of schools in the past two decades are the means and mechanisms of information dissemination. Technologies such as web-based communication portals, social media, email and text messaging allow for information to flow more readily to and from schools. This increased communication flow can assist in the fostering of trust by allowing educators to express their care for their students to parents and the community and to demonstrate their competence at providing rich educational experiences. But it can also allow for information about breeches of trust to spread farther faster. People tend to be more alert to negative information than to positive, leading to a negative bias in information dissemination (Burt & Knez, 1996). The propensity of the news media to capitalize on the desire for negative information has made the cultivation of trust between schools and their publics even more difficult.

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Fostering trust under these circumstances of increasing societal distrust, turbulent external environments, increased diversity, and greater information flow presents significant challenges for educators.

INTERNAL CONTEXT The internal context of schools and districts has complexity of its own. Schools face the same kinds of challenges that all organizations do. These include how to structure the collective work of the participants, how to balance the needs of the collective with the needs of individuals, how to manage the competing interests of subgroups within the collective, and how to foster norms and an organizational culture that guides organizational participants’ perceptions and behavior in constructive ways. Bolman and Deal (2013) provide a helpful framework for the study of the internal context of organizations, inviting exploration in turn of the structural, human resource, political, and symbolic aspects of an organization’s functioning. Making use of this framework, we explore the relevance of trust to each of these areas of a school or district’s functioning.

Structural Frame One of the most critical decisions that school leaders face is the perennial challenge of adopting the most productive structures to organize the work of organizational participants. In turbulent environments with high levels of uncertainty, like those schools currently face, a decentralized structure is thought by organizational theorists to be more adaptive, as it allows those close to the environment the discretion they need to make appropriate adjustments in response to changing external circumstances. And yet, faced with external threats, it is not uncommon for organizations to instead move in the

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opposite direction, to become more centralized and to double-down on exercising control over workers, enforcing rigid adherence to standard operating procedures (Staw, Sandelands, & Dutton, 1981). These tactics can hinder the effective operation of the organization and impair its adaptive response to the threat as workers become increasingly fearful and risk-averse. Trust plays a central role in a school or district’s ability to avoid these counterproductive tactics. Schools where trust is high manage to avoid this rigid response in the midst of crisis and its accompanying ‘hunkering down’ mentality (Daly, 2009). Where trust is high, communication tends to flow more easily and resources are shared rather than hoarded so that they can be allocated in ways that will have the greatest benefit for the survival and flourishing of the organization (Mishra, 1996). Good communication is also crucial to assisting organizational participants to cope with the uncertainty inherent in organizational change (Bolman & Deal, 2013). Decisions about organizational structure are informed by the level of trust leaders hold for organizational participants, and these decisions conversely also influence the level of trust cultivated. On the one hand, bureaucratic elements such as a division of labor with specialization, a hierarchy of authority with a chain of command, written rules and policies, and the standardization of work processes (i.e., the curriculum) are useful ways to organize the joint work of large numbers of people around a shared goal. On the other hand, in organizations where the primary work is done by professionals, as is the case in schools, highly centralized structures and standardized work processes may inhibit the discretion necessary for professional educators to be responsive to the individualized needs of their students (Creed & Miles, 1996). Embedded in decisions about the proper level of centralization and formalization are contrasting levels of trust, based on divergent assumptions about the capacity of workers, resulting in divergent stances

toward control. A culture of distrust can easily take hold in the hierarchical relationships of a centralized organizational structure when those in higher positions consider those below them to be in need of close supervision. For those in the lower position, fear and distrust of those in higher positions who hold coercive authority can lead to problemhiding and constrained communication. Fear can lead to the inclination among subordinates to convey situations in a more positive light than is actually the case, which can give decision makers at the top of the organization an inaccurate sense of the conditions on the ground. Taken to the extreme, the hierarchical nature of a bureaucratic structure can lead to an authoritarian culture of control and fearbased compliance on the part of teachers and staff. These, in turn, are likely to lower motivation and morale, and stifle the very effectiveness and efficiency that school leaders had hoped to achieve (Cloke & Goldsmith, 2002; Tschannen-Moran, 2014a). It is important to note, however, that decentralized educational systems have not always produced equitable results for students. The relinquishing of centralized control could be construed as negligence unless educators demonstrate a strong commitment to serving the needs of all students and not simply to pursuing what is easiest or more expedient. Schools and districts must find ways to balance extending trust to employees and students with the creation of safeguards against self-serving, dishonest, or abusive behavior. To foster trust, the policies in a school must demonstrate an expectation of trustworthy behavior on the part of teachers, staff, and students, and at the same time provide mechanisms to be responsive to breaches of trust, with appropriate consequences for those who violate trust (Sitkin & Stickel, 1996). Trustworthy school leaders do not abuse their power by relying heavily on coercive punishments, but neither do they abdicate their responsibility for leadership (Adams & Forsyth, 2007; Hoy & Sweetland, 2001). Trust is supported by credible, but relatively

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unused, threats and sanctions. Broken threats can be as damaging to trust as broken promises, and teachers or students who are allowed to violate school rules or norms with impunity erode the trust of the whole (Bryk & Schneider, 2002). Trustworthy school leaders engage in coaching and collaboration to bring underperforming teachers into alignment with professional standards, as well as to provide resources to continually extend the professional knowledge of all teachers in their building (Tschannen-Moran, 2014a).

Human Resource Frame Central to the human resource frame is the challenge of balancing the interests of the organization with the needs of the individuals who comprise the organization. Schools are made up of an array of individuals who occupy various roles, including students, staff, parents, teachers, and school and district leaders, each with diverse interests and needs. Because the collective aspirations of the school or district require the competence and participation of a large number of people, trust is likely to be on the minds of the people engaged in that work. The inherent interdependence in matters of great importance to organizational participants, regardless of their role, requires trust. Participants desire to be at ease, with an absence of fear or anxiety, in the vulnerability that stems from this interdependence. The five facets of trust – benevolence, honesty, openness, reliability, and competence –interface with the needs of the individuals and those of the organization as a whole. Thus, considerations of these facets of trust are salient when it comes to the human resource frame. One of the most universally acknowledged foundations of trust is a sense of mutual good will expressed as benevolence, caring, or positive regard (Tschannen-Moran, 2014a). In order for trust to develop, people look to their interdependent partner to evidence an abiding sense of care for them as a person,

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for the relationship, and for the shared project. The nature of care may vary, however, with the nature of the relationship. For example, when teachers speak about this aspect of trust in relation to students, they may frame it as respect – respect for the shared project of schooling, for the rules and processes of the organization, and for themselves and their trust partners. Employees of the school district look to the organization to meet their needs for the financial support that provides for their subsistence. They also may expect a sense of empathy for other needs as well, such as the need for a healthy work environment and adequate time for rest and recovery from the rigors of the work. Individuals are also likely to look to the school or district to meet an array of psychological needs, such as a sense of community, belonging, and acceptance, as well as support, cooperation, appreciation, and acknowledgement. Individuals, be they students, staff, teachers or leaders, have a need to feel that they matter and that their concerns and ideas are heard. On the organizational side, schools and districts rely on participants to care about the joint work and about the well-being of the organization as a whole. Participants who are perceived as not caring are not likely to be trusted. This is where the depersonalization that stems from burnout can interfere with the trust of a teacher or staff person. Moreover, teacher aggression, evidenced in yelling, using sarcasm or humiliation, or group punishments for individual misbehaviors, disrupts the trust of students, colleagues, and school leaders alike (Riley, 2010). Both burnout and teacher aggression are likely outcomes for teachers whose physical and psychological needs have not been met over a period of time. Honesty is a need both individuals and the organization share in order to relinquish the hypervigilance inherent in a low-trust environment, which frees up the energy needed for the collective work of the organization. In order to meet needs for safety and security, individuals and the organization as a whole want to rest assured that the information they

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are receiving from organizational leaders is accurate. They also want to know that information is not being withheld for nefarious purposes, because withholding important information is a way that leaders sometimes use to maintain power or manipulate employees (Kramer, 1996; Mishra, 1996). When integrity is evident in the congruence between people’s words and their deeds, trust is fostered. Conversely, when a culture of distrust and tight control takes hold in a school or district, teachers and students may respond with feelings of alienation, disloyalty, and a lack of commitment, which can make dishonesty and cheating more prevalent (Govier, 1992; Kramer & Cook, 2004). People may reason that if they are already presumed guilty, there is little incentive not to engage in selfserving behaviors. When students, teachers, and school leaders do not trust one another, each seeks to minimize their vulnerability and risk by adopting self-protective stances. The result can be disengagement that consequently diminishes student learning (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Tschannen-Moran, 2014b). Openness is a process by which organizational participants make themselves vulnerable to others by sharing information as well as influence over decisions that affect them (Zand, 1997). Openness in information includes the disclosure of facts, alternatives, intentions, judgments, and feelings. Openness in control means granting actual influence over decisions to stakeholders – not the phony forms of shared decision making in which leaders purport to want input in a decision, when it is clear that the decision has already been made and that what leaders are really after is compliance. Genuine openness leads to a more authentic form of shared decision making based on the belief that the involvement of subordinates will result in higher quality decisions, because they are close to the action and have information and insight that leaders may lack. Trusting leaders make themselves vulnerable by sharing authority and the consequences for joint actions that are taken. When leaders

in a school or district share actual influence in decision making, they demonstrate significant trust and respect for their subordinates, and are typically rewarded by greater trust in return (Hoy & Tarter, 2008; Short & Greer, 1997; Zand, 1997). Through openness, a spiral of trust can be initiated that serves to foster increasing levels of trust in the organization. Interestingly, one of the ways that high trust facilitates school functioning is that it expands the zone of acceptance in decisions. Where trust is low, teachers want a place at the decision-making table in order to guard their interests. When they trust that their interests will be well looked after, they often would prefer to invest their energies elsewhere (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Hoy & Tarter, 2008). One of the deleterious effects of depriving teachers of control over the decisions that affect their professional lives is that it keeps them in a perpetual state of dependency. A culture of control and compliance interferes with teachers’ developmental needs for learning and growth, which may lead them to behave in immature ways (Cloke & Goldsmith, 2002). When the needs of professionals are not met, they may respond by withdrawing psychologically, becoming passive or apathetic. They may ‘retire on the job’, exhibiting resistance through minimal compliance with directives, deception, sabotage, or chronic absenteeism. Or they may leave the organization and perhaps the profession altogether (Bolman & Deal, 2013). In addition to developing mechanisms for authentic participation and influence in organizational decision making, schools can respond to the growth needs of teachers and staff through redesigning work to provide autonomy and discretion, job enrichment, teaming, and training to develop new skills and capabilities. When colleagues, students, and parents foster trust through reliability, they support the needs of individuals and the organization in a variety of ways. For individuals, needs for safety and predictability are met when

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their trust partners behave in reliable ways. When their trust partners are in positions of power, needs for fairness and justice are also salient. As the school or district as an organization looks to participants, it is first and foremost looking for people to fulfill their role obligations. For employees, this means meeting contractual obligations, for parents it means sending students to school ready to learn and supporting their learning outside school, and for students it means engaging in the learning tasks set for them in predictable and cooperative ways. For schools to reach excellence, however, they need organizational participants to go beyond the minimum expectations set for them. To achieve excellence, the organization needs participants to voluntarily contribute to the school or district’s efforts to reach its multiple goals. These voluntary activities are called organizational citizenship behaviors, and research on fostering these behaviors suggests that trust plays a critical role in creating the organizational conditions in which they are likely to emerge. Transformational leadership behaviors have been presumed to inspire followers to greater citizenship, but in a study that tested this theory in schools, trust alone emerged as an independent factor contributing to fostering greater citizenship among teachers (Tschannen-Moran, 2003). Finally, a focus on fostering the competence of students, staff, teachers, and leaders in a school or district can create the conditions to meet their needs for self-efficacy, contribution, creativity, challenge, learning, and discovery. The organization in turn benefits as organizational participants execute their job responsibilities with skill and expertise. The challenge for schools, however, is that the work of educating young human beings – in their infinite variety and wide range of competencies, aptitudes, and needs – is extraordinarily complex. Although there have been numerous efforts to standardize the work of educators, the task of fostering the cognitive, social, and emotional growth of diverse young human beings is inherently too complex

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for these efforts to succeed. In the absence of standardized processes, schools must rely on the professionalism of teachers and educational leaders to exercise specialized knowledge to assess the needs of students and to design differentiated interventions based on the widely varying needs of their students. A hallmark of professional practice is the ability to apply professional judgment in non-routine circumstances, taking relevant considerations into account. Because certainty about practice does not exist, practitioners must engage in ongoing disciplined inquiry to discover the most responsible courses of action (Darling-Hammond, 1988). Granting discretion in instructional decisions that rely on teacher expertise and commitment to students both relies on and builds trust (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Lee, Zhang, & Yin, 2011; Tschannen-Moran, 2009; Tschannen-Moran & Gareis, 2017). A competent school leader cultivates norms of behaviors among members of the school community that are conducive to student achievement. In order for leaders to inspire followers to commit to the shared mission or goal, trust is required. A leader without trust may serve as a manager in enforcing minimum compliance with contract specifications but cannot truly lead a group of teachers and staff to high levels of professionalism and performance (Tschannen-Moran, 2003, 2014a). Competence in leadership consists of not only inspiring teachers in their commitment to students, but also challenging and supporting teachers who fall short in their duty to improve their instructional practice (Chughtai & Buckley, 2009; Forsyth & Adams, 2014; Handford & Leithwood, 2013; Zeinabadi, 2014). Adopting a trusting stance is not the same thing as taking a lax orientation where teachers are not held accountable in their responsibilities to students. Principals must address instances of unprofessional or untrustworthy behavior on the part of teachers in a proactive but respectful manner in order to foster strong collegial relationships between teachers. Coaching teachers through new expectations and providing professional

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development to assist teachers in resolving the inevitable conflicts inherent in joint work will assist teachers in fostering the strong relationships that undergird collaboration and a professional orientation in schools.

Political Frame The political frame invites us to explore the uses of power and control in the organization. Conflict over the interests of individuals and of various stakeholder groups is an inevitable part of organizational life. Even where there is agreement on organizational goals, there are often differences of opinion on the strategies to achieve those goals. Schools have stakeholders with multiple competing goals, and these competing interests may collide as rival aims, aspirations, and interests lead to conflict. Opposing forces may form coalitions or utilize other sources of power, both legitimate and illegitimate, in the service of their goals. Individuals may accrue and use power to further legitimate organizational ends, or they may use their power to further their own individualistic interests at the expense of organizational aims. It is important for mechanisms to be in place to help members of a school community to respond constructively to conflict so that the distrust resulting from unresolved disputes does not impair the ability of a school community to fulfill its mission and goals. When trust breaks down, the energy of organizational participants is expended making provisions for self-protection, such as insisting on lengthy contracts or written agreements to protect against possible or feared betrayal by others, siphoning energy and engagement away from collaborative efforts in service of school goals. Teachers, students, and parents all look to school leaders for competence in navigating conflict skillfully (Cosner, 2009; Tschannen-Moran, 2014a). The health of a school community is dependent upon leaders who can mediate the inevitable conflicts inherent in the vital and complex work of schools. It is also important for

leaders to assist teachers and students to learn constructive conflict-management strategies (Tschannen-Moran, 2014a). As schools engage in organizational change initiatives, conditions are ripe for conflict. Change disrupts the power dynamics within a school, advantaging some and disadvantaging others. Breakdowns in trust may emerge around issues of misunderstanding the purpose of the change process, what behaviors and outcomes will be expected, and how and when the success of the change will be assessed (Ford & Ford, 1995). One mechanism to deal with conflict in organizations is to create arenas for debating differing positions or points of view (Bolman & Deal, 2013). Arenas are a critical vehicle for adapting new ideas to existing realities. Developing strong norms of civil discourse, guiding participants to challenge the strategies, ideas, or thinking of opponents while steadfastly avoiding personal attacks, is important to keeping the dialogue constructive. Honing the competence to skillfully debate ideas in order to engage rather than avoid controversy is valuable at all levels of schooling. Professional learning communities, communities of practice, or critical friends groups are all forms that schools use to create arenas in which educators can discuss and debate contemporary conundrums and issues in schools. As schools press for greater professionalism among teachers, collaboration has become a more salient aspect of educators’ work. The quality and productivity of this collaboration is dependent in large measure on the level of trust educators hold for one another (Hallam, Dulaney, Hite, & Smith, 2014; Tschannen-Moran, 2001).

Symbolic Frame The symbolic frame invites the exploration of how people in organizations find a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives and work. When schools and districts are functioning at their best, participants at all levels

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bind their hearts and minds to the mission and vision of the organization, and that requires trust. For people to open their hearts and dedicate themselves to the work of the school or district, the organization needs more than just a mission statement posted prominently in public spaces. While the stated mission of most schools is quite similar, the history and culture of every school is unique. There must be a rich array of mechanisms through which the values, history, and tradition of the school are communicated. Schools use ceremonies such as convocation and graduation and rituals such as morning announcements to highlight the attitudes, behavior, and performances that are prized. Stories of the history of the organization, including stories of the heroes and heroines who have been a part of that history, likewise point to what is important in the school or district. The norms and the informal and formal sanctions to protect those norms strengthen the culture by letting participants know when they have stepped outside of expected behaviors. These build trust as organizational participants align themselves with these values and become inculcated in the organizational culture. An informal barometer of the level of trust infused in a school’s culture is the level of humor and play. When trust is high in a school or district, it quickly becomes evident to even a casual visitor through the lighthearted laughter and a sense of playfulness. People display a sense of connection to one another and to their joint work. People seem to enjoy one another and to be at ease in each other’s company. In an atmosphere of high trust, although deeply committed to the serious work to be done in the school, people don’t take themselves too seriously and are willing to laugh at themselves. Where trust has been damaged or has failed to take hold, there may still be humor but it often has a sarcastic edge that targets others. Sarcasm is a way that people cope with organizational practices that are out of alignment with their core values or basic needs. An old adage warns that ‘many a truth

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is spoken in jest.’ People may employ this strategy when they do not feel the safety to convey their ideas and disagreement directly. Playfulness may also take the form of practical jokes to settle a score. In schools with no humor at all, a visitor is likely to quickly pick up the chilled atmosphere. Distrust is likely to be rampant as teachers, staff members, and perhaps even students are on guard, ever watchful not to allow themselves to be more vulnerable than necessary for fear of how they might be exploited. The symbolic frame suggests an approach and attitude toward change that differs from the other frames. From a symbolic point of view, organizational change disrupts people’s sense of meaning and purpose. As educators cope with the loss inherent in change, it is important for leaders to recognize their reactions as normal responses to grief and not to interpret them as evidence that the change is somehow in the wrong direction, or as a sign that those resisting are malevolent or incompetent if they are initially less than enthusiastic at the prospect of doing things differently. Listening skillfully to people’s concerns as they react to change can be a powerful way to foster trust in the midst of a change process. The symbolic frame focuses on elements of organizational culture and school climate. Strong bonds of trust have been related to a number of positive aspects of school climate, including an orientation toward innovation, continuous learning, and improvement (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Cerna, 2014; Daly, Liou, & Moolenaar, 2014; Forsyth, Adams, & Hoy, 2011; Hoy, Sabo, & Barnes, 1996; Moolenaar et al., 2010; Seashore Louis, 2007). When a high level of trust prevails in a school, a sense of collective efficacy tends to be evident as well (Tschannen-Moran & Goddard, 2001; Tschannen-Moran, Salloum, & Goddard, 2014). Collective teacher efficacy is a shared belief among the teachers that they can accomplish the common goals of fostering student learning and development (Bandura, 1997; Tschannen-Moran & Barr, 2004; TschannenMoran et al., 2014). Teachers are more likely

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to persist in efforts toward goals they believe they can accomplish. These shared beliefs become manifest in the norms of a school and the casual conversations among teachers concerning expectations about the likelihood of success of a school faculty. A virtuous cycle in which trust, success, and collective efficacy reinforce one another can be set in motion. In schools where teachers trust their students, there is likely to be a stronger press for high academic achievement (TschannenMoran et  al., 2013). Moreover, faculty trust in clients, collective teacher efficacy, and academic press are so closely linked and such potent predictors of student achievement that together they have been framed as a composite variable called Academic Optimism (Hoy, Tarter, & Hoy, 2006; Kirby & DiPaola, 2011). A culture of trust, and especially the relationships of trust between teachers and students, is at the heart of the learning enterprise of schools. It is in the interpersonal space between student and teacher that students are inspired to invest the effort required in learning. For much of what is learned in schools, students are asked to believe what they read and what teachers tell them without independent evidence; so when students do not trust their teachers, learning is impaired. When trust between teachers and students breaks down or fails to develop in the first place, a number of problems arise. Without trust, teachers and students are unlikely to take the risks that genuine learning entails. When distrust prevails, students are motivated to minimize their vulnerability by adopting self-protective stances. The result is disengagement from the educational process. Safety comes at the expense of student investment in the learning process. In addition, teachers may resort to more rigid forms of discipline and control, as well as the use of extrinsic rewards. Teachers who do not trust their students are likely to rely on inflexible rules and group punishments rather than to develop educative responses based on the needs of individuals. When coercive actions are used to enforce compliance, student alienation is likely.

When students trust their teachers, a climate of safety and warmth prevails which facilitates learning. When teachers trust their students and believe them to be respectful, honest, competent, and reliable, they are more likely to create learning environments that facilitate student academic success. High trust is likely to elicit instructional practices and behaviors based on attraction, engagement, and identification (Adams, 2010, pp. 264–265). Studies have consistently demonstrated a substantial relationship between faculty trust in students and their parents with student achievement across a variety of contexts, even when the impact of SES was held constant (Adams, 2010; Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Forsyth, Barnes, & Adams, 2006; Goddard, Salloum, & Berebitsky, 2009; Goddard, Tschannen-Moran, & Hoy, 2001; Hoy, 2002; Hoy & Tschannen-Moran, 1999; Lee, 2007; Mitchell, Forsyth, & Robinson, 2008; Mitchell, Kensler, & TschannenMoran, 2018; Tschannen-Moran et al., 2013; 2014b). Thus, as teachers learn better how to cultivate high-trust learning environments in their schools, student success is likely to follow. And because of the tendency for trust to build on itself, higher student achievement is likely to produce even greater trust, whereas low student achievement could be expected to lead to a self-reinforcing spiral of blame and suspicion on the part of teachers and students that could further impair student achievement.

DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH Our conclusions from this review open new avenues for research on the dynamics of trust in schools. There is a growing interest in the importance of trust in interpersonal relationships to well-functioning organizations and the literature of trust in schools continues to grow. The groundwork laid to date provides a rich foundation for future scholarship on trust in schools. A number of directions for future research emerge from this exploration of Bolman and Deal’s (2013) framework.

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The structural frame suggests a number of unstudied or understudied dimensions of trust in schools. Are there some ways of structuring schools that are more conducive to fostering trust than others? Does block scheduling allow for deeper teacher–student relationships than a traditional seven- or eight-period day? Does departmentalization in the elementary school disrupt the development of trust between students and their teachers? Is school size associated with the level of trust? Further, we would do well to continue to build on the knowledge base of trust in situations of reform and organizational change. The human resource frame invites an exploration of how schools balance the needs of individuals with the needs of the organization. Needs in the socio-emotional realm would seem to be of particular interest in fostering high-trust schools and districts. Do schools that have a program for socialemotional learning and/or character education tend to have higher levels of trust? What socio-emotional supports are important to teachers in maintaining high-trust relationships with leaders, students, and parents? How do high-trust schools respond to teacher aggression, when teachers’ emotional reaction to a provocation outstrips their capacity to respond in a trustworthy way? Can teachers be coached into high-trust behaviors that are reflected in the tone and feel of their classrooms? How do high-trust teachers and principals respond to student misbehavior in ways that are responsive to students’ needs at the same time as they protect the organizational needs for order and safety? In a society experiencing so much flux and rapid change, the political frame would seem to be an area ripe for exploration. One of the most serious issues that most schools face may be the problem of broken trust in the midst of conflict. When conflict is poorly handled, suspicion and psychological withdrawal are likely to result. The process of repairing broken trust is difficult and costly. Studies that examine the process of

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rebuilding broken trust in schools are essential if we are to begin to break through the barriers to building more trusting school cultures. Further, do schools with peer mediation programs have higher levels of trust among the student body? To what extent does training in peer mediation influence students’ relationships with school leaders and teachers? Where are there successful examples of teacher training in conflict management and to what extent has that facilitated more productive collaboration or professional learning communities? And how is controversy taught and modeled in high-trust schools? Both administrators and teachers would do well to be aware of the dramatic costs of broken trust and use that knowledge to encourage openness and cooperation and to prevent the abuse of power. What school conditions produce such knowledge? How can such knowledge be transformed into positive outcomes? Finally, although aspects of the symbolic frame in terms of both school climate and culture related to trust have been extensively researched and have resulted in a robust evidence base of the importance of a school culture that supports trust, evidence of how trust is cultivated remains understudied. We need greater clarity to understand the dynamics that foster trust. An understanding of the conditions and processes that enable educators and constituents to trust and cooperate is critical as schools are faced with the volatility of changing expectations. What is the role of humor and play in cultivating and sustaining a high-trust school culture? Are teachers more innovative and students more creative in a culture that fosters playfulness? Are there examples of schools that have maintained a lighthearted spirit of playfulness during the stress that has generally accompanied the accountability movement, and, if so, what leadership and instructional practices have led to this resilience? How are teacher morale, burnout, and teacher turnover influenced by the level of trust and humor in a school? Furthermore, educators and researchers need to understand more about the

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mechanisms that link trust and achievement. We need further exploration not only of how trust relationships among teachers, parents, and students relate to the risk taking inherent in learning, but also of how they influence persistence and effort. Teachers’ level of trust in relation to their classroom management strategies and their attitudes about student control seem promising avenues to explore in understanding the link between trust and achievement. An examination of school discipline policies in light of the imperatives of trust would seem to be overdue. Do schools with systems of restorative justice or discipline policies rooted in attachment theory do better in fostering student trust than more traditional programs? In addition, the reciprocal trust of teachers and students has not received adequate attention. Similarly, the trust between educators and parents has been virtually ignored. These would all seem to be promising areas for investigation. Given the strong evidence that already exists of the powerful influence of trust in schools, researchers need to work vigorously to continue to unlock the secrets of trust in school settings.

CONCLUSION This chapter has explored the growing body of research on trust in schools as an essential characteristic of schools at both interpersonal and organizational levels. Clearly, trust is a salient aspect of school life. It is an important end-in-itself, but it is also related to other important organizational outcomes. Schools are likely to benefit from a greater understanding of the dynamics of and consequences of trust in schools. For schools to fulfill their duty to students, they must cultivate a context that is responsive to student needs. This will necessitate strengthening the norms, attitudes, and values embodied in a school’s culture so that leaders can trust teachers and grant them discretion to be responsive to student needs. They need to

know that the time it takes to establish and maintain trusting relationships is time well spent because it helps create the conditions necessary for schools to meet their goals. In order to garner the trust of their students, educators must be trustworthy in their own actions, demonstrating an unfailing ethic of care as well as the highest integrity in all their dealings. When educators are trustworthy, they set a tone that influences how students relate to one another. For schools to live up to the aspirations that we have for them, they need to function as high-trust organizations.

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22 Understanding Schools as Organizations and the Role of Organized Teachers: Perspectives on Teachers’ Work and Teacher Unions Howard Stevenson

INTRODUCTION Approaching educational institutions as organizations allows for a much more sophisticated appreciation of what it means to work and study in such institutions. Within the educational leadership and management literature in particular there is a tendency to see schools and colleges as relatively uncomplicated institutions, free from the messiness and conflicts that many people experience as common and even ordinary in their workplaces. One particular feature of this approach is to make invisible the organizations that in many contexts represent a majority of the workforce in relation to employment matters – teachers’ unions. This chapter seeks to address this deficit in the educational leadership and management literature by setting out a range of issues that reflect the importance of union organization, and industrial relations structures, within educational institutions. The aim is to demonstrate that there can be no meaningful understanding of educational institutions as organizations in

most parts of the world without taking account of teacher unions. However, the more substantial argument is that it is not possible to understand educational institutions as organizations without a theorized understanding of the employment relationship itself – what it means to be a worker (and from which collective worker organization becomes a logical next step). This chapter begins by exploring the employment relationship. It provides three perspectives for conceptualizing this, which are widely used in other research traditions, such as management studies, but which are seldom found in literature relating to educational leadership and management – unitarist, pluralist and conflict theories (Burchill, 2014). Having set out this framework, the following section explores the development of collective worker organization in education and the role of teacher unions as the inevitable outcome of an employment relationship that is antagonistic. The section offers three different perspectives for considering teacher union traditions and strategies – industrial unionism,

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professional unionism and political unionism. I subsequently demonstrate how these different approaches to understanding the employment relationship, and the role of teacher unions, have been reflected in public policy in myriad contexts. I argue that in many education contexts public policy has shifted from an approach rooted in the pluralist tradition and an emphasis on collective bargaining, to a renewed unitarism grounded in new public managerialism. In conclusion I suggest that while the new unitarism seeks to marginalize, and even eliminate, independent collective worker organization from schools and colleges, it may, in fact, reinvigorate what was a bureaucratic unionism and bring forth a much more vibrant, grassroots-driven form of teacher union renewal (Bascia & Stevenson, 2017). Any analysis such as the one outlined above provides a broad overview across a global landscape that shares many common issues, but which is deeply context-specific. Industrial relations issues in and across education sectors are as sensitive to such contextual particularities as any aspect of education. Much of the argument I present in this chapter draws on my own research, which has been undertaken in many countries (Bascia & Stevenson, 2017; Stevenson et  al., 2017), but it particularly reflects my own personal history and experiences and consequently presents a picture grounded in a broadly western industrial relations tradition. This is a limitation that I am happy to acknowledge and I hope that one of the ways that readers will engage with this work is to be patient of this limitation and to use it to engage with a wider set of questions about the arguments presented here and the extent to which the analysis presented reflects the reality in other contexts, or not.

THE SCHOOL AS AN ORGANIZATION: UNDERSTANDING THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP Much educational leadership and management literature treats educational institutions

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as relatively unproblematic organizations in which the aims of the school are largely taken for granted (Buck, 2016; Coates, 2015). The goal is to be ‘effective’ and whether currently effective or not, the exhortation is to be always ‘improving’ (Blatchford, 2014). Very often the focus in such literature is on the means rather than the ends – on how to bring about improvement, rather than debating the purposes. Improvement for what? Within this framework the role of the educational leader is to organize the school’s resources in order to bring about the desired improvement (Coleman & Anderson, 2000), in much the same way that a business entrepreneur has the task of coordinating the various factors of production in order to maximize output from a given level of inputs. This is not, however, a technical process which can be undertaken in any formulaic way, but rather the role of the educational leader is to ‘transform’ the organization through the transformation of those who work in it (Leithwood & Jantzi, 1990, 2005). A key purpose of leadership is to secure the support of those who work in the organization so that all are committed to the organization’s goals, or its ‘mission’. Within this paradigm much emphasis is placed on having a vision that sets out ultimate aspirations (Stokoe, 2014), while simultaneously there are frequent references to the importance of the values that underpin these objectives (Gentile, 2013). Increasingly, leadership is framed within a discourse of moral purpose (Fullan, 2003), in which every child matters, and which tolerates ‘no excuses’ for educational underachievement. However, for all the discussion of vision, values and moral purpose, there is rarely any meaningful discussion of what ‘achievement’ might really mean for young people, or whether schools as they are commonly organized and managed, are the most appropriate way to facilitate learning. Such debates are rarely presented in terms that fundamentally challenge the existing order. In this view of schools, and schools as organizations, questions of power and

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conflict are often acknowledged but they are rarely seriously analyzed. Within the wider management literature this perspective is identified as a unitarist approach (Burchill, 2014), in which the interests of employers and employees, or managers and workers, are presented as synonymous. There is limited scope for disagreement about fundamental aims and all have an interest in working towards the success of the enterprise. Conflict is treated as a ‘blip’ to be resolved, with longer-term conflict representing irrational or aberrant behaviour on the part of dissenters. Where this latter behaviour is evident, the goal of leaders is to re-engineer the organization so that all are ‘on board’, with the emphasis in transformational leadership on ‘winning hearts and minds’ and securing ‘buy in’ (Reeves, 2009). While such an analysis is common in much educational leadership and management literature, it is also rarely the experience in the schools where students learn and teachers work. As Hargreaves and Fullan (1998: 47) asserted: ‘Power and politics are inescapable realities of school life. People neglect these realities at their peril.’ Stephen Ball has gone further and argued that not only are power and politics ‘inescapable realities’, but that conflict, far from being aberrant, should be treated as the norm: I take schools, in common with virtually all other social organizations, to be arenas of struggle; to be riven with actual or potential conflict between members; to be poorly co-ordinated; to be ideologically diverse. I take it to be essential that if we are to understand the nature of schools as organizations, we must achieve some understanding of these conflicts. (Ball, 1987: 19, emphasis added)

The basis of this conflict is a fundamental questioning of the unanimity of aims and purposes on which unitarist approaches are predicated. Ball (1987) immediately locates these tensions in a struggle over divergent interests – a recognition that those within the organization have different, often competing, and sometimes conflicting aspirations and that this is not an aberration but the natural

order. Specifically, Ball identifies three different types of interests, all of which need to be considered if the complexities of schools as organizations are to be understood. First is the notion of ‘vested interests’ which refer to the material concerns of teachers, such as remuneration and working conditions. Second, Ball identifies ‘self-interest’, described as a sense of self or identity – ‘the sort of teacher a person believes themselves to be or wants to be’ (1987: 17). Finally, Ball identifies ‘ideological interests’, which he defines as the values and philosophical commitments a teacher may have in relation to their work. The diversity of interests within schools, and the inevitability of interest divergence, means that schools will always be places where competing interests create frictions. Oftentimes these frictions are barely visible – part of the natural order in which frustrations are suppressed and conflicts are managed. At other times, however, and in particular during times of significant change when any pragmatic equilibrium is destabilized, competing interests can erupt into much more explicit conflict. This is not irrational, but rather it is inevitable as any change creates a new balance sheet of winners and losers. Take, for example, the current trend to enhance the importance of mathematics within the school curriculum (Department for Education, 2012), a trend so common as to be considered global in its form (Galey, 2015). Mathematics teachers might be expected to welcome this development. They will see the status of their subject enhanced (self-interest), and with it, quite possibly their sense of job security (vested interest). In contrast, teachers of subjects that have to make way for the increased mathematics provision will see their subject (and themselves) diminished in status (self-interest), with a concomitant impact on job security (vested interest). Such changes may also challenge a teacher’s beliefs in a broad and balanced curriculum (ideological interests). The broad analysis provided by Ball (1987) finds expression in two alternative approaches to understanding the employment

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relationship and which can be identified in traditions associated with critical management studies (Alvesson & Willmott, 1992). The first of these is located within a pluralist paradigm, in which there is a recognition of competing, and at times conflicting, interests in any workplace (Budd, Gomez & Meltz, 2004). These conflicts are seen as embedded within the employment relationship whereby employer and employee have both common and antagonistic interests. The existence of conflict in this form is seen as inevitable, but not inherently dysfunctional. The challenge for the employer is to find ways to make the conflict ‘manageable’ and to establish the structures and processes to do this (Clegg, 1975). Within this tradition there is a recognition that not only are the interests between employer and employee inherently conflictual, but that the power relationship between the two parties is also uneven. Individual employees, operating in a labour market are undermined by the process of having to compete against others for work and wages and hence the employer enjoys significantly more power. Again, the challenge for those in the pluralist tradition is to find ways to redress the power imbalance between employer and individual employee (Flanders, 1968). Finding mechanisms to address these issues often emerged as state support for trade union organization (legal rights, etc.) and the development of structures and procedures to secure agreements and manage disputes (typically collective bargaining structures). The second of these alternative approaches includes a range of analyses that might be broadly covered by the term ‘conflict theories’. Conflict theories of the employment relationship can be located in the Marxist tradition and draw on a Marxian analysis of work and the labour process [Marx, 1976 (1867)]. Put simply, such approaches see the employment relationship as inherently conflictual because within a capitalist mode of production the labour process is always exploitative (Braverman, 1974). Workers are involved in a productive process which

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generates a surplus. The employer seeks to appropriate the surplus and valorize it in the form of profit. The key task of managers (who may not be employers in the sense of being owners of capital) is to make that process happen by transforming labour power (an employee’s ability to work) into labour (actual work). Conflict arises out of the struggle over the distribution of the surplus generated with workers seeking to reappropriate the value their labour created. Although such an analysis relates most visibly in a traditional private enterprise, where the employer seeks to make a profit, the analysis can also be extended to public sector workers, such as teachers, where teachers produce ‘value’ and where employers also face a pressure to maximize worker ‘productivity’ (Carter, 1997). As with the pluralist tradition, conflict in the employment relationship is seen as inevitable. However, it is also seen as an insurmountable tension within capitalist social relations, hence the challenge for those who locate themselves in this tradition is to transcend the capitalist system itself as only partial victories can ever be achieved within the system of capitalist social relations (Hyman, 1975). Identifying these approaches to the employment relationship is essential if we are to develop an understanding of how that relationship is managed within an organizational context, and indeed how policies and practices have developed based on the assumptions that underpin these models. For example, within a school context, the dominance at different times of unitarist and pluralist ideas is clearly evident in public policy relating to the management of schools and teachers, while conflict theories are evident in the strategies of some grassroots movements of organized teachers (Gutierez, 2013; Gutstein & Lipman, 2013). Both pluralist and conflict theories highlight the importance of collective organization, and therefore the critical role teachers’ unions can play in managing the employer-employee relationship in schools.

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TEACHERS’ WORK AND TEACHER UNIONISM: IDENTIFYING UNION STRATEGIES As indicated, the nature of the employment relationship discussed above has highlighted the significance of collective worker organization in the form of trade unions. In this section I explore these issues in relation to teachers. Teacher unions, in their contemporary form, often have long-established histories. In Scotland, the Educational Institute of Scotland, which represents 80% of Scottish teachers, was formed in 1847. Some unions were formed initially as professional associations, for example the National Education Association in the United States of America (Murphy, 1992), while others have a longer history of being concerned with traditional trade union concerns, such as the pay and conditions, as well as with matters of professional concern (Tropp, 1957). Trying to briefly summarize the development of teacher unionism, in a global context, is extremely difficult as the diversity of histories and contexts is simply too broad. Differences in industrial relations systems and teacher unionism can be substantial between continents, but also within continents (Bascia, 2015; Moe & Wiborg, 2017; Weiner & Compton, 2008). However, despite these differences, there are important commonalities, not least that in those countries where trade unions are allowed to function with some measure of freedom and legal protection, teachers are almost always among the most highly unionized occupational groups. Despite declining overall union membership in many industries, and especially in private sector industries, the membership of teacher unions has largely been maintained. Teacher unions now have a single global federation (the largest sectoral union federation in the world), Educational International, and this organization reports 401 different affiliates, in 172 countries, collectively representing over 30 million educators (www.ei-ie.org). What is clear is that for very many teachers, in very

many parts of the world, membership of a labour union is important, emphasizing a key argument within this chapter that there can be no understanding of teaching as a pedagogical process without acknowledging that teaching is work and that the teacher is a worker, and, logically, that the school or college must be treated as a workplace (Connell, 1985). This recognition of the teacher as a worker, and the brief overview above to the diverse origins and traditions of different teacher unions, draws attention to the complex ways in which teacher unions seek to represent the collective interests of teachers, and in particular how they understand the notion of teaching as work. Such an approach provides a broad schema to help conceptualize approaches to teacher unionism and in this section I present three ways of considering these issues. This approach inevitably involves setting out complex and nuanced differences in a simplified form, but such an approach does allow for an identification of the key strategies adopted by teacher unions in diverse contexts.

Industrial Unionism As a term, ‘industrial unionism’ is widely understood to refer to a type of unionism in which a particular union seeks to organize and represent all the employees in a particular industry. In such cases, quite diverse groups of workers (manual workers, clerical workers, supervisory workers) might all be in the same union by virtue of the fact that they work in the same industry. This is evident in some jurisdictions, for example in the USA, where the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers recruit across the education profession (teachers and ‘paraprofessionals’). However, in this context I am using the term to describe the ‘scope’ of bargaining, that is, the range of issues over which the union bargains and seeks to influence. Industrial unionism in education is evident when the focus is on what are sometimes

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called ‘bread and butter’ issues, identified as those that relate principally to pay and working conditions. These concerns can be considered as the core issues in the ‘wages for work’ bargain that is the nature of the employment relationship, discussed above. In a teaching context, the basic ‘industrial issues’ are often captured within the employment contract, which sets out the key terms of engagement between employer and employee. However, the level of detail (or ‘scope’) in a contract can vary enormously between different jurisdictions. In North America, contracts are typically quite detailed and may include issues such as class size. In other cases, contracts are more open and focus on fewer issues. In the latter case, the scope for managerial discretion is enhanced. The rationale for this approach to teacher unionism is that the union is considered to be most effective when it can mobilize around the ‘core concerns’ of teachers (pay, workload), and thereby create the appropriate working conditions for teachers to exercise their professional judgement. Such an approach does not seek to represent a union position in relation to teachers’ professional concerns or see these professional issues as legitimate issues for union interest (for a fuller discussion, see Carter, Stevenson & Passy, 2010).

Professional Unionism An alternative approach, indeed a critique of industrial unionism, has been presented by academics and union activists based in the United States and has argued that teacher unions must engage more constructively with governments and employers in pursuit of school improvement (Kerchner & Mitchell, 1988). This has sometimes been referred to as ‘professional unionism’ (Kerchner & Koppich, 1993). This requires teacher unions to explicitly focus on what Kerchner, Koppich and Weeres (1997) refer to as ‘the other half of teaching’. For Kerchner et  al., engaging

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with the ‘other half of teaching’ requires teachers’ unions to have a much broader purview of what is the union’s interest, and rather than focus narrowly on pay and conditions, advocates argue that unions should be prepared to work together with employers to improve ‘quality’ and be willing to discuss associated issues, including teacher performance and processes to assess and promote teacher quality (appraisal systems or performance-related pay). Such an approach is largely accepting of what might be considered orthodox or mainstream ways of securing school improvement and argues that teachers’ interests are best served by engaging constructively with this agenda. The argument for such an approach is that it enhances teachers’ claims to ‘professionalism’, thereby allowing teachers to mobilize public support and lever the political capital necessary to win improved status and working conditions (Chase, 1999).

Political Unionism A third approach rejects the simple bifurcation between so-called professional and industrial issues, and argues that the two dimensions of teachers’ work are indivisible. There is a clear recognition that teaching as work is a complex mix of both industrial and professional issues and that the role of teacher unions is to provide members with enhanced control over the totality of their work. However, there is also a rejection of the argument that engaging with ‘the other half of teaching’ (Kerchner et al., 1997) necessarily involves support for a professional agenda that is framed by a managerial focus on performance and the measurement of performance. Rather, this approach seeks to make explicit the extent to which professional issues are also political, and argues that teacher unions must be willing to act politically on professional issues if they are to be able to also address teachers’ ‘industrial’ concerns, such as workload (Stevenson, 2015).

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Political unionism locates teachers’ work in a wider debate about the purpose of teachers’ work and the political context in which that work is framed. One issue that might illustrate such an approach is that of standardized testing, which is an increasingly common feature of school systems (Kohn, 2000). This approach to teacher unionism not only highlights possible increases in teacher workload (industrial issues) and restrictions on professional autonomy (professional issues), but also emphasizes the purposes of standardized testing as a measure of performance intended to create divisions within school systems and that exacerbate inequalities (political issues). One early attempt to articulate this more political form of teacher unionism was presented by a range of activists and academics in North America in a joint statement making the case for ‘social justice unionism’ (National Coalition of Education Activists, 1994). In this statement there is a rejection of the industrial versus professional binary and an argument that education unions needed to place wider social justice concerns at the core of their objectives. Such an analysis necessarily required teachers, through their unions, to reach out to oppressed groups, and in particular to those experiencing injustice within the education system (poor funding, discriminatory practices). For some time the language of ‘social justice unionism’ framed a particular debate about union strategies in North America (Weiner, 2012), but also elsewhere. In due course this has tended to merge with wider labour movement debates about a shift towards a more radical form of ‘social movement unionism’ (Moody, 1997; Waterman, 1993) with its focus on fusing industrial issues with wider community campaigns and alliances. For many it is best illustrated by the activities of the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) (Uetricht, 2014), but it is also evident in the approaches adopted by many unions in Central and South America (Cabalin, 2012; Cook, 2004) and the National Union of Teachers in the England (Kenny, 2017).

CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTS IN SCHOOL SECTOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: FROM PLURALISM TO UNITARISM The strategies and approaches of teacher unions outlined above cannot be separated from the institutional arrangements, and state policy, within which industrial relations structures across systems are located (Stevenson & Carter, 2009). As has been indicated, the contexts and histories of teacher unionism in different parts of the world can differ significantly, and therefore it is always important to recognize difference and diversity in industrial relations systems rather than reach for what can be unhelpful generalizations. However, it is possible to identify some important trends in industrial relations structures that share some commonalities across systems. One such commonality has been the dominance of pluralist orthodoxy in many contexts during the twentieth century, which has been reflected in the commitment of governments to employment protections for workers in law and support for trade union involvement in collective bargaining. This commitment to collective bargaining was often institutionalized in public sector employment practices, where the notion of the state as a ‘model employer’ has a long tradition (Carter & Fairbrother, 1999). For example, teachers in the public (state) education system in England and Wales secured national collective bargaining in 1919, in the immediate aftermath of the 1914–18 Great War (Seifert, 1987). This meant that although the public education system was the responsibility of local government, there was an established national machinery for negotiating pay and conditions of service. In the period following the Second World War, as welfare states became consolidated in many western societies, a social contract with organized labour would often include a commitment to promoting collective bargaining. A common response was to introduce more

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formality into industrial relations systems, by codifying industrial relations processes and providing state support to ensure ‘good industrial relations’ (see the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers Associations (1968) in the UK). This was the era of consummate pluralism, when the state, capital and organized labour developed the structures to manage the potentially antagonistic employment relationship (Edmonds, 2016). Conflict was not denied; rather, the reverse – it was recognized and acknowledged. What was evident in state policy at this time was its commitment to establishing the structures and frameworks for managing this conflict. In many education systems these structures were already well established. As has been indicated, teachers in England and Wales secured national collective bargaining early in the twentieth century. In other jurisdictions, such as the United States, these developments followed much later when teachers’ frustration over basic issues of pay and conditions drove them to adopt the strategies of traditional labour unions (Golin, 2002; Murphy, 1992). Hence it was not until the 1960s that collective bargaining became a reality for teachers in the United States (and even then, and now, not in all States). Given these developments, and the high levels of unionization within the teaching profession, teacher unions emerged as key policy actors in the development of education policy in the 1960s and 1970s (Lawn, 1985). Several systems could be described as a form of tri-partism in which central government, employers and teachers’ unions played a key role in developing and shaping national education policy (Stevenson, 2014). As indicated, this period was when the pluralist tradition in industrial relations theory had assumed the position of an orthodoxy (Ackers, 2014), and where the assumptions underpinning the pluralist analysis provided the basis for public policy. It was not, however, an orthodoxy that was to go unchallenged. The post-war welfare state consensus, based on a settlement between capital and

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labour and underpinned by Keynesian demand management, began to crumble as soon as economic prosperity began to falter and global recession loomed. By the time of the oil crisis in 1973 it was clear that the alliance between capital and labour was beginning to crack and that a wider social and political crisis also looked likely (Conference of Socialist Economists, State Group, 1979). This was evident in a number of forms, including employer attempts to push back the gains made by organized labour in the three decades since the end of the Second World War. It was also evident in the emergence of an ideological movement identified as the New Right, which explicitly sought to challenge social democratic ‘welfarism’ (and the pluralist industrial relations model that was indirectly associated with it). This emerging political tradition represented a complex mix of ideas, but a common thread was a commitment to ‘roll back the frontiers of the state’ and to assert an aggressive individualism over public service and collective values (TaylorGooby, 1981). Central to the project of ‘re-capturing’ public education was the need to challenge the power of teacher unions, which were perceived to be key defenders of traditional public systems of education (Friedman & Friedman, 1980). Much New Right analysis was underpinned by the concept of ‘producer capture’, whereby proponents argued that in public service monopolies (such as public education) those who work in the system organize it in their own best interests (Demaine, 1993). In the absence of pressures to the contrary, producers act to protect their ‘vested interests’, rather than act in the interests of service users. The logic of this argument was that the power of public service unions needed to be challenged by introducing market forces into services such as education. These New Right ideas were reinforced by a range of academic thinkers (see Caldwell & Spinks, 1992, in Australia, and Chubb & Moe, 1990, in the USA) and were realized in the education policies of Conservative governments in several countries (Chile, New

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Zealand, the USA, the UK). At the core of a wide range of reforms was the concept of ‘site-based management’ and the creation of education quasi-markets. In these cases, the intention was to introduce market forces into public school systems and to use these to challenge the power of (organized) teachers. In such instances, the state often (paradoxically) centralized powers significantly while simultaneously devolving responsibility for key operational decisions to school level. In the England, the government minister who presided over these reforms specifically referred to the reforms as designed to ‘punish’ teacher unions (Smyth, 2011: 114). This explicit intention to weaken teachers’ union organization is also evident in the charter school movement in the USA, where many charter schools have been specifically established as non-union schools – a trend illustrated most graphically in New Orleans when, in the period after Hurricane Katrina, all of New Orleans’ public schools were closed down and re-opened as charter schools (Le Blanc Goff, 2009). All of the teachers in the New Orleans public school system were ‘laid off’ and had to re-apply for their posts – in non-union charter schools (Buras, Randels & ya Salaam, 2010). Although the pattern is complex, with significant differences between contexts, what appears to be emerging is a new form of unitarist management in many school systems, replacing the pluralist model that had existed previously. This ‘new unitarism’ has little or no place for union organization in schools or school systems, which it sees as an alternative pole for organizational loyalty. Rather, employment relationships are individualized – a contract freely entered into between employer and employee. The employee has made a choice and undertaken to work for the organization and is consequently expected to support the objectives of the organization. Such an analysis denies the existence of conflict and therefore has no need for mechanisms to manage conflict, or the organizations that have a role in such processes. Hence the

direct, and sometimes indirect, methods used to marginalize teacher union organization. Examples of the former include the undermining of collective bargaining arrangements (ETUCE, 2015, 2016), while an example of the latter involves influencing the content of headteacher training programmes in ways that render industrial relations issues invisible (see Thrupp & Wilmott, 2003). This analysis explains much of the shift in school sector industrial relations in recent years. The power of organized teachers, which the New Right always identified as a threat, has been attacked by a combination of centralized control, quasi-market structures and the promotion of a new managerialism. There is considerable evidence that the combined effect of these developments has had some impact. Teacher unions have often struggled to retain their past influence and, in some contexts, maintaining a union presence in any form has become extremely difficult (Stevenson, 2016). However, it is important not to confuse what might be temporary shifts in power for longer-term trends. It is far from clear, for example, that the new managerialism promoted by current policy orthodoxy is able to offer a sustainable model for school improvement. Denying the existence of conflict in the employment relationship, and removing any meaningful mechanisms for dealing with it, does not, of itself, make the conflict disappear. It may have the effect of temporarily suppressing it, but it cannot wish such conflict away, let alone contain it. One sign of such suppressed conflict is the large numbers of teachers exiting the profession across many different countries, often citing rising workloads (Guardian, 2016), but others also reference aggressive management (School Governance, 2016). It is for this reason that a shift towards an anti-union unitarism may only be temporary, and that in the longer term management in schools will once again be compelled to work with teacher unions. What now looks likely is that the new unitarism, with its goal of marginalizing the voice

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of organized teachers, will give rise to a reinvigorated and more explicitly political form of teacher unionism. Dismantling national collective bargaining structures, and seeking to remove union presence at the workplace, is intended to create an organizational environment in which managerial decisions go unchallenged by organized teachers. In reality, it has created a vacuum in which conflicts and pressures are still present, but the structures and institutions capable of managing these tensions are no longer able to work in the way they once did. As this new landscape has become more apparent, some unions have sought to radically reconfigure their organization and structures in response. This is most obvious among teacher unions that have sought to decentralize their own structures in order to mirror the decentralized school system they work within (Bascia & Stevenson, 2017). Given that school leaders now have greater responsibility at institution level, the decisions they make have an obvious and immediate impact in the workplace. Unions have therefore re-organized accordingly so that they are able to intervene at the point where key decisions are made and power is exercised. One obvious example of this is the National Union of Teachers in England, which has very deliberately shifted towards a workplace orientation, and shown a particular willingness to take industrial action at the level of the individual school (Blower, 2014a; Courtney & Little, 2014). Indeed, as a consequence, industrial action (both strike action and action short of strike action) within individual schools has become an increasingly common feature of the contemporary English school system. Prior to the introduction of site-based management, the experience of this type of single-institution industrial action was virtually non-existent. At the same time, the union has focused on mobilizing its members in political campaigns (nationally and locally) that seek to challenge the overall trajectory of government education on a wide range of issues (Blower, 2014b). For example, in the run-up to the general elections in the UK in 2015 and 2017, the union organized a large number of

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public ‘Question Time’ events in which election candidates were quizzed on education issues. In the 2017 election, the union was attributed with organizing a very effective political campaign focused on school funding and proposed government cuts, after which a BBC journalist proclaimed ‘the teaching unions are coming back into the frame’ (Cook, 2017). Such campaigns have often acted as catalysts for membership mobilization and it may well be that this shift in union focus opens up the possibility of a union renewal from below in which member engagement and democratic participation is privileged (Fairbrother, 1996, 2000).

CONCLUSION There can be no understanding of educational institutions as organizations without an appreciation of the employment relationship. As Connell (1985) argued, we must be willing to see teaching as work, teachers as workers and schools/colleges as workplaces. A failure to adequately theorize these relationships is what has allowed so much educational leadership and management literature to effectively ignore a key feature of teachers’ employment – that teachers are organized collectively and are capable of acting collectively in order to prosecute their interests. Such an omission is at best naive, but may actually be deliberate. In promoting particular forms of educational leadership, some researchers have reinforced a unitarist notion of leadership that seeks to marginalize the independent voice of organized classroom teachers. Such an approach is not politically neutral and has contributed to an environment in which the voice of classroom teachers in all aspects of their work has been undermined at the expense of enhanced state power and managerial authority. In this chapter I have demonstrated how these views, which dominate much academic educational management literature, are

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mobilized in order to support state strategies associated with the neoliberal restructuring of public education systems. These ideas are currently in the ascendancy as the new unitarism is used to ‘push back’ against welfarist models of education and the broader notion of education as a public good. The pluralist approach to employment relations, associated with this social-democratic welfarism, has similarly been in retreat. Indeed, the two issues cannot be separated as the restructuring of public education along neoliberal lines requires the marginalization of the collective voice of teachers. However, despite an emerging dominance in policy and practice, these developments are far from uncontested. Indeed, in denying conflict in the workplace, and dismantling the systems to manage it, the new unitarism seeks to suppress conflict rather than deal with it. This may have some success in the short term but will be unlikely to be sustainable in the longer term. Rather, by seeking to marginalize and exclude union organization, the new unitarism may be fuelling a new, more vibrant grassroots teacher unionism. National systems of collective bargaining have often produced union structures that are centralized, and in turn, detached from rank-and-file members. Decentralizing decision-making to the school level, while simultaneously dismantling the structures that have traditionally contained conflictual relations, may provide the spark that ignites a new unionism.

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Bascia, N. (2015). Teacher unions in public education: Politics, history and the future. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bascia, N. & Stevenson, H. (2017). Organising teaching: Developing the power of the profession. Brussels: Educational International Research Institute. Blatchford R. (2014). The restless school. Melton Mowbray, UK: John Catt Educational Ltd. Blower, C. (2014a). Empowering lay structures. Morning Star, 19 April. Available at: www. morningstaronline.co.uk/a-6e5a-Empowering-lay-structures (accessed 10 December 2017). Blower, C. (2014b). Putting the union at the heart of our communities. Morning Star, 22 April. Available at: www.morningstaronline. co.uk/a-b53c-Putting-the-union-at-theheart-of-our-communities#.VbZ5nkWUc-c (accessed 10 December 2017). Braverman, H. (1974). Labor and monopoly capitalism: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. New York: Monthly Review Press. Buck, A. (2016). Leadership matters: How leaders at all levels can create great schools. Melton Mowbray, UK: John Catt Educational Ltd. Budd, J. W., Gomez, R., & Meltz, N. M. (2004). Why a balance is best: The pluralist industrial relations paradigm of balancing competing interests. In B. Kaufman (Ed.) Theoretical perspectives on work and the employment relationship (pp. 195–227). Champaign, IL: Industrial Relations Research Association. Buras, K. L., Randels, J., & ya Salaam, K. (Eds.) (2010). Pedagogy, policy, and the privatized city: Stories of dispossession and defiance from New Orleans. New York: Teachers College Press. Burchill, F. (2014). Labour relations. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cabalin, C. (2012). Neoliberal education and student movements in Chile: Inequalities and malaise. Policy Futures in Education, 10(2), 219–228. Caldwell, B. & Spinks, J. M. (1992). Leading the self-managing school. London: Psychology Press. Carter, B. (1997). The restructuring of teaching and the restructuring of class. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18(2), 201–215.

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Edmonds, J. (2016). The Donovan Commission: Were we in the trade unions too shortsighted? Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 37, 222–228. ETUCE (2015). ETUCE report on the state of funding in education, teachers’ working conditions, social dialogue and trade union rights in Central and East European countries. Brussels: European Trade Union Committee for Education. Available at: www.csee-etuce. org/en/documents/publications/1185-draftetuce-report-on-the-state-of-funding-in-education-teachers-working-conditions-socialdialogue-and-trade-union-rights-in-centraland-eastern-european-countries-october-2015 (accessed 10 December 2017). ETUCE (2016). ETUCE report on the state of funding in education, teachers’ working conditions, social dialogue and trade union rights in Western European countries. Brussels: European Trade Union Committee for Education. Available at: www.csee-etuce. org/en/documents/publications/1453etuce-report-on-the-state-of-funding-ineducation-teachers-working-conditionssocial-dialogue-and-trade-union-rights-inwestern-european-countries-2016 (accessed 10 December 2017). Fairbrother, P. (1996). Workplace trade unionism in the state sector. In P. Ackers, C. Smith, & P. Smith (Eds.), The new workplace and trade unions (pp. 110–148). London: Routledge. Fairbrother, P. (2000). British trade unions facing the future. Capital and Class, 71, 47–78. Flanders, A. (1968). Collective bargaining: A theoretical analysis. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 6(1), 1–26. Friedman, M. & Friedman, R. (1980). Free to choose. London: Penguin. Fullan, M. (2003). The moral imperative of school leadership. New York: Corwin Press. Galey, S. (2015). Rethinking the rise of STEM education. Available at: https://edwp.educ. msu.edu/green-and-write/2015/rethinkingthe-rise-of-stem-education/ (accessed 10 December 2017). Gentile, M. (2013). Educating for values-driven leadership: Giving voice to values across the curriculum. London: Business Expert Press. Golin, S. (2002). The Newark teacher strikes: Hopes on the line. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

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Guardian (2016). Nearly half of England’s teachers plan to leave in the next five years. The Guardian, 22 March. Available at: www. theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/22/ teachers-plan-leave-five-years-survey-workload-england (accessed on 10 December 2017). Gutierez, R. R. (2013). Beating the neoliberal blame game: Teacher and parent solidarity and the 2012 Chicago teachers’ strike. Monthly Review, 65(2). Available at: http:// monthlyreview.org/2013/06/01/beating-theneoliberal-blame-game/ (accessed 10 December 2017). Gutstein, R. & Lipman, P. (2013). The rebirth of the Chicago teachers’ union and possibilities for a counter-hegemonic education movement. Monthly Review, 65(2). Available at: http://monthlyreview.org/2013/06/01/therebirth-of-the-chicago-teachers-unionand-possibilities-for-a-counter-hegemoniceducation-movement/ (accessed 10 December 2017). Hargreaves, A. & Fullan, M. (1998). What’s worth fighting for in education? Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press. Hyman, R. (1975). Industrial relations: A Marxist introduction. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kenny, A. (2017). Fighting back in the 21st century: The NUT and social movement trade unionism. Available at: www.counterfire.org/ interview/19165-fighting-back-in-the-21stcentury-the-nut-and-social-movement-tradeunionism (accessed 10 December 2017). Kerchner, C., & Koppich, J. (Eds.). (1993). A union of professionals: Labor relations and educational reform. New York: Teachers College Press. Kerchner, C., Koppich, J., & Weeres, J. (1997). United mind workers: Unions and teaching in the knowledge society. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Kerchner, C. & Mitchell, D. (1988). The changing idea of a teachers’ union. London: Falmer Press. Kohn, A. (2000). Standardized testing and its victims. Education Week, 20(4), 46–47. Lawn, M. (Ed.) (1985). The politics of teacher unionism: International perspectives. London: Taylor & Francis. Le Blanc Goff, S. (2009). When education ceases to be public: The privatization of the

New Orleans school system after Hurricane Katrina. Unpublished dissertation. University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations, 911. Available at: https://scholarworks.uno. edu/td/911 [accessed 10 December 2017]. Leithwood, K. & Jantzi, D. (1990). Transformational leadership: How principals can help reform school cultures. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 1(4), 249–280. Leithwood, K. & Jantzi, D. (2005). Transformational leadership. In B. Davies (Ed.), The essentials of school leadership (pp. 31–43). London: Sage. Marx, K. [1976 (1867)]. Capital (Vol. 1). London: Lawrence and Wishart. Moe, T. & Wiborg, S. (Eds.) (2017). Teachers unions and education systems around the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moody, K. (1997). Towards an international social movement unionism. New Left Review, I, 225. Available at: http://newleftreview. org/I/225/kim-moody-towards-an-international-social-movement-unionism (accessed 10 December 2017). Murphy, M. (1992). Blackboard unions: The AFT and the NEA 1900–1980. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. National Coalition of Education Activists (1994). Social justice unionism: A call to activists. Available at: www.rethinkingschools.org/special_reports/union/sjun.shtml (accessed 10 December 2017). Reeves, D. (2009). Leading change in your school: How to conquer myths, build commitment and get results. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers Associations, 1965–1968. (Donovan) Report. Cmnd 3623 (1968). London: HMSO. Seifert, R. (1987). Teacher militancy: A history of teacher strikes 1896–19 87. London: Falmer Press. School Governance (2016). Overworked, bullied and lack of respect: Key reasons why teachers quit. Available at: www.schoolgovernance.net.au/2016/04/28/overworkedbullied-and-lack-of-respect-key-reasonsteachers-quit/ (accessed 10 December 2017). Smyth, J. (2011). The disaster of the ‘selfmanaging school’: Genesis, trajectory, undisclosed agenda, and effects. Journal of

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23 Schools as Organizations: Accountability Concerns Melanie Ehren

INTRODUCTION School accountability has been a key driver for education system reform in many countries over the last decade. An report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2013) shows how external accountability, such as high-stakes testing or school inspections, is often introduced to counterbalance the greater decision-making powers in schools and provide safeguards for the autonomy of head teachers and teachers. Some countries have also introduced external accountability in response to international league tables: a well-known example is Germany where school inspections were rolled out across the country in the wake of disappointing PISA results. The purpose of external accountability varies, as well as what schools are held accountable for. In this chapter we will reflect on various types of accountability systems, and particularly how centralized measures of school quality and outcomes have shaped our understanding of school organization and the actual organization of schooling.

This chapter will first explain what we mean by ‘educational accountability’ and how various types of accountability systems have standardized aspects of a school’s organization. Campbell’s law and the work of others (particularly Espeland and Sauder) are used to explain the mechanisms of self-fulfilling prophecy and commensuration, through which accountability measures potentially distort our understanding of school organization. The conclusion of this chapter draws on Creemers and Kyriakides’ (2015) dynamic model of educational effectiveness to inform a more holistic approach in holding schools to account, which allows for more variation in how schools organize their teaching and learning.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘EDUCATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY’? ‘Accountability’ is a broad term that has different meanings and is used to refer to different types of practice and outcomes. Romzek

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(2000), for example, talks about the accountability relationships of government agencies and public managers, whereas Anderson (2005) refers to different types of accountability systems. Bovens (2005) also talks about ‘being accountable’ as the outcome of such systems. A helpful definition is provided by Klijn and Koppenjan (2014, p. 264), who talk about accountability as ‘the extent to which actors (accounters: those rendering accounts) are held accountable for their behaviour and performance by other actors (accountees: those to whom account is rendered)’. The ways in which accounters are held to account by accountees may vary but will generally involve a measure and judgement according to a set of common metrics, such as a school inspection framework or a test framework. De Grauwe (2007) describes three different, yet complementary, purposes of school inspections, which can also apply to other types of external accountability: to control and evaluate; to give support and advice; and to act as a liaison agent. The control function is at the heart of many inspection systems, where school inspectors undertake compliance checks, observing whether a provider is complying with the standards, which are commonly set out in a checklist. These standards focus, for example, on the qualifications of teaching staff and other evidence of the competence of teachers and the physical conditions in which children are educated. The outcome of such a compliance check is to highlight any breach in compliance to regulation and to ensure these are amended. Many systems, however, are increasingly seeking to evaluate and improve school processes and/or outcomes, focusing on school improvement instead of just checking compliance to regulations. Some countries put in place advice and support systems to support school improvement, such as through the publication of ‘good practices’ by Inspectorates of Education or feedback forums at the end of an inspection visit.

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In some systems, control and evaluation of school quality also inform a third function of external accountability: acting as a liaison agent between the top of the education system (where norms and rules are set) and the schools (where education is shaped and takes place). Those who hold schools to account act as go-between agents in having a task to inform schools of decisions taken by the centre, and to inform the centre of the realities at the school level. This function is particularly seen in countries that have an Inspectorate of Education, as they can ‘translate’ and explain ambitious centralized reform programmes to schools during inspection visits and monitor the extent to which these are implemented. Baxter (2017), for example, positions school inspectors as ‘policy brokers’ who are central in implementing national policy, through disclosing cross-national discourses and measuring outcomes. Accountability systems also vary in their focus and locus. De Grauwe (2007) distinguishes systems which evaluate and measure: (1) school inputs, norms and regulations, (2) instructional processes, and what goes on in the classroom, and/or (3) school results (e.g., student achievement). The locus differs according to who is holding whom to account, such as schools being held accountable by an education administration (Ministry, state or district in a public/state control model), teachers holding one another to account through a peer review model (professional accountability model), parents through participation on school governing bodies (the partnership model), or the general public by means of parental choice and competition between schools (the free market model). Many countries have combinations of different types of accountability systems in place, particularly when education systems are decentralized and newer accountability arrangements are introduced at the local level (e.g., city or district) and added to existing centralized systems, or when newer measures of student performance are added to existing compliance-oriented systems.

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Recently, states in the United States have also introduced measures of school processes (e.g., quality reviews) to existing test-based accountability to counterbalance some of the unintended consequences of high-stakes testing, while many Inspectorates of Education incorporate student achievement tests in their frameworks to prevent ‘goal displacement’ or improve the efficiency of their work. As Frey, Homberg and Osterloh (2013) describe, output-related performance measures and rewards have become commonplace in many countries in the wake of New Public Management, aiming to raise public servants’ motivation and enhance service quality.

STANDARDIZING SCHOOL ORGANIZATION The commonality of these systems is their use as a set of standardized measures, such as tests or observation protocols used in inspections to judge schools against a set of common metrics. In many systems, the judgement is used to rank order schools, classify schools on a grading scale or against a target where schools failing to meet these targets often face sanctions. The theory of change underlying such models is that feedback about performance and ‘carrots and sticks’ inform and motivate improvement, conceptualizing schools as rational systems in deciding on what to do and where to go. Many reform initiatives assume that greater accountability will mean improved performance, particularly through the alignment of a school’s organization to the control and reward system, through which they are held to account. A number of studies support the positive impact of external accountability, such as Hamilton, Stecher and Klein (2002), Au (2007), and Lee (2007), whose work provides examples of high-stakes tests motivating teachers to work harder to improve student performance, and understand the subject areas that need more emphasis, or

Ehren’s (2016) work, which shows that school inspections can build a school’s capacity for internal evaluation and highlight areas for professional development. Many studies have, however, also questioned the beneficial views of external accountability, expressing concerns over unintended consequences and presenting examples of the strategic responses of schools to various forms of external accountability. Frey et al. (2013), for example, argue that output performance measurement, such as in test-based accountability, is not suitable for public services as there is high ambiguity over goals, means–end relations are often not understood, and accountability relationships are varied. In education, multiple stakeholders are involved in organizing schooling and they may all have different perspectives on the purpose of teaching and learning; for example, teachers are accountable to various user and stakeholder groups who may all have different goals (e.g., children, parents, their principal and school board, and perhaps even professional peers). Output measurement is, according to Frey et al. (2013), also less suitable in contexts, such as in education, where moral purpose and communitybuilding are important underpinnings to how a service is organized. Such complexities similarly complicate the use of input and process measures, such as those in school inspection systems as they don’t allow stakeholder groups to set and inform the evaluation agenda of their own school. The standardized and centralized nature of external accountability measures does not allow for a responsive evaluation of the highly interdependent nature of teaching and school organization and multiplicity of purposes. As a result, these measures are, by nature, incomplete and simplistic and ill-aligned with their overarching goals. The consequence of having such inflexible accountability measures is that the accountability system cannot accommodate the variety in schools and, particularly in the context of high-stakes testing, the measures are prone

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to distort the behaviour they are trying to measure. Examples of such distortion were already reported by Campbell in 1979 in what has become known as ‘Campbell’s law’: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor. (Campbell, 1979)

Others have furthered his work by categorizing the types of responses and distortions one would expect from performance measurement. Meyer and Gupta (1994), Meyer and O’Shaughnessy (1993) and Van Thiel and Leeuw (2002), for example, talk about a ‘performance paradox’, by which they refer to a weak correlation between performance indicators and performance itself, caused by positive and perverse learning, selection and suppression. Positive learning is the intended outcome of most accountability systems as it refers to a genuine improvement in the performance of schools where, over time, indicators lose their sensitivity in detecting bad performance. Perverse learning is an example of where measures become distorted as organizations or individuals have learned which aspects of performance are measured and which are not, and when they can use that information to manipulate their assessments. Selection occurs when poor performers are replaced by better performers (such as when failing schools are closed and new schools open in their existing school building), again reducing differences in performance. Finally, suppression refers to measures which ignore meaningful differences in performance, such as when accountability systems only measure similar performance of schools in cognitive areas but fail to capture the variety between schools in other subjects. Smith (1997) details the positive and perverse learning into a further eight types of strategic responses to the publication of performance data. De Wolf and Janssens (2007) grouped them into unintended and intended strategic responses:

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• Unintended strategic behaviour: behaviour of schools is influenced by assessment – teaching to the test, short-term targets and organizational paralysis. • Intended strategic behaviour: schools intentionally try to improve their status on the measures – window dressing, fraud, gaming and misrepresentation.

Examples of both types of behaviour have been reported in various studies about testbased accountability and school inspections in the US and Europe. In the US, Hamilton, Stecher and Klein (2002), Koretz (2002, 2003), Stecher (2002), Stecher et al. (2006), Holcombe, Jennings and Koretz (2012), Jennings and Bearak (2014), and others, for example, report of score inflation when teachers teach to the test, schools narrow their curricula or reallocate their resources to tested subjects. In Europe, De Wolf and Janssens (2007), Ehren (2016) and Jones et  al. (2017) talk about ‘teaching to inspection’, ‘window dressing’, ‘ossification’ and ‘tunnel vision’ as ways in which inspections and inspection frameworks unintentionally shape a school’s organization and classroom teaching. Other concerns address the wider issue of using centralized standards which allow limited flexibility for schools to respond to local problems or context, particularly in addressing the specific needs of their student population. Ehren and Godfrey (2017), for example, explain how external accountability motivates the implementation of internal control systems, aligned to external accountability measures, forcing teachers to teach to a prescribed curriculum and set of formative assessments. The many (both positive and negative) examples clearly indicate how school accountability shapes and reconceptualizes our understanding of school organization. As Frey et  al. (2013) explain, control and performance measurement systems are critical to how organizations function: accountability measures affect the social structure by which participants in the school interrelate. In the next section, we will further explore

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how standardized measures shape (our understanding of) a school’s organization, by which we mean the formal and informal roles in the school, the decision-making structures in the school, their goals and the set of technologies or tasks the school performs in order to render inputs into desired outputs (e.g., curricula, grouping of students, timetabling) (Scott, 2003).

CAMPBELL’S LAW: HOW MEASURES CHANGE COGNITION AND BEHAVIOUR Campbell’s law (1979) has influenced the work of many in thinking about the ways in which accountability measures distort school organization. Sauder and Espeland (2009), for example, talk about how people’s reflection on how they are monitored, evaluated, observed and measured ensures that they change their behaviour accordingly, and bring the organization in which they work more in line with the metrics they are measured on. They explain how, as a result, the measures become increasingly valid in classifying, rewarding and punishing those that have successfully and unsuccessfully aligned themselves with these measures, and disciplining those which fail to meet the metrics. Certain solutions, such as how to group students according to age-grade structure, how to allocate teachers and teaching assistants to classroom units and subjects and content to specific periods of time become fixed in the institutional structure of the school when performance measurement schemes identify these as aspects of a ‘good school’. Teachers and head teachers adhere to these principles and metrics of how to organize a school, not because they know that this is the best way to respond to the needs of their student population and school community, but because they have come to be identified in the minds of students, teachers and parents of what it means to ‘do school’ (see also Elmore, 1997).

In a similar way, Elmore (1995) talks about the ‘four regularities of schooling’, referring to the grouping of students for purposes of instruction, how teachers’ work is defined vis-à-vis groups of students, how content is allocated to time, and how students’ progress is assessed. These regularities, and how they are measured in external accountability systems, have been greatly influenced by school effectiveness research. As Scheerens and Ehren (2015) explain, this body of knowledge has produced increasingly clear sets of malleable and school-level conditions to explain variations in school output, informing many inspection frameworks across Europe, particularly in providing the knowledge on how to measure and judge the quality of school-level conditions such as leadership, culture and achievement orientation, while also greatly contributing to the development of valueadded models to measure student achievement in test-based accountability systems. Campbell (1957, p. 298) and Espeland and Sauder (2007) talk about ‘reactivity’ when explaining how accountability measures modify the phenomenon under study, change the very thing one is trying to measure, and how the distinction between the act of measuring and the object of measurement is becoming increasingly blurred. Espeland and Sauder (2007, p. 11) distinguish two mechanisms in explaining these changes: self-fulfilling prophecy and commensuration. Self-fulfilling prophecies, according to these authors, operate primarily by changing behaviour in relation to altered expectations, whereas commensuration works mainly by transforming cognition and changing the locus and form of attention. The two mechanisms are closely related in that measures change people’s expectation of what a good school looks like, while they further reinforce those expectations when the school aligns its behaviour to the measures and is rewarded by a subsequent good assessment outcome. As Espeland and Sauder (2007) explain, self-fulfilling prophesies operate by confirming people’s expectations or predictions

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through a good outcome on these measures, even though the initial measure was false in identifying high-quality performance. Once beliefs are defined as real and confirmed by these measures, they amplify. Self-fulfilling prophecies change the actual behaviour of teachers and head teachers, as well as those who are working and interacting with schools (e.g., parents and students) to produce an organization that conforms to the measure, making the measures increasingly tangible and valid in the eyes of those who use them. Espeland and Stevens’ (2008) study of rankings of law schools provides a range of examples of how measures cause both school staff and external stakeholders to think and act differently. They found that rankings prompted school staff to re-evaluate their perceptions of their own schools, and how these rankings and the measures underlying them became more taken for granted over time, particularly when the number of people using the rankings (students, staff, trustees, employers, media) expanded and when rankings informed actions that had real consequences for schools. The study, for example, showed how parents and students increasingly used rankings to decide on which school to go to and where to send their tuition dollars, where teachers plotted careers at schools in the top ranks, and foundations decided on giving grants only to high-ranked schools, and administrators used the metrics from these rankings to evaluate the performance of their own schools and school staff (Espeland & Stevens, 1998, 2008). Similar examples were reported for inspection systems. Ehren and Perryman (2016) explain how schools that fail an English Ofsted inspection find it increasingly difficult to recruit high-quality teachers and head teachers, and where middle- and high-income parents particularly use Ofsted grades to choose a school for their children. Gustafsson et al. (2015) also talk about schools that become self-inspecting when they embed inspection standards in their daily functioning. As many Inspectorates of Education require or request

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schools to self-evaluate and report their own performance according to external inspection standards, such self-inspecting is actively reinforced through the way Inspectorates of Education measure the quality of schools. Conformity to inspection standards is particularly enhanced, according to Gustafsson et  al. (2015), when there are clear inspection standards that have been operationalized in specific guidelines and protocols to inform an inspection assessment. Such clarity can vary across the different standards in an inspection framework and can, as such, create different trajectories of change. The fact that only some standards will be incorporated into targets for distinguishing failing from good performance further enhances such variability in change. Diegmann et  al. (2011), for example, explain how the various stages of a school inspection are standardized and normalized differently. Their analysis of German inspection guidelines and handbooks revealed differences in semantics and how strictly exemplary performance is described, suggesting that schools have more leeway in deciding on appropriate actions in some areas, while being more restricted in others. Protocols and guidelines around monitoring and observation of lessons were particularly strict, according to Diegmann et  al. (2011), and resulted in high pressure for school staff to conform to the standards assessed through lesson observation. Normalization or norm-conforming behaviour is especially evident in schools which are deemed to be failing or have already been signalled out as not meeting external accountability targets. Hanushek and Raymond (2002), for example, expect schools that have scores close to a performance target to alter their behaviour more than schools further away from the established crucial performance target. The interrelationship between the choice of a school score model, the choice of performance targets, and the location of a given school relative to those targets will most likely influence the use of strategic behaviour in schools. De Wolf and Janssens (2007) also

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argue that the pressure to meet the standards through the use of strategic behaviour may differ per school. Low-performing schools and schools with a large population of minority pupils will be more inclined to exclude pupils from tests. Results of studies by Jacob and Levitt (2003) and Stecher (2002) support this assumption, as they found that teachers in schools with lower achievement, higher poverty rates and more Black students were more likely to cheat and engage in excessive test preparation. The negative effects of highstakes testing on curriculum and instruction appear to be greater for these low-performing students and low-scoring schools than they are for high-performing students or highperforming schools (Stecher, 2002). Koretz and Barron (cited by Hamilton & Koretz, 2002, p. 41) reasoned that teachers faced with targets they cannot reach by legitimate means will have strong incentives to try to reach these targets in ways that may corrupt scores (especially when the stakes to do so are high). School staff in under-performing schools and schools in disadvantaged areas are prone to feel pressure to respond to inspection prompts and improve the education in their school by following the types of good practices published by Inspectorates of Education and copying the legitimized protocols, structures and good practices from schools considered to be high-performing. More generally, Ehren et  al. (2013) found that, regardless of their previous performance, schools use inspection frameworks as tools for school self-evaluation, school development planning, and to frame professional development for teacher and head teacher performance management. A number of authors (Chapman, 2001; Ferguson et  al., 2000; Matthews & Sammons, 2005; Perryman, 2005; Scanlon, 1999) additionally explain how Ofsted’s ‘special measures’ tag gives head teachers in England the mandate to make difficult decisions. The requirement to draw up and implement an action plan, which is monitored by Ofsted and often supported by external consultants (such as

from the local education authority), focuses the school staff’s efforts on improvement of weaknesses and motivates them to set clear targets to become Ofsted ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’. A similar effect was reported for the Netherlands and Flanders, where Ehren and Shackleton (2016) and Penninckx (2015) found that principals in weak schools report greater increases in school effectiveness and more improvements in school policies than schools with a positive inspection assessment. Some Inspectorates of Education actively encourage these self-inspecting mechanisms by publishing good practices on their website or actively discourage unwelcome responses to inspections. Ofsted’s YouTube channel and twitter account, for example, has a number of examples of exemplary school practices, while their twitter feed #OfstedMyths actively campaigns against ineffective rituals, such as through the following quote: Ofsted does not require self-evaluation to be provided in a specific format. Any assessment that is provided should be part of the school’s business processes and not generated solely for inspection purposes.

THE POWER OF NUMBERS: WHY ACCOUNTABILITY MEASURES CHANGE COGNITION AND BEHAVIOUR At the heart of self-fulfilling prophecies and commensuration is the transformation of distinct and often diffuse school qualities and outcomes, such as ‘culture’, ‘leadership’ or ‘student performance’, into comparable quantitative numbers. By measuring school organization on a common set of metrics, our understanding of ‘school organization’, and how different properties of a school’s organization are related in improving student outcomes, is reduced and simplified into a (set of) number(s) or grades. Clapham, Vickers and Eldridge (2016) explain how Ofsted’s categorization of ‘outstanding’ has reduced

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our understanding of what ‘outstanding’ means to something that is evidenced through scientific rather than narrative knowledge. Soft, emotional, narrative data, such as that of relationships, are, according to Clapham et  al. (2016), simply ignored in Ofsted’s description of outstanding and, as they are not considered in these accountability measures, they have become de-legitimized and are no longer considered to be valuable or fundamental to school quality. Ehren and Hatch (2013) similarly report examples of principals and teachers in the US who talk about their school and students in terms of test scores in different subject areas, school grades and the extent to which certain student groups are failing to meet ‘annual yearly progress’ and are targeted for ‘booster sessions’ to improve their scores. Scheerens and Ehren’s (2015) comparison of frameworks of six European Inspectorates of Education clearly showcases the properties of a school’s organization that are isolated in inspection measures. Their analysis indicates that all these frameworks measure and report single organizational properties in separate scores, such as grades for the quality of leadership and management of the school, the quality of a school’s quality assurance, or the culture of the school. Assessments of school quality by these six Inspectorates of Education include a set of standards and substandards with underlying detailed criteria, where strict rules are applied on grading schools on a scale in a similar manner for all the schools. The assessment protocols and guidelines require an assessment of conditions as ‘present’ or ‘absent’, or an assessment on a 3- or 4-point scale, ignoring the potential interrelatedness of the conditions. An overall effectiveness grade for the school sees an aggregation of the scores on these single indicators through a preset formula of how to weigh the scores on these indicators. In weighing up these scores, school inspectors are expected to use their professional judgement and understanding in deciding how these elements interact in improving

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performance overall and whether they need to deviate from the calculated overall grade. There is, however, often little guidance on how to understand a school’s quality and effectiveness from a more holistic perspective, while the strict prescriptions on how to separately score the different properties of a school also skew their thinking towards looking at a school’s actions separately. Also, as Scheerens and Ehren (2015) explain, the way in which information on conditions at the classroom level are aggregated to evaluate school-level effectiveness discounts the fact that these conditions have different meanings at different levels of the school hierarchy. Observations of ‘achievement orientation’ in lesson observations (at the classroom level) are, for example, often simply averaged to come to an assessment of the school’s quality in this area, whereas achievement orientation at the school level also includes an assessment of school policy in this area and the monitoring systems that the school has in place to support teachers’ orientation on high student achievement. Only some of the Inspectorates of Education (e.g., Sweden and Austria) seem to steer away from this approach of treating school and classroom conditions similarly, by emphasizing a more holistic approach to the evaluation of schools and providing schools with an overview of strengths and weaknesses instead of using rudimentary thresholds to single out failing schools. In a similar manner, the outcomes of highstakes tests in the US are generally reported in school report cards, distinguishing student outcomes according to subject (often Mathematics and Literacy) by grade and by student group (ethnic and gender). For each of these outcomes, schools will have to meet progress and/or attainment targets. Gregory (2007), Esperland and Sauder (2007), Sauder and Espeland (2009) and Espeland and Stevens (1998, 2008) explain why numbers have such power in transforming cognition and behaviour. They talk about how the capacity of numbers to circulate

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widely is enhanced by their abstractness, which appears to eliminate the need for particularistic knowledge in interpreting them. Numbers have authority and persuade because of their sense of accuracy or validity as a representation of some quality feature, their usefulness in solving problems, in how they accumulate and link users who have investments in the numbers, and in their long and evolving association with rationality and objectivity. Erasing contextual information and condensing and transforming information about uncertain and elusive qualities of a school’s organization into a common, standardized metric, for example, allows people to quickly grasp, represent and compare differences. The abstract nature of numbers and the fact that they present a decontextualized and simplified picture of school organization facilitates their use as school staff, parents, students and other stakeholders value them for their perceived objectiveness, abstractness, transparency and ease of use. The reduction of messy information into a small set of comparable numbers is often also welcomed by decision-makers, such as school boards or superintendents or those working in local authorities or school districts. They often have to oversee a large portfolio of schools and being able to compare and understand the quality of their schools through a small set of simplified numbers condenses and reduces the amount of information they have to process, allowing them to mechanize their decision-making in the face of their own and their organization’s cognitive limitations (Espeland & Stevens, 1998). Numbers create an ‘illusion of control’, which also direct the actions of a school’s stakeholders (Frey et al., 2013). In their study of rankings of law schools in the US, Sauder and Lancaster (2006), for example, found that prospective students embraced these rankings in their choice of law school as it allowed them to easily compare ‘the quality’ of these schools, instead of having to invest time and energy in gathering direct information on educational quality on their own.

As the rankings gained legitimacy in the eyes of potential employers, prospective students had even more reason to use them as a primary source of decision-making as their future career would benefit from going to a highly ranked law school; subsequently, administrators, boards of trustees, and other central administrative staff were forced to consider how their decisions affected these rankings, making them ‘omnipresent’.

CONCLUSION: ALTERNATIVE ACCOUNTABILITY MODELS This chapter has presented a range of examples of how schools’ organizational structures and processes have become standardized as and when those working with and in schools respond to external accountability measures. The power of numbers used to grade school quality and the convenience of a shared set of standards forces schools into a similar mould. This concluding section aims to end on a more positive note in looking for alternative models of school accountability that allow for a more holistic assessment of school organization and for more variety between schools in how they organize their school. Arguments for such a model are increasingly being listened to in a need to improve teachers’ autonomy and control over their classroom practices, giving them more professional discretion and value for their professional experience, judgement and expertise (Wills & Sandholtz, 2009), while allowing schools to respond to their local context, make longterm decisions and better understand how improved student performance is the result of interactions between school-level and classroom-level conditions (Ebrahim, 2005; Gregory, 2007). Frey et al. (2013) also highlight the need for performance measures that can fulfil an explanatory role in understanding how means (school organization) and ends (student outcomes) are related in

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ways that enable double-loop learning and experimentation. The work of Creemers and Kyriakides (2015) offers a new framework to understand and measure the complex and interdependent nature of school organization and address some of the unintended consequences we have discussed in this chapter. Their dynamic model of educational effectiveness takes into account a broader set of educational goals than only achievement of basic skills, and how these relate to teaching and learning. The model considers the educational effectiveness conditions, such as cooperative planning of teaching or school climate, as multidimensional constructs to be measured on the classroom, school and system level, on five dimensions: 1 2 3 4 5

Frequency: quantity of an activity Focus: specificity and purpose of the activity Stage: continuity and duration of the activity Quality: specific properties of the activity Differentiation or consistency of implementation.

The combination of conditions, which are measured on multiple levels and on multiple dimensions, allows for a more qualitative evaluation of the functioning of each effectiveness factor, while also taking into account that the relationship between school organizational factors and student outcomes are not linear. Not only does the model allow for a more holistic assessment of school organization, it also enables those who hold and are held to account to search for optimal values of the various dimensions of school effectiveness factors and optimal combinations between the factors. Incorporating the dynamic model in school accountability frameworks would ensure a focus on the performance of the whole school system, using a set of multiple measures which combine soft narrative information with harder outcome data to understand how the different components in an education system are interrelated and change over time. Examples of such holistic systems can already be found in a number of countries, such as in the ‘place-based scrutiny’ in East Perthshire, Scotland (see Box 23.1).

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The exercise aimed to identify issues that need to be addressed to improve the lives of the people living in the area. For more information, see: www.schoolinspections.eu Box 23.1:  Place-based scrutiny in East Perthshire, Scotland Education Scotland, responsible for the inspection of Scottish schools, led the place-based scrutiny exercise which included a number of Inspectorates overseeing services within that area (the Care Inspectorate, the Scottish Housing Regulator, Audit Scotland, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, HMICS, the Fire Inspectorate, and the Academic Advisor) as well as a number of representatives from the local community (the environment and consumer services, Housing and Community Care, Children and Families’ Services, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, Police Scotland, Senior Community Capacity Worker and the National Health Service). The ‘place-based scrutiny’ took place in 2015 with a scoping exercise in February and fieldwork during a week in March. The scrutiny led to a report which focused on the answering the following questions: 1 What is it like to live in this community? 2 How well are services collaborating to improve outcomes for people living there? 3  Is our collective activity addressing/tackling inequalities?

The example highlights how a more holistic approach would see the use of less standardized, and more intelligent and flexible evaluation models and intervention strategies. The promise of such models and strategies is that they are better able to improve educational quality by purposefully providing relevant actors in the school and their stakeholders with feedback that is fit for purpose.

REFERENCES Anderson, J. A. (2005). Accountability in education. Paris/Brussels: Unesco. Au, W. (2007). High-stakes testing and curricular control: A qualitative metasynthesis. Educational Researcher, 36(5), 258–267.

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assumptions on causal mechanisms in six European countries. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 25(1), 3–43. Ehren, M. C., & Godfrey, D. (2017). External accountability of collaborative arrangements; a case study of a Multi Academy Trust in England. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 29(4), 339–362. Ehren, M. C., & Hatch, T. (2013). Responses of schools to accountability systems using multiple measures: The case of New York City elementary schools. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 25(4), 341–373. Ehren and Perryman (2016) Motivations and Contexts for Strategic Responses. In Ehren (Ed) Methods and Modalities of Effective School Inspections (pp. 87–109). Springer, Cham. Ehren, M. C. M., & Shackleton, N. (2016). Mechanisms of change in Dutch inspected schools: Comparing schools in different inspection treatments. British Journal of Educational Studies, 64(2), 185–213. First published online, 27 March 2015. DOI:10.1080/ 00071005.2015.1019413 Elmore, R. F. (1995). Teaching, learning, and school organization: Principles of practice and the regularities of schooling. Educational Administration Quarterly, 31(3), 355–374. Elmore, R. F. (1997). The paradox of innovation in education. Innovation in American government: Challenges, opportunities, and dilemmas, 246–273. Espeland, W. N., & Sauder, M. (2007). Rankings and reactivity: How public measures recreate social worlds. American Journal of Sociology, 113(1), 1–40. Espeland, W. and Stevens, M.L. (1998). Commensuration as a social process. Annual Review Sociology, 24, 313–343 Espeland, W. N., & Stevens, M. L. (2008). A sociology of quantification. European Journal of Sociology/Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 49(3), 401–436. Ferguson, N., Earley, P., Fidler, B., & Ouston, J. (2000). Improving schools and inspection: The self-inspecting school. London: Chapman/Sage. Frey, B. S., Homberg, F., & Osterloh, M. (2013). Organizational control systems and pay-forperformance in the public service. Organization Studies, 34(7), 949–972.

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Gregory, A. J. (2007). Target setting, lean systems and viable systems: A systems perspective on control and performance measurement. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 58(11), 1503–1517. Gustafsson, J.-E., Ehren, M. C. M., Conyngham, G., McNamara, G., Altrichter, H., & O’Hara, J. (2015). From inspection to quality: Ways in which school inspection influences change in schools. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 47, 47–57. Hamilton, L. S., & Koretz, D. M. (2002). Tests and their use in test-based accountability systems. In L. S. Hamilton, B. M. Stecher, & S. P. Klein (Eds.), Making sense of test-based accountability in education. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, www.rand.org/pubs/ monograph_reports/MR1554/ Hamilton, L. S., Stecher, B. M., & Klein, S. P. (Eds.). (2002). Making sense of test-based accountability in education. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, www.rand.org/pubs/ monograph_reports/MR1554/. Hanushek, E.A. and Raymond, M.E. (2002). Lessons about the Design of State Accountability Systems. Paper prepared for ‘Taking Account of Accountability: Assessing Policy and Politics’, Harvard University. Holcombe, R. W., Jennings, J. L., & Koretz, D. (2012). The roots of score inflation: An examination of opportunities in two state’s tests. In G. Sunderman (Ed.), Charting reform: Achieving equity in a diverse nation. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Jacob, B.A. and Levitt, S.D. (2003). Rotten Apples: an investigation of the prevalence and predictors of teacher cheating. The Quarterly Journal of Economics (august), 843–877. Jennings, J. L., & Bearak, J. M. (2014). ‘Teaching to the test’ in the NCLB era: How test predictability affects our understanding of student performance. Educational Researcher, 43(8). Published online, 1 November 2014. DOI:0013189X14554449. Jones, K., Tymms, P., Kemethofer, D., O’Hara, J., Huber, S., Myrberg, E., Skedsmo, G., & Greger, D. (2017). The unintended effects of school inspection: The prevalence of inspection side-effects in Austria, the Czech Republic, England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. Oxford Review of

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Education, 43(6), 805–822. Published online, 26 September 2017. DOI:10.1080/0305498 5.2017.1352499 Klijn, E. J., & Koppejan, J. F. M. (2014). Accountable networks. In M. Bovens, R. E. Goodin, & T. Schillemans (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of public accountability (pp. 242–258). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Koretz, D. M. (2002). Limitations in the use of achievement tests as measures of educators’ productivity. The Journal of Human Resources, 37(4), 752–777. Koretz, D. M. (2003). Using multiple measures to address perverse incentives and score inflation. Educational Measurement, 22(2), 18–26. Lee, J. (2007). Revisiting the impact of highstakes testing on student outcomes from an international perspective. In L. Deretchin & C. Craig (Eds.), International research on the impact of accountability systems (pp. 65– 82). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Matthews, P., & Sammons, P. (2005). Survival of the weakest: The differential improvement of schools causing concern in England. London Review of Education, 3(2), 159–176. Meyer, M. W., & Gupta, V. (1994). The performance paradox. Research in Organizational Behavior, 16, 309–369. Meyer, M. W., & O’Shaughnessy, K. (1993). Organizational design and the performance paradox. In R. Swedberg (Ed.), Explorations in economic sociology (pp. 249–278). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. OECD. (2013). PISA 2012 results: What makes schools successful? Resources, policies and practices (Vol. IV). Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Penninckx, M. (2015). Inspecting school inspections (Doctoral dissertation, Doctoral dissertation. University of Antwerp. Google Scholar). Perryman, J. (2005). School leadership and management after special measures: Discipline without the gaze? School Leadership and Management, 25(3), 281–297. Romzek, B. S. (2000). Dynamics of public sector accountability in an era of reform. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 66(21), 21–44. Sauder, M., & Espeland, W. N. (2009). The discipline of rankings: Tight coupling and

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organizational change. American Sociological Review, 74(1), 63–82. Sauder, M., & Lancaster, R. (2006). Do rankings matter? The effects of US News & World Report rankings on the admissions process of law schools. Law & Society Review, 40(1), 105–134. Scanlon, M. (1999). The impact of OFSTED inspections. London: National Foundation for Educational Research and National Union of Teachers. Available at: https://www.nfer. ac.uk/publications/91013/91013.pdf Scheerens, J., & Ehren, M. (2015). The evidence base for school inspection frameworks. Journal of Educational, Cultural and Psychological Studies (ECPS Journal), 1(12), 43–76. Scott, W. R. (2003). Organizations: Rational, natural and open systems (5th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Smith, P. (1995) On the unintended consequences of publishing performance data in the public sector. International Journal of Public Administration, 18(2–3), 277–310. Stecher, B. M. (2002). Consequences of largescale, high-stakes testing on school and classroom practices): Tests and their use in test-based accountability systems. In L. S.

Hamilton, B. M. Stecher, & S. P. Klein (Eds.), Making sense of test-based accountability in education. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_ reports/MR1554/ Stecher, B.M. (2002). Consequences of largescale, high-stakes testing on school and classroom practices). Tests and their use in test-based accountability systems. In Hamilton, L.S., Stecher, B.M., Klein, S.P. (Eds.). Making sense of Test-based Accountability in Education. Santa Monica: Rand cooperation. http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_ reports/MR1554/ Stecher, B. M., Le, V., Hamilton, L., Ryan, G., Robyn, A., & Lockwood, J. R. (2006). Using structured classroom vignettes to measure instructional practices in mathematics. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 28(2), 101–130. Van Thiel, S. & Leeuw, F.L. (2003). De prestatieparadox in de publieke sector. Beleidswetenschap, 17(2), 123–143. Wills, J. S., & Sandholtz, J. H. (2009). Constrained professionalism: Dilemmas of teaching in the face of test-based accountability. Teachers College Record, 111(4), 1065–1114.

24 Organizational Performance Metrics for Schools Daniel Muijs

INTRODUCTION Performance metrics provide a benchmark on which future performance can be judged, and they can help school management spot strengths and weaknesses and areas for intervention. They can also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions and they are key to judging school effectiveness. School effectiveness is primarily concerned with the extent to which an organization, in this case a school, can meet its goals. This means that a focus on outcomes (such as attainment) is linked to the processes through which such outcomes can be achieved (such as teaching practices) (Chapman et al., 2015). The inputprocess-output model that dominates effectiveness perspectives assumes that, given a particular input, we can identify those processes that lead to optimal outputs, which provides us with key information on where to focus leadership efforts. As such, we can and should collect data on both outputs and processes, with a view to monitoring how well

we are doing, where we can improve and what process levers to pull to enable improvement to occur. In this chapter we will discuss what and how we can use metrics to enhance educational effectiveness at the school level. We will discuss the main performance metrics available to schools, how they can be used and their advantages and disadvantages. We will first look at attainment data and value-added attainment measures, and then look at process data at school and classroom levels. In the finals section we will discuss a balanced scorecard approach as an illustration of how they can be integrated into a balanced performance management model.

DIFFERENT MEASURES OF EFFECTIVENESS AND QUALITY Schools in most countries have a range of performance data that can inform school policies and practices.

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Attainment In countries where standardized assessment takes place, data from these assessments can provide useful, albeit limited, information to schools. Such tests have a number of uses for school management in terms of organizational performance evaluation: • They can provide an indication of the extent to which pupils are meeting or exceeding a particular (set of) standard(s). • They can allow the school to judge what progress is being made over time. • They can allow schools to compare their performance measures to the system as a whole or comparator schools.

Standards are a common aspect of accountability systems internationally, with pupils typically expected to reach particular levels of performance in key subjects, such as their home language. As such, information on the extent to which pupils are meeting those standards in the school is valuable. However, such standards have severe limitations as a management tool. They only provide a temporal snapshot of performance, typically being based on one-off assessments at the end of a particular stage of education, and are therefore susceptible to cohort effects. Being ‘national’ means that they don’t tend to take into account school intake and circumstances, which makes it easier for some schools than for others to reach the standards, and they can be susceptible to politically mandated change, as the differential pattern of adoption and non-adoption of the common core state standards in the US illustrates (LaVenia, Cohen-Vogel, & Lang, 2015). Having common standards usefully allows leaders to look at the progress of pupils and the school over time, as comparisons can be made. This is, however, contingent on the stability of the assessments themselves and of the overall composition of the student body. If either or both change significantly, comparisons over time do not tell us much about school performance.

Potentially, one of the most useful aspects of this type of data for performance management is the option of comparing the performance of a school to that of other schools, which can provide a useful benchmark on standards and effectiveness. However, again there are a number of conditions here. First, national assessment and performance data must be made available to schools and, second, it has to be made available in a form that allows schools to compare themselves with similar schools in terms of intake and context. Raw assessment league tables in themselves tend to be little more than rankings of schools by pupil intake. An example of a useful approach is that of ‘families of schools’, as used in the London Challenge programme in the UK, where schools were grouped with similar schools on a range of characteristics based on pupil demographics and attainment (e.g., prior attainment at intake, ethnicity, socio-economic status (SES)) for the purpose of comparison (Fullan & Boyle, 2014). Of course, not all education systems use national assessment as part of their accountability systems. In these cases, schools can make use of standardized testing individually or as a group of schools. The former has some uses in terms of assessing organizational performance in that it still allows one to measure changes over time internally, and it can provide some overall standards if the tests that are used have been age standardized, but there are obvious limitations in terms of comparing relative performance. Working with standard measures in a local authority or with a group of schools is more useful in this regard.

Value Added Attainment measures are, as mentioned above, limited in terms of allowing fair comparisons between schools, which means that their usefulness as a performance metric is questionable. The strongest predictor of student attainment is prior attainment, followed

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by other key student variables, such as ability and social background (both partially subsumed in prior attainment (Muijs et  al., 2014)). These limitations of so-called ‘raw’ attainment data have led to the use of valueadded assessment instead. Value-added assessment (VAA) is a term used to describe the assessment and mathematical modelling used to measure change over time. The distinguishing feature of VAA is that it examines current performance and compares it to previous performance. The reference point in improvement is the unit itself – that is, the classroom, school, district, or jurisdiction. Value-added models (VAMs) are the statistical models used to estimate growth in learning. Data can be analyzed at various levels (e.g., teachers or schools) and may or may not include indicators such as background variables of students and communities. If the latter are included, the models are known as contextual value-added (Braun, 2005; Johnson et al., 2012; Koretz, 2008; McCaffrey et  al., 2003). The central idea of VAA is simple; it examines how much value a teacher or school adds to students’ learning. However, the mathematics behind the idea is complex. In many ways, from the point of view of educational effectiveness, value-added attainment models are attractive. In such models, student test scores or outcome measures at the end of a particular period (typically a school year) are controlled for scores at the start of the measured period (or, as often happens in practice if the period measured is a school year, test scores at the end of the previous year). This, in principle, should allow us to measure the value added by a particular school to the learning of their students. As some studies suggest that growth in learning (as well as initial levels of attainment) are partly determined by student background characteristics such as SES, ethnicity and gender, so-called contextual valueadded models control for such factors as well (Muijs & Chahine, 2015). While attractive in theory, such models have a number of problems. One set of issues is technical, such as

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the stability of estimates and residuals, with studies coming to rather different conclusions regarding the extent to which they are susceptible to different assumptions, input variables and models; and the extent to which the usually relatively small samples allow reliable distinctions to be made, not least in light of the large confidence intervals around residual point estimates (Chetty, Friedman, & Rockoff, 2014). Another set of issues is related to the usefulness of such measures for policy and practice. Value-added measures, thus, are more useful than raw attainment in terms of giving an accurate picture of the relative performance of a school but are nevertheless limited as performance measures for school management. They are somewhat determined by the models used and are also severely limited in terms of usefulness for school development as they cannot tell us where strengths and weaknesses lie other than in very broad terms (e.g., weaker value added in reading), and thus what areas should be targeted for development.

Sub-Group Measures In some cases, schools have attempted to look at attainment at the sub-group level. In England, for example, these attempts have in the past been encouraged by the inspection system, which has asked schools to attend to gaps in attainment between different pupil groups such as pupils from more and less disadvantaged backgrounds and specific ethnic or ethnic/class/gender groups. In principle, this approach of course makes sense, as it is important to know whether any particular groups are being disadvantaged or require more support. However, using attainment data to do this is very problematic. Sample sizes are often small, which means that there have been cases where schools have made inferences about the performance of groups of pupils on the basis of very small numbers. In these cases, the attainment of just one pupil may make the group look abnormally high- or

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low-performing (so-called outlier effects). Statistical estimates for small groups also come with a great deal of uncertainty, so we need to be cautious in doing such analyses.

Process Measures In addition to the above, attainment-based measures, whether value-added or raw scores, have a number of key limitations in terms of their use for school improvement. First, they do not cover all the outcomes we want pupils to obtain. We also want to develop personal skills, such as resilience or well-being. Second, they only tell us about outcomes at a particular point in time, which does not help us determine which school processes require improvement. Process measures are therefore an essential part of any system of organizational performance metrics. Of course, schools being complex organizations, there is a wide range of process indicators that we could potentially collect, and a number of ways in which we can collect them. In this, we need to distinguish between data at two levels, that of the school as a whole, but also that of the classroom, as it is classroom processes that most strongly determine pupil outcomes and both pupil and parental satisfaction with school as it is this which is most strongly experienced by pupils (Chapman et al., 2015).

School Level A variety of process data at school level should be collected to assist performance management. These can include data collected from a range of key stakeholders in the school, including: • pupils • staff • parents.

In addition, we can use a range of documentary data, sometimes prepared by external stakeholders, such as inspection bodies.

Pupil data Pupils are of course key stakeholders in the school and their views are therefore important and valuable. Pupils have a lot to say on the quality of schools, in particular on factors such as learning environment, school climate, relationships with teachers and other pupils, and teaching quality (which we will discuss in the section on classroom-level measures). Data from pupils can be collected in a number of ways: • Pupil questionnaires can be a useful way to collect data on a range of school conditions, such as school climate, for which a number of pupil questionnaires exist (e.g., Cavrini et  al., 2015; Freiberg, 1999). A key advantage is that, unlike other forms of pupil involvement, such as school councils, it is possible to reach the population of pupils and thus have a more representative view. Questionnaires also allow standardized data to be collected, which makes it easier to measure change over time and to determine, for example, whether a particular initiative has helped pupils. Of course, the extent to which this approach is useful will depend on pupil age, and in terms of pupil voice questionnaires are limited by the fact that they can only contain what the author has decided to measure, and thus may miss key aspects of pupil experience that are important to them and may affect learning. • For this reason, more qualitative approaches using interviews, focus groups, or pupil-led methods such as photo-elicitation can be useful. In photo-elicitation, for example, pupils will take pictures around a particular topic and discuss their meaning, such as what areas of the school make them feel unsafe, or help them learn. These methods can provide insightful and unexpected data and bring new perspectives to school leaders. It can be a good idea to let pupils themselves design a methodology, which both allows them to attain ownership of the process and provides a valuable learning experience to them (Meo, 2010). However, these methods can leave questions around representativeness, as pupils are not a homogeneous mass. Hence it is important that one ensures that different pupil groups get the chance to have their say, not just those favoured by teachers, as is sometimes the case in school councils.

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Staff data In order to understand how well school processes are working it is often useful to gather data from staff. School leaders may often inaccurately assess the extent to which staff are confident in dealing with proposed changes or are satisfied with current processes and may be unaware of issues emerging in the school. As with pupils, the options of both quantitative surveys or qualitative exploration can be considered, with many of the same advantages and disadvantages existing. To collect comparable data which would allow one to track factors such as school climate or satisfaction with professional development over time, a survey approach would be most sensible, while again to get at emerging issues a more open-ended and qualitative approach would make sense. In practice, a formal approach to collecting staff data is in many cases unnecessary as this data collection can be done through regular informal conversations, providing there is sufficient trust and openness within the school (Kraut et  al., 1990). Again, when collecting staff data, it is important not to ignore the views of the naysayer or those members of staff who are least likely to support change. While they may appear as an obstacle or impediment to change, their views on the limitations of innovations are often highly valuable and can help avoid errors in implementation (Perren, 1996).

Parent data As key school stakeholders, it is important to get the views of parents, and it is a good idea to collect these before any problems start to get aired on social media instead, as is increasingly the case, and can catch school leaders off guard. In some countries, gaining the views of parents is a requirement, for example for inspection. Traditionally, parent views have been sought through representative channels such as Parent–Teacher Associations, through the involvement of parents in governance (again, this is mandatory in a number of education systems internationally) or in a more limited

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way during Parent–Teacher evenings. While undoubtedly valuable, these methods do present key issues in terms of representation, with the level of effort involved meaning that groups who are time poor or less confident in navigating formal structures may be underrepresented. Some studies in the UK, for example, have shown significant underrepresentation of Black and Ethnic Minority populations in school governance (DCSF, 2009; Ellis, 2003). Therefore, as with pupils, it can be useful to formally consult parents through surveys or qualitative interviews/focus groups, for example, to gain a general picture of their views on the school or when changes that are likely to affect parents are proposed. Advantages and disadvantages of the different methods are as previously rehearsed, so we will not repeat them here, although it is important to note that typically the most problematic issue in parent surveys is nonresponse, and that in general it may be those parents who are hardest to reach that the school may most value reaching. In most studies, greater parental involvement is associated with better outcomes, but involving parents can be challenging in a school serving disadvantaged communities in particular. Many of those parents may themselves not feel positively disposed towards schools, may feel they have not befitted from their time at school, or may have had negative experiences of school. Some schools have successfully improved parental involvement in such circumstances by providing parents with incentives to come to school, such as providing transport, childcare, further education or even laundry facilities (Muijs et al., 2004). It tends to be easier to get parents involved at the stage of their children’s nursery education than later on.

Documentary data A range of documentary evidence exists which can be useful to school leaders. First and foremost, inspection reports should provide valuable insights into areas of strength

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and weakness of the school, albeit that some research suggests that they often confirm officially what school leaders know rather than necessarily providing new insights (Ehren, Perryman, & Shackleton, 2015). The extent to which inspection reports are useful for school improvement differs across contexts, depending on the focus of inspection, as being more or less developmental and more or less regulatory. However, in many cases, school leaders do not react so much to published reports on their own school, but rather to what they see or perceive as inspectorate priorities (Ehren et al., 2015). In highstakes accountability systems, it is of course a brave school leader who does not act on inspection insights. Other documentary evidence is of course available to school leaders as well, such as local authority reports, and possibly the insights from external consultants. A growing source of useful information may be social media, and in particular the way the school is perceived by parents and the community. This source of information can be quite timeconsuming to search, however, and should certainly not consume too much of a school leader’s time. Parallel instruments for teachers, pupils and parents can provide useful complementary data, and allow comparisons to be made of the perceptions of these different stakeholder groups (Cavrini et al., 2015).

Classroom Level Of course, while school-level data is important, the heart of learning – and therefore the work of the school – is what happens in the classroom. Collecting data on classroom processes is therefore key to managing organizational performance (and to an extent to individual performance management as well). The quality of teaching and assessment, along with the curriculum, are of course key determinants of the quality of education in a school, and teachers should

therefore understand the significance of this relationship for their school. It is therefore not surprising that a range of approaches to collecting classroom data, particularly on the quality of teaching, exists. Again, the choice that has to be made is whether to use classroom observation, surveystyle research, qualitative methods, such as interviews, or a combination of methods.

Classroom observation When studying behaviours, classroom observations have the advantage of possibly being more objective due to the outsider’s perspective. A further advantage is that as observers are likely to have observed a range of classrooms, they should be better able to judge a teacher’s behaviour relative to that of other teachers. However, it is not realistic to study teacher beliefs using this method, and data on subject knowledge collected through observation would be highly partial unless a great number of observations of individual teachers were performed. When using questionnaires to ask teachers about their own teaching, one is confronted with a number of problems with regards to reliability. The fact that many teachers do not observe each other’s lessons, even within their own school, and certainly not outside it, means that they often have little to compare their own teaching to. Teachers are also not always aware of exactly what they are doing during lessons and can sometimes be surprised when confronted with the findings of outside observers. The detailed recording of actual behaviours that is possible during classroom observation allows for a finegrained exploration of behaviours, which would be hard to achieve in survey-style studies (Muijs & Reynolds, 2017). The disadvantages of classroom observations are, first, that they are all snap-shots, and even successive observations of a teacher will only ever supply a collection of snapshots rather than a full picture of a teacher’s behaviour over time. Further, the presence of an observer, not least a senior manager, in the

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classroom will inevitably influence the teacher’s behaviour, either consciously in the form of the teacher putting on a ‘performance’ for the sake of the observer, or unconsciously, through increased caution or nervousness. The strength of this ‘observer effect’ on the teacher seems to differ from person to person, making it difficult to take this bias into account statistically (Ward, Clark, & Harrison, 1981). Explaining the purely investigative and noninspectoral nature of the observation, being as unobtrusive as possible and not interfering in the lesson in any way will help attenuate these effects but will not make them disappear. There are also questions about how reliable classroom observation really is, with several studies, not least the very well resourced MET studies in the US, showing that it is hard to reliably assess teacher quality, and that such assessments are only moderately correlated with pupil outcomes (Coe, 2014; Joe et al., 2013). Observation, particularly when used in conjunction with grading lessons and teacher performance management, can also lead to unintended consequences, such as narrowing the repertoire of teaching methods used.

Teacher questionnaires Questionnaires do not suffer from these disadvantages: no observer is present during lessons and teachers can reflect on their teaching over the whole year rather than just one lesson. The major problem with using survey questionnaires to measure teacher behaviour is the lack of correspondence often found with their behaviours as observed in the classroom. Charlesworth and colleagues (1993), for example, found that what teachers say and what they do during lessons often differ. Earlier, Hook and Rosenshine (1979) reviewed 11 studies that employed (mainly low inference) classroom observation schedules and found that in nine studies in which this comparison was possible, there was no relationship between teachers’ reports of their use of specific behaviours and the actual occurrence of these behaviours. In those

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studies in which student views were solicited, these proved to be more highly correlated with the results of third-party observations, and were likewise unrelated to the teacher self-reports. In three studies that looked at the relationship between scales and dimensions of self-reported and externally observed teacher behaviours (e.g., ‘teacher control’), there was more evidence of correspondence between the two, although a significant positive correlation was found in fewer than half of all cases. While in itself it is possible that observers may not have picked up a particular teacher behaviour during a lesson (although if the method was consistently employed this is unlikely), the fact that observer and student reports do correlate, and the fact that there was also little correspondence on larger areas where the effect of not observing a single behaviour would be limited, suggests, according to Hook and Rosenshine (1979), that teacher self-reports are unreliable, largely due to a lack of practice of teachers in this respect. Questionnaires are also susceptible to social desirability response sets (Moorman & Podsakoff, 1992). This means that respondents are likely to provide an answer that they see as presenting their behaviour in the most positive light. It is therefore important to take this issue of conforming to social desirability into account in looking at the data collected. Some researchers have advocated the use of so-called social desirability response scales, which are designed to measure individual respondents’ tendency to give a socially desirable response. This approach would allow the researcher to adapt scores on other variables accordingly. These instruments have come in for some criticism, however, being described as too obvious and of unclear reliability, and are in practice rather cumbersome to use in a school context, as well as potentially damaging relationships between teachers and management by suggesting that teachers may not be being truthful (Hays & Ware, 1986). On balance, observations are more useful than most other methods for analyzing teacher

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practices. However, when looking at other teacher factors, such as beliefs, questionnaires, though susceptible to the limitations mentioned above (such as social desirability bias), are more suitable than observations. Their suitability results from the impossibility of directly observing inner states, and the necessity for a longer-term perspective than can be achieved through observation. Subject knowledge is also only partially observable, though here questionnaires are also limited due to strong social desirability response sets and the difficulty for teachers’ in accurately judging their own subject knowledge. In theory, use of tests can be appropriate, but practically this is often hard (due to teacher sensitivity and time constraints). Many researchers have therefore used proxy measures, such as certification and degree classification, both of which can be seen to require certain subject knowledge standards. These are, however, relatively crude measures and do not necessarily incorporate pedagogical knowledge (Darling-Hammond, 2001). An alternative to observation and questionnaires that has been suggested is the use of teacher reports describing their last lesson rather than their teaching as a whole. This approach is posited as being more likely to produce unbiased reports than traditional teacher classroom questionnaires, by diminishing social desirability responses due to the specificity of the items (e.g., ‘I used audiovisuals’). However, correspondence with the results of observations were mixed, being high for such factors as use of specific materials, but far lower with respect to measures of the type of teaching and student reactions (Tamir, 1983).

Student ratings and teacher interviews As mentioned above, student ratings of their teachers provide another alternative. Students can certainly provide highly interesting and useful information on their teachers, especially those aged 11 years and older, but they are not always able to supply detailed

information on specific behaviours. The results on reliability of student data are unclear. In an early study, student ratings were found to differ from classroom observation data and were therefore likely to be a useful addition rather than a replacement for observation methods (Evertson et al., 1978). Another early study found student ratings of their teachers to be related to the grades awarded to them and to be influenced by ‘halo effects’ (Owen, 1976). However, a more recent study found high correlations between student classroom climate selfreports and teachers’ use of effective instructional behaviours as measured through classroom observation (Padron & Waxman, 1999). There is an issue of potential bias in pupil ratings, as there is some evidence that, for example, females get lower student ratings than males, when other factors are controlled for (Muijs & Bokhove, 2017). Interviews with teachers have the advantage of allowing the researcher to probe the teacher in depth on his/her teaching and thus allow more detailed findings to emerge than is possible through questionnaires. However, they suffer from lower reliability, relying on teachers’ ‘there and then’ memory and, if not standardized, from a lack of comparability. These characteristics make them more difficult to quantify. In-depth interviews also make a large demand on teacher time, but allow the interviewer to be reactive and probe, and are likely to lead to a deeper understanding of meaning and reasons for teachers engaging in classroom practice. They can often lead to a deeper understanding of underlying teacher beliefs and thought structures.

CONCLUSION: MAKING SENSE OF THE DATA So a range of data exists, but how do we make sense of it all? There are two key issues in terms of being able to use the data effectively. The first is how to manage the volume

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of data, make sense of it, and prioritize it; the second is what is the capacity in our school in terms of understanding and interpreting the data, also known as data literacy. In terms of the first issue, a key point is that not all data are useful. It is not a question of collecting as much as humanly possible, and then seeing whether it contains anything helpful. Rather, we need to have a clear set of goals which determine what data we will collect, and when. For example, where our goal is primarily to monitor the quality of teaching and learning in the school, why would we need data on teacher views on change management, for example? It may also not make sense to collect or retain data that are no longer in keeping with the current processes in the school. For example, if we were observing and grading lessons because this is what the inspectorate does, why are we still continuing to do so when the inspectorate no longer grades individual lessons? Arguably data should not be kept for the sake of it. Anything that appears not to add to the quality of organizational management should be discarded and data collection discontinued, not least to ensure that teachers and school leaders are not unnecessarily burdened with surveys, for example. It is also important that data are organized in such a way that they can actually inform management practice. One model for doing so is to use a balanced scorecard approach. This approach originated in non-educational organizations. It was developed as a way to go beyond using only financial indicators as a measure of performance by including measures of internal business processes, an external customer perspective, and developmental learning and growth. In this sense, a useful analogy for education is to think about going beyond attainment measures in judging the performance of a school. However, a balanced scorecard, by selecting carefully beforehand what measures will be included, also acts as a break in terms of not including everything and thus avoiding some of the issues with data overload we hinted at

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earlier. Since the development of the original methodology in the 1990s (Kaplan & Norton, 1992), a range of variants have been developed, but all share the common feature of focusing on both internal and external factors, and on a range of stakeholders, including customers. Key in all developments has been translating strategy into actionable measures and processes to achieve the strategy. In schools, attainment measures can play the role of financial indicators in the original business models, with data from, for example, parent surveys, feeding into stakeholder perspectives, data on teaching processes can be a key internal process indicator, while staff surveys on, for example, openness to change or well-being can feed into organizational growth metrics. Clearly these aspects will translate into a school context and allow for a focused use of data (Storey, 2002; Yuksel & Coskun, 2013). In addition, however, there is a need for schools to have the capacity to interpret and evaluate data. This capacity is not a given, and its lack can often lead to the poor use of data in school, as in the example of the sub-group analysis above. This outcome of the lack of capability clearly implies a training need within the system, but also the need for schools to draw on resources that do have the capacities required, such as local authorities or other overarching structures, like multi-academy trusts or charter management organizations. Networking and collaboration can also be helpful here as it allows schools to pool expertise and can (as can local authorities) enable schools to develop comparative data so they can benchmark their performance against that of other local or similar schools. All the issues discussed in this chapter, taken together, may seem daunting to school leaders. However, as in other organizations, it is increasingly the case that the effective and measured use of data is key to improving organizational performance. This assertion does not mean, of course, that it will be either expected or desirable to see schools

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collecting all the possible data sources mentioned above. Rather, school leaders need to judiciously select those sources of data that are likely to be of most use in their specific school context, taking into account the capacity to analyze and evaluate the data.

REFERENCES Braun, H. I. (2005). Using student progress to evaluate teachers: A primer on value-added models. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, Policy Information Center, www.ets. org/Media/Research/pdf/PICVAM.pdf Cavrini, G., Chianese, G., Bocch, B., & Dozza, L. (2015). School climate: Parents’, students’ and teachers’ perceptions. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 191, 2000–2044. Chapman, C., Muijs, D., Reynolds, D., Sammons, P., & Teddlie, C. (2015). Routledge international handbook of educational effectiveness and improvement research. London: Taylor and Francis. Charlesworth, R., Hart, C., Burts, D., Thomasson, R., Mosleu, J., & Fleege, P. (1993). Measuring the developmental appropriateness of kindergarten teachers’ belief and practices. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 8, 255–276. Chetty, R., Friedman, J., & Rockoff, J. (2014). Measuring the impacts of teachers. I: Evaluating bias in teacher value-added estimates. American Economic Review, 104(9), 2593– 2632. DOI:10.1257/aer.104.9.2593 Coe, R. (2014). Classroom observation: It’s harder than you think. Durham, UK: Centrre for Evaluation and Monitoring Centre, www. cem.org/blog/414/ Darling-Hammond, L. (2001). Does teacher certification matter? Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 9(2). DCSF (2009, January). Schools, pupils and their characteristics. London: Department of Children, Schools and Families. Ehren, M., Perryman, J., & Shackleton, N. (2015). Setting expectations for good education: How Dutch school inspections drive improvement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 26(2), 296–327.

Ellis, A. (2003). Barriers to participation for under-represented groups in school governance. Research Brief No. RB500, December. London: Department for Education and Skills. Evertson, C. M. et al. (1978). Process–outcome relationships in the Texas junior high school study: Compendium. Papers presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Toronto, March. Freiberg, H. J. (Ed.). (1999). School climate: Measuring, improving, and sustaining healthy learning environments. London: Falmer Press. Fullan, M., & Boyle, A. (2014). Big-city school reforms: Lessons from New York, Toronto, and London. New York: Teachers College Press. Hays, R. D., & Ware, J. E. J. (1986). My medical care is better than yours: Social desirability and patient satisfaction ratings. Medical Care, 24(6), 519–525. Hook, C. M., & Rosenshine, B. V. (1979). Accuracy of teacher reports of their classroom behavior. Review of Educational Research, 49(1), 1–12. Joe, J., Tocci, C., Holtzman, S., & Williams, J. (2013). Foundations of observation. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. Johnson, M., Lipscomb, S., Gill, B., Booker, K., & Bruch, J. (2012). Value-added models for the Pittsburgh public schools. Report to Pittsburgh Public Schools. Cambridge, MA: Mathematica Policy Research. Kaplan R. S., & Norton D. P. (1992). The Balanced Scorecard: Measures that drive performance. Harvard Business Review, January–February, pp. 71–79. Koretz, D. (2008). A measured approach: Valueadded models are a promising improvement, but no one measure can evaluate teacher performance. American Educator, Fall, 18–39. Kraut, R. J., Fish, R. S., Root, R. W., & Chalfonte, B. L. (1990). Informal communication in organizations: Form, function, and technology. In I. S. Oskamp & S. Spacapan (Eds.), Human reactions to technology: The Claremont Symposium on applied social psychology. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. LaVenia, M., Cohen-Vogel, L., & Lang, L. (2015). The Common Core State Standards Initiative: An event history analysis of state

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adoption. American Journal of Education, 121(2), 145–182. McCaffrey, D. F., Lockwood, J. R., Koretz, D. M., & Hamilton, L. S. (2003). Evaluating value added models for teacher accountability. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. Meo, A. I. (2010). Picturing students’ habitus: The advantages and limitations of photoelicitation interviewing in a qualitative study in the city of Buenos Aires. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 9(2), 149–171. Moorman, R., & Podsakoff, M. (1992). A metaanalytic review and empirical test of the potential confounding effects of social desirability response sets in organizational behaviour research. Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology, 35(4), 218–234. Muijs, D., & Bokhove, C. (2017). Postgraduate student satisfaction: A multilevel analysis of PTES data. British Journal of Educational Research, 43(5), 904–930. Muijs, D., & Chahine, S. (2015). Literature review into student assessment: A report for the British Council. Southampton, UK: University of Southampton. Muijs, D., Harris, A., Chapman, C., Stoll, L., & Russ, J. (2004). Improving schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas: An overview of research. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 15(2), 149–176. Muijs, D., Kyriakides, L., van der Werf, G., Creemers, B., Timperley, H., & Earl, L. (2014). State of the art: Teacher effectiveness and professional learning. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 25(2), 231–256.

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Muijs, D., & Reynolds, D. (2017). Effective teaching: Evidence and practice. London: Sage. Owen, S. A. (1976). The validity of student ratings: A critique. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA, 19–23 April. Padron, Y. N., & Waxman, H. C. (1999). Classroom observations of the five standards of effective teaching in urban classrooms with English language learners. Teaching and Change, 7(1), 79–100. Perren, L. (1996). Resistance to change as a positive force: Its dynamics and issues for management development. Career Development International, 1(4), 24–28. Storey, A. (2002). Performance management in schools: Could the Balanced Scorecard help? School Leadership & Management, 22(3), 321–338. Tamir, P. (1983). Teachers’ self-reports as an alternative strategy for the study of classroom transactions. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 20(9), 815–823. Ward, M. D., Clark, C. C., & Harrison, G. V. (1981). The observer effect in classroom visitation. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Los Angeles, CA. Yuksel, H., & Coskun, A. (2013). Strategy focused schools: An implementation of the Balanced Scorecard in provision of educational services. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 106, 2450–2459.

25 National and Transnational Influences on School Organization C h e n g Y o n g Ta n a n d C l i v e D i m m o c k

INTRODUCTION Student learning in the twenty-first century has received considerable attention from policymakers, scholars, educators, and even corporate chieftains internationally for three reasons. First, humanists argue that individuals need to learn cognitive and socioemotional competencies to lead meaningful lives (Dornbusch, Glasgow, & Lin, 1996; Tikly, 2017). Second, rationalists underscore the salience of human capital formation, arguing that national governments have little choice but to develop the productive potential of their populations for economic competitiveness (Valverde, 2014). Third, internationalists and comparatists attribute discourses on educational development to the enabling forces of globalization and technological advances (Dolby & Rahman, 2008; Spring, 2008). Indeed, it could be argued that at no point in the history of human civilization have we witnessed a greater flow of ideas and resources across

national boundaries, culminating in educational change and development. Given the emphasis on student learning, it is unsurprising to find a rich scholarship on how schooling and educational developmental trajectories have been negotiated from different influences, comprising national (including their representativeness of local constituencies’ interests) and transnational sources (Dolby & Rahman, 2008; Dornbusch et  al., 1996; Spring, 2008). Indeed, researchers have contributed to the knowledge base on diverse aspects of school organization, including educational aims, curricular content, teachers and teaching, and the internationalization of student assessment (Kamens & McNeely, 2010; Paine & Zeichner, 2012; Tikly, 2017). There is also a complementary literature on broader educational issues contextualizing school organizational development (Benavot et  al., 2010; Mundy & Menashy, 2014; Valverde, 2014). These issues may be exemplified by probing questions such as, ‘Who should be deciding

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the education that students receive?’, ‘What resources are being used for sponsoring education?’, ‘What does a “good” education look like?’, and ‘Where should solutions for solving educational problems be found?’ A critical reading of the literature indicates a preponderance of perspectives conveying the influence of transnational (vis-à-vis national) influences on the development of schools and schooling in sovereign states. Therefore, it is easy, if somewhat misleading, to dismiss the influence of national (including regional and local) government over educational policymaking and practice (Kamens & McNeely, 2010; Lewis, Sellar, & Lingard, 2015). National governments may appear to have little agency to resist transnational influences in the process of promoting their own national educational agendas. This chapter elucidates the relationships between transnational and national influences on school organization and, in so doing, provides a balanced, nuanced perspective. While we discuss how these different influences impinge on school organization, our approach is informed by Bray and Thomas’s (1995) argument that the exegesis of complex educational issues should consider societal developments impacting educational policymaking. Therefore, we argue that a discussion of broader contextual issues is essential for a more comprehensive understanding of the subtle nuances of why and how school organization may be influenced by various actors both within and beyond national jurisdictions. Accordingly, we include in our discussion how national and transnational influences shape educational policymaking and school organization. There are three specific objectives in this chapter. First, we affirm the existence of a prolific literature explicating transnational influences on school organization and education. Our mission is to provide a comprehensive review, taking stock of key arguments, before suggesting avenues for future research. Second, we aim to provide a considered perspective on how transnational

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influences have shaped educational development. The third objective is to call for attention to the mediating, and at times moderating, influence of national factors in the larger discourse on the relationship between transnational influences and educational development. A key argument is that with the recent focus on transnational influences on educational reform and development largely eclipsing the national, there are at least two reasons for presenting a more balanced perspective. First, sovereign governments irrevocably control the developmental trajectories of their education systems. Second, enduring societal cultures (Dimmock & Walker, 2005) have established distinct school systems. Although these cultures are malleable, they still characterize national jurisdictions, and serve to mediate and moderate external influences to yield unique school systems.

SCHOOL ORGANIZATION – CONCEPT AND REALITY Prior to gauging the multitude of transnational and national influences, it is important to clarify what is meant by ‘school organization,’ on which influences act and impact. At the macro level, a key organizational characteristic is the distinction between public and private schools, and the degree of competition allowed between schools. At the school level, Danielson (2002, p. 43) succinctly defined school organization as ‘how schools arrange the resources of time, space and personnel,’ to enhance student learning. This definition fails to emphasize that the curriculum is the foundation of school organization. Curriculum is taken here to be the expression of a nation’s (and school’s) selection of knowledge, values and skills deemed most worthy of passing on from generation to generation (UK Department for Education, 2014). It is defined by the selection of subjects and knowledge areas (with relative weightings) enshrined in the school mission

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and timetable (Kelly, 2009). Hence from a time dimension, school organization includes the number of days that schooling is provided per year, the fracturing of the year into semesters or terms, the length of the school day, and how the day is organized into learning schedules. The timetable is the most obvious manifestation of how time is organized in schools, allocating time, teachers, students and other resources (e.g., space) to a learning program based on a weekly number of hours (or period of time) to each area of learning. Students are organized in diverse ways (e.g., via ability grouping) to benefit from learning experiences based on several criteria, including age and ability. Teachers are also organized in many ways (e.g., departments, year groups, and teams), depending on various criteria, including teaching preferences, abilities, and the school mission (Dimmock, 2000). Besides the aforementioned structural elements of school organization, a different but possibly even more salient part of school organization is concerned with processes (Dimmock, 2000). Three sets of interrelated processes are crucial in how a school approaches its organization: teaching styles and methods, learning experiences, and leadership styles and patterns. First, choices are made between ‘student-centered’ and ‘teacher-centered’ teaching styles, with each approach being efficacious for specific purposes (Hattie, 2009). Evidentially, teachercentered approaches are more likely to secure higher test results, while student-centered approaches are more likely to develop the human capital needed for the knowledgebased economy (KBE) (Rotherham & Willingham, 2009). A conundrum for most school systems is securing a balance between the two approaches, with a convergence noticeable between developed Asian school systems (e.g., Hong Kong, Singapore, and China moving towards student-centered) and western systems, which tend towards teacher-centered methods (Dimmock & Walker, 2005).

Choice of teaching methods in turn affects the ways in which students experience learning. Here, schools must decide the combination of ways that will best provide a range of learning styles and experiences, from promoting students as independent learners, learners in groups, and whole-class learners (Rotherham & Willingham, 2009). Partly, these choices also depend on the range of learning goals and skills thought desirable for students to achieve. For example, deep learning for understanding is better achieved by student-centered learning, whereas surface learning, which is often seen as efficacious in securing test results, can be effectively transmitted by teacher-centered teaching (Biggs, 1999). Student assessment, especially national examinations and international testing such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), is increasingly seen as a powerful influence on school organization, including what is taught and how (Morris, 2015). Leadership is a further part of school organization, particularly the endorsement in the patterns of distributed leadership devolving more decision-making power to schools and empowering middle-level teacher leaders within schools (Harris, 2004; Spillane & Diamond, 2007). In the following sections, many of the aforementioned elements of school organization are evidently impacted by both transnational and national influences.

MODUS OPERANDI OF INFLUENTIAL TRANSNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS Many transnational institutions, such as the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union (EU), the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), exert

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an inexorable influence on schools and education in individual countries (Benavot et  al., 2010; Dale & Robertson, 2002; Ginsburg et al., 2012; Spring, 2008). The legitimacy of these institutions is sustained by the co-creation and reproduction of a set of rational expectations governing behavior, which are derived either formally (e.g., via ruling bodies) or informally (e.g., using shared values and norms) (Peters, 2011; Weber, 1946). These institutions can involve multiple stakeholders from the public (e.g., schools and national education ministries) and private (e.g., private corporations, corporate foundations and groups of businesses) sectors in shaping education in individual countries via reciprocal obligations and mutual accountability, risk sharing, and joint responsibility in design and execution (Educational International, 2009). Examples of public–private relationships in education include infrastructure investment, private operations of public schools, outsourcing of educational and non-educational support services, innovation and research, and voucher and subsidy schemes (Educational International, 2009). These transnational institutions influence educational trajectories in myriad ways. For instance, UNESCO (and more generally, its parent organization, the United Nations) promotes educational development, science and cultural exchanges as conduits to realizing a more cohesive and peaceful world. To this end, it implements initiatives such as the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1994–2004), Education for All (EFA), and sponsors research projects and conferences. The EFA in particular is a multi-agency initiative involving institutions such as UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank that is aimed at enhancing educational access for children, youths, and adults via providing early childhood care and education, universal primary education, equipping youth and adults with key skills, improving adult literacy, promoting gender parity and equality, and enhancing the quality of education (UNESCO, 2014). The EFA is premised

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on promoting education for national economic development and as a basic right for individuals (Tikly, 2017). Another influential transnational institution, the OECD, promotes educational development to improve individuals’ economic and general well-being, and develop economic growth and shared values among countries (OECD, 2007). It operates many influential education programs. For example, it conducts an international triennial assessment of student reading, mathematics, and science literacies via PISA. Results from PISA inform education policy and school practices in many countries. More recently, the OECD also launched the PISA-Test for Schools program, which is aimed at encouraging and enabling individual schools, bypassing national governments, to compare their student performance to the subnational and national-level performance for their country (Lewis et al., 2015). The Centre for Educational Research and Innovation enables policymakers and researchers access to a plethora of publications and statistics (OECD, 2017). The Program on Educational Building facilitates international exchange and analysis of matters related to the optimal planning and design of educational facilities in educational institutions. The third example is the World Bank, which underscores the salience of educational development in contributing to human capital and economic competitiveness, asserting that human capital is one of the most effective ways to combat poverty and inequality and to support sustainable economic growth (World Bank, 2007a). The Bank also affirms the role of lifelong learning for adaptation to the changing needs of the global knowledge-based economy (World Bank, 2003). It achieves its educational goals using different initiatives, including emphasizing privatization and the restructuring of school systems (Rideout, 2000), supporting private education in developing countries to promote mass education (World Bank, 2007b), and encouraging private investment in education through EdInvest (International Finance

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Corporation, 2007). For example, the Bank launched the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) as a ‘partnership between donor and developing countries to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goal … of universal primary education’ (World Bank, 2005, p. 2). The GPE represents donor countries, recipient countries, multilateral agencies, civil society organizations, the private sector and foundations (GPE, 2012a, 2012b). It oversees grants from donor countries for supporting the educational development of 59 developing countries.

NEOLIBERALISM AND DECENTRALIZATION The importance of student achievement to individual well-being and national economic productivity has culminated in a global discourse, emanating from and involving some of these aforementioned transnational organizations, on whether competitive markets or national government control constitute the best ways of organizing schools and informing education policymaking (Astiz, Wiseman, & Baker, 2002; Hannaway & Woodroffe, 2003; Levin & Belfield, 2003). In the process, many transnational institutions allude to the appeal of the invisible hand. However, most sovereign governments also recognize the role of education in nation-building and are therefore reluctant to cede control of educational development entirely to market forces (Astiz et al., 2002). What often results is a hybridized model in many education systems – neoliberalism – that relies on market competition and decentralization of educational policymaking to drive school excellence within an overarching framework of centralized government control (Levin & Belfield, 2003; Spring, 2008). National governments subscribing to neoliberalism rely on policy instruments harnessing competitive pressures to drive school behavior (e.g., use of school vouchers, tuition tax credits, charter schools) and instruments

that promote administrative accountability (e.g., via teacher performance-based rewards and sanctions) (Hannaway & Woodroffe, 2003). Another facet of this hybridized model is the isomorphism in national education systems involving centralization and decentralization (Astiz et al., 2002). In particular, educational decentralization is often characterized by state withdrawal, privatization, and localization of educational services (Morrow & Torres, 2000). The school curriculum is often subject to the contesting forces of centralization and decentralization because it represents key inputs in schooling, embody cultural values and norms, and remain levers of social control (Carnoy & Levin, 1985). Astiz and colleagues’ (2002) study of different national education systems revealed different variants of isomorphism, with some centralized systems adopting decentralized policies, and decentralized systems partially adopting centralized polices. Arguments for neoliberalism in education include being democratic, accountable, and responsive to local constituencies, being empowering toward teachers and parents, and being able to reward teachers according to market principles (Morrow & Torres, 2000). However, neoliberalist models may fail if competition does not impact poor-performing schools, if they do not promote educational equity, if parental selection of schools is not based on valid academic criteria, if market uncertainty discourages teacher collaboration and school innovation, and if schools’ product differentiation compromises the achievement of national educational aims (Gill, Timpane, Ross, & Brewer, 2001; Levin & Belfield, 2003).

IMPACT OF TRANSNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS Notwithstanding the myriad ways transnational institutions are influencing schools and educational development, there are questions as to whether these institutions are achieving the impact they desire. The first

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question pertains to the direction of influence. In many instances, it is a case of the transnational institution deciding the aims of education reforms in target countries (e.g., Western donor institutions dictating terms to recipients in developing countries). National governments and school teachers in target countries may seldom be consulted, thereby compromising schools’ buy-in for effective and sustainable reforms. This exclusion risks scarce resources not being allocated to critical areas of educational needs in individual countries (Benavot et al., 2010). Additionally, the oblivion to realpolitik compromises the realization of the educational ideals of transnational institutions (Smith et  al., 2007). Indeed, transnational institutions have sometimes been accused of not adequately ensuring that national and local implementation of educational policy and school practice reforms is aligned to their global educational agenda (Dale & Robertson, 2002). The second question relates to capacitybuilding for target countries of educational reforms. Brady and Galisson (2008) argued for two critical success factors in effective transnational multi-stakeholder partnerships. The first is that transnational institutions and national governments should jointly determine educational needs and implementation strategies instead of transnational institutions unilaterally setting the educational agenda. The second is that transnational institutions need to emphasize capacity-building in attitudes, knowledge, and skills to support target countries in designing and implementing educational reforms in addition to ‘hardware’ investment such as equipment donation, infrastructure building, and scholarship disbursements.

INTERNATIONALIZATION OF CURRICULUM The school curriculum constitutes a prime object of this transnational influence. Global interconnectivity among countries impinges on the development of the school curriculum

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in two ways, namely, the proliferation of international schools and the internationalization of school curricula. With regards to the proliferation of international schools, these institutions may be conceived to be dedicated to achieving two educational aims (Cambridge, 2003; Cambridge &Thompson, 2004). The first aim is to instill in students an international perspective where they will appreciate humanity and advocate progress and equality for all. However, international schools may also aspire to give their students an edge in being globalist – the second aim. International schools appear to have developed from early isolated institutional efforts to meet the educational needs of students whose parents work in international organizations (e.g., The League of Nations), and to promote understanding and cooperation among students from different countries (Sylvester, 2002; Walker, 2000). The International Schools Association, founded in 1951, then promoted the expansion of international schools worldwide via its creation of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program and the IB Organization in the 1960s (Hill, 2002). Another organization that contributed to the proliferation of international schools is the Council of International Schools (CIS), founded in 1965. The CIS provided a useful platform for educators and researchers to discuss IB-related issues and maintained a comprehensive database of international school enrolment and tuition fees. Globalization may impact schools via the types of curriculum that students receive in both international and non-international schools. There are four types of internationally oriented curricula, namely, peace education, global education and multicultural education, human rights education, and environmental education, all of which are designed to sensitize students to the broad principles of human co-existence, expand their intellectual and social horizons, and develop students who would contribute to the well-being of the global collective (Dolby & Rahman, 2008; Noddings, 2005; Reardon, 2000).

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SPOTLIGHT ON TEACHERS AND TEACHING The analysis of transnational influences on education will inexorably invoke another related variable – student learning. It is noteworthy that student learning has been inextricably associated with, and sometimes reduced to, performance in international and comparative testing (Lewis et  al., 2015). Indeed, results of international testing of student literacies in subjects such as reading, mathematics, and science have shown differences in student achievement across education systems in various parts of the world, thereby prompting many supranational organizations and national governments to benchmark their educational policies against those of high-performing educational systems (Lewis et  al., 2015). In the process, many national governments inexorably converge in their conceptions of critical success factors that they deem to be responsible for student learning (Paine & Zeichner, 2012; Robertson, 2012). The two critical success factors that are often identified are related to teacher quality and teaching. First, there appears to be an emerging global consensus that teacher quality is the most critical ingredient for student achievement (Paine & Zeichner, 2012; Robertson, 2012). McKinsey & Company made headlines in 2007 when it asserted that, ‘the quality of the education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers’ (Barber & Mourshed, 2007, p. 7) and disseminated two reports on top-performing education systems (Barber & Mourshed, 2007; Mourshed, Chijioke, & Barber, 2010). Authoritative reports by supranational institutions (e.g., the World Bank and the OECD) shape common understandings of the nature of teaching; teachers’ requisite knowledge bases; and the recruitment, preparation, and retention of teachers (Robertson, 2012). For example, the World Bank initiated the Systems Assessment and Benchmarking Education for Results – Teachers (SABER-Teachers)

project to shape national governing frameworks in teacher accountability (World Bank, 2011). It is disconcerting that educational economists were primarily responsible for designing the benchmarking and data collection protocols pertaining to teacher polices. Teachers were noticeably absent from the process (Robertson, 2012). The OECD provides another example of a supranational institution influencing teachers and teaching in its implementation of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) in 2009 after experiencing relative success in its flagship educational program, PISA. TALIS is aimed at collecting empirical data on teaching-learning processes from different participating education systems for benchmarking international best practices to improve student learning. The convergence of understandings in the role of teachers and teaching in student learning has the expected effect of promoting common perspectives in the analysis of educational issues and a fallacious belief in the existence of shared solutions transferable across educational contexts (OECD, 2011; Schleicher, 2012). Notwithstanding the overall emphasis on teacher learning (e.g., see Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics or TED-M; Tatto et  al., 2012), there is a disconcerting theme that effective teachers and teaching depend on the recruitment of talented, competent teachers as opposed to the professional development of average teachers (Auguste, Kihn, & Miller, 2010; Paine & Zeichner, 2012). The discourse also implies that it is more rational to focus on equipping teachers with the technical skills that contribute to student learning than on enhancing teachers’ socioemotional development. However, we argue that it takes more than talented teachers to develop a child holistically. Talented teachers may contribute effectively to student learning in pedagogical content knowledge and provide insights to the effective learning of an academic subject area. Furthermore, learning cannot be reduced to the acquisition of technical knowledge.

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Instead, effective teachers need also to demonstrate empathy to understand student learning needs to imbue in students a deep love for learning. Therefore, teacher professional development should also be correspondingly holistic to include both technical training and the development of socioemotional competencies. In particular, the latter would enable teachers to find greater meaning in their work and to be more adept at facilitating the socioemotional development of their students. Furthermore, many national education systems expect schools to imbue in students specific sociocultural values characterizing nation building. Obviously, if teachers are only trained in pedagogical content knowledge, they may be poorly equipped to realize this mission (Paine & Zeichner, 2012). Some scholars also question the notion of a global vision of a good teacher or even the development of one (Tatto & Plank, 2007). More realistically, teachers and their professional practice are situated in both global contexts of shared pressures as much as national and local contexts of particularistic challenges (Shriberg, 2009). The second critical success factor articulated in the international discourse on school improvement is the tacit acknowledgement of the superiority of particular pedagogies (Komatsu & Rappleye, 2017), as exemplified by the role of student-centered teaching, the emphasis on developing student intrinsic motivation, and the use of formative assessment. However, and somewhat paradoxically, international assessments of student achievement have shown that academically high-achieving countries are associated with teacher-centered teaching in large classes, high parental and social expectations in learning, and a ubiquitous emphasis on high-stake summative assessment (e.g., in Confucian heritage cultures; Komatsu & Rappleye, 2017). While detractors may argue that students in these high-performing systems excel academically at the expense of a more holistic development, it cannot be denied that these

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characteristics contradict expectations from pedagogies premised on the so-called mainstream student educational psychology that is largely derived from Anglo-American contexts (Arnett, 2008). In these contexts, students are assumed to be autonomic and less affected by parental or social expectations, and where national developmental trajectories are more holistic. The difficulties in identifying a globally relevant formula for educational success are evident in the observed hybridity in education systems incorporating both transnational and national elements (Vavrus & Bartlett, 2012). For example, teachinglearning may be more accurately described as undergoing iterative cycles of development that are better described as ‘globalized localism’ and ‘localized globalism’ in some contexts (De Sousa Santos, 2006). The assumptions of the contribution of quality teachers and teaching also trivialize the potential contribution of socioeconomic factors at the national, community, and family level on student achievement (Dornbusch et  al., 1996; Sirin, 2005; Tan, 2015, 2017; Waithaka, 2014). The heavy emphasis on school-level factors such as teachers and teaching in the search for an educational panacea therefore cannot but appear to be incomplete at best. Nonetheless, de facto, current transnational and national influences are re-conceptualizing schools and schooling in the twenty-first century, and it is to this theme the following section now turns.

TRANSNATIONAL AND NATIONAL INFLUENCES ARE TRANSFORMING CONCEPTIONS OF EDUCATION AND SCHOOL ORGANIZATION Compellingly, not only are transnational– national influences changing schooling and school organization, they are increasingly shaping global educational reform agendas, and dictating a fundamental re-conceptualization of what is education. This claim is exemplified by

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three broad movements: the rationalization of education emphasizing evidence-based policy and practice, the assumption that all educational problems can be managed via standardized solutions, and the implied logic that the pursuit of international educational standards leads to educational excellence and quality. Each of these themes is the focus of this section.

Evidence-Based Policy and Practice As Valverde (2014) argued, education policy across the globe now emphasizes the importance of quality outcomes for students and societies. Maximizing the productivity of system policymaking and schools as organizations delivering teaching and learning are seen as key goals (Hanushek & Woessman, 2010). Policymakers see strong links between the performance of their education systems and the competitive standing of their nations in the global marketplace. Governments compare the quality of their educational outcomes with those of competitive nations. Valverde (2014) claimed that many global, international and increasingly domestic agencies support education systems in accepting internationally derived definitions of quality, making them the focus of policy. These agencies he terms, ‘radical advocates of education’ (Valverde, 2014, p. 575). Chapman and Salokangas (2012) exemplified how education policy eventuated in a common set of school interventions in the case of low-performing, independent, state-funded schools in the UK, the US, and Sweden. These interventions include a shift from the individual school to ‘federal’ efforts comprising a group of schools to centralize the coordination of school functions, exploit administrative economies of scale, provide continuous professional development and career advancement for staff, cater for the specific needs of struggling schools, and promote a common identity. Valverde (2014) went on to state that transnational institutions

set targets, develop instruments, and collect, compare and disseminate indicators to monitor the standards and performance of member systems. However, there seems little empirical substantiation for the notion that pursuing quality standards actually delivers increased quality (Valverde, 2014). Finland, Singapore, and Korea did not become leading education systems because of their participation in, and conformity to, PISA’s or other international assessment regimes’ standards. Rather, the ‘radical advocates’ rely on data-inspired speculation that is often de-contextualized and comes with little guidance as to how best to implement the policies and practices in diverse cultures and settings. At best, knowing what works (or may work) does little to guide those responsible for implementation in other, different contexts; as Dimmock and Tan (2016) argued, each system tends to follow its own path to success.

Belief that Educational Challenges can be Managed The second broad movement is the belief that educational problems and challenges can, first, be managed and, second, irrespective of culture and context, can be similarly managed. This naïve belief in the decontextualized management of educational challenges raises the issue of the power and influence of relations between national governments and transnational agencies. Are national governments still de facto exercising sovereignty and jurisdiction over their schools, or are they increasingly following an international narrative of policies and practices espoused by transnational agencies? A starting point to address this question is the spread of international testing and national assessment. Assessment regimes are increasingly seen as governing school organization – both policies and practices. As Kamens and McNeely (2010) pointed out, the number of countries participating in international testing for learning in mathematics, science and

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reading has increased dramatically among both developed and developing countries. For example, the PISA is a triennial international survey that aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. In 2015, over half a million students, representing 28 million 15-year-olds in 72 countries and economies, took the internationally agreed two-hour tests. Students were assessed in science, mathematics, reading, collaborative problem solving, and financial literacy. Kamens and McNeely (2010) made the following observations. First, even countries that score poorly in the early rounds of PISA tend to continue their involvement in subsequent three-yearly rounds of testing. Second, low-scoring countries that drop out often turn to international governmental organizations (IGOs) and non-government organizations (NGOs) to assist them in national assessments. These transnational organizations often mandate testing as an obligation in return for aid and assistance. National ministries then become compliant in imposing testing on their schools. In short, Kamens and McNeely (2010) argued that the dramatic growth of national and international testing is reflective of a world culture and polity, giving rise to a world educational ideology, with the hegemony of science (through causal relationships) as a mode of understanding. The central assumption is that societies, like organizations, can be successfully managed by following standardized policies to achieve important goals. In this environment, the role of international experts espousing models of best practice finds expression and application through networks of NGOs and nation states. And progress, it is believed, can be measured against national educational goals through assessment, thereby further informing policymaking. National government agendas and policy portfolios thus tend to be captured, steered, and vicariously controlled by agencies operating transnationally. In a more positive light, the agendas sometimes include more than reforming schools

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to produce high student test scores, thereby having positive outcomes on school organization. Among these other goals are equipping students with skills and knowledge for the twenty-first-century economies, hence improving employability, addressing world citizenship and human rights (every child has the right to an education), and stressing equality and democracy (Fiala 2006). In some cases, national governments that are keen to reform their school systems – especially those in pluralistic political systems – may be willing adherents to this transnational agenda, since they see such external advocacy as legitimizing a national policy platform that may help overcome domestic political opposition to reform.

Pursuit of Transnational Standards is Assumed to Generate Excellence and Quality Both trends discussed above – a belief in evidence-based policy and practice, and the notion that school systems and their problems are responsive to standardized management policies and practices to fit whatever new goals and expectations are set – have been the irrevocable outcomes of the growing influence of transnational agencies, and the apparent willingness of national governments to buy-in to their regimes. A superficial appraisal of this mantra might appear to have appeal – for example, evidence-based policy and practice has a sound ring about it. However, a deeper analysis exposes many worrying and questionable assumptions underlying this ideology. First, there is the problem of using the scores of 15-year-old students (as PISA does) in international tests in three main subjects, plus problem solving, as being indicative of the effectiveness of school systems. The assumption is made that higher test scores indicate effective structures, processes, and practices in school organization. Generalized claims are then made about evidence-based

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practice, which other systems are then encouraged to emulate. In some cases, the evidence contradicts the generalizations and prescriptions being advocated, as the following iteration between McKinsey & Company’s report (Barber & Mourshed, 2010) on the world’s best education systems and the OECD’s (2013) PISA report illustrates. In the McKinsey & Company typology, only Finland qualifies to be placed in the highest stage, while Singapore is classified as belonging to the ‘good to great’ stage. Singapore earns the status of a ‘sustained improver’ by virtue of its cumulative and consistent rises in student achievement spanning multiple data points (1983 to 2007) and subject areas (reading, mathematics, science). However, according to the PISA 2012 results, Shanghai eclipses Finland in terms of mathematics, reading and science, and the top seven places were, by 2012, occupied by East and South-east Asian countries, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea. The domination of Asian systems is noteworthy, and in just an abbreviated time (2009–2012) McKinsey & Company’s classification of Finland as the world’s only excellent system, seemed inappropriate if not misleading. What implications are to be drawn for national governments and schools who decided to emulate Finland after 2009? The allusion from McKinsey & Company, however, is that the Singapore education system exhibits most, if not all, of the developmental characteristics of other similarly improved systems in the same stage, and is predicted to manifest even those of Finland as it continues its improvement journey (in fact, by 2015, according to PISA test scores, Singapore was the first-ranked system in the world). These characteristics comprise, first, the expected professionalization of teachers and principals, and, second, the staged decentralization of decision-making from the center to school level. This ‘truism’ according to McKinsey & Company occurs invariably as follows:

Systems on the poor to fair journey … exercise tight, central control over teaching and learning processes in order to minimize the degree of variation between individual classes and across schools. In contrast, systems moving from good to great … only provide loose, central guidelines for teaching and learning processes, in order to encourage peer-led creativity and innovation inside schools, the core driver for raising performance at this stage. (Mourshed et al., 2010, p. 34)

Further evidence of a generic correlation between high performance and the loosening of centralization is given by the PISA 2012 results (OECD, 2013), the report for which asserts that the ‘highest-performing school systems are those that allocate educational resources more equitably among advantaged and disadvantaged schools and that grant more autonomy over curricula and assessments to individual schools’ (OECD, 2013, p. 4). However, this correlation does not seem to hold for Singapore, as even the OECD’s own data reveals school autonomy to be less than the OECD average (Dimmock & Tan, 2016). Hence, some of the assumptions and generalizations advocating policy and practice for school organization are questionable, and in some cases, even misleading. Furthermore, they appear simplistic in attributing the success of student test scores principally to aspects of school organization per se. Little regard is paid to other factors that are acknowledged to influence student learning, such as broader sociocultural and political contexts of different societies, and their diversity. For example, even among the top Asian performers in PISA – Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Macao, and Japan – and the top European systems – Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Netherlands, Estonia and Finland – there is as much variation within each of the Asian and European clusters as there is between them, in terms of school organization and governance, and centralization and autonomy. It is hard to escape the conclusion that there are multiple pathways to becoming a top-performing system (Dimmock & Tan, 2016). Claims of

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generalized characteristics across all systems as they progress to the top are thus vulnerable to the criticism that they are reductionist and fail to take account of the unique complexities of culture and context that characterize each system in its development trajectory (Dimmock & Walker, 2005). Given this naïve empiricism, it is important for scholars, policymakers and practitioners to seriously question simplistic assumptions based on incomplete or partial data that, for example, suggest that the pursuit of international educational standards leads to educational quality, and that school organizational factors are responsible for academic achievement in high-performing schools and school systems, without taking into account a more holistic perspective incorporating societal culture and family and home background (Dimmock & Tan, 2016; Dimmock & Walker, 2005).

IMPLICATIONS FOR REFORMING EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND PRACTICE IN A TRANSNATIONAL WORLD Although previous sections of this chapter have highlighted many of the pitfalls underpinning transnational influences on policy and practice in relation to school organization, it is also important to recognize their positive contribution. Transnational agencies help to fill a void that existed previously in two respects. First, organizations such as the OECD have enabled international comparisons between student achievements in different systems. Previously, there were few if any ways of making valid comparisons in student attainment across different systems. Second, NGOs and IGOs have at least begun to tackle the growing global gaps in achievement between educational systems. Hitherto, support for developing nations’ education systems was left to missionaries and imperial powers with empires, many of which

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failed to take their responsibilities seriously. Latterly, as we have stated, while some national governments on some occasions may feel compelled to follow global trends, others at other times may be willing partners, using the transnational agencies to embolden their own reform efforts to change school organization. Many of the negative connotations and impacts resulting from transnational influences are not due to the work of the agencies per se; rather, they are due to the misuse and misinterpretation of the valuable data that are often generated, the naïve empiricism that is reflected in over-generalized claims from the data, de-contextualized advocacy of new policy and practice, and the failure to give earnest consideration to implementation, leadership and management. As Cowen (2009) succinctly put it, in learning from transnational data and other systems, we need to understand better the concepts of transfer and context. And as Yore, Anderson, and Chiu (2010) concluded, both funding agencies with responsibilities for disseminating research and development results, and receiver nations interested in applying and implementing them, need to show a more refined understanding of values, cultures and contexts. Moreover, in a further assessment of the relative influence of transnational organizations, it is important not to lose sight of the major contributions still made by local and national bodies in the shaping and reforming of school organization. In charting the way forward, we propose the following directions for future research. First, researchers might investigate how national contextual factors could mediate or even moderate transnational influences on the way schools are organized. This research would enable us to ascertain how national factors might facilitate or mitigate transnational influences. Second, researchers could scrutinize the different nuanced ways in which national governments and schools exercise their roles and agency to fulfil their educational agenda considering exogenous

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transnational pressures in educational reform and change. This research would provide insights on how national and school-level actors make sense of and work toward achieving specific educational goals. A possible third trajectory for research would be to study the sustainability of educational reform and change emanating from, or implicating, transnational institutions, and the long-term effects of these influences on the quality of student learning thereof. This last research trajectory would determine the critical success factors needed for sustainable, effective transnational programs to improve education.

REFERENCES Arnett, J. J. (2008). The neglected 95%: Why American psychology needs to become less American. American Psychologist, 63(7), 602–614. Astiz, M. F., Wiseman, A. W., & Baker, D. P. (2002). Slouching towards decentralization: Consequences of globalization for curricular control in national education systems. Comparative Education Review, 46(1), 66–88. Auguste, B., Kihn, P., & Miller, M. (2010). Closing the talent gap: Attracting and retaining top-third graduates to careers in teaching. London: McKinsey & Company. Barber, M., & Mourshed, M. (2007). How the world’s best-performing schools come out on top. London: McKinsey & Company. Barber, M., & Mourshed, M. (2010). Shaping the future: How good education systems can become great in the decade ahead. Report on the International Education Roundtable (7 July 2009, Singapore). Educational Studies, 3, 6–31. Benavot, A., Archer, D., Moseley, S., Mundy, K., Phiri, F., Steer, L., & Wiking, D. (2010). International aid to education. Comparative Education Review, 54(1), 105–124. Biggs, J. (1999). What the student does: Teaching for enhanced learning. Higher Education Research & Development, 18(1), 57–75. Brady, K., & Galisson, K. (2008). Dynamics of private sector support for education: Experiences in Latin America. Washington, DC:

Academy for Educational Development and United States Agency for International Development. Retrieved from www.usaideducationworkshop.com. Bray, M., & Thomas, R. M. (1995). Levels of comparison in educational studies: Different insights from different literatures and the value of multilevel analyses. Harvard Educational Review, 65(3), 472–490. Cambridge, J. (2003). Identifying the globalist and internationalist missions of international schools. International Schools Journal, 22(2), 54–58. Cambridge, J., & Thompson, J. (2004). Internationalism and globalization as contexts for international education. Compare, 34, 161–175. Carnoy, M., & Levin, H. M. (1985). Schooling and work in the democratic state. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Chapman, C., & Salokangas, M. (2012). Independent state-funded schools: Some reflections on recent developments. School Leadership & Management, 32(5), 473–486. Cowen, R. (2009). The transfer, translation and transformation of educational processes: And their shape-shifting? Comparative Education, 45(3), 315–327. Dale, R., & Robertson, S. L. (2002). The varying effects of regional organizations as subjects of globalization of education. Comparative Education Review, 46(1), 10–36. Danielson, C. (2002). Enhancing student achievement: A framework for school improvement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. De Sousa Santos, B. (2006). Globalizations. Theory, Culture and Society, 23, 93–99. Dimmock, C. (2000). Designing the learningcentered school: A cross-cultural perspective. London: Falmer Press. Dimmock, C., & Tan C. Y. (2016). Explaining the success of the world’s leading education systems: The case of Singapore. British Journal of Educational Studies, 64(2), 161–184. Dimmock, C., & Walker, A. (2005). Educational leadership: Culture and diversity. London: Sage. Dolby, N., & Rahman, A. (2008). Research in international education. Review of Educational Research, 78(3), 676–726.

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Dornbusch, S. M., Glasgow, K. L., & Lin, I.-C. (1996). The social structure of schooling. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 401–429. Education International. (2009). Public private partnerships in education. Brussels: Education International. Retrieved from www.ei-ie. org/research. Fiala, R. (2006). Educational ideology and the school curriculum. In A. Benavot & C. Braslavsky (Eds.), School knowledge in comparative and historical perspective: Changing curricula in primary and secondary education (pp. 15–34). Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong & Springer. Gill, B. P., Timpane, M., Ross, K., & Brewer, D. (2001). Rhetoric versus reality: What we know and what we need to know about vouchers and charter schools. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. Ginsburg, M., Brady, K., Draxler, A., Klees, S. J., Luff, P., Patrinos, H. A., & Edwards, D. (2012). Public-private partnerships and the global reform of education in less wealthy countries: A moderated discussion. Comparative Education Review, 56(1), 155–175. GPE. (2012a). Global governance manual. Washington, DC: Global Partnership for Education Secretariat. GPE. (2012b). Results for learning report. Washington, DC: Global Partnership for Education Secretariat. Hannaway, J., & Woodroffe, N. (2003). Policy instruments in education. Review of Research in Education, 27, 1–24. Hanushek, E. A., & Woessman, L. (2010). Education and economic growth. In D. Brewer & P. J. McEwan (Eds.), Economics of education (pp. 60–67). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Harris, A. (2004). Distributed leadership and school improvement. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 32(1), 11–24. Hattie, J. A. C. (2009). Visible learning. London: Routledge. Hill, I. (2002). The history of international education: An International Baccalaureate perspective. In M. C. Hayden, J. J. Thompson, & G. Walker (Eds.), International education in practice (pp. 18–29). London: Kogan Page. International Finance Corporation. (2007). EdInvest. Retrieved from www.ifc.org/edinvest/

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OECD. (2013). PISA 2012 results: What makes schools successful? Resources, policies and practices (Vol. IV). Retrieved from www. oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-resultsvolume-IV.pdf OECD. (2017). Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI). Retrieved from www. oecd.org/edu/ceri/ Paine, L., & Zeichner, K. (2012). The local and the global in reforming teaching and teacher education. Comparative Education Review, 56(4), 569–583. Peters, B. G. (2011). Institutional theory in political science: The new institutionalism. London: Bloomsbury. Reardon, B. (2000). Peace education: A review and projection. In B. Moon, S. Brown, & M. Ben-Peretz (Eds.), Routledge international companion to education (pp. 397–425). New York: Routledge. Rideout, W. (2000). Globalization and decentralization in sub-Saharan Africa: Focus Lesotho. In N. Stromquist & K. Monkman (Eds.), Globalization and education: Integration and contestation across cultures (pp. 255–274). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Robertson, S. L. (2012). Placing teachers in global governance agendas. Comparative Education Review, 56(4), 584–607. Rotherham, A. J., & Willingham, D. (2009). 21st century skills: The challenges ahead. Educational Leadership, 67(1), 16–21. Schleicher, A. (2012). Preparing teachers and developing school leaders for the 21st century. Background report for the Second International Summit on the Teaching Profession. Paris: OECD. Shriberg, J. (2009). Perpetuated suffering: Social injustice in Liberian teachers’ lives. In F. Vavrus & L. Bartlett (Eds.), Critical approaches to comparative education (pp. 199–214). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sirin, S. R. (2005). Socioeconomic status and academic achievement: A meta-analytic review of research. Review of Educational Research, 75(3), 417–453. Smith, P., Pigozzi, M. J., Tomasevski, K., Bhola, H. S., Kuroda, K., & Mundy, K. (2007). UNESCO’s role in global educational development. Comparative Education Review, 51(2), 229–245.

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26 Decision-making and the School Organization S t e p h a n i e C h i t p i n a n d C o l i n W. E v e r s

INTRODUCTION From the 1950s through to the late 1970s, much of the study of schools was framed in terms of schools conceived as a particular sort of organization, notably as a system. Systems theory was the preferred theoretical perspective with which to understand school performance and achievement. In improving school performance, this theoretical approach tended to focus on the interactivity of the various components of the school as a system. Other explanatory schemes were also seen as relevant, such as leadership, but it wasn’t until the 1980s and onwards that leadership came to dominate the scene. Here, the nature of the school as an organization was best given by a hierarchically structured organizational chart. The outward signs of this change were numerous. Journals had name changes: School Organization, commencing in 1981 changed to School Leadership and Management in

1997; Educational Management and Administration added Leadership to its title, and a considerable number of new journals with leadership titles were launched. Degrees in educational administration changed to educational leadership, as did many academic titles. And centres for educational leadership flourished. The net result was that leadership became the default explanatory option in accounting for school performance. These two approaches to schools as organizations have a number of different consequences for how decision-making is conceived and implemented. In what follows, an overview of possible approaches to decisionmaking will be discussed, together with what might be seen as areas of difficulty or limits to their scope and value. In later sections of this chapter a model of school decision-making that can overcome the most serious difficulties faced by other models will be presented and defended.

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GENERAL APPROACHES TO DECISION-MAKING At its most general level, decision-making can be regarded as possessing two key elements. The first is some preferred goal or set of goals. The second is some means or set of means for achieving preferred goals. How these elements are characterized, and how they are fitted together varies from approach to approach in decision-making, and in the justification of each of these elements. Perhaps the dominant perspective on decision-making is captured by rational ­ choice models, that is, models that identify certain means as the most rational way of achieving identified goals. A useful overview of the range of options can be found in Heap, Hollis, Sugden and Weale, The Theory of Choice: A Critical Guide (1992). Decisions made under conditions of risk are those where the probability of a means being successful is known. Rationality, then, is often treated as that sum of the arithmetic product of means, of a given set of probabilities, and ends, of a given set of preferences that yields the largest sum. Formally this is known as maximizing expected utility. Sometimes the consequences of means are uncertain, not admitting the assignment of probabilities. In this case, the criterion of rationality cannot be utility maximization. Instead, in the face of epistemic uncertainty, decision-makers can be recommended to make the choice that hedges against the worst possible, or imagined, outcome (Peterson, 2009, pp. 179–183.) This is known as the maximin criterion of rationality and was most famously employed by Rawls (1971). Rawls’s central argument was a thought experiment where people were invited to choose those principles of justice for a society where they were ignorant of what social position they would occupy. Rawls argued that people would choose principles that would hedge against them being in the worst-off position.

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Rational choice models of decision-­ making have a number of serious problems. A comprehensive survey of these can be found in Zey, Decision Making: Alternatives to Rational Choice Models (1992). One problem is that the value of a goal, or the strength of a person’s preference for it, is sensitive to how the goal is described. A parent’s decision to send their child to what is accurately known as the best school in the city may yield a different result if the school is also accurately described as the school on the corner of Third and Elm streets. Preference for goals is also labile. One source of this is that goals mostly come in clusters rather that as single, isolated aims. The perceived value of paying fees for a favoured private school may compete unfavourably if a mortgage is increased on a favoured dwelling. The most serious problems with rational choice models are epistemic. In general, our social science is not strong enough to tell us with any certainty what might happen when a decision is implemented. The sheer causal complexity of successive chains of events compromises our knowledge of means as ways of bringing about goals. For example, assigning probabilities as to how people will react in a school context to the implementation strategy adopted to reach a desired goal is exceedingly difficult, especially where a person’s reaction can be contingent upon seeing how others react, and then on how they revise their reaction upon seeing that person’s initial reaction. This is the realm of dynamically shifting probabilities. In his classic work, Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization, Herbert Simon (1945) regarded the twin problems of specifying all the initial conditions relevant to a decision, and all the consequent causal processes following the decision’s implementation, to be largely unknowable or beyond our cognitive resources (Simon, 1945, pp. 79–109). As a result of this ‘bounded rationality’, Simon argued that

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the task of making optimal decisions cannot be done, suggesting that we should aim for satisfactory decisions. He coined a term for this: instead of trying to optimize we should ‘satisfice’.

DECISION-MAKING IN EDUCATION Because schools as organizations are seen as complex contexts for understanding decision-making in education, in general ­ they must accommodate the epistemic constraints that support claims of bounded rationality. However, there are many detailed different ways of trying to meet these constraints in the literature of educational organizations and leadership – too many to be considered here. Instead, we mention some useful sources. Hoy and Tarter’s Administrators Solving the Problems of Practice: Decision-Making Concepts, Cases, and Consequences (1995) contains an excellent overview of eight decision-making models, all illustrated with educational examples, and all of which reflect different responses to limitations of knowledge of initial conditions, social causation, and cognitive processes. The models discussed are optimizing, satisficing, muddling, mixed scanning, garbage-can, political, and two models of shared decisionmaking. Choice among these models is guided by a number of conditions. One concerns the complexity of the ­decision-making environment. This, in turn, is related to the perceived levels of either risk or uncertainty associated with required knowledge. The last touches on the matter of usefulness, which is dependent partly on the cognitive demands of implementation. Another overview of issues in educational decision-making can be found in the edited book by Chitpin and Evers, Decision-Making in Educational Leadership (2015). In this collection, the taxonomy of decision topics reflects both what issues are being decided

upon and the epistemic resources relevant to those decisions. The book has four sections. The first deals with data-driven decisionmaking, exploring new tools for data analysis and inference to decisions. The second offers some radically different approaches to decision-making that reflect the epistemic value of data from feedback on the results of decision implementations to subsequent decisions for achieving the same goal. This is an important development because there exists a long tradition in d­ ecision-making that supposes that information needs to come before a decision is made. That is, decisionmaking is epistemically front-end loaded. But in response to the bounded rationality problem, some chapters in this part of the book propose a view of decision-making as problem-solving trajectories extended through time. Initial errors in making a decision can be corrected by feeding back information drawn from the consequences of the initial decision implementation. In what follows later, this chapter will discuss in detail how this approach works. The importance of emotion in d­ ecision-making is also explored. A third section tackles the problem of complexity of decision circumstances relative to a number of contexts, such as on-thejob decision-making, resistance to change, and the softer constraints to decision-making. The last sections deal with decision-making where there are significantly different decision constraints, such as ethics, legal frameworks, and wider constraints on policy decision-making. Both Hoy and Tarter (1995) and Chitpin and Evers (2015) together offer a particularly wide range of accounts of decision-making that can be employed in educational organizations. As previously mentioned, there is a further issue that is relevant to school decision-making, namely how schools, as ­ organizations, are theorized. The main alternatives are schools as systems with their associated feedback dynamics and schools as leader-centric hierarchies.

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DECISION-MAKING AND SCHOOL STRUCTURES Although there has been a clear shift over the past 30 years, or so, from emphasizing schools as systems towards more leadercentric views where the organizational chart reflects hierarchical structures, these alternatives are not always seen as exclusive of one another. Perhaps the best-known text in educational administration is Hoy and Miskel’s Educational Administration: Theory, Research and Practice (ninth edition, 2012), which offers a system’s view of schools and chapters on leadership and decision-making. In functioning as an excellent review of the most relevant literature concerning the topics of each chapter, the different ways in which research has changed at different times creates some theoretical tensions between systems views and views of leadership. In this section, one of these tensions will be highlighted in relation to decision-making. If the biggest difficulty with decisionmaking in complex organizational contexts is information and cognitive limits to our rationality, then the conceptualization of schools as systems offers some advantages. Of the many properties that systems theory posits as accruing to systems, the most important is feedback. Systems function dynamically through time and are able to change their behaviour in response to feedback from their earlier behaviour and its consequences. Consider a simple thermostat-controlled heater as a system. Let room temperature be regarded as t0 and the desired higher temperature be set at t1. A thermostat then measures the difference as t1 – t0. Let this difference constitute the input to the system. The difference then activates a heater which continues to heat until the output temperature of the room equals t1. When this result is fed back to the thermostat, the difference between set temperature and actual temperature is zero and the heater switches off, with the process starting again when a certain amount of difference emerges.

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Some school policy processes follow this single-loop feedback model. For example, compliance on wearing a school uniform may be set at, say, 90% in response to an actual compliance of 60%. The difference activates a discipline policy which operates until the target compliance is met, at which time the policy ceases to be applied. In more complex decision-making, extra feedback loops may be needed. Thus, in deciding to promote student learning to a certain level, feedback showing the goal is not being achieved may prompt more than continuing to apply the same policy. It may prompt a review of that policy and a decision to try something else. This is sometimes called double-loop learning. The work of Argyris and Schön (1978, 1996) has done much to systematize such organizational learning arrangements. The biggest advantage of these arrangements is that they reduce the demand for all relevant knowledge and cognitive resources to be marshalled before a decision is made. Instead, they admit fallible decisions to be made, but then further admit of their improvement or correction through the epistemically relevant feedback of consequences. Theorizing schools as learning organizations makes much use of these feedback loops in decision-making. In this way, decisionmaking becomes a trajectory that operates through time. Despite its advantages in reducing the epistemic burden on decision-making, systems views of schools have an important limitation. Traditionally, systems accounts of organizations were also crafted to explain the stability of organizations, even when operating at the edge of their operational parameters. So, a major purpose of feedback loops was much more than correcting error. It was also to explain why organizations, disturbed in their functioning, could return to equilibrium. Unfortunately, an organization’s capacity to return to equilibrium compromised the value of systems theory to account for change. And the biggest international force for change over the past 30 years turned out to be when

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multiple jurisdictions moved to implement versions of school-based management. The demand for change to occur in all schools, or all government schools, across an entire jurisdiction led to a demand for leadership, particularly transformational leadership. The capacity for initiating change thus came to be vested in school leaders, often thought to be charismatic and inspiring of their followerships to the point of being able to command the level of support needed to overcome the forces for return to equilibrium. Transformational leadership, the approach of choice, was thus theorized in ways that built into the leaders’ attributes those epistemic, and other, skills necessary for overcoming the contingencies of bounded rationality. These were leaders of vision, with problem-solving skills, who were able to provide intellectual stimulation coupled with capacity to motivate school members to support and implement change. Shifting the locus of decision-making from the structures and processes of organizations that learn to the skills demanded of individual leaders, while it may help deal with the issue of change, does not solve the problem of limited knowledge and cognition. For this problem is not so much a matter of the knowledge and cognitive limitations of leaders as it is the intrinsic unknowable features of the complex realities in which leaders are expected to act. There are some things that leaders cannot know because no one can know them (Evers, 2007). The solution to the resulting leader decision fallibilism is to apply a version of organizational learning as learning through feedback to leaders acting in more distributed contexts of decision-making, those where problem-­solving trajectories are realized through the many participants in solving particular problems.

DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP James Spillane (2006) developed a framework called distributed leadership that acknowledges the contributions of all the

actors in their various acts to arrive at some more comprehensive account of leadership. The distributed leadership moves beyond the principal or department head to include other actors in a school setting. It is first and foremost leadership practice that results from joint interactions between school leaders and followers in their context. For example, in a school setting, leadership does not reside in the principal’s office; rather, it relies on partnerships with other trusted colleagues, such as vice-principals, teachers, support staff, parents and community, to execute leadership (Spillane, 2006; see also Grubb, Flessa, Tredway, & Stern, 2003). Today’s principals are not only managers, heads of finance, efficient schedulers and rigorous followers of bureaucratic regulations, but also curriculum leaders, reflective practiti­ oners and builders of collaborative cultures. They are also tasked with the responsibility to forge powerful visions for their schools and lead significant organizational change (Darling-Hammond et al., 2007; Fahey 2011; Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005; Wagner & Kegan, 2006; Waters & Cameron, 2007). As such, principals recognize that leading schools requires multiple leaders where, at times, responsibilities and decisions are distributed and made among various actors in the school (Gronn, 2003). In light of this, distributed leadership has gained popularity because it emphasizes the ‘how’ of school leadership and not on the ‘what’ of leadership that traditional school leadership centres around (Hallinger & Heck, 1996). However, having a framework that would allow principals to determine ‘how’ to interact with the various actors in their organizations when making decisions is imperative if research is to generate usable knowledge about distributed perspective of leadership. This chapter attempts to address the questions: How do principals make decisions in joint interactions with various actors in their schools? To what extent does the use of a decision-making framework such as the Objective Knowledge Growth Framework

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(OKGF) provide a more holistic and comprehensive description of the strategies used by individuals when distributing school leadership practice. First, the chapter takes the position that leadership does not reside solely with the principals; rather, it takes the view that the actions of various actors in a school contribute to a more comprehensive account of leadership. Second, a description of the decision-making OKGF is illustrated using two principals’ cases in their contexts. Third, the chapter concludes with how a continued systematic application of the OKGF to the study of leadership will lead to the identification of patterns of how decisions are made in school leadership practice.

DECISION-MAKING IN A DISTRIBUTED PERSPECTIVE OF LEADERSHIP Many observers are perplexed and wonder what distributed perspective in leadership means (Spillane, 2006). Often people wonder if there is anything new about distributed leadership. It is a leadership perspective that provides an alternative to account for individuals and groups of individuals who take it upon themselves to initiate and create an organizational change. Distributed perspective of leadership is not about a charismatic individual or a Superman’s or Superwoman’s view of leadership (Spillane, 2006, p. 3). Rather, it is about the leadership practice that results ‘as a product of joint interactions of school leaders, followers and aspects of their situation’ (Spillane, 2006, p. 7). However, the success of this perspective depends on the commitments of all the actors involved, as Fullan (2007, p. 9) so aptly puts it: ‘The litmus test of all leadership is whether it mobilizes people’s commitment to putting their energy into actions designed to improve things. It is individual commitment, but above all it is collective mobilization.’ Spillane cautioned us against prematurely

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describing distributed leadership as an acknowledgment of multiple individual leaders and a leader at work in the school. Even though it is a prerequisite, it does not capture the complexity of the practice of distributed leadership. From a distributed perspective, leadership needs to be more than the person in the principal’s office. It needs to account for all the actors, regardless of their roles, minor or not, so long as it is a collective mobilization to improve a situation or an organizational change. Nevertheless, Hargreaves and Fink (2006) argue that leadership for one reason or another is always distributed. However, Spillane (2006) points out that patterns of distribution vary from one teaching context to another. It is the normative view of how leadership gets distributed in an organization that is the commonly identified characteristic of distributed leadership. From a normative standpoint, it is assumed that the more we encourage distributed leadership in our schools, the better they will be (White, Cooper, & Anwaruddin, 2016). However, there are also risks associated with decentralizing leadership because good intentions can sometime turn into autocratic self-centredness or into anarchy. In fact, in Hargreaves and Fink’s (2006, p. 113) view, distributed leadership occurs primarily through ‘structured means such as roles, commitments, and formal procedures at the bottom; then factors in cultural forms of distribution through communication, relationships and group life in the middle; and adds in political elements and assertiveness toward the top’. As a result, distributed leadership cannot be left on its own or it will run the risk of becoming distributed by default. As well, Hargreaves and Fink (2006) argue that there are times when autocratic measures are needed to make changes happen. The trend in distributed leadership is to recognize that it means different thing in different settings. It never looks the same over time or in different contexts, even within the same school. The school leader, administrator or teacher leaders need to be cognizant of the fact that

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‘distributed leadership can be suppressed, frustrated and prevented as well as supported, encouraged and maintained through the fine art of sensitive delegation’ (White, Cooper, & Anwaruddin, 2016, p. 7). Distributed leadership is also not about delegating leadership. In a school setting, for example, it is about teachers, parents and staff all contributing to the decision-making process (Chitpin, 2015). Hence, this collective decision contributes to achieving the desired outcomes. It can also be regarded as an acknowledgment and involvement of all the actors’ decisions in the school. Although, principals make countless numbers of decisions, some of which are inconsequential and programmed, such as the routine, lowlevel and quantitative decisions, it is the non-­programmed decisions, which are novel, unfamiliar, ambiguous and complex, that would be useful in welcoming some or all of the actors’ contributions, assessment and evaluation of the situation. To elaborate slightly the earlier expressed view of decision-making, Welch (2002) claims that a decision has three components: (1) a goal, (for example, how to raise the provincial Education Quality and Accountability Office Score (EQAO)), (2) options for attaining the goal (different tentative theories or solutions generated through distributed perspectives employed to solve the problem), and (3) the selection of the preferred option (all actors sharing the decisions as to which of their tentative solutions to try out). Although, educators might have similar levels of education and personal experience, they often understand or identify their problems differently. This is due to personal cognitive processing of personal knowledge, values and experiences. Also, due to time and information constraints, often one of the most plausible solutions would be chosen to solve the problem or attain the identified goal. The effectiveness of the solution depends on a variety of factors, such as how the decision-making processes are distributed, and the context in which it is applied.

The distributed perspective of leadership provides us with a view of who makes what decision in the work of leadership and, when used in conjunction with the OKGF, it also tells us how they are using their decisionmaking skills to achieve the desired results and whether they are effective or not and how they go about refining them when they are unable to solve the identified problem (Chitpin, 2015). The distributed leadership theory provides users with a frame to help them and others interpret and reflect on their practice for rethinking and revisiting it (Spillane, 2006, p. 87). Hence, the distributed leadership approach can act as a tool but not as a blueprint for transforming leadership practice (Argyris & Schön, 1974; Schön, 1988). According to Hughes and Busch (1991, p. 103): ‘Theories are most useful for influencing practice when they suggest new ways in which events and situations can be perceived.’ A distributed perspective may have practical as well as entailments for how we understand practice and, when combined with the OKGF, it provides the users with an analysis of how to improve their practice.

THE OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE GROWTH FRAMEWORK (OKGF): A DECISION-MAKING FRAMEWORK The Objective Knowledge Growth Framework, based on Popper’s (2002) critical rationalism, emphasizes that the dynamic growth of knowledge can be stimulated by problems relating to practice, such as educational inconsistencies and intellectual conflicts. According to Popper, accepted theories can only be disproven and must be replaced by newer, more acceptable theories. In this chapter, ‘theories’ is used to mean proposed solutions. Thus, practitioners are actively encouraged to seek information that contradicts formerly accepted theories. The OKGF, therefore, aims to refute erroneous theories in

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order to move knowledge forward by making users question established beliefs and mobilizing them to revise their theories in order to formulate new hypotheses. Crucial to this process is the users’ willingness to reflect upon and revise hitherto accepted but unworkable educational processes (policies and practices). This method strives to replace weak points in their decision-making practices with better processes. It proposes a process that helps principals identify and resolve complex issues generated in interactions with their followers. The framework enables them to learn how they resolve the identified issues by making them more explicit, hence the potential for bias is avoided. The three steps of the OKGF are sequential in general and can be followed in order, but not rigidly so. Sometimes, one needs to ‘double back’ on something one has learned. For example, in the course of gathering information to test a tentative solution or theory, one might discover that one needs to solve another problem before solving the identified problem. At other times, one would not require all the steps. For example, a

long-awaited promotion or proposal for increasing the budget probably would not necessarily require much distance before one accepts the offer. P1 → TT1 → EE1 → Pn Figure 26.1 depicts the cyclical process of identifying an initial problem (P1), proposing several tentative solutions that have been generated with the actors concerned to address or solve the problem by testing tentative (TT) solutions against information one can trust, and distancing oneself from shortterm emotion and conflicted feelings (EE) to make the best choice in solving the identified problem (Pn). The schema then iterates until a satisfactory solution is found. The comprehensive yet simple OKGF has repeatedly been shown to provide a process for teachers’ professional learning (Chitpin, 2011; Chitpin & Jones, 2015; Chitpin & Knowles, 2009; Chitpin & Simon, 2009, 2012; Simon, Chitpin, & Yahya, 2010). For example, when the teachers in Chitpin, S. (2010) study were interviewed in depth

Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF) • Cyclical process of identifying an initial problem (P1) • Proposing a tentative theory to address/solve problem (TT1) • Testing theories against experience/criticism (EE1) • Arrive at new problem identification process out of error elimination (Pn)

Pn: Problem identification after selfreflection

EE1: Error elimination

P1: Problem identification

TT1: Tentative theory

Figure 26.1  The cyclical process of identifying, testing and solving a problem

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and their teaching artifacts were analyzed in detail, the OKGF schema was recognized as a useful process for assisting their professional learning, regardless of their professional training, background or prior experience. Its focus is helping people explicitly examine: (1) how they identify the problem, (2) how they devise tentative theories through joint interactions with other actors in the school, and (3) how they apply the theories or solutions generated through joint interactions to the situation to eliminate errors, such as bias, to resolve the problem at hand. The OKGF is sensitive to experience, contexts and exigencies (Chitpin, 2006; Simon et al., 2010). Perhaps the best-known attempt at incorporating all three – experience, contexts and exigencies – was the model of the reflective practitioner developed by Schön (1983), who focused on broad procedures for specifying the conditions under which reflecting on and in practice could flourish. However, Schön’s work did not provide a structure to guide self-reflection or prompt learners to report on their process when solving problems. By formalizing the intuitive processes of reflection, analysis and resolution, the OKGF enables users to broaden their frame by seeking feedback, options, alternative choices from peers/followers, or by seeking someone who has solved the problems. Furthermore, trusting our ‘gut feelings’ (instinct) or seeking information that confirms our bias will not correct the problems, but following the OKGF process can boost one’s chances of getting where one wants to go. Additionally, the framework can systematically and simultaneously track the progression of challenges and opportunities employed by principals, so that the users learn the ‘shape’ (Heath & Heath, 2013) of the problem. Each strategy generated through joint interactions and employed becomes bolder and sharper in empirical content. Finally, the OKGF is cost-efficient and relatively easy to implement, as demonstrated

by the study conducted with a group of principals from an Eastern Ontario Board, Canada, on how they resolved organizational problems using the OKGF (Chitpin, 2015; Simon et  al., 2010) and a study with pre-service teachers on assessment issues, which was funded by the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (Chitpin, 2010, 2016; Chitpin & Evers, 2012). Participants are essentially asked to document the problems they encountered in their practice using the OKGF template. When the OKGF is adopted within a natural school setting as a process, it offers several advantages: participants are provided with a structured form to record the processes they used and their explanations of actions taken when faced with opportunities or challenges. While it is important to understand ‘what’ solutions leaders proposed in resolving their issues of practice, the ‘how’ they apply their proposed solutions to resolve the issues is equally important. The following two narratives serve as parables to illustrate dilemmas faced by school principals in their daily contexts. The stories illustrate the point that realworld administrative decisions do not always conform to theories about or expectations for analytical planning and rational thinking. While the application of rational/analytical approaches to certain organizational problems or issues can lead to effective decisions, dilemmas faced by principals are often messy, complex, ill-defined and not easily solved through algorithmic reason or the application of rules (Miranda, 2001), as evidenced by the stories provided by Shannon, a third-year principal in a small countryside elementary school in a small northeastern community, and by Fred, a first-year principal in a suburb of a large Southwestern metropolitan area. The scenarios presented may sound familiar to many school administrators. In fact, anyone who has occupied a leadership position may be able to identify with Shannon’s decision dilemmas. There is nothing new in these two situations as principals deal with similar issues every day. Shannon’s and Fred’s

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situations represent only brief examples of the difficult decisions faced by principals in their daily work.

APPLYING OKGF TO INFORM PRACTICE Lamoureux Public School is a K-7 school in the Northern District School Board. It is situated in a small community in the northeast of Ontario, Canada. Lamoureux comprised 158 students, nine teachers, two teaching assistants, an office administrator and a caretaker. The District had always been demographically stable, with few people moving in and out. Many of the teachers had themselves been students in the School District and they were considered to be an important part of the community. Furthermore, they were regarded with respect and the teachers felt valued. For example, the community appreciated the extra-curricular activities offered in the school and praised the teachers for their hard work and commitment to their students. The morale in the school was high. It was not unusual for teachers to socialize together on the weekend, after school and during the summer. There was an informal policy that teachers adhered to which was ‘not to talk shop and complain about work’. Shannon was promoted to Lamoureux after two years of principalship in a mid-size urban school in the same School District. She had previously held a Math specialist’s position and had a track record for boosting test scores in her previous underachieving schools. For the past three years, Lamoureux’s convivial spirit was tested due to the Ministry of Education’s implementation of the provincial Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) assessments, which are administered to students in Grades 3 and 6 in reading, writing and mathematics. Since the Ministry had implemented the new curriculum standards and assessment, Lamoureux had performed below the required standard in all three areas

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(reading, writing and mathematics). The previous principal and all the teachers felt pressure to increase the EQAO scores, but no one seemed to have a solution, and there were no easy scapegoats. The principal decided that it was a good time to retire. Shannon envisioned her role not only as a principal, but also as a resource person who could assist in the classroom, model lessons, and promote creative/innovative teaching practices. Her educational experiences in different capacities taught her that trust, or the lack of it, is one of the key ingredients in educational decision-making. She said: I am very green to the school and I feel that the first thing I need to do is to get to meet the teachers individually and build a trusting relationship with them before I can do my job. I have two teachers teaching Math. One teaches K-3 and the other teaches 4–7. We have 10 and 21 students in each class. I am a believer in differentiated instruction and I want my teachers to utilize Math to 10 kids in a grade K-3 split is one thing. Teaching Math in grade 4–7 split with 21 kids is another. The teachers have been fantastic teaching split classes. But, I can see that they are starting to worry somewhat. I spoke with both of the teachers about having an in-house literacy and numeracy specialist to support them with their work. They appear to be receptive so far. I had a few questions and one of the questions was ‘What do I do to motivate my teachers so that students continue to do well?’ The idea of how to motivate the teachers so that students keep learning is high on my list.

Like Shannon, many school administrators take stock using data to inform them of the changes that are happening in their school and they also know that these data tell only part of the story of the school’s learning needs. Shannon spoke individually with each teacher to create trust and confidence with and among teachers to accelerate changes in the school. In the words of Tom Friedman in the New York Times: You can’t have a democracy without trust and you can’t have citizens without trust – without trust that everyone will be treated with equality, no matter who is in power, without trust and shared vision in what kind of society people are trying to build. (Friedman, 2012, p. 14)

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She also rejected the narrow frame of seeking how to only motivate the ones teaching Math. Instead, she started exploring alternative ways of supporting all teachers in their continuing learning so that, in the process, she not only motivated those who were teaching Grade 4–7 split, but she was able to extend this to all teachers by providing them with concrete and tangible solutions to meet the needs of all students in the school. Student learning depends largely on the learning of teachers, which means that Shannon needs to focus on supporting the learning of individual teachers in her school by identifying individual strengths and areas of development. Shannon asked her staff for feedback as she planned for her staff learning experiences. She received several feedback comments, including: • Is there some way you can get your primary teachers to work with junior/intermediate ­teachers? • They can get the older students involved in some type of blended learning community that might assist with this. Could the Grade 4 and 5 students work with the primary students on reading buddies or a junior-level independent task and teach 5, 6 and 7 Math and then switch. • Is your special education teaching component always linked to literacy? Perhaps it could be moved to Mathematics as literacy is more fluid and might be more easily taught to such a diverse group.

These strategies reminded Shannon that in her leadership role, she needed to provide teachers with ‘an answer’ or help them to find one. They needed to see her as a trusting principal who is on board with them to provide learning experiences that will assist them in developing their own knowledge and skills (Breidenstein et al., 2012). Shannon’s leadership practice focuses not only on her as a formal leader, but also on the teachers and their situations and contexts. We also note the multiple individuals who took responsibility for leading change in teaching practices. It is the collective interactions between the principal Shannon and her teachers and their situation that are paramount (Spillane, 2006).

The value of using the OKGF process is that it focuses Shannon’s attention on things that she might have missed; options she might have overlooked or information that she might have resisted; and preparations she might have neglected had she not involved all the actors in her school. For example, instead of focusing only on motivating her split Grade 4–7 teachers, she focused her attention on the needs of all her teachers. In particular, Shannon’s ensured that split grade teachers had an opportunity to work collaboratively together to find strategies that would meet the needs of the split grade students. In this way, she dodged the confirmation bias by switching from ‘autolight’ to manual spotlight (Heath & Heath, 2013), that is, by adjusting her focus on the split grade teachers to meeting the needs of all the teachers. OKGF helped to illuminate more strategic spots by seeking feedback from her teachers, thus shedding light over a broader landscape that would otherwise be hidden into the corners. She got some distance from her short-term emotions by interacting with her teachers. She made her decisions based on two factors that she cared the most about: motivating her teachers by supporting their professional learning and maximizing student success. Finally, she avoided overconfidence by looking more critically at her solutions and the assumptions generated in joint interactions with her teachers. Contrast Shannon transition into the principal’s office at Lamoureux School with Fred’s transition into the principalship at Fauteux school. It is a K-8 school situated in a suburb of a large Southwestern metropolitan area with a population of 654 students, primarily made up of immigrants: 40% South East Asian, 45% African American and 5% White. Nearly 45% of the students are identified as ‘at risk’ (a number that crosses all demographic boundaries), and there are high absence rates. In addition, many students in this area historically do not finish high school, often due to the family’s low income and low socio-economic status.

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When Fred arrived at Fauteux in the middle of the year, the staff at Fauteux were dubious of any new principal, having experienced an unfortunate, climatic and unannounced exit of the previous principal, who had left on a medical leave, never to be seen again. Since the previous principal’s departure, Mr Murray, a retired principal, was appointed to the school. He was a bright and charismatic principal who was well liked by the staff and students, and thus did not see the need to establish new organizational routines and structure. During his short stay at Fauteux school, only 18% of its students scored at or above the national norms on EQAO tests in reading and mathematics. Mr Murray did not see the need to push teachers to implement the common curriculum because he was only going to be there only a few months. Things began to change when Fred took over the position of school principal. One of Fred’s teacher recalled: ‘I remember the first day Fred walked in the school and we had a meeting. In that meeting, he put forth his goal for coming to Fauteux and what we need to do to ensure that we are growing academically. Fred’s previous administrative experiences had been in a school where there were collective interactions among the principal, vice-principal and teachers. The leadership practice of Fred’s previous school was generated in the interactions of all of these actors. Fred’s immediate reaction was to cultivate a collaborative culture among teachers by setting tasks that involved the teachers’ working together. For example, he solicited the help of the literacy and numeracy consultant to help him put in place a group of teachers to transform Fauteux school. He said: ‘The first thing I did was to seek the help of the board literacy and numeracy consultant, Mrs Smith, because I did not have the time to be involved in the day-to-day planning of the Ontario Curriculum while getting to know the staff, students and community.’ Fred knew the importance of providing the right and necessary tools and routines of various hues to the teachers so they could do their work

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properly and effectively. Even though he is the central character in the story of Fauteux transformation, what he did in the school and how he did it depended on the roles that his vice-principal and teachers took, formally or informally. This was in no way undermining the vital role he played in the school leadership. In other words, Fred wanted to work with his staff to construct an instructional vision, develop his teacher knowledge, procure resources and build a community of practice. However, he was also aware of the fact that half of the teachers at Fauteux had been teaching in the school for decades and he overheard conversations in the hallways and in the staff room that the veteran teachers were not keen in engaging in discussions or conversations about how to improve the school EQAO test scores. His dilemma was how to use Mrs Smith’s instructional expertise to improve the school EQAO scores. The OKGF provided him with a structure to do so. His identified problem was ‘Would the teachers be open to the suggestions of the consultant or would her assistance be perceived as a threat?’ His tentative solution was to work with the consultant by reviewing the curriculum and identifying instructional strategies that would help the school improve its EQAO scores. The challenges inherent in this process were that both Mrs Smith and Fred were new to the teachers. In addition, the teachers still felt the deep sense of loss over the departure of Mr Murray, the retired, charismatic and well-liked administrator. However, with Mrs Smith’s warm personality, boundless energy and knowledge of high-quality literacy instructions, some of the novice teachers began to gradually tap into her expertise and started to trust her. However, the veteran teachers continued to be resistant to change. On the next Professional Development day, Fred asked Mrs Smith to present a workshop on instructional mentoring for all the teachers. As the teachers felt more comfortable and began to trust Mrs Smith, the latter used her instructional mentoring skills to help move

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the teachers forward, guided by the Ontario curriculum standards and the shared understandings of best practice. Soon, under Mrs Smith’s instructional leadership, all the teachers at Fauteux modelled for each other good instructional practice and observed each other’s practice so as to diagnose their problems of practice. The teachers also helped each other analyzed their student work and identified students’ misconceptions. As the teachers began to work more closely with one another and felt supported by Fred’s leadership, he began to have difficult conversations with his staff. He would ask his teachers what they had learned from their teaching and how those insights had guided their decision-­making in the classroom. The OKGF facilitated Fred’s exploration of alternative solutions or theories, such as eliciting Mrs Smith’s instructional leadership to help his teachers to improve the school test scores, while eliminating errors or weaknesses in his proposed solutions to support the professional development of his teachers, and for the teachers to support each other at the school. The framework also helped Fred to search for evidence that contradicted his initial beliefs, that the teachers would not be receptive to his suggestions and/or would perceive Mrs Smith as a threat. He was able to overcome his biases and this led to satisfactory solutions. Another feature of the OKGF is that it allows school leaders to multitrack (Heath & Heath, 2013), that is, to consider several options/solutions simultaneously when faced with a problem of practice, such as dealing with the high absence rate, as evidenced by Fred’s posting in Chitpin and Jones (2015, p. 396): What do we do with students [who] have high absence rates in elementary school? This year we have a student who has diabetes and has missed 12 days so far. The school attendance counselor is on the case, but she has said that if the student has a medical issue/condition, there is not much she can do. Even though there is a medical condition, the student has missed a few days for hockey or a few days here and there because he was not ‘feeling well.’ On these days he would be seen by

others in the community playing hockey, even though he was not present at school. She, the counselor, has had a few discussions with the mother about the situation. So other options that could be considered: (1) Suspension for truancy? Well, you want him here; (2) $200.00 fine? Well, most judges throw these cases out; (3) Family Catholic Services? At what point should you refer? Any other ideas here?

The problem faced by Fred is also echoed by a high school principal, Steve, in a study by Chitpin and White (2012). The thoughts of Steve, a secondary principal, are summed up below: Not just an elementary school problem as we deal with the same issue at secondary. Missed days quickly add up and can impact academic success when on a semester system. In most cases the hands of the Attendance Counselor are tied after she meets with parents and warns of possible action. Over the past few years we have begun sending home attendance letters (once a student has reached 10 or more absences in any given period). The letter discusses the importance of regular attendance, the fact that a medical note will be needed for any extended absences and that the Attendance Counselor may need to get involved, and that if the absences continue then the credit for the course may be in jeopardy. Once the letters are received by parents our phones ring non-stop for the next few days as they offer excuses and look for some sort of explanation. This has led to some great dialogue and, for the most part, has assisted with getting attendance back on track. (Chitpin & White, 2012, p. 346)

Through joint interactions to arrive at a solution, individual principals are able to increase the pool of possible solutions to overcome the problem, thus avoiding a small sliver of the spectrum of options. Moreover, involving all the actors in the school in generating alternatives and comparing them helps principals and staff to understand what is feasible and what is not, and what variables are involved. That understanding provides the confidence needed for principals to make a decision for the school because the solutions were generated through collective interactions and not just through actions. Also, considering multiple

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alternatives seems to undercut the politics because all actors are involved and not just the few. Moreover, when principals have more options, they become less invested in any one of them, which frees them up to change positions as they have new information (Heath & Heath, 2013). When principals weigh multiple options, they also have a built-in fallback plan (Eisenhardt, 1989). In the example provided by Steve, his school sent home attendance letters to parents and required a medical note for students who exceeded more than 10 missed school days. In Wales, attendance is a key issue (Reid, 2008) and there are legal implications (including imprisonment) for parents who continually do not ensure that their children attend school. By extending the OKGF process to involve an international learning community, Steve would have been able to extend his thinking even more laterally. However, there are also drawbacks associated with involving all actors in the organizations and/ or distributing and multi-tasking. It takes time and is one of the many reasons why not all organizations or leaders embrace the distributed perspective of leadership (Eisenhardt, 1989). Another common reason is that when consumers are faced with many alternatives, they have difficulty coming to a consensus. For instance, a study by Iyengar and Lepper (2000) on consumers’ behaviour when they are faced with many choices of a product in a grocery store, they found that consumers had fun sampling the 24 flavours of the jam presented to them, but had difficulty picking the flavour they liked to buy. However, most organizations do not have 24 choices or alternatives to choose from when they are faced with a problem. Instead, they are more likely to have one or two solutions, for example, the whether or not to send the attendance letters home. Consulting all the actors or players or distributing leadership in the schools or organizations to find satisfactory solutions for all can be difficult, time-consuming and may not be always feasible (Heath & Heath, 2013). However, when leadership practice is

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viewed as the interactions of the principal and his or her staff, and not just the actions of the principal (Spillane, 2006, p. 4), more options are more likely to be uncovered, offering more possible solutions, which translate into more choices, collaboration and cooperation. Like many other principals, Shannon and Fred believed that having a framework to help them to be effective in their leadership roles is needed with the additional responsibilities which impact on their decision-making in relation to teaching, learning and school improvement in general. While they argued that mentoring has been vital with respect to the technical aspects of the position, they also believed that leadership is about joint interactions with students, staff, parents and community to accomplish the goal they set out to achieve. The practice of selling the vision of improving the school test scores no longer resides solely on the actions of the school principals, but on the interactions of various actors in the schools, as evidenced by Shannon and Fred’s narratives. Furthermore, having a robust structured framework, such as the OKGF, provides the principals with a more comprehensible description of their decision-making process and how they solve their identified problem in a distributed perspective of leadership. The framework also acts as a safety rail for them.

TRUSTING THE OKGF PROCESS IN A DISTRIBUTED PERSPECTIVE OF LEADERSHIP The roles and responsibilities of principals have radically changed over the last decade and the burdens placed upon the shoulders of these individuals are increasing (DarlingHammond et  al., 2007). They are not only managers, heads of finance, efficient schedulers and rigorous followers of bureaucratic regulations, but they are also curriculum leaders, reflective practitioners and builders of collaborative cultures. They are also tasked

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with the responsibility to forge powerful visions for their schools and to lead significant organizational change (DarlingHammond et al., 2007; Fahey, 2011; Marzano et al., 2005; Wagner & Kegan, 2006; Waters & Cameron, 2007). Given their changing roles, it becomes clear that leadership practice can no longer involve one person, by necessity, and it is difficult to imagine how things could be otherwise. Expecting the principal to single-handedly lead efforts to improve instruction in a school is impractical. Leadership is often portrayed as what the school principal does and where other sources of leadership are ignored or treated as secondary or unimportant because they do not come from the principal’s office (Spillane, 2006). In this chapter, we show how a distributed perspective of leadership, when used in conjunction with the Objective Knowledge Growth Framework, can be effective in assisting principals in solving their problems of practice. It shows how principals and teachers interact with each other to come up with solutions and how they reality-test the different options they have generated. In addition, the OKGF, under distributed leadership, enables principals and teachers to think about a familiar phenomenon in new and different ways from the conventional school leadership model. In other words, the OKGF assists principals to become ‘unstuck’ in a narrow frame when faced with tough problems. It is often hard for them to recognize it because they are viewing the situation from an insider’s perspective. On the other hand, when they view the situation from the outside, as an advisor, as evidenced by Shannon’s example, they are able to see more clearly what may be limiting their choices. Thus Shannon, for example, was able to decide that she needed to support all of her teachers’ learning to maximize student success. In Fred’s case, working with his literacy and numeracy consultant, and by consulting with his teachers, he was able to get his teachers on board to share their teaching insights, and this guided their decision-making in the classroom.

The OKGF is not a framework that discharges answers when you input the problems. It acts as a safety rail to guide users in the right direction. Put bluntly, it is a process that allows users to apply their theories or solutions when solving problems. The process does not require a lengthy amount of time and the OKGF provides the process for users to be bolder and wiser in solving problems. Different school leaders (principals plus teachers) will (and must) have different answers to the same problems, as evidenced by Fred’s and Shannon’s problems. Lumby and English (2009) differentiate between ‘routinization’ and ‘ritualization’. They argue that ‘They are not the same. The former erases the need for human agency while the latter requires it’ (Lumby & English, 2009, p. 112). The OKGF process, therefore, will not provide school leaders with the right answers to their dilemmas. Because two school leaders facing the same problems might use polar opposite theories/ solutions/choices/options and they might be right in doing so due to contextual factors. Similarly, in a busy day or week, school leaders will be inclined to take the shortest distance between two points in the decisionmaking process: problem identification to problem resolution. The implementation of the OKGF may sometimes seem to introduce unnecessary points along this route and will not be labouriously applied in all decision-making situations. The instinctively pragmatic solution will often produce effective results but, in order to reduce irrational outcomes, the systematic approach employed by the OKGF is preferable. The OKGF needs to be managed, implemented and sustained locally if it is to provide the maximum benefits for school decision-makers. If the OKGF process enables decision-makers to find good, sound solutions to their problems by helping them to distance themselves from their emotions and confirmation biases, which often distract them from solving problems, then its use will have been worthwhile.

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REFERENCES Argyris, C., & Schön, D. (1974) Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Argyris, C., & Schön, D. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Argyris, C., & Schön, D. (1996). Organizational learning II: Theory, method and practice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Breidenstein, A., Fahey, K., Glickman, C., & Hensley, F. (2012). Leading for powerful learning: A guide for instructional leaders. New York: Teachers College Press. Chitpin, S. (2006). The use of reflective journal in initial teacher training: A Popperian analysis. Reflective Practice, 7(1), 73–86. Chitpin, S. (2010). A critical approach for building teacher knowledge. The International Journal of Education, 2(1), 1–14. Chitpin, S. (2011). Can mentoring and reflection cause change in teaching practice? A professional development journey of a Canadian teacher educator. Professional Development in Education, 37(2), 225–240. Chitpin, S. (2015). Capturing principals’ ­decision-making processes in an online professional learning community. In S. Chitpin & C. Evers (Eds.), Decision-making in educational leadership: Principles, policies and practices (pp. 41–56). New York: Routledge. Chitpin, S. (2016). Leading school improvement: Using Popper’s theory of learning. Educational Philosophical and Theory, 3(1), 190–203. DOI:10.1080/23265507.2016. 1217742 Chitpin, S., & Evers, C. W. (2012). Using Popper’s philosophy of science to build pre-­ service teachers’ knowledge. International Journal of Education, 4(3), 144–156. Chitpin, S., & Evers, C. W. (Eds.). (2015). ­Decision-making in educational leadership. New York: Routledge. Chitpin, S., & Jones, K. (2015). Leadership in a performative context: A framework for decision making. Educational Philosophy and Theory. Special Issue: New Frontiers in Educational Leadership Theory, 47(4), 387–401. Chitpin, S., & Knowles, J. G. (2009). A principal’s view on the use of the Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF) as a

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reflection tool. In M. P. Caltone (Ed.), Handbook of lifelong learning developments (pp. 1–15). New York: Nova Science Publishers. Chitpin, S., & Simon, M. (2009). Even if no one looked at it, it was important for my own development: Pre-service teacher perceptions of professional portfolios. The Australian Journal of Education, 53(3), 197–227. Chitpin, S., & Simon, M. (2012). Capturing problem-solving processes using critical rationalism. Teacher Education & Practice, 25(2), 302–319. Chitpin, S. & White, R. E. (2012). Self-Directed professional development for educational leaders: using the objective knowledge growth framework. The Scholar-PractitionerQuarterly, 6(4). 329–349. Darling-Hammond, L., LaPointe, M., Meyerson, D., Orr, M. T., & Cohen, A. (2007). Preparing school leaders for a changing world: Lessons from exemplary leadership development programs. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Stanford Educational Leadership Institute. Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Making fast strategic decisions in high velocity environments. Academy of Management Journal, 32, 543–76. Evers, C. W. (2007). Lifelong learning and knowledge: Towards a general theory of professional inquiry. In D. N. Aspin (Ed.), Philosophical perspectives on lifelong learning (pp. 173–188). Dordrecht: Springer. Fahey, K. M. (2011). Still learning about leading: A leadership critical friends group. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 6(11), 1–35. Friedman, T. (2012). The impulses behind freedom. New York Times, p. 14. Fullan, M. (2007). Leading in a culture of change (revised ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Gronn, P. (2003). The new work of educational leaders: Changing leadership practice in an era of school reform. London: Paul Chapman. Grubb, W. N., Flessa, J., Tredway, L., & Stern, J. (2003). A job too big for one: Multiple principals and other approaches to school leadership. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.

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Hallinger, P., & Heck, R. H. (1996). Reassessing the principal’s role in school effectiveness: A review of the empirical research. Educational Administration Quarterly, 32(1), 27–31. Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D. (2006). Sustainable leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Heap, S. H., Hollis, M., Sugden, R., & Weale, A. (1992). The theory of choice: A critical guide. Oxford: Blackwell. Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2013). Decisive. Toronto: Random House Canada. Hoy, W. K., & Miskel, C. G. (2012). Educational administration: Theory, research, and practice (9th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill. Hoy, W. K., & Tarter, J. (1995). Administrators solving the problems of practice: Decisionmaking concepts, cases, and consequences. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Hughes, M., & Busch, T. (1991). Theory and research as catalysts for change. In W. W. Walker, R. Farquhar, & M. Hughes (Eds.), Advancing Education: School Leadership in Action (pp. 86–124). London: Falmer Press. Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 995–1006. Lumby, J., & English, F. (2009, April–June). From simplicism to complexity in leadership identity and preparation: Exploring the lineage and dark secrets. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 12, 95–114. Marzano, R., Waters, T., & McNulty, T. (2005). School leadership that works: From research to results. Alexandria VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Miranda, T. (2001). Rationality and critical education. Available at: www.educaco.pro.br/ rationalith-critical.htm Peterson, M. (2009). An introduction to decision theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Popper, K. (2002). Conjectures and refutations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Reid, K. (2008). National Behaviour and Attendance Review (NBAR) report. Cardiff: Welsh Assembly Government. Retrieved 14 November 2013 from: http://wales.gov.uk/dcells/ publications/publications/reports/3773934/ nbarreport?lang=en Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Schön, D. (1988). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Simon, H. A. (1945). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organization. New York: The Free Press. Simon, M., Chitpin, S., & Yahya, R. (2010). Preservice teachers’ thinking about student assessment. International Journal of Education, 2(2), 1–22. Spillane, J. P. (2006). Distributed leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Wagner, T., & Kegan, R. (2006). Change leadership: A practical guide to transforming our schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Waters, T., & Cameron, G. (2007). The balanced leadership framework: Connecting vision with action. Denver, CO: Mid-­continent Research for Education and Learning. Welch, D. A. (2002). Decisions, decisions: The art of effective decision making. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. White, R., Cooper, K., & Anwaruddin, S. (2016). Canadian contexts in educational leadership: A hermeneutic approach to distributed leadership for teachers’ professional learning. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 20(6), 1–15. Zey, M. (Ed.). (1992). Decision making: Alternatives to rational choice models. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

27 Lesson Study: Curriculum Management for 21st-century Skills Eric C. K. Cheng and John Chi-kin Lee

INTRODUCTION The rapid expansion of knowledge, and ways of acquiring knowledge, are influencing the school curriculum dramatically. We educate for the benefit of the individual, but societies also require educators to develop a knowledgeable workforce to support their economies. To this end, curriculum reforms have been proposed and implemented in many countries. One area receiving ever-increasing emphasis is the development of 21st-century skills to help students not only succeed in their school education but also become a productive part of the workforce. In today’s world, students need to develop complex problemsolving abilities as well as master how to learn through digital networks (Griffin, McGraw, & Care, 2012). They also have to know how to plan their own learning, work collaboratively and assess their own levels of mastery. Many countries including those in Asia have made these generic or 21st century skills part of the school curriculum (Kennedy

& Lee, 2010, 2018; Lee and Caldwell, 2011). Such initiatives include ‘Learning to Learn’ in Hong Kong (Education Commission, 1997; Curriculum Development Council, 2001), ‘Thinking Schools, Learning Nation’ in Singapore (Saravanan, 2005), and ‘Integrated Curriculum Reform’ in Japan (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2001). Teachers are charged with helping students acquire these 21st-­century skills, but there is often a gap between the level of knowledge needed to implement the curriculum and the knowledge possessed by teachers. That is one reason many countries have faced persistent difficulty in implementing such curriculum reforms which embed and integrate 21st century skills. Challenges for implementing a curriculum of 21st-century skills include not only teacher competencies, but also deficiencies in instructional design and the lack of a platform to manage and align curriculum, instruction and assessment practices. Schools need to develop a knowledge creation platform that encourages

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teachers to work together to develop sustainable pedagogical knowledge and manage a curriculum that includes 21st-century skills. Teachers, in turn, have to cultivate the habit of reflective practices and master the pedagogical knowledge to achieve intended learning objectives. Yet, school leaders and teachers rarely have the capability to design the lesson plan for such curriculum implementation (Chu, 2014). For this reason, research into how to strengthen schools’ abilities to plan, implement, evaluate and monitor the implementation of the curriculum is crucial. There is no single definition of 21st-­century skills. The range and scope are so broad that any skills essential for navigating life in the 21st century may fall within the classification. The skills needed by students to compete in the global workforce and economy include thinking, collaboration, adaptability, initiative, and effective written and oral communication (Wanner, 2008). Griffin, McGaw, and Care (2012) have also emphasized that the skills required by students for employment in a digital age include complex problem solving, collaborative problem solving, and learning through digital networks. It is not surprising that, in different countries and societies, the focus of the curriculum in terms of 21st-century skills varies considerably. In 2010, the Singapore Ministry of Educat­ ion introduced a new framework for 21stcentury competencies, influenced by the Assessment and Teaching of 21st-Century Skills project, which identified and classified them. Singapore’s framework highlights competencies related to both the internal cognitive processes of students and their interactions with the outside world. The Singapore Ministry of Education (2015) also identifies certain core values related to civic education as central to the learner. In Hong Kong, curriculum reform has long focused on nurturing whole-person development and lifelong learning skills to prepare students for success in a knowledge-based, technologicallyadvanced, increasingly-globalized world (Curriculum Development Council, 2015,

2017). Responding to contextual changes in economic, scientific, technological, social, and political realities over the past decade, Hong Kong also, in 2014, launched a new reform phase called Learning to Learn 2.0 (and later 2.0+) to renew and update the school curriculum on a continual basis. It introduces three clusters of generic skills – Basic Skills, Thinking Skills, and Personal and Social Skills – that students must develop to meet the challenges of the 21st century (Curriculum Development Council, 2015, p. 6). Finland’s focus on 21st-century skills emphasizes meta-cognition and the development of students’ abilities to learn to learn (Ahonen & Kankaanranta, 2015). The core curriculum guides teachers in how to collaborate to develop local curricula and assessments that encourage students to be active learners who can find, analyze and use information to solve problems in novel situations. The Finnish curriculum also defines goals for teachers, such as encouraging students to learn through peer interaction, to take responsibility for their own learning, and to develop strategies for applying skills in new situations. Such new version of the curriculum adds to the initial document by mandating that students improve their ability to collaborate and that both teachers and students increase their knowledge and use of information communications technology (ICT) to become autonomous learners. Against this backdrop and call for integrating 21st century into the school curriculum, different approaches to curriculum and teacher development are explored with the view to enhancing knowledge management and sustainable curriculum implementation. One of these approaches is Lesson Study which is now discussed.

LESSON STUDY Lesson Study has a long history in Japan (Watanabe, 2002; Yoshida, 1999) and has spread rapidly throughout the United States

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(Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). There has also been a steady growth in places such as Hong Kong (Ng, Liao and Lee, 2010), Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Indonesia, Sweden, the UK and the Netherlands. The process of Lesson Study involves a group of teachers meeting regularly for a few months to a year to work on the design, implementation, testing and improvement of one or several research lessons (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999, p. 110). Lesson Study can be defined as action research conducted by teachers, in which they work collaboratively to reflect on the effectiveness of their lessons and improve their teaching. It may also be conceptualized as a professional development model enabling teachers to develop greater awareness of, and deeper insights into, learners and their needs. The aims of the research lesson are to examine and identify teaching methods for curriculum implementation to enhance student learning. The primary objective of Lesson Study is to improve the overall quality of teaching, through demonstrating, sharing and reflecting on teaching techniques, by teachers. Through Lesson Study, teachers adopt the action research approach to research their own practices. Teachers become more aware of, and responsive to, pupils’ pre-existing level of knowledge and more able to consciously analyze the learning goals of a lesson in relation to what their pupils know.

The PDCA Cycle in Lesson Study Lesson Study essentially consists of four steps: Plan–Do–Check–Action (PDCA) (Sarkar & Matoba, 2005). The PDCA cycle is a continuous quality improvement method developed by William Edwards Deming (Dahlgaard, Kristensen, & Kanji, 2007; Sallis, 2005). The central practice of the PDCA cycle is the iteration process to attain the target through its repeated execution. This PDCA cycle incorporates the main and critical learning activities of Lesson Study,

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which help teachers acquire the knowledge to implement the curriculum and improve teaching competency. • The planning stage involves setting learning objectives regarding school goals and how best to equip students with 21st-century skills. • The doing stage involves formulating a strategic and coherent teaching plan and curriculum, then implementing the curriculum and actualizing the lesson plan. • The checking stage involves evaluating the effectiveness of the overall lesson with assessment tools and rubrics. • The action stage involves improving the curriculum and teaching strategies that should be completed within the school year.

Repetition of the PDCA cycle can bring teachers closer to intended curriculum objectives. The systematic process of inquiry, which involves collaborative lesson planning, research lesson implementation, reflective evaluation of the research lesson, and curriculum implementation, is central to the PDCA cycle. The collaborative lesson planning of Lesson Study includes the process of choosing the topic and defining learning objectives that align with the school curriculum. Teachers identify the problems they encounter in their daily teaching as the learning objective of their research lesson. The steps involve collating students’ conceptual understanding of the learning objectives and the skills they need to develop. This helps the teachers identify the student needs to facilitate instructional designing. The learning objective refers to what is being learned in the research lesson, and how the learner makes sense of it. The assessment of the knowing of a learner encompasses different ways of seeing the learning objective: learning takes place when one’s way of seeing changes. This planning stage allows teachers to select appropriate approaches and teaching strategies for lesson planning. The implementation of the research lesson is central to the work of Lesson Study.

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It takes learning beyond talk about practice, and into the realm of learning-by-doing. The research lesson is taught by one of the teachers who planned the lesson, and the teaching process is observed by other teachers. The lesson is also videotaped for later analysis. A post-lesson conference takes place immediately after the research lesson, during which the group can reflect on the lesson itself, share views, and give suggestions on how to improve it. Other teachers then teach the revised research lesson to different classes. Again, the research lesson will be videotaped, thoroughly discussed, and the plan revised. This process is repeated until all the teachers have taught the research lesson to their classes. Engaging in the research lesson of Lesson Study and then coming together to share opinion enables the group members to learn from one another. This also shows the way in which teaching practices make a difference by provoking higher-order reflection in the teachers implementing the research lesson plan. The reflective evaluation stage occurs at the same time as the implementation stage. Reflective evaluation of the research lesson takes place throughout the process and involves data triangulation of test scores, student interview data and teaching enactment from the video clip. The teaching enactment is the analysis and interpretation obtained from the triangulation of the video records and the data from pre-lesson tests and postlesson tests. Teachers are provided with the video record of the research lessons in the different cycles and the test scores that reflect student learning outcomes. By triangulating the approaches of teachers and the performance of students, the teachers may come up with suggestions to further improve the research lesson, revise the lesson design and implement the revised form. This evidencebased or data-driven evaluation encourages a powerful reflective process. The pedagogical knowledge and good practices created through the Lesson Study will then be applied in teaching and learning.

After completing the process of inquiry, teachers are required to reflect on what they have learned through the Lesson Study and externalize personal knowledge in their presentations by codifying tacit knowledge as explicit knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). Then, the whole experience is written up and a presentation, including video clips of the research lessons, is prepared. Lesson Study help to transform knowledge into a tangible, shareable, durable and transferable resource for curriculum implementation.

The PDCA Cycle for Teacher Collaborative Learning Through the PDCA cycle, a collaborative learning platform is developed, through which teachers inquire into the students’ understanding of what is taught, share and testify to their own personal practical knowledge, and disseminate their pedagogical findings. The PDCA cycle allows teachers to intellectually engage with what they have learned through collaborative work. They learn collaboratively and have equal status in knowledge-sharing. They create a team to share a teaching topic, a set of challenges in terms of student learning, and a passion for the topic. Together they deepen their knowledge and expertise in teaching. Research shows that Lesson Study creates a collegial learning culture for teaching that prioritizes discussion among teachers rather than individualism as they observe and discuss each other’s practice. There are correlations between the methods of Lesson Study and the indicators of a professional learning community in elementary and middle schools (Chichibu & Kihara 2013). Cheng (2009) has explored the mechanism of Lesson Study in enhancing teacher learning by adopting communities of practice as the analytical framework. He found that the collaborative features of Lesson Study encourage teachers to create shared knowledge, values and beliefs, and help them build their pedagogical content

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knowledge (PCK). Cooperative learning supports teachers in practising the theories postulated by others and helps them become more reflective practitioners (Schön, 1983). Elliott (2008) found that collaborative lesson planning could help teachers adopt variation theory as a conceptual framework for their lesson design (Elliott, 2008, p. 140). The plan-process of the Lesson Study involves procedures to identify student learning problems and thinking processes by interviewing them or using diagnostic tests. Learning problems can also be discovered by listening carefully to their responses during the lesson. These procedures not only help teachers identify gaps in students’ prior knowledge, or possible misconceptions and difficulties the students may have, but also the teachers’ own previous shortcomings in dealing with the selected topic. The teachers’ understanding of students’ learning difficulties tells them what they need to focus on when dealing with the topic (Lo, Chik, & Pang, 2006). Lesson Study therefore influences teachers’ sensitivity to students’ learning difficulties, students’ needs and their own conceptual and practical understanding of assessment (Elliott, 2008). The do-process of Lesson Study involves the lesson implementation, in which explicit knowledge is internalized and becomes implicit knowledge and is then reconstructed through reflection as personal knowledge (Kolb, 1984). This enhances teaching competency. The checkprocess in Lesson Study allows teachers to learn from evaluating what they have planned and done, by reflecting on the discrepancy between intended and enacted learning objectives, as well as by examining the relationship between enacted learning objectives and what the students have actually learned. The research lessons have provided teachers with successful experiences in internalizing their knowledge via teaching practice. Lesson Study can create strategies to equip teachers with an inquiry lens that can enhance competency. The outcomes of conducting Lesson Study include knowing how

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to analyze learner characteristics and tasks to be learned and identify learner entry skills; how to define learning objectives and select an instructional approach; how to develop instructional or training materials; how to implement the lesson and deliver those instructional materials; and how to evaluate the lesson plan and recommend materials that achieve the desired goals. Research shows that Lesson Study can enhance teachers’ pedagogical capabilities and provide a powerful reflective practice for their professional development (Pang, 2006). Many evaluative studies of Lesson Study claim that participant teaching competencies benefit from understanding student learning difficulties (Elliott, 2008; Lo et  al., 2006), enhancing teachers’ abilities on PCK (Elliott, 2008; Nilsson, 2014), and improving instructional design (Cheng, 2014; Holmqvist 2011). Lesson Study opens up new directions for the development of pedagogy, through which teachers can discover what can be achieved in different conditions and with different resource levels. That, in turn, further enhances their subject knowledge and pedagogical skills as well as the reflective process. Lesson Study creates a channel through which a professional learning community for knowledge sharing can be created (Doig & Groves, 2011). The knowledge created through Lesson Study can be applied to fill in the knowledge gap for effective curriculum implementation.

The PDCA Cycle Creates Knowledge for Curriculum Implementation A growing amount of research suggests that the PDCA cycle in Lesson Study supports the growth of highly contextualized forms of knowledge that are directly relevant to, and find their use and application in, teachers’ classroom practice in alignment with the curriculum. The development of a professional knowledge-base for teaching may be an even

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more complicated endeavour than generally recognized, since Lesson Study entails the development of the knowers as well as the knowledge, and the development of communities of practice as well as individual teachers (Lewis, 2009). Teachers’ knowledge of practice is visible in the process as it enables relevant questions to be addressed and subtle signals from students to be taken into account. The analysis of teachers’ practice ensures that the activities used are suitable for the students. It also challenges teachers’ assumptions about teaching and learning and allows them to be discussed (Thorsten, 2015). Lesson Study creates practical teaching knowledge for addressing curriculum needs. Perez, Soto, and Servan (2010) have verified the application of Lesson Study as an action research model for reconstructing the theories-in-use that teachers count on in their school practice. Their research was carried out through an online Master’s degree course for Spanish-speaking teachers from three universities in Andalusia. They found that Lesson Study supported the teachers’ production of practical teaching knowledge. Gómez, Núñez, Gómez, and Trapero, (2015) also explored the relationship between the processes generated by Lesson Study and the development of practical thinking in inservice teacher training. She proposed broadening the focus of Lesson Study not only to improve the lesson or teaching practice, but also to reconstruct and improve the practical knowledge of teachers. She discusses the relationship between practical knowledge (the mostly unconscious knowledge that every teacher uses in his or her daily practice, such as theories-in-use) and the conscious and explicit knowledge (including practical thinking and explicit theory) that teachers use to describe and justify their practice. Lesson Study creates pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). PCK refers to content knowledge that deals with the teaching process (Shulman, 1986), which differs in different content areas. Moss, Hawes, Naqvi, and Caswell (2015) indicate that Lesson Study

can help teachers develop not only content knowledge, but also PCK for teaching geometry and spatial reasoning. Juhler (2017) conducted a study to address the missing connections between subject-matter knowledge, pedagogical competence and real-life practice in schools. He applied Lesson Study with content representations (a systematic tool that connects overall teaching aims with pedagogical prompts) as the intervention of the study. He found that the intervention affected the pre-service teachers’ potential to start developing PCK. The teachers focused much more on categories emphasizing the learners and PCK. Leavy and Hourigan (2016) conducted Lesson Study research with 25 pre-service primary teachers of PCK development in which participants designed, taught and reflected upon early number lessons. They found that engaging in Lesson Study promoted mathematics PCK development, especially in knowledge of content and students (KCS) and knowledge of content and teaching (KCT) sub-domains. They also found that reflecting on classroom teaching facilitated growth across both knowledge sub-domains and resulted in highly integrated and robust pedagogical understandings that transferred beyond the study context. Lucenario, Yangco, Punzalan, and Espinosa (2016) investigated the effectiveness of Pedagogical Content Knowledge-Guided Lesson Study (PCKLS) as an intervention to develop PCK competencies among teachers, and consequently enhance student achievement in terms of conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills. They found that there was a significant difference between the PCK competencies of the PCKLS group teacher respondents and those of the conventional group. Also, student respondents showed a significant increase on mean scores in terms of conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills. The researchers conclude that PCKLS was an effective method to develop the teachers’ PCK competencies and student achievement in terms of conceptual understanding and problem solving.

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Lesson Study also creates technologicalpedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). TPACK refers to the knowledge required by teachers to effectively integrate technology into their teaching in any content area by teaching with appropriate pedagogical methods and technologies. Meng and Sam (2013) conducted a study to develop pre-service secondary teachers’ TPACK for teaching mathematics with the Geometer’s Sketchpad (GSP) through Lesson Study. The results of the paired-samples T-test reveal a significant difference in the pre-service secondary teachers’ TPACK for teaching mathematics with GSP for all the subscales after engaging in Lesson Study. Nami, Marandi, and Sotoudehnama (2016) also found that participants in Lesson Study felt that the teaching practice and peer observation promoted their knowledge of technology, technological pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of technological glitches, and their confidence in teaching with technology. The above researchers reported significant improvement in teachers’ knowledge and skills through Lesson Study. Practical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and technological-pedagogical content knowledge for teaching can all be created or enhanced by Lesson Study. Curriculum management involves analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation of a curriculum (Molenda, 2003; Strickland, 2006). The process of analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation is embedded in the PDCA cycle, which provides opportunities for teachers not only to learn the concepts of curriculum management, but also to create knowledge through data analysis and teaching. Lesson Study provides a collaborative and practice-based venue for teachers to leverage knowledge for innovating curriculum and instruction. It creates the knowledge to enhance teacher competencies and improve student learning. Leveraging, codifying and disseminating individual teachers’ knowledge can help address problems in curriculum implementation.

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AN EMPIRICAL PDC MODEL FOR TEACHER COLLABORATIVE LEARNING This section reports on a quantitative study of the effects of Lesson Study on developing teacher collaborative learning. A quasiexperimental research design was used to examine the PDC mechanism of the Lesson Study for enhancing teacher collaborative learning and teaching competency. A selfdeveloped quantitative questionnaire was sent to participants to collect data. The exogenous variables were the procedures of conducting Lesson Study, which consisted of three items: collaborative lesson planning, lesson implementation and reflective evaluation. The endogenous variables were teaching competencies and collaborative learning, each of which consisted of three items. The questionnaire was based on nine items constructed to measure the variables. The 157 subjects of the study were the key participants in the 120 schools which had participated in the Lesson Study conducted in Hong Kong. They served as team leaders of the Lesson Study project at their schools and were considered the most knowledgeable key players in conducting Lesson Study. They were invited to respond to the questionnaire survey on behalf of their schools and were asked questions on the effectiveness of the Lesson Study and their learning outcomes. A Likert five-point scale was used to measure the variables. A structural equation model (SEM) was applied to examine the factor structures and the paths among the variables, using Lisrel 8.3 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1999). An SEM is a collection of statistical techniques that allows the examination of a set of relationships between exogenous and endogenous variables. The structural and measurement coefficients and the goodness of fit statistics from the completely standardized solution under maximum likelihood are presented in Figure  27.1. The SEM shows that the endogenous variable teaching competencies is predicted by collaborative

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0.30 Collaborative lesson planning

Collaborative Learning

Lesson implementation

Co-constructing knowledge Knowledge sharing

0.53

0.49

0.50 Reflective evaluation

Collegial learning

0.61

0.26 0.72

0.96 0.88

0.31

Teaching competencies

0.67 0.62 0.80

Understanding students Pedagogical knowledge Instructional design

χ2 (N=157) = 9.801, P = 0.958, PGFI = 0.407, CFI = 1.00, NNFI = 1.00 and IFI = 1.00 Figure 27.1  Structural equation model of the study by Jöreskog and Sörbom (1999)

learning (β = 0.49), lesson implementation (γ = 0.53) and reflective evaluation (γ = 0.31). Collaborative learning is predicted by collaborative lesson planning (γ = 0.30). All the paths in the model were significant at the 0.05 level, according to the Z-statistics. The hypothesized model is a good fit with the data. The results of the SEM based on 157 participants showed that the chi-square value was not significant for the overall model, χ2 (N=157) = 9.801, P = 0.958. In the present study, the indices are: PGFI = 0.407, CFI = 1.00, NNFI = 1.00, and IFI = 1.00, suggesting a reasonable fit between the data and the hypothesized model. SRMR = 0.013, whereas RMSEA = 0.000 (90% CI. 0.000; 0.000). Given that this is a very stringent model, these fit statistics indices show that the empirical data fits the theoretical model fairly well. The SEM shows that the endogenous variable teaching competencies and the exogenous variable collaborative learning are empirically constructed with three observable items. Teaching competencies are constructed by the items: ‘enhancing my understanding of student learning process’, ‘enriching my pedagogical knowledge’ and ‘strengthening my instructional design

capabilities’. Collaborative learning is constructed by ‘increasing collegial collaboration’, ‘increasing the opportunities for discussing pedagogy’ and ‘increasing the opportunities for sharing students’ learning’. The PDC framework is represented by another three observed items: collaborative lesson planning, lesson implementation and reflective evaluation. The results of the SEM show that collaborative lesson planning (γ = 0.30) is a predictive factor for collaborative learning. This is similar to Cheng’s (2009) and Pang’s (2006) findings, which state that Lesson Study offers the potential for teachers to intellectually engage in the factors that brought them into the learning through collaborative work. The Lesson Study created a collective learning opportunity for a team of teachers to investigate student learning difficulties regarding the curriculum. The team created practical knowledge in identifying students’ learning objectives, planning the research lesson, designing learning activities and selecting appropriate teaching aids. Collaborative lesson planning enabled them to improve their knowledge and expertise in teaching. Another interesting result of the SEM is that the lesson implementation (γ = 0.53) and

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reflective evaluation (γ = 0.31) are predictive factors for teacher competencies. This finding is similar to those of recent studies on action research, which indicate that Lesson Study has a positive impact on nurturing the professional growth of teachers (e.g., Davies & Dunnill, 2008; Marble, 2006; Smith & Sela, 2005; Zambo & Zambo, 2006). This suggests that concepts, ideas and research can be reinforced by practitioner research combined with an effective teaching experience that reflects and reinforces those concepts. Similar results have been reported by other researchers (Lee, 2008; Pang, 2006; Siu, 2008). Participants in the Lesson Study project had a successful experience of internalizing the theory via teaching practice. Through the lesson implementation, explicit knowledge is internalized and becomes implicit knowledge, and then, reconstructed through reflection, becomes personal knowledge (Kolb, 1984; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Wood et al, 2017), through which teaching competencies are enhanced. The final result of the SEM is that the collaborative learning (γ = 0.49) is also a predictive factor for teaching competencies as empirically constructed by understanding student learning difficulties (Elliott 2008), mastering pedagogical knowledge (Desimone et  al., 2002; Ingvarson, Meiers, & Beavis, 2005; Kennedy, 1999; Lauer et al., 2014), and gaining proficiency in instructional design (Cheng, 2014). These findings are interesting in reflecting that the collaborative learning and practices not only supported communications and interactions among teachers, but also helped to transfer knowledge among participants to support individual learning. Regarding the relationship with collaborative learning, we need to link teacher learning with the practice of teaching. Lesson Study supports the development of a collaborative practice because of its connectedness to teachers’ social learning (Cheng, 2009). If collaborative practice is removed from Lesson Study, the learning is less effective. As collaborative action research, Lesson Study provides the opportunity for teachers to

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learn from evaluating what they have planned and implemented by reflecting on the discrepancy between the intended and enacted learning objectives, as well as by examining the relationship between enacted learning objectives and what the students have learned. This explains how collaborative learning in a professional learning community can support teachers’ development of the skills to conduct classroom research to improve teaching and learning. The PDCA cycle can enhance curriculum management and teaching competencies. Lesson Study not only enables teachers to create knowledge, such as setting learning objectives and learning activities in the lesson plan and teaching aids for curriculum implementation, it also supports communications and interactions between teachers.

A CASE STUDY OF THE PCDA CYCLE FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION This section illustrates how Lesson Study can be applied to create pedagogical knowledge for effective curriculum implementation through aligning the curriculum, implementation and assessment practices. One of the primary schools that participated in the above survey was selected as a case school. Its curriculum objective was to develop self-regulated learning competencies in students, one of the key 21st-century skills in the curriculum of many countries. The case school had applied Lesson Study as a curriculum management approach to improve teaching and learning for more than a decade. External reviews by the Education Bureau of Hong Kong showed that the teachers had achieved a collaborative relationship and had adopted Lesson Study successfully as a school routine for curriculum management. The school had institutionalized a schoollevel and a subject-level Lesson Study to manage the curriculum. Subject-level Lesson Study operated with a few PDCA cycles in a teaching subject to manage the subject-level

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curriculum plan. It also aimed to develop pedagogical content knowledge to enhance students’ skills in learning language and problem solving. In subject-level Lesson Study, teachers met regularly to spark ideas, choose a teaching unit for the research lesson and formulate lesson plans. One of the teachers who implemented the research lesson developed the teaching strategies for the lesson with a lesson plan. A pre-lesson meeting for the teaching team of the same grade or subject committee took place to seek comments and suggestions. It took a few weeks to discuss, clarify and integrate the ideas of team members to refine the draft lesson plans. The lesson plan and teaching materials were used in the lesson. The team videotaped the class and observed sample student documents. In the post-lesson conference, the team checked the development and learning processes of the students through collecting data, scripted lesson documents, or videotape, and verified whether lesson purposes, methods and structures were appropriate. The newly-generated ideas were then applied and assigned to daily lessons. All subject teachers implemented the case in their lessons and checked student learning progress and effectiveness. This single PDCA cycle was repeated as teachers planned their lesson, systematically refining the teaching to improve future lessons. Through Lesson Study at the subject level, teachers prepared their lesson materials and refined the lesson in three or four cycles. Students actively learned and engaged in discussion and presentation as key instructional events. The PDCA cycle at subject level involved teachers of the same subject determining the pedagogical content knowledge for their subject curriculum. The subject-level PDCA cycle was geared and synchronized with the school-level PDCA cycle to ensure that overall curriculum objectives were being met in each subject. School-level Lesson Study involves teachers from different subjects constructing pedagogical knowledge to implement the curriculum objective: developing self-regulated

learning competencies in students. The function of school-level Lesson Study is to ensure all subject-level curricula are geared to the school curriculum. The planning stage of the school-level Lesson Study kicks off before the subject-level Lesson Study meetings. Teachers discuss and propose generic teaching strategies to develop self-regulated learning competencies. In the case school, they have identified ‘thinking aloud’, ‘selfquestioning’ and ‘teaching students the skills of self-monitoring through directed instruction’ as hypothesized teaching strategies to be tested and implemented in their classes. Subject teachers discussed how to apply the teaching strategies in their subjects to deliver subject knowledge to their students. They formulated pedagogical content knowledge during the planning stage of their subjectlevel Lesson Study meeting. In the case school, the major concerns of the language subjects were the development of reading and writing skills. The language subject teachers focused on using directed instruction to demonstrate how they could help their students monitor their own comprehension of the articles they read. The major concerns of Maths and Science subjects are problem-solving skills and inquiry-based learning enhancement. Science and Maths teachers were more interested in using thinking aloud and self-questioning through life examples to develop skills in their students. Here too, the subject teachers strived to align their teaching strategies and implementation plan with the school level curriculum plan. In our case study, the implementation of the school-level Lesson Study was conducted after completing a few cycles of the subjectlevel Lesson Study. Usually the lesson plan and materials demonstrated in the openedup research lesson were developed through a few subject-level PDCA cycles. The final research lesson developed from the subjectlevel Lesson Study was opened to ‘checking’ by teachers from different subjects. The resea­ rch lessons demonstrated to the teachers from

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other subjects the teaching strategies and PCK for developing self-regulated learners. The observers evaluated whether teaching strategies and materials could engage the students in learning. In the check-stage of the school-level PDCA cycle, a whole-school professional development meeting was organized to synthesize teaching strategies from each subject. Teachers were able to raise issues they had about creating self-regulated learning activities. They were encouraged to codify their findings into lesson plans, teaching materials and artefacts, in a handbook, so that knowledge could be retained. Almost all the teachers were involved to improve their own and other teachers’ teaching skills, both as experts and specialists in subject and lesson development, and as colleagues in the school. In response to the strength of the working relationship among the teachers, the school has continued to apply Lesson Study to create pedagogical knowledge to design self-regulated learning activities. The school-level PDCA cycle we examined lasted for one semester. The school integrated the PCK created in different subjects into its pedagogical knowledge to implement the school-level curriculum in the next semester. School-level Lesson Study enabled the school to integrate the pedagogical content knowledge developed from individual subjects. The school-level Lesson Study cycles could align subject-level Lesson Study to strengthen the effectiveness of curriculum management and improve the quality of teaching and learning.

INSTITUTIONALIZING LESSON STUDY Lesson Study can develop teacher competencies. That is helpful in bridging knowledge gaps that would otherwise hinder curriculum implementation and tackling the challenges of furnishing students with 21st-century skills. It is in the interest of school leaders to play a leading role in formulating school-based

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policy and strategies, and to cultivate a knowledge-sharing culture, if they wish to ­ support the development of Lesson Study for curriculum management. This section articulates the importance of leadership, strategies and organizational culture in institutionalizing Lesson Study. Principal support is critical in cultivating a Lesson Study community. Lesson Study can be initiated effectively by principals who act as role models for lifelong-learning teachers (Yager, Pedersen, Yager, & Noppe, 2011) and make a commitment over an extended period of time to build collegial relationships among teachers (Cheng & Ko, 2012). Saito & Masaaki (2012) described a case study of a learning community that was cultivated by conducting Lesson Study in a Japanese junior high school. Adopting the Lesson Study approach allowed the school to improve in three years from being one of the worst schools to becoming one of the best. They found that the principal’s support in terms of establishing a vision of reform, organizing a learning community to involve the entire school and overcoming problems in implementing school reform was successful management practice for school improvement. The principal’s top priority was on making learning more collaborative. He interacted with teachers individually to develop a culture of collegiality among them and to improve the capacities of middle-level leaders. School leaders are well placed to formulate strategies to start and operate Lesson Study. Cheng and Ko (2012) conducted a case study to analyze how a Lesson Study community was created in an aided secondary school. Their case school applied Kotter’s (1996) model to create a sense of urgency for change in the teachers and initiate cultural change for school improvement. Hall and Hord’s (2006) strategies were identified as supporting factors for creating a Lesson Study community. Zhang (2015) identified strategies that school leaders used successfully to overcome challenges and sustain Lesson Study innovations in a Hong Kong primary school. She found

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that the leadership team under study used positive peer leadership to successfully implement Lesson Study activities. She identified a number of implications for this process in sustaining school development and teacher professional development through Lesson Study and devised a checklist of positive peer leadership practices for school leaders, teacher leaders and teacher trainers. Principal support is critical to nurturing a collaborative learning culture (Cheng, 2017; Hord, 1997). Learning-focused leadership promotes a collaborative learning culture (Johnston & Caldwell, 2001). School leaders may consider setting up an academic curriculum development committee under the leadership of the principal or vice-principal to promote Lesson Study for curriculum management. The committee should include a coordinator of Lesson Study, a head of curriculum coordination, heads of subject departments, and involve other responsible members in operating the PDCA cycle. They have to set aims and formulate strategies to develop an action plan with a timeline to organize schoollevel annual programmes and whole-school Lesson Study meetings. School leaders may also create a school policy to evaluate and monitor the effectiveness of the implementation of Lesson Study. Wu, Wu, Chi, and Jiang (2016) investigated the development of a professional teacher learning community using Lesson Study, which was promoted by Tainan City. They implemented the project in the following order: community formation within the school, achieving unity of group consensus, teacher empowerment, collaborative course preparation, public class observation, and collaborative course discussion. They found that instructional effectiveness could be enhanced by the in-class observation triad, while learning effectiveness was enhanced by team learning. While Lesson Study activities in most of the schools have enhanced teacher competencies and promoted student learning, Lesson Study activities can be made even more effective by institutionalizing a

mechanism to formulate, monitor and evaluate existing Lesson Study policy to address the needs of teachers and school development. The mechanism should also evaluate the effectiveness of Lesson Study activities in enhancing teacher competencies. Based on this mechanism, school Lesson Study coordinators can adjust the progress and model of Lesson Study activities to maximize teacher learning and facilitate school development. School leaders may also seek external resources to support the development of Lesson Study. Collaboration between teachers and university educators and researchers can be an important element in promoting Lesson Study in schools. It also maximizes the benefits in terms of teachers’ professional development because researchers are able to introduce theory into teachers’ practice (Cheng, 2014). Such a collaboration has also been considered as a way of filling the knowledge gap for curriculum implementation (Lewis & Takahashi 2013) and bringing mutual benefits to all parties through developing a learning community (Potari, Sakonidis, Chatzigoula, & Manaridis, 2010). Collaboration between teachers has been identified as one of the most important features of a school culture that fosters professional development, teacher satisfaction, teacher effectiveness and student achievement (Puchner & Taylor, 2006, p. 924). A knowledge-sharing culture has been identified as an organizational factor for institutionalizing Lesson Study communities, as evidenced by several research studies. Howell and Saye (2016) found that Lesson Study could be used to develop a shared professional teaching knowledge culture among 4th grade social studies teachers. However, a combination of other factors may also contribute to variations in teachers’ participation in that shared teaching knowledge culture, including the degree to which the teachers embraced the public nature of Lesson Study. These factors also included teachers’ idiosyncratic views on teaching and learning, teachers’ individual tolerance for socially

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constructing curricula, and the degree to which teachers acceded to cultural obstacles within elementary schooling. Groves, Doig, Vale, and Widjaja (2016) investigated the role of Japanese Lesson Study as a model for professional teacher learning in the Australian context as well as the critical factors in the adaptation and effective implementation of structured problem-­ solving mathematics lessons. They found that the opportunities for in-depth lesson planning, the presence of a large number of observers at the research lessons and post-lesson discussions, and the insight provided by the ‘knowledgeable other’ were critical factors that contributed to the success of the project. The difficulty of finding suitable problemsolving tasks to match the Australian curriculum and a teaching culture that emphasized small-group rather than whole-class teaching were the major constraints. Ebaeguin and Stephens (2014) reported on an adaptability study on the transferability of Japanese Lesson Study to the Philippines. They applied Hofstede’s dimensions (1982) of national culture to identify and analyze potential incompatibilities in cultural orientation between Japanese and Philippine teachers. Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture could explain the adaptations needed to implement Lesson Study in Philippine schools. They found that sensitivity to cultural challenges during the process of adaptation is an important factor in increasing the odds of a successful implementation to the benefit of Philippine teachers. Recently, Stigler and Hiebert (2016) examined the organizational supports that are required to sustain the practice of Lesson Study in various contexts, and the benefits that may be derived from making more explicit connections between Lesson Study and the wider field of improvement science. They found that the process of importing cultural routines could benefit both the research and practice of Lesson Study. Ultimately, school leaders cannot rely merely on bureaucratic control. Instead they

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should engage their teachers in taking a collaborative approach to professional development (Seezink & Poell, 2011). Principals can create a school structure and routine that supports collaborative learning and encourages regular collegial interaction among teachers (Cheng, 2012). Principal support is crucial in convincing and motivating teachers to involve themselves in collaborative learning. Principals should encourage regular collegial interaction among teachers to cultivate a Lesson Study community for curriculum implementation. They should cultivate a collaborative learning culture that facilitates both formal and informal learning processes to sustain Lesson Study activities. Such a culture will support the implementation of Lesson Study and enhance the professional competencies of teachers.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS This chapter has explored Lesson Study as an effective model for addressing implementation gaps in the 21st-century skills curriculum. It is our belief that Lesson Study can be adopted as a effective and sustainable approach curriculum management approach that creates and retains pedagogical knowledge by building a knowledge-sharing platform. Introducing alternative teaching practices usually involves a knowledge conversion and/or creation process to address a specific teacher-generated problem related to pedagogical practice. Lesson Study provides a platform for teachers to examine students’ understanding of what is to be taught, to share and testify to their own personal practical knowledge, and to disseminate the findings of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Its usefulness in enhancing teachers’ professional development suggests that Lesson Study can be viewed as an educational practice, rather than just a method or technique. Lesson Study can help most teachers develop

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their pedagogical capabilities and teaching competencies for 21st-century skills by developing classroom research skills that focus on teaching. This chapter has also presented some evaluations of the implementation of Lesson Study for developing teaching competencies through a constructive and collaborative learning platform. It has described how a pedagogical plan–implementation–evaluation framework for teacher learning operates, and how this approach helps teacher participants develop research and teaching competencies. The Lesson Study approach provided teachers with the necessary professional development skills to improve their own pedagogical capabilities and teaching competencies. However, follow-up investigation of the sustainability of such learning communities is still recommended. School leaders could consider nurturing a set of conditions that support and sustain the knowledge retention and creation processes, for example, school leadership support, an organizational learning culture, and a school policy for teacher professional development, to manage the curriculum of their schools effectively. The plan–do–check–act (PDCA) framework provides a unique and valuable structure that creates opportunities for teacher learning and helps professional development. If policy makers, educators and school leaders wish to implement the 21st-century skills curriculum through improved teacher learning, the evidence is that Lesson Study can create positive growth in teaching competencies as well as establishing mutually beneficial collaborative learning communities for teachers and students.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, the Centre for Religious and Spirituality

Education and Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, the Faculty of Education and Human Development, the Education University of Hong Kong for supporting the preparation of this manuscript.

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28 Beyond Ritualized Rationality: Organizational Dynamics of Instructionally-focused Continuous Improvement Donald J. Peurach, William R. Penuel and Jennifer Lin Russell

Continuous improvement has gained currency in US educational reform. By continuous improvement, we mean coordinated, iterative problem analysis, solution design, implementation, and evaluation. These activities can be narrow: for example, a single teacher enacting cycles of inquiry to improve her own practice. These activities can be broad: for example, leadership teams enacting annual, state-prescribed school improvement processes aimed at raising average achievement and reducing achievement disparities among student groups. Whether current enthusiasm for continuous improvement leads to positive change in educational opportunities and outcomes for large numbers of students is an open question. From one perspective, the popularization of continuous improvement marks an advance toward more rational approaches to the organization and management of schools: approaches anchored in iterative analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation. From another perspective, it risks a

sort of ‘ritualized rationality’: a complianceoriented response in which schools devise improvement-focused roles and structures, appropriate improvement language, and enact prescribed improvement processes, though without coupling improvement activity with day-to-day work in classrooms. With the following chapter, our purpose is to examine organizational dynamics that support instructionally-focused continuous improvement: that is, improvement activity aimed at increasing effectiveness in the primary educational function of schools – classroom instruction. Our chapter is not a ‘how to’ guide. Rather, it is an embedded analysis of conditions in and among three interdependent levels of organization that enable and complicate instructionallyfocused continuous improvement: • Schools as the locus of classroom instruction. • Networks as novel resources supporting instructional improvement.

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• Educational environments that provide essential resources for schools and networks, that accord them legitimacy, and that establish and enforce expectations for their performance.

Our argument is that history tilts the field more toward ritualized rationality than toward instructionally-focused continuous improvement, and that tipping the field in the other direction will depend as much on dynamics in and among agencies, organizations, and interests in educational environments as on dynamics in and among schools and networks. The argument turns on an analysis of competing logics – modes of thinking and reasoning – at each level of organization that push improvement and instruction toward and away from each other: a ‘logic of confidence’ in schools; an ‘evolutionary logic’ in networks; and a ‘researchdevelopment-diffusion-utilization logic’ in environments. It also turns on an analysis of longstanding pulls in education away from cooperation and coordination and toward fragmentation and incoherence. Our approach heeds an axiom of continuous improvement. We begin with a problem of practice (i.e., moving beyond ritualized rationality to instructionally-focused continuous improvement), and we map backward to the system that produces it, tacking between educational and organizational scholarship as we go. Heeding this axiom has our analysis moving along a micro/meso/macro trajectory, in that our primary level of analysis progresses out, from schools to networks to environments. We begin with schools, by examining ways that interactions with educational environments incentivize instructionally-focused continuous improvement while also risking ritualized rationality as a compliance-oriented response. We continue by examining ways that school improvement networks can both support instructionally-focused continuous improvement and exacerbate the risk of a ritualized rationality in schools. We then examine educational environments as

constituting school improvement networks and holding them accountable for the success of their schools, though without providing the supports needed for networks to evolve as enterprises able to ground continuous improvement in instructional practice. We conclude by discussing the strengthening of environmental supports for networks as essential to moving beyond ritualized rationality to instructionally-focused continuous improvement in large numbers of schools.

FROM SCHOOLS… The rise of continuous improvement rests on what, from an historical perspective, appears to be a sharp pivot toward rational approaches to the organization and management of US schools, in response to an equally-sharp pivot toward accountability and competition in US educational environments. The risk of ritualized rationality rests on the matter that, from another perspective, these ‘sharp pivots’ look like yet another round of educational fads to be embraced by schools in response to turbulence in their environments, resulting in a façade of continuous improvement disconnected from the day-to-day work of students and teachers in classrooms.

The Logic of Confidence and the Legacy of Loose Coupling Historically, organizational scholars describe US public schools as having emerged as loosely coupled organizations with weak relationships between formal structures and the work of students and teachers in classrooms (Bidwell, 1965; Meyer & Rowan, 1978; Weick, 1976). By this account, schools were managed by a ‘logic of confidence’. Educational leaders maintained public confidence, garnered legitimacy, and ensured viability not by closely managing instruction to ensure effectiveness but, instead, by mirroring

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to stakeholders organizational features that these stakeholders valued in a ‘real school’ (Metz, 1989). Examples of features of a ‘real school’ include certified teachers, agegrouped students, 50- to 55-minute lessons, discipline-aligned curricula, state-approved textbooks, and a program of extra-curricular activities. Yet, within a ‘real school’, responsibility for the organization and management of instruction rested largely with teachers themselves working autonomously and independently in their own, private classrooms (Dreeban, 1973; Jackson, 1968; Lortie, 1975). This pattern of organization and management was argued to be an adaptive response to educational environments that emerged as ‘institutionally strong’ and ‘technically weak’: marked by customs, legal requirements, and fads that defined a ‘real school’, absent social agreement on the goals of schooling, the professional knowledge base of instruction, or measures and standards of success (Meyer & Rowan, 1978; Meyer, Scott, & Deal, 1981). Absent agreements and resources needed to manage for effectiveness, these customs, legal requirements, and fads functioned as myths of a sort: features of schools widely believed to bear on educational quality, with which schools could ritualistically comply to maintain public confidence. But it wasn’t only that US educational environments were institutionally strong and technically weak, nor that US schools were loosely coupled. Rather, it was that US educational environments were fragmented, incoherent, and turbulent, with customs, legal requirements, and fads flowing from agencies at all levels of government, from non-profit and for-profit organizations, and from professional groups and associations – never mind communities and families (Cohen & Spillane, 1992; Rowan, 2002). Moreover, it was that formal structures in schools developed as an organizational façade that mirrored the fragmentation, incoherence, and turbulence of their environments, as schools responded structurally to these many uncoordinated

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influences to maintain confidence while continuing to delegate responsibility for organizing and managing instruction to teachers.1

Evolving and Legacy Environments Things are changing. Over the past 30 years, a litany of priorities, movements, and initiatives have strengthened technical environments, with agencies, organizations, and interests within and beyond the K-12 governance structure interacting to elaborate the goals of schooling, the professional knowledge base of instruction, and measures and standards of success. The effect is to link confidence, legitimacy, and viability to effectiveness in the core educational function of schools: classroom instruction. These strengthening technical environments have created resources and incentives for schools to introduce rational approaches to organizing and managing instruction. Consider, for example: • Standards-based reform policies that hold schools accountable to the state and the public for improving academic performance (and reducing performance disparities) as measured using policy-specified standards and assessments, matched by teacher and leader evaluation policies that locate additional accountability for improvement at the level of individual educational professionals. • Market-and-choice policies that have schools accountable to parents and families, with competition among schools an incentive to provide convincing evidence of students’ academic performance in order to recruit students and secure funding. • The press for the use of data and evidence as resources for improving student performance, matched by the proliferation of roles, structures, and resources to support schools in responding: for example, assessment coordinators, data teams, benchmark student assessments, and organizational self-assessments, bound together in data dashboards and leveraged in annual school improvement planning processes.

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Yet these resources and incentives have not been advanced by a single entity, nor as a coordinated ‘grand plan’ that would bring coherence to technical environments. Rather, they are creations of the same fragmented, incoherent, and turbulent educational environments that have long propagated customs, legal requirements, and fads. Over the past 30 years, state standards and assessments have been in the throes of design and redesign across content areas. Policies supporting markets-and-choice have gained support in some places and have struggled in others. And many ‘technical resources’ float freely through the educational idea-space, as public domain notions untethered to the specific reasoning of their initiators: for example, classroom walk-throughs, instructional coaching, and professional learning communities. Moreover, strengthening technical environments that elaborate the goals, means, and ends of schooling are evolving alongside legacy institutional environments that both perpetuate and refashion customs, legal requirements, and fads that define and redefine a ‘real school’. That, in turn, has incentives and resources for more rational organization and management co-existing with environmental conditions that effect and sustain loose coupling. Indeed, the strengthening of technical environments has not been matched with the weakening of institutional environments, nor have schools purged themselves of leaders and teachers with decades of experience enacting their roles absent coordination, nor have stakeholders stopped valuing the organizational façade of schools over their educational substance.

Enacting Environments and the Risk of Ritualized Rationality For schools operating amidst developing technical environments and legacy institutional environments, a first-order challenge is to make sense of these complex, uncertain environments. Organizational scholars

describe this as a process of ‘enacting’ environments by monitoring and interpreting environmental influences, deciding which to heed (and which not to heed), and discerning their meaning for the organization (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978; Weick, 1979). There is much in education (Spillane, 2004) and beyond (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978; Weick, 1979) to predict variability among schools in enacting environments, owing to differences in such matters as their experiences, priorities, interests, capabilities, and agency. For example, some schools may enact these environments from a technical perspective, in ways that lead to rational organization and management of instruction. This would have schools recognizing accountability via standards and markets as threats to their viability, ‘bridging’ resources supporting rational management (e.g., data teams, benchmark assessments, data dashboards, and the like), and integrating them into a coherent instructional program coupled tightly with the day-to-day work of teachers and students, all while ‘buffering’ disruptive institutional influences that could undermine coherence (Honig & Hatch, 2004).2 Others may enact these environments from an institutional perspective, in ways that risk a sort of ‘ritualized rationality’. This would have schools interpreting ‘strengthening technical environments’ as no more than a new set of myths and fads about educational quality, with the response being structural and procedural compliance (in order to maintain public confidence) while maintaining a loose coupling with classroom instruction (because these fads, too, will pass). For example, schools would recognize accountability via standards and markets as non-threatening or as passing fads, bridge resources that project an outward image of rational organization and management, while buffering instruction from intervention and ignoring classroom implementation. The risk of ritualized rationality runs high. For most of the history of US public education, that is precisely how a ‘real school’

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would respond to fragmented, incoherent, and turbulent environments to garner confidence, legitimacy, and resources. There is evidence that this history is alive in the present: for example, public schools enacting ‘technical ceremonies’ that ostensibly use data as a resource for improvement, though without intervening in instruction; and charter schools improving advertising (rather than instruction) to recruit students.3 The risk runs especially high in chronically underperforming schools in which decades of faddish program adoption-and-abandonment interact with enduring labor–management divides to calcify loose coupling. As a result, many lack coherent curriculum, assessments, professional learning opportunities, and other ‘educational infrastructure’ supporting instructional practice on any level, let alone its continuous improvement (Peurach & Neumerski, 2016).

TO NETWORKS… By the preceding analysis, dynamics in US educational environments are creating incentives and resources for schools to embrace instructionally-focused continuous improvement. However, these same environmental dynamics risk ritualized rationality: a ­compliance-oriented response through which schools create a façade of continuous improvement that is disconnected from the day-to-day work of students and teachers in classrooms. Coupling the work of continuous improvement with instructional practice in large numbers of schools would require categorically different support than is commonly available in US educational environments. This would be support that mediates between schools and their challenging environments; that develops the rudiments of coherent educational infrastructure; and that guides schools in using educational infrastructure as a resource for coupling continuous improvement with instructional practice.

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Concurrent with the rise of standardsand-accountability and markets-and-choice, school improvement networks have emerged as a novel organizational form with the potential to provide exactly such support. In contrast to the logic of confidence and the legacy of loose coupling, research on successful, large-scale networks suggests that they operate in accord with an ‘evolutionary logic’ that begins with problems of practice and then maps backward to constructing, using, and refining the structures, norms, and knowledge needed to solve them. While this evolutionary logic suggests the potential for coupling continuous improvement with instructional practice, operationalizing this logic in large numbers of networks that are able to support large numbers of schools will also require uncommon environmental support. This would be support that not only incentivizes the creation of networks but that also guides them in developing capabilities for collaborative, inter-organizational problem solving and learning. The absence of such support, in turn, risks school improvement networks exacerbating (rather than ameliorating) risks of ritualized rationality.

School Improvement Networks as an Organizational Form School improvement networks take a general form: a central, hub organization that collaborates with members to develop, use, and refine a common approach to improvement (Peurach & Glazer, 2012; Peurach, Glazer, & Lenhoff, 2016). With that, school improvement networks are distinct from professional networks and communities that broker the exchange and sharing of ‘best practices’ among members, from consortia that broker the exchange of information among members (and between members and environments), and from policy networks that gather diverse members around a specific policy issue. School improvement networks can operate within bureaucratic education systems (e.g.,

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district initiatives supported by the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools and the SERP Institute – Strategic Education Research Partnership). They can operate in interaction with bureaucratic education systems (e.g., New Visions, Reading Recovery, and Success for All). And they can operate within alternatives to bureaucratic education systems (e.g., Achievement First, Aspire Public Schools, and KIPP – Knowledge is Power Program). In contrast to institutionalized, hierarchical administrative structures and funding sources, school improvement networks often feature dynamic, reciprocal relationships among hubs and members, supported by grants and other soft funding.4 The soft funding giving rise to school improvement networks is tied to priorities that, for the past 30 years, have structured federal and philanthropic investment in educational innovation and improvement.5 These include: • Schools as the unit of both accountability and improvement, with a particularly keen focus on improving or replacing chronically underperforming schools. • Systemic (vs. targeted) interventions with the potential to address interdependent problems undermining student, teacher, and leader performance. • Scalable, sustainable (vs. boutique, faddish) interventions with the potential to support rapid and continuing improvement in large numbers of schools.

While characterized by this general hub– member network form, school improvement networks can vary dramatically in their particulars. For example, hubs can be universitybased projects, non-profit organizations, and teams within state and local education agencies. Members can be teams of teachers and leaders, entire schools, or entire districts. Networks can vary in their size and geographic distribution (e.g., within-school, within-district, and trans-district networks). They can operate with or without external support (e.g., as research-practice partnerships or

as self-managed networked improvement communities). And they can range from emerging enterprises engaged in early-stage problem solving (e.g., those awarded development grants under the federal Investing in Innovation program, or i3) to mature enterprises leveraging highly refined solutions (e.g., those awarded scale-up grants under the i3 program).

Puzzles, Problems, and Learning Systems In evolving technical environments, the legitimacy and long-term viability of school improvement networks are tied to success in improving (and reducing disparities in) students’ educational opportunities and outcomes, central to which is improving the day-to-day work of students and teachers in classroom instruction. That, in turn, presses networks to function as ‘learning systems’, with hubs and members collaborating to produce, use, and refine the practical knowledge needed to support members in working together in new ways and to greater effect. This learning imperative arises from what researchers describe as endemic puzzles and problems in the interactions among schools, improvement approaches, hubs, and environments, for which there are few ready solutions and little available know-how (Cohen et  al., 2014; McDonald, Klein, & Riordin, 2009; Peurach, 2011). These puzzles and problems become less tractable with weaker initial capabilities in schools, more comprehensive improvement approaches, more complex hub organizations, and more uncertain the environments. Some of these puzzles and problems are inward-facing: for example, schools teetering between ritualized rationality and earnest engagement, in districts doing more or less to tip the balance; complex improvement approaches with multiple, interdependent components; and newly-formed hubs collaborating with schools to work within

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newly-created network structures to use these complex approaches.6 Other of these problems and puzzles are outward-facing: for example, ever-evolving state standards and assessments that establish performance expectations for networks; ever-shifting public and philanthropic funding streams that establish and shift priorities and timelines; and emerging research and resources that have potential implications for network activities. They go further, to include uncoordinated federal, state, and local policy activity that can conflict with the work of networks, require rapid change, and risk members dropping out. Indeed, enacting environments is as much a challenge for hub organizations in networks as it is for schools.

Core Learning Processes: Exploration and Exploitation Case studies of school improvement networks that have been successful in improving instructional practice and student achievement in large numbers of schools frame this practical knowledge as being produced, used, and refined via the coordination of two core learning processes in hubs and schools: exploration and exploitation (Peurach & Glazer, 2012; Peurach, Glazer, & Lenhoff, 2016). These learning processes are both iterative (as networks design, test, and refine solutions) and recursive (as networks address new problems that arise as a consequence).7 Exploration is divergent learning aimed at examining premises, addressing local needs, and building agency through iterative search, experimentation, and invention (March, 1991; Van de Ven et al., 1999). Exploitation is convergent learning aimed at developing capabilities to leverage promising solutions through repetition and trial-and-error learning while, at the same time, establishing local conditions that support their use (March, 1991; Van de Ven et al., 1999). The principles of coordinated exploration and exploitation are captured in Improvement

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Science, as advanced by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Bryk et  al. 2015), and Implementation Science, as advanced by the National Implementation Research Network (Fixsen et al., 2009). The former places a keen focus on exploration; the latter places a keen focus on exploitation. The principles of exploration and exploitation also parallel double-loop and single-loop learning, as advanced by Argyris and Schön (1978), and adaptive and technical problem solving, as advanced by Heifitz, Gashow, and Linsky (2009).8

An Evolutionary Logic: Coupling Improvement and Practice The organizational dynamics of exploration and exploitation are represented in Table 28.1 as an evolutionary logic: a heuristic for thinking and reasoning about ways in which school improvement networks couple continuous improvement with instructional practice in large numbers of schools.9 The logic draws on conceptions of evolution as the progressive development of an enterprise from a simpler, more vulnerable form to a complex, more viable form as it exercises agency in reconciling internal aims with external environments.10 A contrasting conception of evolution is a sort of agent-less organizational Darwinism that has environments selecting organizations with favorable characteristics and killing off those without. From the perspective of this evolutionary logic, one central function of a school improvement network is to discipline exploration through the use of common tools, routines, measurement systems, and organizational arrangements to identify shared problems and aims in the day-to-day work of students and teachers; to develop theories of problems and solutions; to iteratively implement, evaluate, and refine solutions; and to re-assess theories of problems and solutions in response. Such functions are hallmarks of both Design-Based Implementation Research

Table 28.1  An evolutionary logic: Exploration and exploitation in school improvement networks Learning processes and associated organizational dynamics ‘Exploration 1.0’ •• This is the genesis of a network: the point at which a small, ad hoc project team begins collaborating with a small number of members to address a common problem of practice. •• This work features exploration: divergent learning aimed at examining premises, addressing local needs, and building agency through iterative search, experimentation, and invention. •• The organization is more social than formal, and dependent on personal relationships, affinities, and mutual trust. •• Learning activities focus on mapping backward from problems to systems; devising provisional logic models and program theory detailing promising interventions; and engaging in iterative, rapid-cycle design, testing, and evaluation. •• The yield is a promising, partial, but provisional knowledge base detailing ways that interdependent norms, structures, roles, and practices interact with local context to effect intended outcomes, along with a template member (or set of members) that serve as ‘proof of concept’. •• Mechanisms for using and maintaining this knowledge base are, again, social: e.g., communities of practice, mentoring arrangements, and collegial coaching. ‘Exploitation 1.0’ •• This marks a transition: a point at which early success among founding members generates incentives to recreate that success in newly-recruited members, capitalizing on ‘lessons learned’ to effect coordinated practices and intended outcomes more quickly and reliably than would be possible working independently. •• This work features exploitation: convergent learning aimed at developing capabilities to leverage promising solutions through repetition and trial-and-error learning while also establishing local conditions that support their use. •• The formal organization of the network begins to emerge: e.g., a more defined hub with specialized leadership, development, coaching, and evaluation capabilities; contractual relationships with members; and the codification of the promising, partial, but provisional practical knowledge in routines, procedures, manuals, tools, organizational blueprints, and statements of principles and norms to support the day-to-day work of members. •• Learning activities focus on developing understandings of these formal resources through their use, via repetition, trial-and-error adjustment, self-reflection, feedback, and correction. Standards for effective use include fidelity and integrity, with key goals being: establishing coordinated, base-level operations, capabilities, and understandings; effecting a break from (and preventing regression to) ineffective past practice; and preventing ‘lethal adaptations’ among novice members. •• The yield is a new set of social and formal resources that are often absent among members: e.g., conventions of practice; a common language; a shared narrative and identity; shared norms of possibility, responsibility, and mutual trust; and common data, evidence, and artifacts. Evolutionary Learning •• Success achieving conventional, base-level operations among new members initiates a progression into iterative, recursive exploration-and-exploitation. •• Variation: ‘Exploration 2.0’ focuses on site-based discretion in adapting norms, structures, roles, and practices in response to knowledge gaps, design problems, and local needs and opportunities. Site-based discretion and adaptation are supported by the introduction of resources, methods, and norms supporting disciplined, evidencebased design, testing, and evaluation. Site-based discretion and adaptation, in turn, introduce variation into the network regarding ways that interdependent norms, structures, roles, and practices interact with local context to effect intended outcomes. •• Selection: The hub monitors and evaluates patterns of variation across the network; selects and more carefully evaluates those suggested by evidence to be bearing positively on practice and outcomes; reconciles positive changes with complementary activity in environments; and formalizes improvements in routines, procedures, manuals, tools, organizational blueprints, and statements of essential principles and norms. •• Retention: ‘Exploitation 2.0’ has the hub supporting members in developing understandings of these improved resources through their use, via repetition, trial-and-error adjustment, self-reflection, feedback, and correction, with initial attention to fidelity and integrity. •• Iterations and recursions: Success, in turn, initiates additional exploration-and-exploitation to refine existing knowledge and to address new problems: a sort of ‘perpetual beta’ that yields an ever-growing, increasingly-refined, yet always-partial knowledge base that is more generally useful in improving practices and outcomes more quickly and more reliably among increasing numbers of members. •• Viability and survival: In technical environments favoring standards-and-accountability and markets-and-choice, success improving practices and outcomes among large numbers of schools increases the viability and survival prospects of the network.

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and Networked Improvement Communities as leading approaches to organizing and managing instructionally-focused continuous improvement (Bryk et al., 2015; Fishman et al., 2013; Penuel & Gallagher, 2017). A second central function is to support exploitation by capturing practical knowledge that emerges through exploration using routines, tools, manuals, and other resources, and to support their use in instructional practice via trial-and-error learning, training, coaching, mentoring, and collegial learning. While also characteristic of Design-Based Implementation Research and Networked Improvement Communities, exploitation of this sort is especially characteristic of mature networks that have accumulated such a comprehensive suite of resources that they are identified more as ‘programs’ than as ‘networks’: e.g., Reading Recovery, Success for All, the Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention, and Word Generation (Donovan & Snow, in press; Glazer & Peurach, 2015; Peurach & Glazer, 2012). A third central function is to coordinate exploration and exploitation as synergistic learning strategies that drive the evolution, accumulation, and use of practical knowledge. As represented in Table 28.1, this process of evolutionary learning supports networks in progressing along an ‘intervention development curve’ (Supovitz, 2013): from emergent, small-scale, socially-organized communities of practice to more mature ‘scientific-professional learning communities’ that exhibit high levels of formal and social organization (Russell et  al., 2018). With that, synergistic exploration and exploitation position networks strongly in relation to technical environments by increasing their potential to improve educational opportunities and outcomes reliably at a large scale.

Challenges Establishing and Managing Learning Networks The preceding analysis details an ‘evolutionary logic’: an ideal type for thinking and

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reasoning about how, in principle, school improvement networks can function to coordinate complementary learning processes that couple continuous improvement with instructional practice in large numbers of schools. This evolutionary logic stands in stark contrast to earlier analyses that had the logic of confidence and the legacy of loose coupling as reinforcing a disconnect between an improvement-focused organizational façade and the day-to-day work of students and teachers in classrooms. However, operationalizing this idealized network type is no simple matter. One problem is that the evolutionary logic has networks working at odds with deeply institutionalized understandings of largescale educational innovation: understandings that have exploration and exploitation either in sequence (the former associated with development, and the latter with diffusion) or in tension (the former associated with local adaptation in professional contexts, and the latter with fidelity of implementation in bureaucratic contexts). Indeed, the historical pull is not toward synergistic exploration and exploitation but, instead, toward pursuing one or the other. From that follows a risk: that networks develop not as ‘evolutionary enterprises’ that coordinate exploration and exploitation but, instead, either as ‘incubation enterprises’ that pursue exploration-absent exploitation or as ‘diffusion enterprises’ that pursue exploitationabsent exploration (Peurach, Glazer, & Lenhoff, 2016). Another problem is that, beyond the challenges of endemic puzzles and problems, the evolutionary logic, as a heuristic, understates the complexity of network-based learning activity. For example, solutions and components can be in different phases of exploration and exploitation. Further, teacher and leader transiency can result in a mix of novice and experienced collaborators with very different learning needs. Finally, weak coordination of learning activities risks recreating in networks the fragmentation, turbulence,

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and incoherence that has long characterized US educational environments. Responsibility for solving these puzzles and problems is distributed throughout networks, among leaders in hubs and in member organizations. Yet, in many cases, the novelty of such work has many of these leaders with little (if any) formal preparation or prior experience working in (let alone managing) complex learning systems. Even so, this distributed leadership community is responsible for collaborating to navigate trade-offs and dilemmas widely recognized as befuddling even the most expert and experienced innovation leaders, including: • Managing and coordinating transitions between exploration and exploitation. • Motivating professional discretion while maintaining network conventions. • Shifting between organic/plural/’loose’ and mechanistic/unitary/’tight’ leadership strategies. • Framing all of the preceding as enabling (and not coercing) network members to work together in new, more effective ways. • All while discerning among technical and institutional environmental influences.11

Success is possible. For example, Success for All and America’s Choice, two early networks that demonstrated positive effects on practice and outcomes, were also identified as having highly developed capabilities for instructionally-focused continuous ­improvement.12 More recently, among projects awarded funding under the federal Investing in Innovation (i3) program, at least four programs that were successful in generating evidence of positive effects on educational outcomes using rigorous evaluations also engage in instructionally-focused continuous improvement: Building Assets Reducing Risk, Reading Apprenticeship, Reading Recovery and Success for All.13 Even so, there is much to suggest that success will be the exception, and not the rule. Cross-sector research suggests that capabilities for such expert leadership practice are generally scarce, often tacit, and a source of

competitive advantage for innovating organizations operating in complex and turbulent environments (Choo & Bontis, 2002; Dosi, Nelson, & Winter, 2001; Van de Ven et  al., 1999). Indeed, in an analysis of a three-year professional development effort for leaders from 20 projects awarded i3 funding, over 90% of face-to-face learning time focused on managing challenges of continuous learning and improvement (Peurach, 2016). From that follows yet another risk. At the same time that school improvement networks open up new potential to couple continuous improvement with instructional practice, they also open up new potential to exacerbate loose coupling in large numbers of schools. With hubs struggling to manage puzzles, problems, dilemmas, and trade-offs endemic to instructionally-focused evolutionary learning, rapidly proliferating school improvement networks become yet another organizational form that schools can embrace to project rationality and to garner legitimacy. With that, struggling networks become ‘shell enterprises’ that replicate broad structures supporting continuous improvement without recreating capabilities to couple continuous improvement with instructional practice (Peurach, Glazer, & Lenhoff, 2016).14 By the preceding analysis, much as schools need categorically different types of support, so, too, do the school improvement networks being created to support them. The need for support begins with new forms of professional development for network leaders that focus not on administering institutionalized educational organizations but, instead, on designing and managing complex learning systems. But leadership development is just the tip of the iceberg. Establishing a large population of networks that are able to support large numbers of schools in coupling continuous improvement with instructional practice would require established models and approaches for network organization and management; enterprises able to support the use, improvement, and refinement of those models; funding to support such work; and much more.

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TO ENVIRONMENTS For networks (as for schools), dynamics in US educational environments are creating incentives and resources to embrace instructionally-focused continuous improvement. However, challenges, puzzles, and problems that complicate establishing and managing novel types of learning systems exacerbate the risk of ritualized rationality, with networks inadvertently supporting schools in creating a façade of continuous improvement that is disconnected from the day-to-day work of students and teachers in classrooms. Indeed, in networks as in schools, moving beyond ritualized rationality to instructionally-focused continuous improvement is bound up with how school improvement networks enact their environments: not only how they discern among dynamic and uncoordinated standards, funding streams, resources, and policies; but how they identify novel sources of support for establishing themselves as new types of learning systems. Again, US educational environments are not objective realities that exist in some true form, independent of conscious attention. Rather, they are subjective realities actively constructed in and among schools and networks. Just as US educational environments are not objective realities, neither are they natural: that is, a physical world that existed prior to human activity and that would continue to exist in its absence. Rather, US educational environments are what Simon (1996) would describe as artificial: constructed not just cognitively, in and among schools and networks, but constructed literally, as the product of activity distributed in and among governing bodies, government agencies, philanthropists, professional organizations, for-profit and non-profit organizations, and more, at the national, state, and local levels.15 Over the past 30 years, this type of fieldbuilding activity has yielded national-level ‘innovation infrastructure’ that is both supportive of and hostile to school improvement

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networks. The rub lies in the comparative influence of a legacy ‘research-developmentdiffusion-utilization logic’ (vs. the emerging evolutionary logic) in shaping this innovation infrastructure. A fundamental matter is whether continuing dynamics will further shape this innovation infrastructure in ways that increase supports for networks while mitigating threats.

Innovation infrastructure, Field Building, and a Built Field Again, the rise of school improvement networks owes much to federal and philanthropic investment focused keenly on the school as the unit of improvement, on systemic interventions, and on scale and sustainability. This pattern of investment has been described as one component of a coherent, national-level innovation infrastructure: interdependent political, policy, philanthropic, private, and professional organizations collaborating to motivate, enable, and constrain the work of large-scale educational innovation and improvement (Peurach, 2016). In contrast to the incoherence, fragmentation, and turbulence characteristic of US educational environments, this innovation infrastructure functions as a comparatively coherent organizational field in which a diverse collection of organizations with diverse aspirations and interests co-engage in a common domain of activity.16 Alongside standards-and-accountability and marketsand-choice, this organizational field – this innovation infrastructure – is yet another dimension of the strengthening technical environments of US public education. Animating activities and values include: • Effecting transformative, coordinated change in organization, management, and instruction in schools (vs. incremental change in selected components). • Driving such change with evidence-based solutions to pressing needs and problems (vs. fads

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that privilege the appeal of ‘solutions’ with no clear warrant or need). • Measuring success in terms of positive impact on educational opportunities and outcomes (vs. the number of adoptions).

Organizational scholars describe field building in ways that parallel network building: as distributed activity that progresses from social to formal organization over time.17 Fields emerge as individual organizations with different beginning points, approaches, and interests begin working toward similar ends. Fields gain coherence as individuals begin moving among these organizations, and as these organizations become conscious of each other, develop contractual relationships, engage in exchange and competition, and assert individual influence. Fields gain further coherence, identity, and legitimacy with the emergence of what Nelson (1994) describes as ‘supporting institutions’: government agencies, professional associations, and business associations chartered to coordinate activity among organizations, legitimize and publicize their value and contributions, and assert their collective interests. A hallmark of a mature, ‘built’ organizational field that is able to support and sustain innovation at a large scale is coordination among: • Proprietary activity: a population of organizations and enterprises advancing similar products and services that address valued needs and that achieve valued ends. • Institutional arrangements: governing policies, regulations, and performance standards. • Resource endowments: sources of organizational capital (e.g., start-up and operating funding), intellectual capital (e.g., essential knowledge and component technologies), and human capital (e.g., pre-professional and professional education programs). • Markets: incentives, resources, and contexts that facilitate relationships and exchange among those advancing and using new products and services.18

For purposes of this analysis, the central question, then, centers on the development and

coordination of proprietary activity, institutional arrangements, resources endowments, and markets with the potential to support a large population of networks in supporting large numbers of schools in coupling continuous improvement with instructional practice.

The Legacy Logic of RDDU The innovation infrastructure aiming to motivate, enable, and constrain the work of largescale educational innovation has not emerged in a vacuum. Rather, it has emerged from (and in interaction with) earlier political and policy initiatives that aimed to do the same. These earlier initiatives reflect what Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury (2012) describe as an ‘institutional logic’: widely shared principles, symbols, and language that interact to influence motivations, perceptions, reasoning, and action among organizations in a given field.19 Like the evolutionary logic, this legacy logic is characterized by rational approaches to organizing the production and use of knowledge for educational improvement. Yet it is a rationality of politics and policy that stands in sharp contrast to alternative conceptions of rationality emerging from the practice and study of school improvement networks. In contrast to the iterative, recursive, problem-solving rationality of the evolutionary logic, these earlier political and policy initiatives have been guided by an institutional logic that has long framed large-scale educational innovation and improvement as a sequential process of research, development, dissemination, and utilization (RDDU). This RDDU logic is evident in the collection of governmental and quasi-governmental organizations that emerged between 1960 and 1980 as the product of federal efforts to support educational innovation and improvement, including: • The US Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement, its national institutes, and its center on educational

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statistics, all interacting to establish priorities, agendas, and funding streams. • National centers conducting basic educational research aimed at informing intervention design. • Regional laboratories conducting applied research aimed at fashioning interventions. • The The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) Clearinghouse and the National Diffusion Network disseminating research and information about interventions.

In contrast to the reciprocal hub-and-school relationships in school improvement networks, this RDDU sequence, arrayed vertically, has the hallmarks of hierarchy and bureaucracy. Those at the top, in political and policy contexts, structure agendas, resources, incentives, accountability, and timelines for activities below, while ‘black boxing’ those activities and delegating responsibility for them to others with specific expertise. They manage these black boxes primarily by asserting control over inputs (e.g., by requests for funding proposals that address political and policy agendas and priorities) and outputs (e.g., by requiring those receiving funding to report effects on key outcomes and to contribute knowledge and tools into the public domain). The tacit assumption is that activity within these black boxes is amenable to this same rational approach to organization and management. The rationality of the RDDU logic appeals to what Mehta (2013) describes as the ‘allure of order’ in political and policy contexts.20 Political and policy actors are accountable to voters for promises to address complex educational problems within tight electoral cycles. Lacking in direct authority over (and specific expertise in) the work of educational innovation and improvement, and working in contexts generally intolerant of complexity and uncertainty, this RDDU logic legitimizes political and policy activity by appearing to bring order and discipline to the broader educational reform enterprise (no matter the fragmented, incoherent, turbulent reform activity that this political and policy activity often evokes).

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Variably-Developed Impact and Improvement Infrastructure These two logics – the legacy RDDU logic and the emerging evolutionary logic – are evident in two sub-components of the innovation infrastructure supporting the work of large-scale educational innovation and improvement: impact infrastructure and improvement infrastructure (Peurach, 2016). Evident, too, is the comparative influence of these two logics, with the former more highly developed and the latter more emergent. Consistent with this notion of hierarchy and bureaucracy as characteristic of the institutional RDDU logic, impact infrastructure is a subset of activity that establishes controls on the inputs to and outputs of the work of educational innovation. This includes requirements that link initial and continuing funding to (a) the use of scientific evidence as a resource for innovation and (b) the use of rigorous evaluations to generate scientific evidence of impact. As detailed in Table 28.2, this impact infrastructure features coordination among highly developed institutional arrangements, resource endowments, proprietary activity, and market functions.21 The comparative maturity of this impact infrastructure owes much to it being more of an evolved version of pre-existing research-and-development infrastructure than a start-from-scratch enterprise, one long anchored (again) in the rationality of politics and policy. It also owes much to the establishment over the past 15 years of a collection of supporting institutions chartered with the aim of advancing evidence-based educational policy and reform, again guided by the institutional RDDU logic.22 These include: • The 2002 re-organization of the US Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement as the Institute for Education Sciences and the Office of Innovation and Improvement. The mission of the former is ‘to provide scientific evidence on which to ground education practice and policy’ (Institute for Education Sciences, 2017). The mission of the

Impact infrastructure

Markets: Incentives, resources, and contexts that facilitate relationships and exchange among those advancing and using innovations.

•• A small number of non-profit and university-based enterprises (e.g., the Carnegie, SERP, LearnDBIR), consultants, and university-based researchers with limited capabilities to support leadership development and improvement activity in large numbers of networks. •• Limited engagement by for-profit and non-profit research firms (e.g., AIR, Mathematica, SRI, and WestEd). •• No accepted developmental progression structuring network-based improvement activities (e.g., as detailed in Table 28.1 – Exploration 1.0, Exploration 1.0, and Evolution). •• No federal guidelines, standards, or clearinghouses for organizing and reporting on network-based improvement. •• Weak, loosely coordinated professional standards for the presentation and publication of improvement research and results within the American Educational Research Association and its divisions, special interest groups, and journals. •• Distributed efforts among researchers and philanthropists to develop and build consensus around improvement standards.

Improvement infrastructure

•• Emerging approaches to network-based improvement (as advanced by Carnegie, LearnDBIR, SERP, and traditions of participatory action research) and to practicebased leadership development (as through developmental evaluation), though characterized by methodological pluralism (and not consensus). •• Emerging efforts in non-profits and universities to provide professional learning opportunities for network leaders and improvement researchers (e.g., the Carnegie Improvement Summit and Higher Education Network; the LearnDBIR Summer Institute; the University of Michigan’s program in Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement). •• Limited public and private investment in the methods or learning opportunities. •• Resources and requirements in federal and philanthropic •• Federal and philanthropic grant programs supporting research–practice partnerships. grant programs for networks to incorporate rigorous impact •• Pilot federal grant programs supporting continuous improvement research in evaluation into proposals for funding. education. •• No requirements among federal and philanthropic grant programs that networks incorporate rigorous improvement approaches into proposals for funding, nor that they coordinate them with impact evaluations.

Resource endowments: Sources of •• Highly developed, agreed-upon methods for rigorous organizational capital (e.g., start-up impact evaluations, supported by federal and philanthropic and operating funding), intellectual investment in the advancement of statistical methods. capital (e.g., essential knowledge and •• Extensive pre-professional and continuing education component technologies), and human through universities, conferences, and other professional capital (e.g., pre-professional and contexts for researchers aiming to use these methods, professional education programs). supported by extensive federal and philanthropic support for researchers’ professional development.

Proprietary activity: A population •• A large population of for-profit and non-profit research of organizations and enterprises firms (e.g., ABT Associates, AIR, Mathematica, and Rand) advancing similar products and and university-based researchers with capabilities to services (i.e., innovations) that collaborate with large numbers of networks to conduct address valued needs and achieve rigorous impact evaluations. valued ends. Institutional arrangements: Governing •• A ‘tiered evidence’ sequence structuring a series of policies, regulations, and performance progressively more rigorous evaluations, as innovations standards. move from development to validation to scale-up. •• Common research guidelines and evidence standards coordinated across federal education agencies. •• Research clearinghouses (both governmental and nongovernmental) to synthesize and report evaluation results. •• Professional standards for the presentation and publication of evaluation results within the American Educational Research Association and its divisions, special interest groups, and journals.

Infrastructure component

Table 28.2  Building innovation infrastructure: Comparing the maturation of impact to improvement

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latter is ‘to accelerate the pace at which the U.S. identifies, develops, and scales solutions to education’s most important or persistent challenges’ (Office of Innovation and Improvement, 2017). • The What Works Clearinghouse, a quasi-governmental organization that aims ‘to provide educators with the information they need to make evidence-based decisions’ (What Works Clearinghouse, 2017). • The Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE), a professional association chartered with the express purpose of ‘provid(ing) an organizational infrastructure that supports and promotes research focused on cause-and-effect relations important for education’ (Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, 2017).

Improvement infrastructure is a subset of activity that aims to support (and to bring rigor to) the work of innovation as characterized by the evolutionary logic: the work of organizing and managing iterative, recursive, continuous learning and improvement grounded deeply in practice. With the substantive work of educational innovation having long been ‘black boxed’, this improvement infrastructure has not benefitted from a pre-existing infrastructure from which to evolve, nor from existing government agencies that could quickly evolve into supporting institutions, nor from an institutional logic guiding collective activity. Rather, as detailed in Table 28.2, this improvement infrastructure is earlier in its development: more of an ‘improvement movement’ than a mature organizational field, with the broad outlines of institutional arrangements, resource endowments, proprietary activity, and market functions beginning to take shape, and with the organizing, evolutionary logic emerging from this early work.

Tipping the Balance Between Impact and Improvement Infrastructures Much as with exploration and exploitation, impact and improvement appear symbiotic:

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positive impact depends on improvement, and improvement is driven by evidence of impact. Yet the preceding analysis suggests an imbalance between the two, with current political and policy support for large-scale educational innovation weighted heavily toward developing impact infrastructure over improvement infrastructure. With that, a school improvement network seeking funding to continue or expand its operations would have far less difficulty identifying partners to satisfy impact evaluation requirements and far more difficulty identifying partners to support the improvement activity on which positive impact depends. With the weakening of impact infrastructure unlikely, tipping toward a more symbiotic balance between impact and improvement hinges on strengthening improvement infrastructure. Holding to the field-building progression sketched above, a key next step would be collective action effecting the emergence of supporting institutions that are responsible for such functions as coordinating diverse organizations and interests; developing collective identity and cultivating legitimacy; establishing standards for improvement organizations, processes, and products; and exercising collective voice. Such supporting institutions would need to be of sufficient legitimacy and critical mass not only to corral, guide, and lead this stilldiffuse improvement movement, but also to assert the interests of the movement in political and policy environments in which impact and its institutional logic hold sway. Indeed, such work goes well beyond field building and deep into the realm of institutional entrepreneurship.23 Whether (and how) any such supporting institutions emerge and garner influence is an open question. A sort of distributed leadership has emerged among a constellation of enterprises that have assumed responsibility for advancing improvement approaches, cultivating community, and exercising voice. Examples include: the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; the

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SERP Institute; LearnDBIR; the Research + Practice Collaboratory; the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools; the National Network of Education Research–Practice Partnerships; and the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice. These enterprises, in turn, have benefited from leadership within the funding community that has opened up new sources of support for continuous improvement in education, both federal (in the case of the national centers) and philanthropic (as from the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the Wallace Foundation). Yet these enterprises are vulnerable to a host of well-established risks to those leading disruptive innovation, especially in highly institutionalized sectors: for example, dependence on soft funding and, thus, the shifting agendas of public and private funders; shifting membership of (and support from) boards of directors; executive leadership turnover; the lack of intent to establish the enterprises as a going concern; and simple burnout among those leading the charge. Research on field building in knowledge-intensive sectors suggests that, in the absence of a dominant firm with an enforceable advantage (e.g., a patent), there is collective advantage to ‘running in packs’ to legitimize a domain of innovative activity, to build coherence and identity, and to assert the political influence needed to effect institutional support (Van de Ven, 2005). This line of reasoning suggests advantage in establishing something like an improvement parallel to the Society of Research on Educational Effectiveness: for example, an ‘Association for Continuous Improvement in Education’ as a professional association (replete with journals, academic conferences, and associated quality standards) chartered with the express purpose of establishing an organizational infrastructure that supports and promotes research, policy, and practice focused on continuous improvement in classrooms, schools, networks, and systems.

At the time of this writing, potential seeds were being sewn. For example: • In the Fall of 2016 and Spring of 2017, the Spencer Foundation funded a series of convenings that brought leaders from diverse improvement traditions together with practice leaders and ‘critical reflectors’ to begin cultivating a shared identity and sketching quality standards potentially useful by funders and editors in evaluating proposals and publications. • In Fall of 2017, a diverse team of researchers proposed the launch of an Improvement Science Special Interest Group in the American Educational Research Association, with the aim of advancing scholarship on improvement methods, the organization and leadership of improvement, and the yield from improvement activity. • In Fall of 2017, a team of researchers, in collaboration with (and support from) the William T. Grant Foundation, released a framework for understanding and assessing the effectiveness of research–practice partnerships (Henrick et al., 2017). • In April, 2018, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching convened an Academic Symposium for researchers, theorists, and practice leaders, with the aim of beginning to galvanize a community of academics open to working collectively to deepen scholarship on continuous improvement and to advance its legitimacy.

While having the potential advantage of serving as an umbrella beneath which to gather a diverse collection of organizations vested in the improvement movement, running as a pack under the guise of a professional association presents challenges, as well. Whether any of the preceding initiatives evolves into an organization on the level of a SREE-like supporting institution hinges on such matters as legitimizing initial leadership, securing start-up funding, establishing a sustainable financial structure, and devising a system of professional governance. And then there is what Van de Ven et  al. (1999: 16) describe as the ‘paradox of cooperation and competition’. Enterprises within the improvement movement have incentives to cooperate to garner the influence and

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establish the infrastructure needed for all enterprises to survive and thrive. At the same time, they are competing (e.g., for funding, influence, publication opportunities, and partners) to establish their distinctive position within the movement. In that the improvement movement has emerged as a plural enterprise in-and-from the environments of US public education, the paradox of cooperation and competition looms large. On the one hand, the depth at which the legacy RDDU logic guides political and policy reasoning and action pulls toward cooperation and coherence: not only within the improvement movement, but also with political and policy actors advancing the impact agenda. Again, there is much to suggest that the positive educational impact sought by these political and policy actors depends on support for improvement. On the other hand, the history of fragmented, turbulent US educational environments pulls toward competition and incoherence, as do deeply held understandings of impact and improvement as antithetical (and not synergistic).24

ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS: SCHOOLS, NETWORKS, AND ENVIRONMENTS From one perspective, these notions of enacted and artificial environments, field building, supporting institutions, and institutional logics are miles away from classrooms. From another, these notions are absolutely proximal. For it is the organizational dynamics captured in these notions that shape the environments, systems, and schools in which teachers and students work. And for teachers seeking to ground continuous improvement deeply in day-to-day instructional practice (and for those seeking to support them), their legacy and evolving effects are profound. By the preceding analysis, a fundamental challenge for schools and networks in

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moving beyond ritualized rationality to instructionally-focused continuous improvement lies in educational environments: specifically, in the comparative influence of the RDDU logic over the evolutionary logic in influencing reasoning and action aimed at motivating, enabling, and constraining largescale educational innovation. The former is a legacy logic that values the use of scientific evidence as an input to (and product of) the work of innovation and improvement, but that ‘black boxes’ the actual work. The latter is an emerging logic that ‘glass boxes’ this work, and that makes its organizational and learning dynamics visible and evident.25 Notable (and ironic) is the currency of the former, given the latter: the RDDU logic as a rational myth unto itself. This comparative influence of the RDDU logic over the evolutionary logic manifests in variably developed innovation infrastructure that aims to support effective, largescale educational innovation. This innovation infrastructure has opened a niche popularizing school improvement networks as a novel organizational form with the potential to support large numbers of schools in moving beyond the logic of confidence and the legacy of loose coupling to a type of rational organization and management that supports professional, inter-organizational learning. Yet it is not the rationality of professional, inter-organizational learning that has most shaped the innovation infrastructure giving rise to school improvement networks. Rather, it is the rationality of politics and policy. Against a backdrop of political impatience, highly developed impact infrastructure heeds axioms of hierarchy and bureaucracy in holding networks accountable for quickly producing rigorous evidence of positive impact on educational outcomes – for newly-established networks, often within a single three-year grant cycle. Comparatively weakly developed improvement infrastructure provides uneven support for developing the organizational and learning dynamics in networks that have the potential to yield positive impact.

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Thus developed, this innovation infrastructure is evolutionary, but in a Darwinian sense. It is poised to select those networks that are able to adapt independently to include positive organizational and learning dynamics, and to kill off those that are unable (e.g., by de-funding and de-legitimizing them). It is not a context that, as yet, fully embraces Elmore’s (2000) notion of reciprocity in educational accountability, with those establishing performance expectations being responsible for supporting the development of the capabilities needed to meet them. Given endemic, interdependent puzzles, problems, dilemmas, and trade-offs, there is much to predict that some networks may succeed and that many more will struggle. Moreover, there is also much to predict that this inefficiency will not be accepted as the cost of doing business (as in venture capital markets). Instead, this inefficiency risks exacerbating impatience in political, policy, and philanthropic communities, the loss of support, and the movement of attention and resources to an alternative agenda. With that, the niche supporting school improvement networks risks collapse.26 This is the short issue–attention cycle that has long driven churn and faddism in US educational policy and reform. This is the short issue–attention cycle further enabled by variably developed impact and improvement infrastructure. But, again, this organizational Darwinism is not natural. It is artificial. This variably developed innovation infrastructure is the product of intentional efforts to move beyond innovation-as-fad to innovation-as-effective; it is rapidly evolving through intentional efforts; and it will continue to evolve through intentional efforts. Moving beyond this organizational Darwinism to an innovation infrastructure characterized by reciprocity will depend in no small part on dynamics in and among organizations driving the development of improvement infrastructure; on their efforts to devise and assert an institutional logic and supporting institutions; on their success

coordinating with political and policy actors advancing the impact agenda; and on their success in overcoming legacy conditions that pull away from evolving as a coherent organizational field and toward the fragmentation, incoherence, and turbulence that have long characterized US educational environments.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge a discretionary grant received from the Spencer Foundation that supported development of many of the ideas in this chapter. The authors also thank those whose deep engagement helped to motivate and to shape this chapter, including: participants at the September, 2016 and May, 2017 Meetings on Continuous Improvement Research in Chicago, IL, and at the University of Colorado-Boulder; the Foundation Strategy Team at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; and our project team at the University of Colorado-Boulder, the University of Michigan, and the Spencer Foundation. We especially thank Kathryn Gabriele and Maxwell Yurkofsky for detailed comments on earlier drafts. While we benefitted from the engagement of our many colleagues, the arguments advanced here are our own.

Notes 1  For example, see Sebring and Bryk (2000), who characterize such schools as resembling a sort of organizational ‘Christmas tree’, decorated with the uncoordinated artifacts of here-today-gonetomorrow reform activity. 2  For additional accounts of ‘crafting coherence’ as described by Honig and Hatch (2004), see Forman, Stosich, and Bocala (2017), Mintrop (2016), and Newmann et al. (2001). 3  Regarding ‘technical ceremonies’ in response to standards-and-accountability, see Yurkofsky (2017). Regarding improving advertising (rather than instruction) in response to markets-andchoice, see Candal (2016), Jabbar (2015, 2016), and Kasman and Loeb (2013).

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4  As argued by Peurach (2016), policy and philanthropic activities supporting these priorities include: the National Science Foundation Statewide Systemic Initiative, launched in 1991; the New American Schools initiative, launched in 1991; the Goals 2000 – Educate America Act of 1994; the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1995; the Obey-Porter Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Act of 1997; the NewSchools Venture Fund, launched in 1998; the Reading Excellence Act of 1999; the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001; the federal Race to the Top program, launched in 2009; the federal Investing in Innovation program, launched in 2010; the federal Charter School Grant Program competition, launched in 2010; the Every Child Succeeds Act of 2015; and large-scale grant programs by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation (among others). 5  In recognizing the value of this policy and philanthropic activity in supporting the rise of school improvement networks, we also recognize that researchers have raised concerns about the comparative influence of a small number of large philanthropists undermining democratic processes in shaping the reform agenda in public education. See, for example, Burch (2009), Reckhow and Snyder (2014), Scott and Jabbar (2014), and Tompkins-Stange (2016). 6  For detailed expositions of the complexities of leading such learning systems, see Penuel and Gallagher (2017), Peurach (2016), and Russell et al. (2017, 2018). For an account of operational and logistical functions that further complicate the work, see Glennan et al. (2004). 7  This pattern of inter-organizational learning parallels patterns identified in cross-sector research on the process of innovation, on the replication of complex capabilities within and among organizations, and on the production and use of practical knowledge in the professions (Glazer & Peurach, 2015; Peurach & Glazer, 2012; Peurach, Glazer, & Lenhoff, 2016). For complementary framings of the learning processes in school improvement networks, see Datnow and Park (2009) on ‘co-construction’ and Supovitz (2008) on ‘iterative refraction’. 8  As with exploration, both double-loop learning and adaptive problem solving involve examining, reconsidering, and reforming fundamental schema, assumptions, structures, and values. As with exploitation, both single-loop learning and technical problem solving involve incremental improvement of (and within) established schema, assumptions, structures, and values. See also Engeström et  al. (1996) and Engeström (2007) for ‘change laboratories’ as a method that features exploration in supporting Developmental Work Research.

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 9  The language of an ‘evolutionary logic’ draws from Peurach, Glazer, and Lenhoff (2016), who developed the logic from a body of scholarship that had deep roots in seminal research on evolutionary economics by Nelson and Winter (1982), including scholarship on the knowledgebased view of the firm, the management of intellectual capital, and the replication of organizational capabilities. Table 28.1 extends this logic by coordinating it with (a) the framework for the initiation and development of networked improvement communities advanced by Russell et al. (2017, 2018), and (b) guidance for initiating and leading research–practice partnerships as advanced by Penuel and Gallagher (2017). On ‘lethal mutations’, as discussed in Table 28.1, see McLaughlin and Mitra (2001). 10  For more on this contrast between the agentive evolution of individual organizations and the comparatively agent-less evolution of organizational populations, see Aldrich (1999) and Hannan and Freeman (1989). 11  For example, see Van de Ven et al. (1999) on challenges in managing transitions between exploration and exploitation; Glazer and Peurach (2015) on motivating discretion while maintaining conventions; Burns and Stalker (1961) and Van de Ven et  al. (1999) on shifting among leadership strategies; and Adler and Borys (1996) on managing interpretations as enabling and coercive. 12  See, for example, Cohen et  al. (2014), Peurach (2011), and Peurach and Glazer (2012). 13  Regarding Building Assets Reducing Risk, see Corsello and Sharma (2015). Regarding Reading Apprenticeship, see Schoenbach, Greenleaf, and Murphy (2017). Regarding Reading Recovery, see Rogers (2016) and Peurach and Glazer (2016). 14  For an account of a large-scale school improvement network struggling to couple improvement structures and activities with instructional practice, see the account of the Accelerated Schools Project in Cohen et al. (2014). 15  For an example of the application of ‘the artificial’ (as developed by Simon, 1996) in the study of educational improvement, see Cole and Packer (2016). 16  We derive this conceptualization of an organizational field from: Aldrich (1999: 50), DiMaggio and Powell (1983: 64–65), and Scott and Davis (2007: 117–120). 17  We derive this précis on field building from: Aldrich (1999); DiMaggio and Powell (1983); Granovetter (1985); Nelson (1994); Powell et al. (2005); OwenSmith and Powell (2008); and Van de Ven (2005). 18  We derive our conceptualization of a mature organizational field from Van de Ven (2005), and his concept of a ‘community-industrial infrastructure’ supporting innovation.

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19  For the origins of the concept of an ‘institutional logic’, see Friedland and Alford (1983). 20  Cross-sector research suggests that this allure of order is not unique to educational innovation but, instead, characteristic of broader policy and philanthropic support for social entrepreneurship (Thümler, 2017). 21  On ‘methodological pluralism’, as discussed in Table 28.2 (especially among improvement approaches), see Moss and Haertel (2016). 22  See Haskins and Baron (2011) on an historic expansion in the use of evidence in social policy and innovation under the Obama administration. 23  See, for example, Garud, Hardy, and Maguire (2007: 962) on the intense political demands on institutional entrepreneurship, owing to the need to effect change among organizations vested in (and possibly advantaged by) existing institutional arrangements both to (a) break with existing rules and practices associated with the dominant institutional logic(s) and (b) institutionalize alternative rules, practices or logics. 24  As evidence supporting the point, the abovedescribed effort to establish an Improvement Science Special Interest Group within the American Educational Research Association hinged on differentiating the proposed SIG from nine other existing SIGs: Action Research, Data-driven Decision Making, Districts in Research and Reform, Educational Change, Learning Sciences, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, School Turnaround and Reform, School/University Collaborative Research, and Systems Thinking. 25  See Lave and Wenger (1991) on the concept of a ‘glass box’ technology. 26  For a theoretical exposition of these population dynamics, see Rowan (2002). For a case study of ways that these population dynamics played out with the comprehensive school reform movement, see Glazer and Peurach (2013). For an exposition of the concept of a reform ‘niche’, see Cohen and Mehta (2017).

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29 Parental Involvement in Schools as Organizations: Examining Consistent Benefits, Persistent Challenges, and Emerging Issues J u l i e W. D a l l a v i s a n d M a r k B e r e n d s

The school, as an organization, does not serve children in isolation. Children are embedded in families, neighborhoods, and communities in addition to schools, and a child’s ability to succeed in school has been considered a shared effort among the adults in their lives. Research on parental involvement in schools, therefore, has been and continues to be an important focus for educators and policymakers as they seek to further establish collaboration between the home and school in the education of children. From an organizational standpoint, parents can be considered stakeholders with a vested interest in the school’s outcomes, namely the education and socialization of their children. How schools can successfully work with parents to help children achieve learning goals, both in the school building and at home, has been promoted as a means to greater student success (Castro et  al., 2015; Jeynes, 2005, 2007; Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwack, 2007; Wilder, 2014). Policymakers in turn have looked to parental involvement

as a way to strengthen schools and education systems, and some countries have established government policies to encourage educators to engage parents in the life and work of the schools (Epstein, 2011; Robinson & Harris, 2014). Most parents seek the best education possible for their children. Although entrusting children and their education to schools, many parents continue to play important roles in the educational endeavor. Through parental support and reinforcement of school values and ideals in the home as well as parental presence and interaction with the school community, the range and influence of the school as an organization are widened and the business of schooling is shared with families. In this chapter, we examine the research on parental involvement in education as it pertains to the school as an organization. First, we explore the role of the family and family resources in education to provide the context for what students and families bring to school. Second, we consider common

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conceptions and definitions of parental involvement as well as empirical relationships between student outcomes and both home- and school-based parental involvement. Third, we examine traditional barriers to parental involvement in schools by exploring challenges originating in the home as well as the school environment and by presenting some emerging issues for schools to consider, including changes in family structures, immigration, family homelessness, and parental incarceration. To conclude, we offer thoughts on the research presented and provide areas for future study.

ROLE OF THE FAMILY AND FAMILY RESOURCES IN EDUCATION Equality of Educational Opportunity, often referred to as the Coleman Report, highlighted the significant role of family background on student achievement (Coleman, et al.,1966), a finding that has held consistently across subsequent analyses (Hanushek, 2016). Correlations between student achievement and family background factors – including parental education, occupation, income, family structure, and neighborhood and community resources, among others – have been noted in the literature, with some drawing the conclusion that family factors are more important to achievement than those related to the school and its resources. Researchers continue to persist in the attempt to establish more causal relationships between family factors and student achievement (Egalite, 2016), while theoretical discussion regarding this relationship conceptualizes family resources as multiple forms of capital – human, financial, social, and cultural – which all families provide in some measure to their children. Human capital, understood as skills, knowledge, education, and health (Becker, 1962), has been tied to labor market outcomes and earning potential. The financial capital of

a family is directly related to the labor market position adults in the family hold and their wages earned. Although income, wealth, and monetary resources explain only part of the variation in student achievement (Doren & Grodsky, 2016; Mayer, 1997), parental education and skills have been found to have an enduring relationship with academic achievement, with cumulative effects over time (Potter & Roksa, 2013). Social capital, conceptualized as the information, resources, and norms that exist in relationships (Coleman, 1988), has been theorized as bringing to bear social network advantages on education. When parents know the parents of their children’s friends, positive correlations have been found with educational achievement and attainment (Carbonaro, 1998; Coleman, 1988; Dika & Singh, 2002). Other researchers have found benefits for students when parents act collectively, drawing on their social networks to make decisions related to education (Horvat, Weininger, & Lareau, 2003; Lareau, 2014). Cultural capital has been defined as the ‘strategic use of knowledge, skills, and competences’ to engage with institutions and secure advantages (Lareau & Weininger, 2003, p. 569). When skills, knowledge, and competencies valued by the school match those of the family, students benefit in multiple ways, with specific advantages related to academic achievement (DiMaggio, 1982; Jaeger, 2011; Kingston, 2001; Lareau, 2003; Lareau & Horvat, 1999). Parents, through their understanding and implementation of certain parenting roles and styles, can assist their children in navigating the school as an institution, leading some students to greater agency in the classroom and the ability to secure educational advantages within the school environment (Calarco, 2011). These sources of parental capital are important to consider when involving parents in the work of schools. What parents bring to their children’s education as resources, they also bring to schools, and when the forms of capital are low within a family, schools may

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serve as an access point for capital in the form of skills and information. Epstein (2011) conceptualized this ebb and flow between the family and the school as overlapping spheres. As the two main environments that affect children’s learning, the mutual interests and influences of the family and school can be promoted through the programs and attitudes of both organizational parties. With effective collaboration, multiple relational, professional, and achievement benefits are gained.

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT AND STUDENT OUTCOMES Definitions and Conceptions of Parental Involvement In the most general sense, parents’ involvement in schools has been considered as the ‘active participation of parents in all aspects of their children’s social, emotional, and academic development’ (Castro et  al., 2015, p. 34), with the general assumption that benefits exist related to the amount of time parents spend in children’s lives (Stacer & Perrucci, 2013). The literature on parental involvement is subject to a lack of clarity and consensus, however, regarding a specific definition and terminology (Calabrese Barton et  al., 2004; Wilder, 2014). Although most studies use the term ‘parental involvement,’ others choose ‘parental engagement’ or ‘parental participation.’ Parental involvement is mostly understood as the relationship between what parents do and how this meets the needs of the child and the school, but some suggest parental engagement is the more salient term, including not just behaviors but also relationships that cross levels and exist outside of school (Calabrese Barton et al., 2004; Luet, 2017). Studies related to parents’ involvement in schools also exhibit differences in how the concept is operationalized, with similar issues to those plaguing the definition of the

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construct. Conceptual difficulties related to how resources, investments, expectations, and behaviors are measured (Castro et  al., 2015; Wilder, 2014) have made comparing studies difficult, especially as the operational use of the construct has not been clear or consistent, and different studies include different constructs (Fan & Chen, 2001). Consensus in the literature has been further complicated by studies with small sample sizes (Robinson & Harris, 2014). There is some disagreement related to how parents should be involved in schooling and which activities are related to academic outcomes. Most studies reference six general categories, based on work by Epstein (1992), which include parenting, learning at home, communicating with the school, volunteering at school, decision making in the school, and collaborating with the community. More recent work builds on these categories with some studies reporting roughly seven categories that specify the roles parents play in their children’s educational lives (Robinson & Harris, 2014), but other studies include categories such as parental expectations and family type that are less tied to behavior (Fan & Chen, 2001). Some criticism suggests there is too much emphasis on a ‘set of deliberate, overt actions’ (Jeynes, 2010, p. 748) and on formal engagement opportunities (Luet, 2017). More subtle forms of parental involvement related to expectations, communication, and parenting style as well as encouragement and support for parents have been found to hold empirical weight but are understudied (Jeynes, 2010).

Empirical Relationships Between Parental Involvement and Academic Outcomes Most researchers separate parental involvement into two categories – school- and home-based involvement (Barnard, 2004; Epstein, 2011; Pomerantz et  al., 2007; Robinson & Harris, 2014) – both of which

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work through the broad mechanisms of skill development and motivational development in children. School- and home-based parental involvement, however, are qualitatively different forms of involvement that have distinct effects (Pomerantz et  al., 2007). While school- and home-based involvement measures are often included within the same study, the next sections attempt to separate out these findings. Due to the multitude of studies on parental involvement, discussion focuses on findings from several meta-­ analyses and studies using large-scale, nationally representative data.

School-based involvement Practices that require contact with the school are considered school-based involvement and include parent presence at meetings, communication with teachers, volunteering, and attendance at events (Pomerantz et  al., 2007). Positive, direct relationships with each type of involvement and academic achievement have been found consistently within the literature, with larger associations tied to broad measures of overall grade point averages compared to individual subjects or test scores (Castro et  al., 2015; Wilder, 2014). Parental presence at meetings, including program involvement and parent-teacher organization meetings, has been positively correlated with academic achievement (Domina, 2005; Jeynes, 2007) and appears to serve as a protective measure against students dropping out of school (McNeal, 1999). Additionally, Jeynes (2012) observed an overall positive effect on academic achievement when parents participate in school-led parental participation programs (Jeynes, 2012). Parent communication with teachers has also been positively correlated with achievement, as has parental volunteering in the school (Domina, 2005). Parent attendance at school events was positively related to achievement but to a lesser extent than other forms of school-based involvement (Castro et al., 2015).

Home-based involvement Practices that take place outside of school are considered home-based involvement and include parent assistance with homework, both creating a space for as well as supervising its completion, talking with children about school, and sharing expectations for students’ academic success (Pomerantz et al., 2007). Parent involvement at home is less examined and seems to operate through indirect means (Barnard, 2004), with work in this area providing a less consistent picture across studies. Perhaps the most inconsistent finding concerns parents’ roles in supervising homework. Although at least one meta-analysis finds a positive relationship between parental involvement in homework and student achievement (Jeynes, 2003), other studies find negative correlations with achievement (Domina, 2005; Hill & Tyson, 2009) but positive correlations with behavior (Domina, 2005), and one finds that it serves as a protective measure against dropping out of school (McNeal, 1999). However, when parents promoted reading habits, studies found positive effects on achievement (Castro et  al., 2015). Talking with children about school also evidenced a positive relationship with academic achievement and behavior (McNeal, 1999; Sui-Chu & Willms, 1996) and was cited as having nearly the largest impact of the various types of parental involvement, second only to parental expectations, which consistently had the strongest positive association with student achievement (Castro et  al., 2015; Fan & Chen, 2001; Jeynes, 2005, 2007; Wilder, 2014). Findings for both school- and home-based parental involvement were generalizable across racial groups (Wilder, 2014), which suggests that parental involvement may help reduce gaps for minorities. The varying strength of relationships for different groups (Jeynes, 2003, 2007) points to the need for more than one uniform parental involvement program within a school.

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Variation in and Barriers to Parental Involvement in Schools To understand variation in parental involvement in school, researchers have investigated the motivations behind parental involvement, surfacing three major factors that shape parents’ decisions (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995, 1997; Hoover-Dempsey et  al., 2005). First, parents must view their involvement in education as a vital and important aspect of their role as a parent. Second, parents must believe that they are capable of helping their children succeed in school, either through sharing skills or knowledge or helping their children access the necessary resources for success. Third, parents must feel they are welcome and wanted in the school, which is often related to the opportunities and invitations that schools provide and whether they fit within the competing demands of parents’ lives. Other research adds that how parents view their children’s intelligence, whether as a fixed property or changeable with effort, impacts parent involvement (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). In the following sections, we consider parent- and school-related factors that result in variation in parent involvement in schools.

Parent Factors Related to Variation in Parental Involvement Student factors Parental involvement varies by the developmental age of the child, with parents most involved during the elementary years and decreasing as children progress through the educational system (Crosnoe, 2001; Muller, 1998; Seitsinger et al., 2008; Useem, 1992). Student desire for parents to be involved in school events is an important motivation for parents (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997), but as children age, they are less comfortable with parental presence at school. Some research suggests that adolescents do value the involvement of their parents, specifically

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in out-of-school settings (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). Parents of students with special needs are more likely to be involved in schools and their presence is essential for providing information about the child and ensuring that the child receives the services necessary for success (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). Parent and teacher disagreement about a child’s needs, however, can discourage parental involvement, particularly when parents believe their child is gifted and teachers do not share this view or may not be able to supplement with additional educational opportunities. Student behavior may also influence the willingness of parents to become involved. When parents are frequently called to address student behavior problems, particularly suspension or expulsion, parents may avoid contact with school and school officials (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011).

Social class Parental involvement in schooling varies by social class and studies have found that parents with a lower socioeconomic status (SES) are less likely to be involved in their children’s education compared to middle and higher SES parents (Heymann & Earle, 2000; Lareau, 1987; Luet, 2017; Raffaele & Knoff, 1999; Schneider & Coleman, 1993; Stacer & Perrucci, 2013; von Otter & Stenberg, 2015). Several reasons for this have been investigated in the literature, including differences in work flexibility, attitudes toward parenting, and parents’ own experiences with education. Many studies point to the inflexibility and lack of paid leave inherent in working-class positions and the need for some parents to take on multiple jobs as creating obstacles for working-class parent involvement in school functions (Heymann & Earle, 2000; Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995; Luet, 2017; Useem, 1992). Middle- and upperclass parents often have more flexibility as well as the means for transportation and childcare for other children in the family.

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Although the amount of parent involvement in schools differs by social class, the amount of supervision in the home may not (Sui-Chu & Willms, 1996). Some studies point to differing attitudes surrounding parenting and education between socioeconomic classes. Working-class parents are more likely to view home and school as separate entities (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997; Lareau, 1987) and to entrust every aspect of their children’s education to the teacher, adhering to teacher decisions with less questioning (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997; Lareau 1987; Useem, 1992). Middle- and upper-class parents, however, understand education as more of a shared endeavor with schools, actively examining, managing, and supplementing their children’s schooling (Lareau, 1987, 2003). These families have been found to be both strategic and intentional in providing advantages for their children (Lareau, 2002, 2003; Xie & Postiglione, 2016). Some research suggests that a sense of entitlement exists among middle- and upper-class families, with parents exerting pressure on schools related to the desire for high-quality education, student track placement (Useem, 1992), and other educational advantages, including tutoring (Erdreich & Golden, 2017). Differences in involvement also exist according to levels of parental education, with more highly educated parents being more likely to be involved in their children’s education (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011; Stacer & Perrucci, 2013; Useem, 1992). When parents do not have a university degree, they may feel an imbalance of power with school personnel, whom they perceive as experts. With higher levels of education, parents are more willing to interact, question, and intervene on their children’s behalf as they consider themselves as possessing equal or greater status compared to school professionals (Lareau, 1987). Parents with less education may not be as confident in their abilities to help children with homework (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995; Luet, 2017), although at least

one study found parent supervision of homework to be stable across social class (Sui-Chu & Willms, 1996). Parents with less education may not have felt successful in school and may be reluctant to engage in their children’s education (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). Parents with more knowledge of educational systems are willing to engage with the system and often find ways to exert their own influence in order to secure educational advantages for their children (Erdreich & Golden, 2017; Useem, 1992; Xie & Postiglione, 2016) leading to a further stratification of educational outcomes by parental education.

Race/ethnicity Race plays an important role in shaping interactions within the school community and the teacher–parent relationship, independent of social class (Lareau & Horvat, 1999). This research suggests that schools as institutional settings still privilege whiteness. Although middle-class African-American parents are able to benefit from their class position, they remain subject to implicit discrimination and disadvantage within schools. These barriers are subtle but present as black parents attempt to relate to their children’s teachers (Luet, 2017). Middle-class black parents have been found to hold a different rationale for parent involvement than white parents, becoming involved in their children’s schooling in order to ensure that their children do not experience racism, are not underestimated, and are able to overcome stereotypes. This research suggests that black parents deploy resources to children as a form of resistance (Vincent et  al., 2012). Some work on parental involvement finds that minority parents are more highly involved in their children’s schooling compared to white parents of the same SES background (Crosnoe, 2001; Kerbow & Bernhardt, 1993). Other research finds that minority parents – particularly black and Hispanic parents – are more likely to wait for an invitation to become involved in the school. Although they do not differ from white

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parents in wanting to be involved, minority parents were more likely to see this as the school’s responsibility to plan the collaboration (Chavkin & Williams, 1993). Some research finds that minority parents are less involved, less represented, and lacking full information regarding what goes on in school. They are also more likely to face substantial barriers to parental involvement related to language, communication, transportation, and childcare (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). A growing body of research, however, suggests that minority parents are very involved but in ways that teachers and schools may not be aware of or recognize as involvement (Hoover-Dempsey et  al., 2005; Kerbow & Bernhardt, 1993; Pena, 2000).

School Factors Related to Variation in Parental Involvement The overall criticism schools face is that parental involvement is defined by standards of involvement for dominant culture parents. Those not able to live up to dominant cultural standards are seen as deficient, with schools and teachers assuming that parents who do not participate must not value education. Luet (2017), building on the Bourdieuan theory of capital, argues that parental involvement necessitates degrees of economic, social, and cultural capital that may keep some parents from involvement. Schools often operate under the assumption that all families have similar backgrounds and access to the same forms of capital (Erdreich & Golden, 2017; Hornby & Lafaele, 2011), and this lack of understanding on the part of the school can further exacerbate issues of trust in school and relationships with families that are already marked by an imbalance of power (Adams, Forsyth, & Mitchell, 2009; Bryk & Schneider, 2009).

School efforts How schools create and structure parental involvement provides insight into who

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participates and how often. Researchers have considered how welcoming schools are as well as the quality of the school’s communications (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005; Kim, 2009; Luet, 2017). Attributes of the school environment – positive relationships, caring and respectful attitudes of staff, and friendly gestures – can lead parents to become involved (Kim, 2009; Raffaele & Knoff, 1999). When parents feel welcome they are more likely to answer requests, and when schools encourage the participation of parents, they feel wanted and a measure of trust is built between schools and families (Hoover-Dempsey et  al., 2005). Parents understand repeated requests and persistence on the part of schools as evidence that their involvement is encouraged (HooverDempsey & Sandler, 1995, 1997). When these requests are communicated far enough in advance, a range of parents are more likely to respond (Kim, 2009). In the absence of welcoming climates and appropriate communication, some parents feel that their presence is not desired or valued (Luet, 2017). What schools include in these invitations is also an important indicator related to who responds and how often. When schools and parents have different goals for parental involvement, conflict between schools and parents arise when participation does not result in progress toward a goal (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011; Lareau & Muñoz, 2012). Schools should consider how they involve parents, specifically what they ask parents to do, how meaningful the tasks are, and how they contribute to supporting children’s education (Calabrese Barton et al., 2004; Comer & Haynes, 1991). The literature suggests that few parental involvement opportunities include parents as equitable partners (Calabrese Barton et al., 2004). The language around parental involvement often talks about home–school partnerships but this is a misnomer, with schools normally dictating what, how, and when parents are involved (Good et al., 1997) and providing evidence that certain ways of participating are more highly

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valued than others. These opportunities for involvement may not be viable options for all parents (Luet, 2017), and schools need to consider a diversity of programs and opportunities to engage all parents in higher-quality experiences. Researchers encourage school leadership to create a climate and culture where parental involvement is highly valued, subject to high expectations, and considered essential to the education of children and the operation of the school (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997; Kim, 2009; Raffaele & Knoff, 1999). When parents feel what they have to offer is valued, they are more likely to become involved (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997).

Teacher attitudes Teachers play a large role in whether parents choose to participate in schools (Erdreich & Golden, 2017; Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997). Unfortunately, when low SES and minority parents fail to respond according to the dominant norms and expectations, many teachers make assumptions regarding how much the parents value education. Teachers have been found to place blame on parents for lack of involvement (Erdreich & Golden, 2017) and the underperformance of students (Luet, 2017), and some research reports that teachers are well aware of the power dynamics in the classroom and view parents with less education as less than themselves (Xie & Postiglione, 2016). Negative teacher perceptions regarding low SES and minority parent efficacy and capacity (Kim, 2009) can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies, with teachers providing fewer invitations to parents and expecting less of their children, leading to both reduced parental involvement and lower student achievement. Other research suggests that low SES and minority parents face a double bind, where their participation is encouraged but then not welcomed or requested (Hughes, Gleason, & Zhang, 2005). Teachers often focus on formal instances of parental engagement when evaluating parental involvement and miss

important ways in which parents support their children outside of the school building (Luet, 2017). When parents and their contributions are not valued, they are less likely to engage in activities with the school (HooverDempsey & Sandler, 1995, 1997). Whether teachers believe in the effectiveness of parental involvement impacts the level of engagement they have with parents (Kim, 2009). When teachers’ and parents’ ideas about parental involvement are aligned, more effective levels of involvement occur, particularly if they share the same sense of relationship between schooling and education (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). In other words, if teachers understand schooling to be just one aspect of education, as do most parents, they are more likely to foster involvement among the group. When there is congruence between the parental involvement programming and the specific needs and availability of the community, there is likely to be higher participation and program success (Wauters et  al., 2017). One such aligned program includes home visits, where teachers visit students’ homes to build relationships with families. Although home visits are considered highly successful in building community, they are time consuming and often reserved for students at the extremes of performance, the gifted and the struggling (Xie & Postiglione, 2016). When teachers make the effort to connect with parents, involvement increases. One study identified three strategies teachers use to engage parents, including: (1) providing information about student performance; (2) providing information about opportunities and suggestions for parent involvement; and (3) connecting parents with health and community resources (Seitsinger et  al., 2008). Similarly, how much teachers attempt to involve parents is positively correlated with the number of parents who attend parent– teacher conferences (Seitsinger et al., 2008). Parents report that teachers provide intangible supports through their communication, including feelings of care, acceptance,

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and value as well as the understanding of an alliance in the education of children (West, Miller, & Moate, 2017). The teacher’s role is one of facilitator, and the more teachers are able to create roles for a diverse set of parents, the more positive parents are about the school and the teacher (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997). Teachers should be supported in this work and in their self-efficacy in dealing with parents, and some scholars call for continued professional development for teachers to improve their interactions with parents (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005).

CHALLENGES FOR SCHOOLS AT THE ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL Changes in Family Structure As mentioned previously, some scholars argue that parental involvement norms and expectations have been influenced by ideas of a dominant family structure most common to middle- and upper-class families which has traditionally provided the time and space for at least one parent, most often the mother, to be involved in a child’s schooling (Smith, 1993). Changes in family structure, including the increase of dual-income families, family instability, and alternative family structures (Powell et  al., 2016), present challenges to the dominant model of parental involvement, and some work suggests that schools have been slow to adapt (Colpin,Vandemeulebroeke & Ghesquiére, 2004; Goldberg, 2014; Kocsiw & Diaz, 2008).

Dual-income families An increasing number of families consist of two working parents or one single working parent (Heymann & Earle, 2000) and employment, as discussed above, may reduce the time available for parents to be involved in their children’s schooling (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011). Much depends on the flexibility of the position and the opportunities for paid leave,

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and some research has found that availability for parental involvement is often determined by job benefits and working conditions (Haley-Lock & Posey-Maddox, 2016). Lowincome parents are significantly more likely to lack both paid leave and flexibility, placing students at a disadvantage if parents are unable to leave work to meet with teachers (Heymann & Earle, 2000). Pressures related to parental involvement are heavily gendered (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011; Offer & Schneider, 2011), with engagement in schooling considered a ‘fourth shift’ for working mothers beyond labor at work, home, and toward their own education (Holloway & Pimlott-Wilson, 2013). Being involved in children’s schooling is part of what it means to be a ‘good mother’ and fieldwork has found that many women have to make hard decisions with real consequences in order to attend events at school. Higher-income mothers whose jobs had more flexible leave policies and paid time off were found to be more involved with their children’s schooling, resulting in a stratification of parental engagement that may increase existing educational inequality (Haley-Lock & Posey-Maddox, 2016).

Divorced parents, single parents, and family instability The number of divorced and single-parent families has increased over time (Powell et  al., 2016) and some research calls for increased recognition of the diversity of family structures and forms, including families who have experienced divorce (Colpin et  al., 2004). Fieldwork has examined divorced parents’ perceptions of their own support for their children’s education. Divorced parents reported limits on the time they were able to commit to children’s schooling due to professional obligations, feared prejudice related to their changed family situation from the school community, and differing levels of support from their ex-partner. Often, burdens related to time and money were disproportionately placed on the

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newly single mother, resulting in initial periods of decreased involvement followed by a resumption of previous levels of involvement over time (Colpin et al., 2004). Quantitative research comparing parental involvement among 10 different family structures suggests that it may not be marriage that is the driver of increased parental involvement and, in turn, higher academic achievement, but rather the presence of two adults in the household who are able to shoulder the responsibilities of parenting and school involvement. The presence of a second adult, even one that was non-biological, increased the frequency of parental involvement in schools (Myers & Myers, 2015). Repeated changes in family structure, regardless of the number of adults in the household, may introduce additional difficulties related to schooling. Family instability has been associated with negative effects on school readiness (Cooper et  al., 2011; Fomby & Osborne, 2017) through mechanisms related to increased stress within the family. Children in families with a history of instability are more likely to experience financial hardship, residential mobility, and harsher discipline compared to children with no changes in family structure (Fomby & Osborne, 2017). The increasingly complex nature of family structures has the potential to impact the extent to which parents are able to be involved in schools.

Alternative family structures Current data estimates that nearly 20% of same-sex couples are raising children under the age of 18 (Powell et al., 2016). While a small number of studies find negative effects of same-sex parenting on children’s educational outcomes (Regnerus, 2012; Sullins, 2015), a larger body of early evidence points to same-sex parents exhibiting higher levels of parenting skills and interactions with children, particularly when children have two mothers (Bos, van Balen, & van den Boom, 2007; Crowl, Ahn, & Baker, 2008; Golombok et al., 2003), although the

long-term advantages are still unclear (Biblarz & Stacey, 2010). Qualitative research suggests that samesex parents are highly engaged in their children’s schooling (Goldberg, 2014; Goldberg et  al., 2017; Kocsiw & Diaz, 2008; Nixon, 2011). Studies suggest that this involvement in schools is heightened by concerns of bullying, in part based on parents’ experiences as students (Goldberg et  al., 2017; Nixon, 2011) and pressures to conform to the ‘good mother’ ideology. One study found that gay fathers, lesbian mothers, and heterosexual mothers were the most likely to take advantage of flexible work schedules to be involved in school events. Compared to heterosexual parents and lesbian mothers, gay fathers were the most likely to advocate for their children in schools (Goldberg et al., 2017). Same-sex parents, however, report feelings of stigma and isolation in their involvement with their children’s schooling (Goldberg et  al., 2017; Kosciw & Diaz, 2008). Advocates call for increased sensitivity and training for school staff to ensure that all children and families feel welcome in schools and are encouraged to become involved in their children’s schooling (Kosciw & Diaz, 2008).

Parental Incarceration Parental absence due to incarceration presents challenges for children and families (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2016) in the US and beyond, and a growing body of research has found negative consequences for parental incarceration on children in relation to schooling. The absence of a father due to incarceration has been found to lead to economic insecurity (Schwartz-Soicher, Geller, & Garfinkel, 2011) and instability within the family (Lopoo & Western, 2005), while the absence of a mother due to imprisonment may lead to an increased risk of deviant behavior as children may lose their primary caregiver. Often this means grandparents and extended kin networks must take on

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additional caregiving responsibilities within the family, leading to increased levels of stress within the family (Hanlon, Carswell, & Rose, 2007) and potentially changing points of contact for school personnel. We would expect that when a parent is imprisoned, the opportunities for interaction with a child’s school and schooling would be limited by the physical confinement of the parent, but in addition, recent research suggests that a father’s incarceration may inhibit the mother’s involvement in schooling, resulting in decreased interaction both during and following incarceration through system avoidance as well as reduced capacity (Haskins & Jacobsen, 2017). Parents with a criminal history may view schools as surveilling institutions due to increased security, formal record keeping, and connections to social services. Many schools require a background check to volunteer or be physically present in the school building, and recent fieldwork suggests that some people with criminal records may choose not to engage with community institutions for fear of stigma (Lageson, 2016). Parents with previous encounters with the legal system may not be willing to complete background checks and, depending on the prior offense, a criminal record may bar some parents from being in schools. More research is needed to understand exactly how much parental incarceration influences the amount and type of involvement in children’s schooling (Haskins & Jacobsen, 2017). Some evidence suggests that having an incarcerated parent influences how teachers treat students. This may result in greater sensitivity toward students’ home situation but may also result in stigma. Teachers, cognizant of the challenges the student is facing at home, may lower their expectations of students with incarcerated parents (Dallaire, Ciccone, & Wilson, 2010). Some evidence suggests that children of incarcerated parents are more likely to be placed in special education programs (Haskins, 2014) and are

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more likely to be retained in the early years of schooling (Turney & Haskins, 2014).

Homeless and Highly Mobile Families Housing instability, residential mobility, and homelessness can impact children’s educational outcomes, disrupting achievement and interfering with family and school functioning when multiple moves are required to find stable housing (Cutuli et al., 2013). Numerous negative associations have been found between being homeless or highly mobile and educational outcomes (Buckner, 2008; Cutuli et al., 2013; Masten, 2012; Rafferty & Shin, 1991), including lower rates of attendance, higher rates of retention (Rafferty, Shinn, & Weitzman, 2004), lower achievement scores (Obradović et al., 2009; Rafferty et  al., 2004), increased behavior problems (Rafferty & Shin, 1991), and feelings of isolation (Miller, 2011). Homeless and highly mobile students are thought to be at the extreme on a continuum of risk, subject to additional risks and stressors compared to those living in poverty (Buckner, 2008; Herbers et  al., 2011) and have been found to be at greater risk for lower academic achievement in the elementary and middle grades. When compared to other lowincome students, achievement gaps for homeless and highly mobile students appear early and persist (Cutuli et al., 2013; Masten, 2012; Obradović et al., 2009). However, homeless and highly mobile students also demonstrate a high degree of heterogeneity, with some studies showing a substantial number of academically successful students (Cutuli et  al., 2013; Masten, 2012; Miliotis, Sesma, & Masten, 1999; Obradović et al., 2009). Research has found that high-quality, effective parenting characterized by warmth, structure, consistent discipline, and positive expectations provides a protective role and moderates the effect of homelessness (Herbers et  al., 2011; Miliotis et  al., 1999).

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These behaviors represent two dimensions of parenting that are important for academic success in homeless children: (1) providing security through a close parent–child relationship; and (2) demonstrating through word and action the value of education. Homeless and highly mobile family situations are also characterized by diversity. Variation is found in the types of homelessness that families face, from one-time shocks to more enduring situations requiring frequent movement between housing situations and shelters (Cutuli et al., 2013). In addition, the places of homelessness vary, with some families ‘doubling up’ with friends or relatives when a housing situation is lost and others moving between emergency and long-term shelters (Miller, 2015). Particularly in the case of ‘doubling up,’ a child’s homelessness or housing instability may not be obvious to schools, resulting in the problem of identifying and determining student needs based on a onesize-fits-all model (Fonfield-Ayinla, 2009). Fieldwork suggests that these different places of homelessness are related to parents’ ability to support their children’s education and interact with schools (Miller, 2015). Schools can serve as a stabilizing force for homeless and highly mobile children and families, creating a network of support and social closure for vulnerable students and families (Miller, 2015).

Immigrant Populations The migration of families from one country to another presents challenges for schools, and some estimates suggest that around 200 million individuals are living outside of their country of origin (Global Commission on International Migration, 2005). Although immigrant families are more likely to struggle economically and live in crowded conditions, a proportion of those who migrate are highly educated and skilled, leading to a heterogeneous population with diverse needs (Adams & Kirova, 2006; Hernandez, Denton,

& McCartney, 2009; Ichou & Oberti, 2014; Sibley & Dearing, 2014). How schools interact with immigrant children and communities is of vital importance as educators and schools are instrumental in helping children become socialized into the new culture (Adams & Kirova, 2006). With immigrant families, communication is one major challenge that schools face due to language differences (Säävälä, Tujanmaa, & Alitolppa-Niitamo, 2017). Language is often the way that immigrant children are most likely to differ from their peers (Hernandez et al., 2009) and difficulties with communication often lead to frustration on the part of parents (Adair, 2014; Pérez Carreón, Drake, & Calabrese Barton, 2005) as well as teachers (Säävälä et al., 2017). Often students must act as interpreters for their parents, placing students in the role of gatekeeper of information with varying outcomes (Pérez Carreón et  al., 2005; Säävälä et  al., 2017; Shuang Ji & Koblinsky, 2009). Some research suggests that the ability to communicate is a first step in fully engaging parents within the school (Lowenhaupt, 2014). Language-related anxiety often prevents parents from fully interacting in their children’s schooling (Ichou & Oberti, 2014; Lowenhaupt, 2014; Shaung Ji & Koblinksy, 2009). From a student perspective, language differences can lead students to feel socially isolated (Adams & Kirova, 2006). Schools need to respect and support children’s first-language use as an important piece of their identity and how they communicate with their families (Guo, 2012), and acknowledge their bilingual status as a potential asset to the community (Goldenberg, 2008; Hernandez et al., 2009). Knowledge of the education system is another major challenge for immigrant parents and schools. Immigrant parents are at a disadvantage as cultural differences exist between schooling and parental roles across national contexts. Even if parents were educated and possessed the cultural knowledge of schooling in their country of origin, this form of cultural capital may not transfer

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to the new country (Säävälä et  al., 2017). Schooling comes with shared norms and expectations for behavior on the part of all actors – students, teachers, and families – and without access to these norms, immigrant parents may struggle to meet school expectations. Often, immigrant parents are judged on unstated and assumed expectations for interaction and engagement for which they have no knowledge (Crozier & Davies, 2007). Some fieldwork has demonstrated that teachers perceived immigrant parents as lacking the understanding of how to support their children in school and were characterized as being too passive (Matthiesen, 2017). Other fieldwork suggests that immigrant parents are active in supporting and encouraging education in the home, but from a cultural perspective that matches their country of origin (Adair, 2014; Andrews, 2013; Pérez Carreón et al., 2005). When immigrant parents do not meet teacher expectations, they are thought of as lacking, are dismissed, and are further marginalized within a deficit perspective (Adair, 2014; Guo, 2012; Matthiesen, 2017; Theodorou, 2008). Some fieldwork, however, suggests that immigrant parents may be more involved at home than at school, resulting in high levels of engagement with their children’s education that may not be obvious to teachers (Adair, 2014). Immigrant parents draw on both traditional and non-traditional resources to engage with their children’s schooling. These parents may not be present at school, but they do not lack a presence in their children’s education (Pérez Carreón et  al., 2005), and their absence at school events should be interpreted as cultural difference rather than indifference (Crozier & Davies, 2007; Theodorou, 2008). Perhaps because of deficit perspectives, immigrant parents report that they do not feel valued in schools (Andrews, 2013; Pérez Carreón et al., 2005) and they lack confidence in dealing with teachers (Crozier & Davies, 2007). Because some immigrant parents have lower levels of education, they may not

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be able to assist with homework (Andrews, 2013; Hernandez et  al., 2009) and may be less comfortable interacting with teachers. Immigrant parents also sharply experience the inequity of the teacher–parent relationship, with the imbalance of power resting in the teacher’s position. Immigrant parents who are feeling vulnerable may respond in overly compliant ways, leading school officials to take on patronizing roles and parents to withhold information about children (Ichou & Oberti, 2014; Säävälä et al., 2017). Despite these deficit perspectives, immigrant parents have been found to value and hold high expectations for their children’s education (Sibley & Dearing, 2014). With evidence of the mismatch between the immigrant home and school culture, researchers call on schools to forge better relationships with immigrant parents. Schools would be better served to consider less rigid definitions of parental involvement and to recognize different cultural ideas of immigrant parental knowledge and support (Adair, 2014; Guo, 2012). Schools must also resist deficit assumptions and consider whether parental opportunities are accessible to a wide range of parent needs (Säävälä et al., 2017). Greater professional development for teachers surrounding the immigrant cultures the school serves would allow for increased cultural sensitivity in the classroom and in interaction with families. Finally, schools must recognize the heterogeneity of immigrant families and backgrounds (Hernandez et  al., 2009; Ichou & Oberti, 2014; Sibley & Dearing, 2014) and seek to tailor solutions to specific individuals and communities.

AREAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH The considerable consistency of positive relationships between multiple types of parental involvement, including school- and homebased activities, despite the substantial variation in how involvement is conceptualized,

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operationalized, and measured, suggests that parent involvement is an important resource for student achievement that school professionals should embrace and encourage. It also suggests that there may not be one ideal way to involve parents in education, but rather multiple avenues for schools to consider in pursuit of increased support for student achievement. We echo the call of multiple scholars for a broader conceptualization of involvement that moves beyond how often parents respond to invitations to interact in specific school-centered activities toward inclusion and consideration of the many ways that parents support their children’s academic progress which may not be apparent to the school (Adair, 2014; Pérez Carreón et  al., 2005; Pomerantz et al., 2007). A broader and more intentional understanding of parental support outside of schools may assist in moving discussion of parental involvement away from a deficit perspective. Robinson and Harris (2014) argue that greater understanding and attention to how parents ‘set the stage’ for children’s learning provides a better sense of how parents are involved in their children’s education and would help schools to understand how best to involve and support parents in their efforts. Instead of holding family involvement to standards related to dominant culture values, resources, and availability, thoughtful consideration of the diverse needs of specific populations is needed before determining how best to develop strategies and programs to engage and involve parents. We have highlighted several specific populations – families with alternative structures, homeless and highly mobile families, families affected by incarceration, and immigrant families – where current research is attempting to understand the motivations, opportunities, and variations in parental involvement and opportunity. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it begins to consider ways in which schools and families respond to circumstances of life beyond conceptions based on a specific ideal family.

Additionally, more investigation and fieldwork is needed in relation to how schools develop programs and involvement for these special populations. Research suggests that parental participation in these programs is beneficial for students (Jeynes, 2012) and greater understanding of the best practices found among these programs would be helpful for school leaders and teachers seeking to develop programs for their specific school communities. In this vein, additional professional development opportunities are needed for teachers, especially related to emerging issues in families, which will allow teachers to better understand and respond to community needs that may also counteract deficit perspectives. Looking toward the future, as state-­ sponsored parental choice options for schooling increase in multiple countries, researchers should consider whether and how these policies influence the relationship between school and home. With additional options beyond government schools, the educational landscape may be increasingly subject to market concerns, with schools competing for students and introducing the potential for a subtle shift in the relationship between schools and parents from that of stakeholder to that of client. Although this relationship may have always existed for private and independent schools, this relationship is likely to be new for many government schools and may present challenges with regard to parental involvement.

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A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 13(1), 1–22. DOI: 10.1023/A: 1009048817385 Fomby, P., & Osborne, C. (2017). Family instability, multipartner fertility, and behavior in middle childhood. Journal of Marriage and Family, 79, 75–93. DOI:10.1111/jomf.12349 Fonfield-Ayinla, G. (2009). Commentary: A consumer perspective on parenting while homeless. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 79(3), 299–300. DOI: 10.1037/ a0017239 Global Commission on International Migration. (2005). Report of the Global Commission on International Migration. Population and Development Review, 31(4), 787–798. DOI:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2005.00100.x Goldberg, A. E. (2014). Lesbian, gay, and heterosexual adoptive parents’ experiences in preschool environments. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 29, 669–681. DOI:10.1016/j.ecresq.2014.07.008 Goldberg, A. E., Black, K. A., Manley, M. H., & Frost, R. (2017). ‘We told them that we are both really involved parents’: Sexual minority and heterosexual adoptive parents’ engagement in school communities. Gender and Education, 29(5), 614–631. DOI:10.1080/ 09540253.2017.1296114 Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English language learners: What the research does – and does not – say. American Educator, 8–23, 42–44. Golombok, S., Perry, B., Burston A., Murray, C., Mooney-Somers, J., et  al. (2003). Children with lesbian parents: A community study. Developmental Psychology, 39, 20–33. DOI:10.1037/0012-1649.39.1.20 Good, T. L., Wiley, A. R., Thomas, E., Stewart, E., McCoy, J., Kloos, B., Hunt, G. D., Moore, T., & Rappaport, J. (1997). Bridging the gap between schools and community: Organizing family involvement in a low-income neighborhood. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 8(3), 277–296. DOI: 10.1207/s1532768xjepc0803_2 Guo, Y. (2012). Diversity in public education: Acknowledging immigrant parent knowledge. Canadian Journal of Education, 35(2), 120–140. Haley-Lock, A., & Posey-Maddox, L. (2016). Fitting it all in: How mothers’ employment

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shapes their school engagement. Community, Work & Family, 19(3), 302–321. DOI: 10.1080/13668803.2015.1023699 Hanlon, T. E., Carswell, S. B., & Rose, M. (2007). Research on the caretaking of children of incarcerated parents: Findings and their service delivery implications. Children and Youth Services Review, 29, 348–362. DOI:10.1016/j.childyouth.2006.09.001 Hanushek, E. A. (2016). What matters for student achievement: Updating Coleman on the influence of families and schools. Education Next, 16(2), 18–26. Haskins, A. R. (2014). Unintended consequences: Effects of paternal incarceration on child school readiness and later special education placement. Sociological Science, 1, 141–158. DOI:10.15195/v1.a11 Haskins, A. R., & Jacobsen, W. C. (2017). Schools as surveilling institutions? Paternal incarceration, system avoidance, and parental involvement in schools. American Sociological Review, 82(4), 657–684. DOI: 10.1177/0003122417709294 Herbers, J. E., Cutuli, J. J., Lafavor, T. L., Vrieze, D., Leibel, C., Obradović, J., & Masten, A. S. (2011). Direct and indirect effects of parenting on the academic functioning of young homeless children. Early Education and Development, 22(1), 77–104. DOI: 10.1080/10409280903507261 Hernandez, D. J., Denton, N. A., & McCartney, S. (2009). School-age children in immigrant families: Challenges and opportunities for America’s schools. Teachers College Record, 111(3), 616–658. Heymann, S. J., & Earle, A. (2000). Low-income parents: How do working conditions affect their opportunity to help school-age children at risk? American Educational Research Journal, 37(4), 833–848. DOI: 10.3102/ 00028312037004833 Hill, N. E., & Tyson, D. F. (2009). Parental involvement in middle school: A meta-­ analytic assessment of the strategies that promote achievement. Developmental Psychology, 45(3), 740–763. DOI: 10.1037/ a0015362 Holloway, S. L., & Pimlott-Wilson, H. (2013). Parental involvement in children’ learning: Mothers’ fourth shift, social class, and the growth of state intervention in family life.

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Education, 40(3), 237–269. DOI: 10.1177/ 0042085905274540 Jeynes, W. (2007). The relationship between parental involvement and urban secondary school student academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Urban Education, 42(1), 82– 110. DOI: 10.1177/0042085906293818 Jeynes, W. (2010). The salience of the subtle aspects of parental involvement and encouraging that involvement: Implications for school-based programs. Teachers College Record, 112(3), 747–774. Jeynes, W. (2012). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of different types of parental involvement programs for urban students. Urban Education, 47(4), 706–742. DOI: 10.1177/ 0042085912445643 Kerbow, D., & Bernhardt, A. (1993). Parental intervention in the school: The context of minority involvement. In B. Schneider & J. S. Coleman (Eds.), Parents, their children, and schools (pp. 115–146). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Kim, Y. (2009). Minority parental involvement and school barriers: Moving the focus away from deficiencies of parents. Educational Research Review, 4, 80–102. DOI:10.1016/j. edurev.2009.02.003 Kingston, P. (2001). The unfulfilled promise of cultural capital theory. Sociology of Education, 74(Extra Issue), 88–99. Kosciw, J. G., & Diaz, E. M. (2008). Involved, invisible, ignored: The experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender parents and their children in our nation’s K-12 schools. New York: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. Lageson, S. E. (2016). Found out and opting out: The consequences of online criminal records for families. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 665(1), 127–141. DOI: 10.1177/ 0002716215625053 Lareau, A. (1987). Social class differences in family-school relationships: The importance of cultural capital. Sociology of Education, 60(2), 73–85. DOI: 10.2307/2112583 Lareau, A. (2002). Invisible inequality: Social class and childrearing in black families and white families. American Sociological Review, 67(5), 747-776. DOI: 10.2307/3088916 Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Lareau, A. (2014). Schools, housing, and the reproduction of inequality. In A. Lareau & K. Goyette (Eds.), Choosing homes, choosing schools (pp. 169–206). New York: The Russell Sage Foundation. Lareau, A., & Horvat, E. M. (1999). Moments of social inclusion and exclusion: Race, class, and cultural capital in family–school relationships. Sociology of Education, 72(1), 37–53. DOI: 10.2307/2673185 Lareau, A., & Muñoz, V. L. (2012). ‘You’re not going to call the shots’: Structural conflicts between the principal and PTO at a suburban public elementary school. Sociology of Education, 85(3), 201–218. DOI: 10.1177/0038040711435855 Lareau, A., & Weininger, E. B. (2003). Cultural capital in educational research: A critical assessment. Theory and Society, 32(5/6), 567–606. DOI:10.1023/ B:RYSO.0000004951.04408.b0 Lopoo, L., & Western, B. (2005). Incarceration and the formation and stability of marital unions. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 721–734. DOI: 10.1111/j. 1741-3737.2005.00165.x Lowenhaupt, R. (2014). School access and participation: Family engagement practices in the new Latino diaspora. Education and Urban Society, 46(5), 522–547. DOI: 10.1177/0013124512468003 Luet, K. M. (2017). Disengaging parents in urban schooling. Educational Policy, 31(5), 674–702. Masten, A. S. (2012). Risk and resilience in the educational success of homeless and highly mobile children: Introduction to the special section. Educational Researcher, 41(9), 363– 365. DOI: 10.3102/0013189X12467366 Matthiesen, N. C. L. (2017). Working together in a deficit logic: Home–school partnerships with Somali diaspora parents. Race Ethnicity and Education, 20(4), 495–507. DOI:10.1080/ 13613324.2015.1134469 Mayer, S. (1997). What money can’t buy: Family income and children’s life chances. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McNeal, R. (1999). Parental involvement as social capital: Differential effectiveness on science achievement, truancy, and dropping out. Social Forces, 78(1), 117–144. DOI:10.1093/sf/78.1.117

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Miliotis, D., Sesma, A., & Masten, A. S. (1999). Parenting as a protective process for school success in children from homeless families. Early Education and Development, 10(2), 111– 133. DOI: 10.1207/s15566935eed1002_2 Miller, P. M. (2011). A critical analysis of the research on student homelessness. Review of Educational Research, 81(3), pp. 308–337. DOI: 10.3102/0034654311415120 Miller, P. M. (2015). Families’ experiences in different homeless and highly mobile settings: Implications for school and community practice. Education and Urban Society, 47(1), 3– 12. DOI: 10.1177/0013124512469814 Muller, C. (1998). Gender differences in parental involvement and adolescents’ mathematics achievement. Sociology of Education, 71(4), 336–356. DOI: 10.2307/2673174 Myers, S. M., & Myers, C. B. (2015). Family structure and school-based parental involvement: A family resource perspective. Journal of Family Economic Issues, 36, 114–131. DOI 10.1007/s10834-014-9409-0 Nixon, C. A. (2011). Working-class lesbian parents’ emotional engagement with their children’s education: Intersections of class and sexuality. Sexualities, 14(1), 79–99. DOI: 10.1177/1363460710390564 Obradović, J., Long, J. D., Cutuli, J. J., Chan, C., Hinz, E., Heistad, D., & Masten, A. S. (2009). Academic achievement of homeless and highly mobile children in an urban school district: Longitudinal evidence on risk, growth, and resilience. Development and Psychopathology, 21, 493–518. DOI: 10.1017/S0954579409000273 Offer, S., & Schneider, B. (2011). Revisiting the gender gap in time-use patterns: Multitasking and well-being among mothers and fathers in dual earner families. American Sociological Review, 76(6), 809–833. Pena, D. C. (2000). Parent involvement: Influencing factors and implications. The Journal of Educational Research, 94(1), 42–54. DOI:10.1080/00220670009598741 Pérez Carreón, G., Drake, C., & Calabrese Barton, A. (2005). The importance of presence: Immigrant parents’ school engagement experiences. American Educational Research Journal, 42(3), 465–498. DOI: 10.3102/00028312042003465 Pomerantz, E. M., Moorman, E. A., & Litwack, S. D. (2007). The how, whom, and why of

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30 Assembling Schools as Organizations: On the Limits and Contradictions of Neoliberalism Andrew Wilkins

INTRODUCTION Neoliberalism has emerged as a broad descriptor or master narrative for situating education settings and processes within wider political and economic trends linked to the expansion of certain policy paradigms shaping public sector reform, namely marketization, privatization, competition, and de-democratization. The aim of this chapter is to explore a range of arguments and perspectives that make use of neoliberalism as a conceptual tool and normative description to theorizing schools as organizations and school systems more generally, while at the same time pointing to the complications and limitations inherent to such theorizing. There is no doubt that neoliberalism is a seductive signifier. It provides researchers with a conceptual apparatus for tracing empirically the relationships between micro changes in the development of value systems and institutional orders and macro changes occurring nationally and globally.

But neoliberalism is more than a heuristic device for some – it is elevated to something normative, intuitive and ordinary (‘we are all neoliberal now’). Some critics go so far as to declare neoliberalism a threat to ‘common sense’ itself (Hall & O’Shea, 2013: 11) since it functions not only as an economic (or ‘restorative’) project (see Harvey, 2005) but a social and cultural one shaping moral judgements about what it means to be ‘good’, ‘fair’ or ‘just’. Therefore, the same critics warn of the dangers of certain species of and appeals to common-sense thinking about the economy, welfare and politics, and the need to reclaim ‘common sense’ from its neoliberal appropriation. Similarly, among researchers, neoliberalism is mobilized to signify a dominant discourse, and therefore suffers from ‘omnipresence (treated as a universal or global phenomenon) and omnipotence (identified as the cause of a wide variety of social, political and economic changes)’ (Clarke, 2008: 135). The effect is that neoliberalism is transformed from a potent analytic tool into a

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detached signifier. This partly explains why neoliberalism is more often asserted than it is critiqued in education research. Another reason why neoliberalism as a conceptual apparatus has not received sufficient critique in education research is perhaps because it operates as a powerful vehicle for mobilizing new political imaginaries and collectivities, including ‘consolation’ for researchers keen to align their ‘professional roles with the activities of various actors “out there”, who are always framed as engaging in resistance or contestation’ (Barnett, 2005: 10). From the standpoint of social justice activists and those broadly on ‘the Left’, neoliberalism gives coherence to various grievances and discontents as well as specific objects, relations and processes to rage against (Davies, 2014). Some researchers therefore gravitate to neoliberalism for cognitive and practical reasons – to define objectively that which they are against. But neoliberalism loses some of its critical edge when it becomes a psychological mechanism for coping with complexity, including elements of ‘the social’. Barnett (2005: 7), for example, is critical of the way neoliberalism is sometimes used to reduce ‘the social’ to a ‘residual effect of hegemonic projects and/or governmental rationalities’. This is evident in some governmentality studies of neoliberalism where the social (those contingent, historically conditioned spaces in which subjects can be found answering back) is eclipsed by a rigid focus on the governmental techniques and practices that go into making-up ethical and economic selves. These studies appear to assume ‘that governmental practice in a plurality of sites flows uniformly from the big transformations produced by neoliberalism’ (Newman, 2007: 54), and therefore neglect the excess or surplus that often exceeds neoliberal capture. This does not mean we should abandon neoliberalism as a conceptual apparatus for modelling correlation or correspondence between what happens ‘in here’ and what occurs ‘out there’. Rather, it means operationalizing neoliberalism as something

instrumental and tentative to capturing the ‘in-between’. As Hall (2011: 9) argued, ‘I think there are enough common features to warrant giving it a provisional conceptual identity, provided this is understood as a first approximation’. In this chapter I present both a critique and defence of neoliberalism by way of drawing on relevant theories and literatures to present competing, sometimes conflicting and irreconcilable, viewpoints and perspectives. My aim is to use these various literatures and theories to work with and against dominant understandings of neoliberalism and to think through possibilities for its continued use in studies of schools as organizations. In particular, I draw on elements of ‘assemblage thinking’ (Higgens & Larner, 2017b) as tools for addressing the importance of ‘the social’ in studies of schools as organizations. Here ‘the social’ can be used to reference an active, dynamic space framed by locally situated dilemmas, obligations, normative commitments, and dispositions. As I will demonstrate, assemblage thinking offers education researchers a useful set of tools for tracing empirically the myriad of forces through which schools as organizations are continually shaped and laboured over in the context of ‘the social’. In what follows I make use of relevant literature to outline a general theory of neoliberalism from different theoretical perspectives, specifically Marxist and Foucauldian, and point to the multiplicity of conceptual approaches secreted within its meaning. This includes tackling some of the contradictory forces at work through neoliberalization and its relationship to statecraft or state transformation. Following this I outline two dominant approaches to theorizing and researching schools as organizations – positivist and ‘critical’ – as well as discuss the mediating structures and discourses that bear upon the development of schools as o­ rganizations – from New Public Management (NPM) and disintermediation to performativity and network governance. In the final section I outline a theory of assemblage thinking and demonstrate

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its analytical significance to navigating the complex terrain on which schools as organizations emerge through fields of contestation where different interests and motives conflict, collide and sometimes converge to produce locally adapted translations and refusals of neoliberalism.

CONCEPTUALIZING NEOLIBERALISM Like many popular ‘-isms’ – feminism, spiritualism and universalism – neoliberalism is used as a shorthand to describe a movement or ‘thought collective’ (Mirowski, 2009: 428). While there is widespread agreement regarding some of the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism – key being marketization, privatization and possessive individualism or self-interest – neoliberalism can be differently conceptualized using specific theoretical lenses. Harvey (2005), for example, best exemplifies a Marxist and political economy approach to neoliberalism. Here neoliberalism is characterized as a class-based hegemonic project driven by the interests and actions of elite groups of transnational actors pursuing new means of capital accumulation and class power. Understood from this perspective, neoliberalism signifies various interrelated patterns thought to be endemic to the development of modern capitalism, namely the subordination of national economies to global patterns of deregulated labour, depleted trade union bargaining powers, deregulated markets, and decentralized authority. Similarly, Duménil and Lévy (2004) and others (Plehwe, Walpen, & Neunhoffer, 2006) have conceptualized neoliberalism as a class hegemony engineered to ensure concentration of wealth among the rich through sustaining patterns of consumption and debt as well as propping up corporate monopoly of industry. From a governmentality and Foucauldian perspective (Ong, 2006; Rose, 1999), neoliberalism represents a range of strategies or techniques

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utilized by government and non-government authorities for the purpose of managing populations and political structures and decisions in the absence of direct control. For Foucault (1982: 790), the term ‘government’ should therefore be understood in the broadest sense to mean legitimately constituted forms of political or economic subjection but also modes of action, more or less considered or calculated, which were destined to act upon the possibilities of action of other people. To govern, in this sense, is to control the possible field of action of others.

At the heart of neoliberalism is a commitment to certain economic and political theories and philosophical perspectives concerning the ontology of the subject (or ‘subjectivity’) and the relationship between the state and the economy. On the one hand, neoliberalism borrows from the moral philosophy of utilitarianism and elements of classical liberalism to advocate a view of the subject as a rational utility maxmizer or ‘homo economicus’, and therefore strives for conditions in which the freedom of the individual to pursue their own self-interest is not impeded by ‘externalities’ such as the authority of the state. However, unlike classical liberalism, which held a strong belief in spontaneous order and the corrosive effects of state intervention on the naturally occurring formation of free, atomistic subjects, neoliberalism is not totally indifferent to the state and its capacity to help others realize and advance their private interests. It is certainly opposed to certain configurations or species of state intervention – such as top-down bureaucracy and welfarism in general. This includes government programmes designed to lower taxes, stabilize pensions, increase spending, and protect individuals and groups against some of the unintended consequences of the capitalism. But neoliberalism gives legitimacy to the state in so far as it performs the role of ‘a market-maker, as initiator of opportunities, as remodeller and moderniser’

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(Ball, 2007: 82). It therefore favours the creation of ‘space[s] for a new conception of the role of government in the macroeconomy’ (McNamara, 1998: 5). A strategic focus of neoliberalism, therefore, is ‘the active destruction and discreditation of Keynesian-welfarist and social-collectivist institutions’ (Peck & Tickell, 2002: 384) and the privatization and depoliticization of public powers and utilities more generally, namely the transfer of ownership of publicly-owned services into private hands. Where wholesale privatization is not possible, a species of active government is necessary to facilitate the subordination of public services to the rationality of the market and the logic of Capital (of profitability, surplus extraction and exchange value). This occurs either through contracting out services to private providers or subsuming existing (publicly-run) services within an economic logic or enterprise form that compels service providers to behave as businesses and rewards individuals who act competitively and ‘rationally’, i.e., in their own self-interest and above or in contradistinction to the interests of others (Marquand, 2004). Under neoliberalism, therefore, ‘the market produces legitimacy for the state, which in turn becomes its “guarantor”’ (Gane, 2012: 626). Here the term ‘neoliberalism’ can be used to condense a heterogeneity of complex forms and formations originating in the design of new technologies of government and governance introduced in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Western economies were gripped by high inflation and economic stagnation during this time, which many liberal economists and political conservatives attributed to Keynesian economics designed to artificially stabilize the economic cycle through cutting tax and increasing spending (Hirschman, 1991). Interventions from right-wing think tanks – namely the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) and the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) – would later successfully purge the government of its Keynesian-welfarist champions and lay the path for the rise of Thatcherism

in the UK (Hall, 1979) and Reaganism in the US (Brown, 2006). These ‘diverse skirmishes were rationalized within a relatively coherent mentality of government that came to be termed neo-liberalism’ (Miller & Rose, 2008: 211). A genealogy of neoliberalism suggests that neoliberalism began as early as the 1920s and 1930s, when economists Friedrich Von Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises engaged in the ‘intellectual project of reinventing liberalism’ with the ambitious aim to ‘replace political judgement with economic evaluation’ (Davies, 2014: 3). For Hayek and Mises, a political economy that works to design or predict collective solutions to individual problems, namely state socialism, has dangerous consequences for the moral, intellectual and economic development of a nation and its peoples. Unlike classical liberals, however, Hayek and Mises did not fully embrace a view of the subject as spontaneously rational or a view of the economy as a natural entity that effortlessly and efficiently self-regulates. Hayek, Mises and other critics of socialism at the time (George Stigler and Henry Simons in particular) did share the classical liberal vision of the moral and ontological primacy of the individual as distinct from and superior to the moral status of ‘society’ and the construction of agreed public purpose. However, they were not committed to a vision of laissez-faire capitalism but instead developed a vision of advanced liberalism (or ‘neoliberalism’) in which government intervenes to determine agendas and priorities. This includes activating and compelling certain behaviours (market-ready, market-responsive or ‘rational’ behaviour, for example) where it does not exist or requires support (see Jones, Pykett, & Whitehead, 2013, on ‘nudge’ tactics). As Peck, Theodore, and Brenner (2009: 51) show: While neoliberalism aspires to create a utopia of free markets, liberated from all forms of state interference, it has in practice entailed a dramatic intensification of coercive, disciplinary forms of state intervention in order to impose versions of market rule.

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The rise of ‘policy networks’ (Rhodes, 2007: 1244) certainly undermines the notion of a sovereign government capable of exercising a monopoly of control over its various constituent parts. This is evident by the generation of new ‘policy communities’ and ‘heterarchical relationships’ (Ball & Junemann, 2012: 137), which are made possible by new philanthropic, charity and private sector actors replacing established policy actors and agencies. Yet, as Taylor (2000: 69) observes, ‘government is being redefined and reshaped from the centre outwards rather than being hollowed out’ (also see Holliday, 2000). Government under neoliberalism shifts responsibility towards citizens, communities and organizations to govern themselves, and therefore relinquishes some of its direct control. At the same time, government is no less active in ‘setting rules and establishing an enforcement mechanism designed to control the operation of the system’s constituent institutions, instruments and markets’ (Spotton, 1999: 971). Thus, the regulation– deregulation dichotomy is a misleading one (Aalbers, 2016). Take academies and free schools in England, for example. These schools are granted ‘autonomy’ (or, to be more precise, professional discretion) to govern themselves strategically, financially and operationally. Yet a condition of that autonomy is that school leaders, governors and trustees adopt certain risks, responsibilities and liabilities formerly managed by traditional structures of government. Under conditions of devolved management, schools are required to be active in their own government as consumerresponsive, market-conforming organizations. Hence regulation is not restricted to parastatal bodies like the school’s inspectorate, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), calling to schools to make themselves publicly accountable. Regulation is exercised through agents themselves: parents are addressed as consumers (Wilkins, 2012); head teachers are activated as ‘transformational leaders’

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(Leithwood & Jantzi, 2005); and governors are activated as ‘professionals’ (Wilkins, 2016). What is specific to neoliberalism is ‘the proliferation of mechanisms of self-regulation in the shadow of the state’ (Levi-Faur, 2005: 13), taken to be essential to ‘linking political objectives and person conduct’ (Rose, 1999: 149) in the absence of direct government intervention. On this account, neoliberalism does not entail the ‘hollowing out’ of the state or ‘institutional retreat’ (Panitch & Konings, 2009: 68) since deregulation produces fragmentation and complexity that requires greater steering from the centre in terms of agenda and priority setting. According to Levi-Faur (2005: 12), ‘Governance through regulation (that is, via rule making and rule enforcement) is at the same time both constraining and encouraging the spread of neoliberal reforms’.

POSITIVIST AND CRITICAL APPROACHES Neoliberalism is one of the most cited and contested concepts in contemporary studies of education. It describes an analytical tool and policy strategy but is used more generally as a normative description for denoting specific trends in the development of Western economies and politics since the late 1970s. These trends include the rise of finance (or speculative) capitalism; the privatization and marketization of public welfare; the curtailing of trade union bargaining powers and the deregulation of labour; the entrenchment of national economies and political structures within the grip of global forces; the valorization of self-interest and competitive individualism; the shift from hierarchy to ‘heterarchy’ or self-organization as principles of government; and the intensification of risk, dispossession and insecurity as factors of everyday life. Various researchers (Hatcher, 2006; Papanastasiou, 2017; Saltman, 2014; Stahl, 2017; Wilkins, 2016) have sought to

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understand the development of education through the lens of these wider political and economic trends, and therefore use neoliberalism as a conceptual apparatus for mapping the connections and disjunctions between micro relations, processes and structures and macro changes occurring nationally and globally. Research on schools and school systems employs specific modes of critique to draw out these connections and disjunctions. They include, on the one hand, ‘assessing the empirical validity of factual analysis or the technical-instrumental practicality of specific social arrangements’ (Jessop & Sum, 2016: 105). This is typical of research commissioned by governments, private industry and some charities, where the preferred outcome is criticism leading to ‘impact’ and ‘improvement’ of system design and service delivery. These types of research – sometimes called ‘school effectiveness’ research – tend to operate under positivist assurances that there is unmediated access to ‘truth’ and reality can be grasped empirically at the level of ‘representation’ and ‘meta-analyses’, such as metrics and algorithms. Intervention is justified as neutral, value-free or ‘non-ideological’ since it is driven by evidence that is automatic and identical to reality. But measurements are not neutral descriptions of properties of reality. They are produced through normative assumptions, value systems and the identification of ‘problems’, and are therefore implicated in the very properties they claim to represent or capture (Beer, 2015). Data use and data production are a social creation and mode of politics (Johnson, 2015). Positivist thinking is complementary to research that strives to bring about greater forms of system coherence and control, and therefore at odds with the idea that schools and school systems produce imaginaries that can only be grasped as partial and provisional. For Jessop and Sum (2016), a critical approach to research entails more than just criticism. It involves ‘critiques of ideology and domination’ (Jessop & Sum, 2016:

105), with a specific focus on semiosis and ‘its articulation into specific imaginaries, discourses and discursive practices or with structuration in the form of specific sets of social relations, institutional orders or broader social arrangements’ (2016: 106). Such an approach is useful to situating and analyzing schools and school systems as the socio-material effects of broader discursive patterns and mediating structures, including discourses and practices of neoliberalism. At the same time, it recognizes ‘the scope for disjunctions between empirical evidence, actual events and processes’ (2016: 106), and the importance of methodological reflexivity more generally. A critical approach to school organization entails documenting the different mediating structures and discourses guiding the development of schools and school systems as well as pointing to any theoretical inconsistencies and anomalies arising from the situated analysis of neoliberalism in practice (‘neoliberalization’).

MEDIATING STRUCTURES AND DISCOURSES A useful starting point for thinking about schools and school systems more generally is to trace the mediating structures and discourses that bear upon their development. In England, for example, publicly-funded schools are required to fulfil certain contractual obligations to the government, namely funding agreements. This strictly applies to academies and free schools, which have responsibilities for the financial and educational performance of the school as well as responsibility for management overheads in the form of employment disputers, contractual issues and premises management. Academies and free schools therefore differ from other publicly-funded schools – local government ‘maintained’ schools, for e­xample – in that they possess freedoms to determine their own budget spending, curriculum, admissions

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(subject to the admissions code), staff pay and conditions, and length of school day and term. A condition of these freedoms and flexibilities is that academies and free schools are auditable and workable as ‘high-reliability’ organizations (Reynolds, 2010: 18) or businesses (Wilkins, 2016). Operationally and strategically, these freedoms and flexibilities demand schools adopt specific modes of co-ordination and their formal operations or activities to ensure continuous self-monitoring, compliance checking, risk assessment, performance evaluation, succession planning, and target setting. Those responsible for ensuring the smooth functioning of the school as a ‘high-­reliability’ organization – school leaders, school business managers and school governors, in particular – emerge as technicians of NPM. This is particularly striking in the case of head teachers and other school leaders, who face huge pressure from central government and the school’s inspectorate, Ofsted (2001, 2011), to maximize delivery of quantifiable outcomes through effective and continuous monitoring and appraisal of staff and student performance (Gunter, 2012). This includes enhancing upward accountability to central government in the case of academies and free schools (‘state-funded independent schools’), which are required to fulfil the obligations of their funding agreement with the Secretary of State. Algorithmic governance linked to the production and analysis of pupil attainment data, financial data and staff performance data therefore tends to dominate the everyday work performed by head teachers as well as school governors and trustees (those with responsibility for holding senior school leaders to account for the educational and financial performance of schools). Increasingly, school governors and trustees in England are harnessing the algorithmic power of digital data technologies (the Department for Education’s school comparison tool, Analyse School Performance (ASP), and the FFT (Fischer Family Trust) Governor Dashboard, among others) to meet these expectations and

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enhance their organizational preparedness and answerability (Wilkins, 2016). Central to NPM as an organizing principle of public service organization is the idea that service providers share characteristics which can be evaluated, measured and compared to determine their effectiveness, efficiency and continuous improvement (Clarke & Newman, 1997). Although NPM tends to be confined to the school, it gives rise to wider systems of ‘commensurability, equivalence and comparative performance’ (Lingard, Martino, & Rezai-Rashti, 2016: 542). In effect, NPM helps to produce schools as navigable spaces of replicable and measurable ‘quality’ so that they are amenable to the scrutiny and statistical mapping of external regulators and funders, and therefore more visible or ‘appropriable’ as deliverers of a standardized product. NPM therefore signifies increased devolved management of education but also the marketization of education more generally and a shift from ‘welfarism’ to ‘post-welfarism’ (Gewirtz, 2002). As Gewirtz (2002) observes, schools in England have undergone significant changes to their internal structures and practices due to a major shift in the politics of education policy making since the late 1970s. Since this time there has been a persistent derisive government rhetoric designed to undermine the relatively autonomous position of teachers and school leaders as ‘professionals’ and the role of local governments as administrators of school bureaucracy and oversight. These kinds of institutional orders and social arrangements were integral to the development of post-war social policy and the political settlement known as ‘welfarism’, but came under increased pressure to reform following interventions by economic liberals and political conservatives during the late 1970s – otherwise known as the ‘New Right’. Borrowing from elements of public choice theory and neo-classical economics, the New Right excoriated state intervention in the economy and welfare as authoritarian, demoralizing and inefficient (Gamble, 1986),

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and instead championed the role of market concepts of supply and demand, competition and choice to ensure ‘allocative efficiency’ (Boyne, 1996: 704) in the funding and delivery of education. Rate-capping on provision was introduced to ensure that school budget levels were linked to student intake, for example. This included summoning parents in the role of consumers to create structured incentives for schools to respond to parents as discriminating ‘choosers’ or ‘rational utility maximisers’ (Wilkins, 2012). Parents would also be supported in their choice-making by league tables, school visits and school brochures, thereby making service providers more responsive and transparent. Gewirtz (2002: 3) refers to this paradigmatic shift in education policy as the ‘post-welfarist education policy complex (PWEPC)’. The PWEPC points to a decisive break from post-war social policy, namely the administration of ‘needs’ through bureaucratic centralism and rationalist social planning, and the construction of agreed social purposes. For Ranson (2003: 460), the shift from a welfarist to a post-welfarist paradigm has not only intensified concerns with ‘accountability’ but reimagined and reoriented relations of accountability to ‘strengthen corporate power at the expense of the public sphere’. Corporate power and private sector involvement in public sector organization is closely linked to NPM as it relies on the development of depoliticized systems of devolved management removed from traditional structures of government, including local government interference, union bargaining and forms of ‘deliberative democracy’ or stakeholder participation (Wilkins, 2016). Under these conditions governments appear to be more trustful of non-human agents and tools as arbitrators of educational excellence – digital data, real-time analytics and machine intelligence (Williamson, 2015) – than they are of teachers, head teachers and middle leaders as professionals. This includes auditing techniques, performance appraisals and standard evaluation frameworks – what Peck

and Tickell (2002: 384) call the ‘technocratic embedding of routines of neoliberal governance’. Moreover, private sector takeover or sponsorship in public education is intimately linked to the proliferation of these technologies and techniques of government. Ball (2008) argues that network governance and venture philanthropy are key to understanding the design and operation of contemporary schools and school systems. Network governance is used here to capture the emergence of new policy communities ‘which “catalyses” business in the delivery of education services and reconfigures and disseminates education policy discourses’ (Ball, 2008: 749). Related to this shift from government to governance is the expansion of public-private partnerships and private sector participation in education (Verger, Fontdevila, & Zancajo, 2016). The exponential rise of private sector actors and agencies as deliverers of public services points to a shift away from hierarchy and top-heavy bureaucracy as models for steering the organization of schools and school systems. A key consequence of this shift is the dispersal and disaggregation of state power facilitated by increased decentralization and ‘disintermediation’. Disintermediation describes ‘the withdrawal of power and influence from intermediate or “meso-level” educational authorities that operate between local schools and national entities’ (Lubienski, 2014: 424), such as local government and municipal authorities. As Gunter, Hall, and Mills (2015) observe, the active discreditation of the bureau-professionalism of local government has cultivated opportunities for private sector management of public services and expanded opportunities for the involvement of new knowledge actors and parastatal agencies in the business of monitoring and running schools. Specifically, they document the role and contribution of consultants ‘who trade knowledge, expertise and experience, and through consultancy as a relational transfer process they impact on

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structures, systems and organizational goals’ (Gunter et al., 2015: 519). Other knowledge actors include school inspectors, who assist and compel schools to realize the ambitions of the state and therefore enhance the legitimacy of government. Similar to consultants and other ‘experts’ involved in practices of credentialing, mediation and monitoring, school inspectors constitute a community of policy actors or ‘policy brokers’ (Baxter, 2017: 3) with significant influence on the strategy and operation of schools and the ends and outcomes of school systems more generally. But the ends and outcomes of school systems are not only shaped by the professional judgements and evaluation criteria of school inspectors operating within a national framework of education governance. School organization is shaped by global testing regimes facilitated by international programmes conducted by big supraorganizations (Lingard et al., 2016), such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The purpose of the OECD’s PISA and other related programmes is to collect and compare data on student achievement from different countries across the globe, to indicate the effectiveness of those national education systems in terms of supporting academic performance, and to use that data to generate a flattened comparison model that allows national governments to determine their international economic competitiveness. As Lingard, Martino, and Rezai-Rashti (2016: 540) observe, these global testing regimes constitute a new form of biopolitics and ‘metapolicy, steering educational systems in particular directions with great effects in schools and on teacher practices, on curricula, as well as upon student learning and experiences of school’. More importantly, they compel the acceleration and expansion of new infrastructures of accountability in which ‘human capital formation has become a central economic focus of national policy, resulting in the economisation of education policy’ (Lingard et al., 2016: 541).

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In this section I have outlined some of the mediating structures and discourses guiding the development of schools and school systems. In some cases, education researchers mobilize neoliberalism as a broad descriptor for linking these discursive practices and institutional orders to wider macro processes, specifically a hegemonic project or dominant social arrangement in which the ontology of the subject (or subjectivity, sometimes called ‘the social’; see Barnett, 2005) is taken to be the residual effect of specific political and economic tendencies linked to processes of marketization, competition, de-democratization, and privatization. Here neoliberalism functions as an analytical framework for tracing interrelationships between school organization, statecraft (or state transformation) and the wider economy. However, some education researchers appear to be less discriminate in their use of neoliberalism compared to others, or at least do not engage sufficiently with the limits of neoliberalism as a normative description to capturing the complex terrain on which school organization is overlaid and aligned with local projects and politics. In what follows I draw on elements of ‘assemblage thinking’ (Higgens & Larner, 2017b) as tools and practices for thinking through the possibilities and implications of such work, namely situating schools as organizations within a ‘matrix of dependencies, reciprocities, and obligations’ (Trnka & Trundle, 2014: 150).

ASSEMBLAGE THINKING Understood as a first approximation, neoliberalism is significant as a provisional starting point to making sense of the discourses, technologies and logics of domination/empowerment shaping the internal operation of schools. Schools and school systems in the grip of advanced liberalism tend to be defined by managerial deference, technocratic efficiency, upward accountability and performativity.

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Yet despite the consistency of its economic objectives, neoliberalism remains, ideologically and logically, internally divided and contradictory (Hall, 2005). As Clarke (2008: 135) argues, ‘Neoliberalism suffers from “promiscuity” (hanging out with various theoretical perspectives)’. But such promiscuity extends to political formations and politics itself (the ways in which actors labour to form new collectivities and counter-conducts). This is evident in the multiplicity of forms and expressions neoliberalism takes as it is coarticulated with other political movements and ideologies (from neo-conservatism and social rights activism to feminism and the Third Way) (see Higgens & Larner, 2017a). This explains the unevenness, unpredictability and variegation or ‘messy actualities’ of neoliberalism across geo-political contexts (Brown, 2006: 14). As Ong (2006: 13) suggests: It therefore seems appropriate to study neoliberalism not as a ‘culture’ or a ‘structure’ but as mobile calculative techniques of governing that can be decontextualized from their original sources and recontextualized in constellations of mutually constitutive and contingent relations.

On this account, the ‘success’ of neoliberalism is contingent on ‘how these selectivities reproduce specific semiotic, social, institutional and spatiotemporal fixes that support the reproduction of economic, political and social domination’ (Jessop & Sum, 2016: 108). From this perspective, neoliberalism does not only operate through ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey, 2007: 34), but also through strategies of reorientation, reculturing and ‘re-agenting’ (Hatcher, 2006: 599) in order to rebuff local politics and local culture. Neoliberalism involves experimentation and adaption (Peck & Theodore, 2015). Such a view of neoliberalism means refusing ‘reified and homogenous accounts of modern power’ which portray ‘forms of power/ knowledge as monolithic, with state practices fitting seamlessly with practices of selfcreation’ (Bevir, 2010: 425). Moreover, it

means ‘foregrounding processes of composition and the heterogeneous actants involved’ (Higgens & Larner, 2017a: 4) with a focus on the labour of socially situated actors engaged in everyday dilemmas of grafting and holding together disparate elements to forge new hegemonic alignments and forms of agency (Newman, 2017). As Li (2007: 13) observes, ‘what appears to be rational landscape design or “management” is the serendipitous outcome of everyday practices that have quite disparate motives’. ‘Assemblage thinking’ (Higgens & Larner, 2017a: 3) offers a useful set of analytical tools and perspectives for tracing empirically ‘the complicated distribution of neo-liberal governmentality’ (Clarke, 2008: 138) and grappling with the complexities of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ through a focus on the ‘mundane practices through which neoliberal spaces, states, and subjects are being constituted in particular forms’ (Larner, 2003: 511). Instead of focusing exclusively on the ‘resultant formation’ or sedimenting domination, assemblage thinking prioritizes the ‘processes of assembly’ (Higgens & Larner, 2017a: 4) through which neoliberalism is grafted onto other elements and entities. This type of relational-processual thinking is critical to moving beyond a view of neoliberalism as naturally tending towards structural coherence and unity. More importantly, it sustains a critique of neoliberalism as always provisional, unfinished and partial given the ‘contingent assembly work’ involved (Higgens & Larner 2017a: 5) and calls attention to the ways in which ‘particular relations are held stable, fall apart, are contested and are reassembled’ (Anderson et al., 2012: 180). In terms of education research into schools as organizations, there is a growing body of literature that is attentive to the dynamic assembly work underpinning the formation of schools as organizations, even if the authors do not explicitly identify ‘assembly thinking’ as their primary analytical framework and theoretical orientation. What this literature shares with assembly thinking is a

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‘processual’ or ‘relational’ perspective that focuses on context, materiality and socially situated performances to disrupt conventional ‘synchronic’, institutionalist’ or ‘structuralist’ accounts of social change. In their research on policy enactments in schools, Ball, Maguire, and Braun (2012: 3) analyze the ‘creative processes of interpretation and recontextualization’ through which policy discourse is translated and implemented. The point here is that policy discourse is not the ‘closed preserve of the formal government apparatus of policy making’ (Ozga, 2000: 42), nor it is the preserve of policy implementers (school leaders, teachers and governors) and their strict traditions and value systems. Rather, policy discourse is a messy hotchpotch of disparate elements that are grafted together to produce situated, sometimes problematic, alignments between the demands of government and parastatal authorities and the interests and motives of school actors. On this account, the relationship between school organization and neoliberalism is not linear, predictable or deterministic since this carries the assumption that human action and response are the residual effects of rational consensus, perfect control and system design. As Mitchell and Lizotte (2016: 224) remind us, it is important to remain circumspect of the ‘apparent seamlessness’ with which policy is translated into the ‘consciousness and practices of individuals and groups’. Other education researchers (Johnson, 2004; Keddie, 2013; Prieto-Flores et  al., 2017; Wilkins, forthcoming) have adopted similar approaches to unravel the micropolitics of policy enactments in schools and their subsumption or accommodation with neoliberalism. These accounts capture the entanglement of disparate elements that make up schools as organizations, including agendas or priorities, laws, socially circulating discourses, knowledges, and regulatory regimes. Moreover, they reveal moments of disjuncture, contestation, negotiation and repair – when meanings are transposed and

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refracted through seemingly conflicting sets of interests and motives to produce contradictory practices and cross-cutting impulses and goals. Wilkins (forthcoming), for example, demonstrates the messy, complicated governance work entered into by school leaders and governors running co-operative academies. Like all publicly-funded schools in England, co-operative academies are accountable to central government and the school’s inspectorate, Ofsted, among other stakeholders, but they have co-operative principles at the heart of their values system, namely ‘mutual support through sharing good practice’ and ‘good governance through sound membershipbased structures that guarantee involvement for all the key stakeholders’ (The Schools Co-operative Society, 2016). Aptly described by Woodin (2015: 6) as ‘hybrid’ organizations, co-operative academies appear to work both with and against the grain of marketization, competition and individualization that saturates public education in England. Wilkins (forthcoming) details the ways in which co-operative academies appear to successfully resist certain elements of ‘neoliberalism’ (legal instruments and schemes of delegation designed to shift power away from students, parents and teachers as stakeholders in the school) in order to make themselves democratically accountable. At the same time, co-operative academies are compelled to accommodate certain elements of neoliberalism due to government pressure to remain economically sustainable and competitively viable in the local education market. Co-operative academies therefore engage simultaneously in upward accountability and downward accountability, competition and collaboration, in order to achieve partial congruence of multiple stakes, interests and objectives. What emerges from these accounts is the contingency and congruence of neoliberalism in the context of locally situated dilemmas, obligations, normative commitments, and dispositions. In terms of conceptualizing schools as organizations, assemblage thinking brings

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into focus the ‘inherited institutional landscape’ on which neoliberalism as the ‘politically guided intensification of market rule and commodification’ is always patterned and layered (Brenner, Peck, & Theodore, 2010: 3–4). Here, then, we are encouraged to think about the ‘the different modes of insertion into “global” neo-liberalism that are experienced by different regions, nations, and more local places’ (Clarke, 2008: 137). Thus, it is possible to identify a ‘variety of neoliberalisms’ (Plehwe, 2009: 3) rather than view neoliberalism-in-practice (or neoliberalization) as ‘always and everywhere in the same homogenous and singular outcome as the sequencing is predefined’ (Springer, 2015: 7).

CONCLUSION This chapter has made use of various theories and literatures to offer a comprehensive overview of some of the challenges and opportunities to theorizing schools as organizations in the neoliberal state. Despite the omnipresence of the term ‘neoliberalism’ both in popular and academic jargon, the literature reviewed in this chapter points to a lack of ‘conceptual specification’ (Castree, 2006: 1). This is due to the different ways neoliberalism has been translated and adapted within and across academic disciplines. From a Marxist and political economy perspective, neoliberalism is an ideological hegemonic project designed to maintain new means of capital accumulation and class power among groups of elite transnational actors (Harvey, 2005). Neoliberalism can also be viewed from a Foucauldian and governmentality perspective to denote a field of governmental power in which subjects are summoned and activated to behave in certain ways, normally concomitant with the political ends of government (Dean, 1999; Rose, 1999). In both cases, however, neoliberalism is in danger of becoming a detached signifier where there is

no focused attention on the interconnections between the whole (the abstraction we might provisionally term ‘neoliberalism’) and the part (the day-to-day organization of schools and school systems more generally). One of the ways in which this problem can be redressed without moving beyond neoliberalism as a normative description and analytical framework for our work is through thick description of the ground logics and deeper frames shaping the development of schools as organizations. The aim of this chapter has been to sketch some of the limitations and contradictions of neoliberalism, especially the critical gap in our thinking about its application and utility to making sense of the complexities of school organization in the modern era. What is not being proposed here is a move beyond neoliberalism, although significant critical literature looking at ‘after neoliberalism’ and ‘post-neoliberalism’ (Springer, 2015) warrant further discussion and debate. Rather, what this chapter is calling for is a critical-reflexive space in which education researchers continually work with and against concepts of neoliberalism in order to confidently attest to their analytic value. Assemblage thinking offers a useful toolkit for doing this, as do other approaches no doubt. What is unique to assemblage thinking and is already pervasive in some of the education literature is a refusal to presuppose the effortless translation of policy into practice. This includes resisting binary language that comfortably bifurcates meanings (public/private, state/market, citizen/consumer, local/global, power/resistance) or privileges discourse over materiality and vice versa. Instead assemblage thinking is attentive to the blurred boundaries, interrelated vocabularies, cross-cutting impulses, and intersecting positions that characterize seemingly ‘neoliberal’ work. This means examining the tensions and struggles that arise when schools as organizations align themselves with the neoliberal work of marketization, commodification and privatization, rather than become subsumed by them.

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31 The Digital Age: Exploring the Relationship between Technology and School Organization Vincent Cho, Virginia Snodgrass Rangel, and Anna Noble

TECHNOLOGICAL STOPS AND STARTS Dr Lockhart, a middle school principal, arrives at work. Although it is barely dawn, she sees that a handful of teachers are already preparing for the day. As she passes their classrooms, she is impressed by the unprecedented roles that new technologies can now play in teaching and learning. As she passes by the foreign language wing, she sees Mr Enos video-chatting with another sixth grade teacher in Spain. As one sips a coffee, the other is having lunch. Together, they are planning their students’ next virtual collaboration session. Students from the teachers’ classes have been working together on interdisciplinary projects. At present, the students have been grouped heterogeneously and have been working to film bilingual public service announcements on a variety of topics, such as climate change and bullying. As a result, Dr Lockhart has enjoyed watching these students grow in a variety of ways, from gaining confidence in

Spanish and in developing new relationships, to gaining experience in using the devices brought about by the school’s piloting of 1:1 devices. In some cases, they have even leveraged social media in order to contact scientists in the field, weaving their commentary into the videos. As she passes by, however, Dr Lockhart realizes that Mr Enos has gone about this work mostly on his own. Just as other teachers and staff have not helped him, he has not shared his experiences with them more broadly. This issue gnaws at Dr Lockhart as she passes Ms Bailey’s classroom. Like Mr Enos, Ms Bailey’s students are also participating in the 1:1 pilot program. Although the devices are often visible in the classroom, it is unclear to Dr Lockhart how students might be benefiting from their use. For example, Dr Lockhart recently observed a lesson on sonnets, which Ms Bailey purchased online from a peer in another state. Some students read from hardcopy texts, others used digital versions, while others seemed to be lost in their

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devices searching for the correct location or even ignoring the lesson and playing videogames. During the lesson, Ms Bailey encouraged students to take pictures of PowerPoint slides and to type down important ideas, but Dr Lockhart sensed that these behaviors were actually getting in the way of learning. The lesson concluded with an online, multiplechoice quiz, which was graded automatically via the school’s learning management system. Although both teachers have embraced the 1:1 program, Dr Lockhart is becoming increasingly sensitive to the differences between these classrooms. As Dr Lockhart arrives at her office, Mr Kennedy is waiting for her. Earlier this year, Mr Kennedy began using an app known as ClassDojo to enhance his classroom management. Now, he is asking for time at the next faculty meeting to share his experiences. He sees the app as dovetailing with the school’s efforts to promote prosocial behavior among students. Mr Kennedy describes how he uses ClassDojo to assign merits and demerits to students for their behavior. Students spent time designing personal avatars, which are projected onto the class SMART board throughout the day, allowing them to monitor their relative achievements. Although Dr Lockhart wants to know more, she also does not want to make him feel defensive. For example, she wants to ask about how Mr Kennedy ensures that certain students aren’t stigmatized for repeated misbehaviors, especially those that might be subjective or difficult to do in light of one’s Individualized Education Program (IEP), such as maintaining ‘time on task.’ What happens for those students? What happens to student motivation over time or when rewards and penalties go away? Are there other app features that might help the school evaluate its discipline practices overall or connect to issues of student achievement? How would this fit into special education services or the district’s new interest in creating an early warning system for school drop outs?

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Before she speaks, however, a parent has arrived with a pressing issue and Mr Kennedy leaves to prepare for class. The parent is concerned that her daughter is being bullied via a new social media app. It seems as if the app was especially designed to hide teens’ activities from adults. The app’s icon looked to be of a calculator and all posts were anonymous. Students were posting profanity, personal attacks, and images of the victim, some of which had been digitally altered to be especially hurtful. As Dr Lockhart learns more about the case, she begins a mental review of the school’s acceptable use policy and makes a checklist of who else she might need to involve in the investigation. Although most of the activity seemed to be occurring late in the evening, it sounds like some of the posts and images were made at school. It is unclear what else is getting posted, and Dr Lockhart suspects that if this is happening with one student, it may be happening with others. It would not be surprising if this student had posted some malicious content herself. In comparison to Dr Lockhart’s experiences as a teacher not so long ago, the digital age would seem to be fulfilling its promise of changing the very fabric of schooling. And yet, even as she considers this possibility, she also thinks about the puzzles that those changes present to her as a school leader.

SCHOOLING IN THE DIGITAL AGE Although the events described above did not happen in any one place, such examples – both the good and the bad – are common in schools. Today, schools are awash with new technologies. Sometimes this is by educator choice, and sometimes it is not. At the classroom level, many of these technologies would seem to promise advancements in learning. For example, one-to-one (1:1) initiatives, which aim to put computing devices (e.g., computers, smartphones, tablets) into the hands of every student, have become increasingly

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commonplace (Nagel, 2010; Richardson et al., 2013). Indeed, some research on the uses of notebook computers suggest that there can be learning gains, especially in areas such as reading and writing (Bebell & O’Dwyer, 2010; Sauers & McLeod, 2012). Further, students can now connect directly with experts or peers around the globe, thus creating and sharing new knowledge as a part of their everyday learning (Greenhow & Burton, 2011; Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes, 2009; Ito et al., 2013). At the same time, the nature of the internet has changed and continues to change. There are increased incidents of cyberbullying and other internet abuses that often involve school time or school-based relationships (Siegle, 2010). Additionally, numerous researchers have raised concerns about the effects of screen time on children’s social development (e.g., Radesky & Christakis, 2016; Twenge, Martin, & Campbell, 2018). At another level, new technologies also promise to reshape the everyday lives of teachers and administrators. Computerized data systems have changed how teachers and administrators analyze and pinpoint students’ academic needs (Wayman, Cho, & Richards, 2010). Standardized tests, interim assessments, common assessments, teacher-­ generated quizzes, and a variety of other data all are being used to inform educators’ changes in practice. In this vein, classroom behavior management technologies (e.g., ClassDojo) promise to promote prosocial behavior among students, helping teachers to address students’ non-academic needs (Chiarelli, Szabo, & Williams, 2015; Robacker, Rivera, & Warren, 2016). Some of these systems (e.g., LiveSchool; Kickboard) go a step further by offering features similar to those found in academic data systems. These include tools for analyzing and disaggregating behavioral data according to various groups or subgroups, as well as for planning and monitoring the success of interventions. Thus, the image that emerges is of educators constantly being able to ‘plug in’ to the whole student, academically and non-academically.

Added to this, new technologies also promise to expand the wealth of knowledge resources that educators might leverage in their work. For example, educators both inside and outside of the schoolhouse may use social media to connect professionally, sharing lesson plans or other wisdom (Carpenter & Green, 2017; Noble, McQuillan, & Littenberg-Tobias, 2016). In fact, Opfer, Kauffman, and Thompson (2016) find that a majority of teachers use the internet to gather lesson plans and instructional resources, sometimes even buying or selling homespun lessons via sites such as Teacherspayteachers. Similarly, school administrators have been found to use social media to exchange ideas about effective education and leadership, as well as to provide each other with encouragement and social support (Cho, 2016a; Sauers & Richardson, 2015). Self-reported data suggest that these platforms fulfill important needs, but their actual impact or quality has yet to be evaluated. There exists, then, a tension between the promises of technologies and the real challenges schools face. In practice, this tension means that schools are adopting technologies at a rapid pace, but that these investments do not necessarily result in meaningful changes to instruction or learning (Cuban, 2001; Means, 2010). Recalling the example of Dr Lockhart’s school, it is possible for teachers to gain access to the same sets of resources (e.g., 1:1 devices), and yet still to arrive at vastly different practices. At the very same time, new technologies (including, but not limited to, classroom behavior management technologies) are constantly emerging. With each one, educators must make decisions about likely consequences – whether intended or unintended. For those who are interested in the organization and management of schools, these and other dilemmas are rooted in questions about the natures of technology and educational change. Does change come from the technology itself or from the people using the technology? How one goes about addressing this tension

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depends upon one’s theoretical stance, which may then have implications for the ways in which schools and districts are managed. In this chapter, we argue that one can develop a better grasp of these issues by considering the various organizational factors that influence the success of technology initiatives. In the following section, we describe and contrast two theoretical perspectives that have been applied to the analysis of technology in schools, rationalism and open systems, and the ways in which they may manifest in the management and leadership of technology initiatives. We suggest that although the first perspective provides what may seem like intuitive answers, those answers may not reflect or help explain actual practice. Instead, the second perspective, which may require additional thought or preparation, is likely to yield additional insights that contribute to the long-term success of technology initiatives. The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. First, we describe the rational and the open system perspectives on organizational change, especially highlighting how the latter might provide an alternative to the conventional approach to technology implementation. In our discussion, we present some opportunities for future research, both topically and methodologically. Finally, we reflect on the ways in which leaders might leverage both lenses in order to address problems such as those faced by Dr Lockhart.

COMPETING PERSPECTIVES ON ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE: RATIONAL AND OPEN SYSTEMS As organizational theorists have pointed out, there are different ways to see and to think about the nature of organizations (Pfeffer, 1997; Scott & Davis, 2007). With each conceptualization comes different presumptions (and in some cases, metaphors) regarding how and why groups of people get things

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done. As Morgan (1986) demonstrates, thinking about organizations as if they are essentially machines helps to spotlight the importance of command, control, and the orderly fit of components. On the other hand, seeing organizations as similar to biological organisms illuminates the importance of addressing the well-being of members and of responding to unique environmental demands. Other ways of seeing organizations abound, and no single perspective is all encompassing. We offer up this reminder because technology is easy to take for granted. As Turkle (2011) points out, current generations of young students and even young adults are growing up in the so-called digital age, which can make it is easy to forget that the digital age is, at a sociological level, still quite new. In the everyday lives of many, it might not seem unusual to text message a friend about dinner, to choose a restaurant from online reviews, or to post pictures and video from the night out via social media. But, as we attempt to highlight through the example of Dr Lockhart’s school, it is both difficult to comprehend all the many technological changes occurring in schools simultaneously, as well as to understand how or why certain changes may occur but not others. We argue that a fruitful approach to understanding these changes is to abstain from taking technology at face value. Rather, increased cognizance about different organizational perspectives could be helpful in understanding issues of school and technological change. In the following, we attempt to demonstrate this by describing how Scott and Davis (2007) have distinguished between rational system and open system perspectives. Whereas the former might lead analysts to see organizations as being mechanistic in nature, the latter emphasizes the importance of social interaction, intersubjectivity, and adaptation in organizations. We selected these particular perspectives because of the way in which their contrasts help to cast into relief some of the assumptions that leaders or

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researchers may carry when thinking about issues of technology and technological change in schools. We contend that increased cognizance of these assumptions can better position schools and districts for technology adoption and integration initiatives.

The Rational System Perspective The rational system perspective has played an important role in organizational thinking since the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Scott & Davis, 2007). Schools of thought informing this perspective include Taylor’s scientific management, Fayol’s administrative theory, and Weber’s work on formal bureaucracy. According to the rational system perspective, ‘organizations are instruments designed to attain specified goals’ (Scott & Davis, 2007, p. 35). In other words, this perspective leads the analyst to focus on an organization’s stated goals and the ways in which efficiency in working toward those goals might be maximized. Such efficiency might be achieved by standardizing or modifying work processes, patterns of communication, or other structures. A useful metaphor for this perspective is that of the organization as a machine (Morgan, 1986). This metaphor suggests that there is a rational and determinate order in how an organization’s parts might best fit together. Work and organizational change are seen as linear processes: the role of the decision-making core is to dictate or plan what work is to be done, by whom, and how it will be coordinated. The role of workers (whether human or mechanical) is to fulfill those plans.

The rational system perspective and technology integration The rational system perspective underpins much of the conventional wisdom regarding what it takes to manage a technology initiative. For example, national standards for school technology leadership emphasize

activities such as connecting technology plans to district vision, developing shared definitions of productivity, setting goals and measures for success, and other logistics (e.g., budgeting, resources, infrastructure) (Garland & Tadeja, 2013). Similarly, US Department of Education recommendations regarding the adoption of computerized data systems emphasize tasks such as providing guidance and oversight regarding data use, clearly articulating what users need from systems, and the planning of rollout (L. S. Hamilton et al., 2009). Further, Phillips and Sianjina (2013) provide recommendations for leaders regarding how to develop and enforce regulations regarding technology use, as well as how to calculate matters such as the total cost of ownership. Altogether, this perspective leads the analyst to treat educational change as linear, casting the work of school technology leadership as simply the development of goals and plans, and the allocation of resources toward those plans. It also leads the analyst to assume that practices relating to technology emanate from expectations set forth by an organization’s decision-making core. For example, Hughes, Boklage, and Ok (2016) studied one district’s technology initiative, describing how top leaders arrived at a vision, handed it down to teachers, and oversaw logistics (e.g., training, infrastructure, oversight, budgeting). Despite this seemingly logical approach, it did not result in the intended changes to teacher practice. Seeing these issues through the rational system lens, one is led to see teachers (i.e., their lack of awareness about goals, expectations, or leaders’ vision) as the sticking point. As such, it becomes easy to argue that the way to move an initiative along is to focus on teacher knowledge, enhancing what teachers know about content, pedagogy, or technology (Hughes, Guion, Bruce, Horton, & Prescott, 2011; Koehler & Mishra, 2009). This argument is underpinned by the assumption that the powers of technology are always there, but that teachers have simply failed to grasp how to unlock them.

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Although linear thinking can make technology implementation seem simple, it may also overlook other factors that may be equally important for success. In broad strokes, a rational system view risks underestimating the degrees to which decision-makers could be fallible or non-rational, while overestimating the value of formal training or directives (March & Olsen, 1984; McDaniel & Driebe, 2001; Weick & Roberts, 1993). Moreover, the rational system model presents what might be considered a reductionist approach to understanding the nature of technology. In essence, it presumes that there is a direct line between decision-makers’ intents for a technology and what becomes of that artifact in practice. For example, Brooks (2011) describes how policymakers may assume that the purchase of new technologies equates to educational progress, thus neglecting any consideration of the potential for lack of actual technology use. Among technology researchers, this reductionist stance is known as technological determinism (Leonardi, 2012; Markus & Robey, 1998; Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001). In brief, technological deterministic stances assume the existence or properties of an artifact will determine what people do with it. As Latour (2004) points out, it is easy to think that because kettles can boil water, or because knives can cut meat, or because hammers can hit nails, that these uses are endemic to the artifacts themselves. In other words, it can seem as if the artifact itself had agency, as if a hammer’s properties or design are what impose the act of hitting. Moreover, when technological deterministic assumptions are projected onto digital technologies (whose properties are often much less tangible, stable, or predictable), it becomes especially easy to confound designers’ intents and promises with an artifact’s actual uses or effects. Yet, just as there is not anything that prevents one from using even the most ideal hammer as a paperweight (Leonardi, 2012), there is not necessarily anything that prevents educators from declining to use 1:1 devices instructionally, from using an app with

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unintended and negative consequences for students, or that might prevent students from cyberbullying. At the same time, the same might be said regarding more positive uses of educational technologies – simply expanding access does not necessarily ensure advancements in practice (Means, 2010). Indeed, in a comparison of three school districts’ uses of computerized data systems, Cho and Wayman (2014) found both these dynamics at play. Not only might the same system be used in vastly different ways, those uses might represent only a fraction of a system’s many promises. For researchers and practitioners alike, the limitations of rational, deterministic perspectives on technology implementation raise questions relating the nature of technology adoption and use. These include: what else accounts for variation in adoption and use? For practitioners, what is the best way to think about technologies and what else can be done to support their use? If they are not simply tools, then what are they? If supporting changes in practice is about more than simply establishing clear goals and aligning resources, then what else might need to be done?

The Open System Perspective In contrast to the rational system perspective, the open system perspective focuses one’s attention on the ways in which the parts of an organization may interact with each other and with their environments (Scott & Davis, 2007). In this view, some elements of educational organizations may be understood as being loosely coupled (Weick, 1976). In other words, members of organizations may exhibit both independence and connections with others. Rather than being tautly aligned, different parts of an organization might be drawing from different sets of goals, rules, information, or interpretations of the world. Thus, people in organizations can be understood as constantly processing information from each other and from their environments,

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attempting to adapt to the circumstances at hand (Lichtenstein, 2006; McDaniel & Driebe, 2001). Practices in organizations can be understood not as emerging from a rational decision-making core, but rather as the products of distributed cognition, spanning multiple actors and interactions (Pfeffer, 1997; Spillane, Reiser, & Gomez, 2006; Weick & Roberts, 1993). Useful metaphors for open systems include birds flocking or fish schooling (McDaniel & Driebe, 2001). These metaphors highlight the connectedness of system elements, as well as the ways in which elements may self-organize, heed, and interact with each other and new phenomena on a moment-to-moment basis. In education, one prominent example of open systems thinking can be found in theorizing around sensemaking. Sensemaking focuses the analyst’s attention on the ways in which shared interpretive processes influence how organizations perceive and respond to their environments (Weick, 1993; Weick & Roberts, 1993). The theory maintains that ‘action is based on how people notice or select information from the environment, make meaning of that information, and then act on those interpretations, developing culture, social structures, and routines over time’ (Coburn, 2001, p. 147). In other words, sensemaking discourages the analyst from imagining that policies or other messages might have stable, clear-cut meanings. In this, it is helpful to consider that sensemaking is neither a one-time occurrence, nor something that occurs in isolation. Rather, meaning itself can be understood as ‘co-­ ­ constructed’ by various actors as they negotiate and renegotiate, perhaps multiple times, what they understand about their worlds and the demands at hand (Daly, 2012; Datnow, 2006). Although it is possible to operationalize sensemaking as if it were the sum of individual-level schema or interpretations (e.g., Schechter, Shaked, GanonShilon, & Goldratt, 2016), we caution that this approach may divert inordinate attention from the intersubjective and organizational

nature of sensemaking. After all, what one thinks or notices about phenomena may differ depending upon who else is present or involved and the manner in which information travels across the group (Weick, 1993; Weick & Roberts, 1993). In this way, educational practices can be seen as emergent from how educators have influenced each other’s understandings, within and across organizational levels (Coburn, 2001; Farrell & Marsh, 2016; Honig & Venkateswaran, 2012). For example, responses to high-stakes accountability can be understood not simply in terms of what different individuals might think, but rather in terms how particular individuals interacted in particular contexts, thus arriving at particular understandings that then shaped action (Palmer & Snodgrass Rangel, 2011; Rustique-Forrester, 2005).

The open system perspective: Sensemaking and interpretive flexibility Sensemaking, as described above, has yet to be fully explored in the context of technology use and adoption in schools. Rational models can cast technology initiatives as being about ensuring that resources (e.g., training, infrastructure, oversight) are aligned efficiently toward organizational goals. In this view, it can seem as if teachers will act in the desired and predetermined ways, if only teachers are properly instructed or informed about what to do. However, adopting an open system approach, especially one that leverages sensemaking, is likely to open up new avenues for understanding technology initiatives. For example, an open system perspective would not assume there to be an objectively, universally ‘right’ tool for advancing educational practices. Rather, it would recognize that goodness of fit is filtered through not only individual-level interpretive processes, but also group- and organizational-level dynamics as well. These points have also been advanced among some technology researchers. For example, the notion of interpretive flexibility

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highlights the socially constructed nature of technological artifacts (Orlikowski, 2000; Pinch & Bijker, 1984; Winner, 1993). Different social groups will arrive at different understandings about what particular artifacts are or how best to use them. Thus, interpretive flexibility calls into question the technologically deterministic assumptions that artifacts might be themselves imbued with universal or objectively knowable uses and effects. As in Dr Lockhart’s school, the same artifacts can be seen as tools for collaboration, substitutes for everyday work, or sources of tension and woe. For example, Carlson and Patterson (2015) describe some of the tensions arising when different social groups (i.e., department chairs vs. teachers) held conflicting views about the nature of 1:1 computing and whether it was beneficial to the school. At a larger scale, other researchers have described how the same technologies may be construed differently across entire schools or districts, thus contributing to differences in implementation and use (Cho & Wayman, 2014; Dexter, 2011). The value of interpretive flexibility is that it may serve as a valuable jumping-off point for additional theorizing. For example, drawing upon structuration theory (Giddens, 1979, 1984; Sewell, 1992), technology researchers have begun to delve into the interplay between micro-level activities involving technologies and macro-level organizational or institutional phenomena (Jones & Karston, 2008). Specifically, Giddens argued that agents are both constrained and enabled by structures (e.g., norms, relationships, institutions, policies, tools), and that interpretive processes among agents influenced the ways in which structures might be enacted, institutionalized, or modified over time. As applied to technology, Orlikowski (2000) argues that ‘technology is created and changed by human action, yet it is also used by humans to accomplish some action’ (p. 405). If technologies are treated as interpretively flexible, then it becomes possible to recognize that designs and uses flow not simply from the characteristics of the technology itself, but

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also from users’ unique perspectives, contexts, and relationships. Moreover, adopting open system perspectives opens up avenues for joining theoretical debates regarding the extent to which human interactions with technologies are socially constructed or determined, and the extent to which particular activities might be ‘inscribed’ or ‘designed into’ artifacts themselves (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994; Leonardi, 2012; Winner, 1993). There is little to prevent one from using a hammer as a paperweight, an iPad as only an e-reader, or a smartphone as a tool for bullying. But can it be said that the ‘material’ of these artifacts played no role in determining such activities? When users interact with software and digital applications, where does one find the ‘material’ with which they are interacting? After all, teachers using an app to assign merits or demerits to students might not even be aware of menus for analyzing or reflecting about classroom management practices – and if not, can those functions be considered to have had substance for those teachers?

The open system perspective and technology integration Aside from such ontological questions, an open system approach could also provide alternative ways to think about technology implementation and adoption. For example, instead of imagining that initiatives reach fruition at a defined moment of access or ‘implementation line,’ analysts are encouraged to examine adoption as an extended period of sensemaking and adaptation (Davidson & Chismar, 2007; Leonardi, 2009a; Orlikowski, 1996). As applied to the example of Dr Lockhart’s school, teachers’ present practices involving 1:1 devices can be seen as stemming from the variation in his teachers’ interpretation and the ways in which they interact (or do not interact) around those technologies. Through this lens, a ‘rollout’ simply encompassing access and training may fall short. It may be important, then, to consider the roles of narratives about

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technology use in adoption. The impressions that leaders give about the goals of new technologies, along with the ways in which users reconcile those stories with their own experiences, may influence the long-term success of initiatives (Cho & Wayman, 2014; Leonardi, 2009b). Mindful of the notion of interpretive flexibility, different social groups, even within the same organizations, might not share the same interpretive frames. Although educational technology researchers have focused on the roles of teachers’ ­ individual-level attitudes and beliefs in technology integration (Ertmer, 2005; Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Glazewski, Newby, & Ertmer, 2010), less attention has been given to the ways in which variations in sensemaking across organizations or across subgroups within organizations may influence the ways in which teachers and administrators in the same school understand and talk about technology and, as a result, their technology practices. Moreover, because open system perspectives attend not only to interpretive processes among organizational members, but also to the ways in which those processes interact with organizational environments, analysts also may find it fruitful to examine the ways in which social contexts influence technology use. In some cases, these influences may be iterative. For example, leaders might intend to use email or Twitter for professional purposes, but those uses may have repercussions at home (e.g., stress, diminished family time), thus resulting in new behaviors online or offline (Barley, Meyerson, & Grodal, 2010; Cho & Snodgrass Rangel, 2016). Similarly, although the ability to easily share or distribute information might seem to be a benefit of new technologies, this may depend upon users’ contexts. For example, some information might create positive impressions among supervisors or community members, while other information might have negative repercussions (Cho & Jimerson, 2016; Orlikowski, 2000; Peck & Mullen, 2008). As a result, people may self-censor or go to other lengths to manage those impressions.

Returning to the example of the classroom management app in Dr Lockhart’s school, one could imagine that although widespread access to data about teachers’ disbursement of merits or demerits could spark conversations about students in need of support, it could also unintentionally incentivize undesired behaviors (e.g., ‘cooking the books’ in order to appear effective at classroom management). What’s more, educators may struggle to reconcile broader professional and moral beliefs regarding what constitutes the appropriate role of technology in the lives of youngsters (Carlson & Patterson, 2015; Cho, 2017). In our example, Dr Lockhart and Mr Kennedy ended their meeting with conflicting views regarding the nature of schooling and the repercussions of ClassDojo. In practice, such fundamental conflicts could occur for a variety of technologies, across multiple contexts. Altogether, open system perspectives may provide an entree into some unexpected or non-linear dynamics inherent to technology adoption and use. In contrast to rational and technologically deterministic views, technology might not in itself be a magic bullet for educational improvement or something that can be woven into work simply via training. Even so, open system perspectives might not be without their own unique limitations. For example, although they can shed light on the ways in which groups of people, not just individuals, interact with technology, they do not necessarily predict how specific changes might unfold (McDaniel, 2007; McQuillan, 2008). Further, open system perspectives call into question the very possibility of effective change through technology integration. Values and beliefs regarding what constitutes effective change may conflict within an organization, perhaps in light of or in contradiction with empirical research. And, given the popular notion that ‘more is better’ when it comes to novel and frequent technology use (E. R. Hamilton, Rosenberg, & Akcaoglu, 2016), leaders and teachers may find it hard to know just where to begin promoting positive change.

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DISCUSSION The preceding passages have provided alternative lenses for examining issues relating to organizational change and technology integration. As Orlikowski and Barley (2001) note, there is a long-standing divide between the research about organizations and the research about information technology. Our hope has been to bridge some of this gap for educational audiences by highlighting some of the practical issues that can face schools today, and by reflecting upon some of the ways in which rational system and open system perspectives cast into relief different dimensions of such puzzles. For example, whereas rational system models treat work (and workers’ uses of technology) as something that can be predetermined, predicted, and controlled, open system models highlight workers’ sensemaking processes (and thus workers’ agency) when enacting, adapting, or rejecting technologies. Viewed through an open system lens, educators can be understood as drawing upon information from their personal experiences, from each other, and from their environments when attempting to make sense of how or why to use digital tools. These tensions call into question popular beliefs in the ‘power’ of technologies in and of themselves to revolutionize schooling. Building on the previous discussion, we first describe some potential next steps for research, both topically and methodologically. Subsequently, we describe how leaders might incorporate rational and open system thinking into their practices.

Future Research and Methodologies Although this chapter has attempted to synthesize some of the scholarship about organizational change and about technology integration, there is much work to be done yet. For example, educational research may benefit from increased knowledge-sharing

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across disciplines. Educational scholars have approached issues relating to technology from a variety of angles, ranging from sociology to the designing or developing apps and games. Further, some might be primarily interested in a particular context or topic (e.g., K-12, literacy, adult learning), while others might primarily focus on particular technology types (e.g., social media, computerized data systems, iPads). Accordingly, organizational theories may provide a useful way to tie some of these research streams together, arriving at insights that might span contexts or circumstances. For example, a variety of technologies currently promise to support teacher professional learning. Although some, such as online courses or videos, are commonplace today, others are not. Today, teachers buy and sell lesson plans online (Opfer et  al., 2016; Torphy, Hu, Liu, & Chen, 2017) and use social media to organize ‘grass roots’ professional development (e.g., Edcamps, Twitter chats, Voxer groups) (Carpenter, 2016; Carpenter & Green, 2017; Cho, 2016a). Thus, future research could draw upon organizational theories in order to better the ways in which local or contextual factors might influence users’ technology practices, as well as relationships and practices in the schoolhouse. Importantly, insights into such issues could also help address other problems in education. For example, although school districts increasingly turned toward technologies as a way to help them implement policy (Burch & Hayes, 2009; L. S. Hamilton et  al., 2009), and although policy researchers also wrestle with similar questions about the natures of sensemaking and enactment (Coburn, 2016; Spillane et  al., 2006), bridges among these various worlds are rare. Understanding such issues would help shed light on long-­standing questions regarding the nature of human agency, the institutionalization of practice, and the forces that shape society. In future research, social network analysis (SNA) may be especially helpful in breaking new ground. Open system perspectives

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highlight the importance of relationships and information sharing, and SNA provides a way to detail some of these phenomena (Borgatti & Halgin, 2011; Daly, Moolenaar, Carrier, & del Fresno, 2017). Drawing upon network and graph theories, SNA methodologies can help uncover informal social ties within organizations, many of which may stand in contrast to traditional, rational approaches to understanding organizations. In areas such as health care and engineering, some researchers have employed SNA to understand the ways in which technology adoption may lead to social changes, as well as how social forces may influence technology adoption (Barley, 1990; Leonardi, 2013). In education, researchers have begun to explain the ways in which social ties and patterns may influence the innovation and sustainability of instructional reforms, as well as the values and beliefs shared among particular educators (Coburn, Russell, Kaufman, & Stein, 2012; Daly & Finnigan, 2010; Moolenaar, Sleegers, & Daly, 2011). Although studies employing SNA to understand the implementation and uses of educational technologies are still rare, inroads have recently begun to be made in these regards. For example, Cho (2016b) describes how one school’s core–periphery structure (with technology leaders forming a central, densely connected in-group) afforded certain kinds of problem solving around technology, but not others. In contrast with acontextual approaches to understanding technology use, SNA provides an important way to examine the ways in which patterns and structures within organizations may influence the implementation and change.

Considerations for Practice The tensions among rational and open system perspectives can also provide useful avenues for thinking through problems of practice. For example, in the example of Dr Lockhart’s school, teachers held competing ideas about the benefits and appropriate uses of 1:1

devices. In addition, Dr Lockhart faced uncharted territory regarding the consequences of new and previously unimagined applications. Accordingly, it may be beneficial to leaders to develop self-awareness about their tendencies and assumptions regarding school organizations and technology. For example, leaders who face competing ideas about the value of new technologies can be understood as facing the problem of establishing a shared vision and mission. Approached from a rational system perspective, leaders might see vision as something that is dictated from the top down to teachers (Hughes et  al., 2016). This approach assumes that people can be told what to think or believe, and that teachers will naturally adopt technologies whose value is made obvious. Alternatively, leaders who adopt an open system approach might begin by treating vision as something that is constantly emerging, dependent upon who is interacting and how (McDaniel, 2007; Weick, 1993). Consequently, these leaders might promote regular dialogue about the organization’s vision and mission, including the ways in which new technologies might fit in (Cho, Allwarden, & Wayman, 2016). Without effective dialogue, subgroups within organizations may develop their own idiosyncratic technology uses of new tools or reject tools that might have actually benefited their work (Cho & Wayman, 2014; Leonardi, 2013). Conversations in this regard might go beyond the formal mission statement, instead attending to the symbols and stories that excite and unite organization members. Although such conversations might best occur face to face, schools could also leverage technology to strengthen those interactions. For instance, some schools hold ‘Tech Thursdays,’ which are self-organized opportunities to share tips, tricks, and questions related to their classroom aspirations. Such events could reach the broader school community via ‘bring-a-friend’ days, video blogs, or social media hashtags geared toward maintaining a

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sense of momentum. Together, face-to-face and digital interactions could foster shared understandings about the organization’s core values and purposes, how individuals’ work might interrelate, and the fit of technologies to that work. Further, leaders charged with overseeing technology implementation might benefit from rethinking their approaches to planning. Whereas a rational system perspective might focus on logistical matters leading up to a finite ‘implementation line,’ open system perspectives might also attempt to account for the broader social and environmental factors influencing technology practices (Leonardi, 2009a; Orlikowski, 2000). By being cognizant of the potential value of both approaches together, leaders might be able to engage in planning that is responsive to changes in conditions over time (Eisenhardt, 1990; Thomas, Sussman, & Henderson, 2001). For example, Cho and Wayman (2015) contrast the implementation practices of three districts, highlighting how an open system lens especially helped one district restructure its central office bureaucracy, adapt implementation over time, and foster positive attitudes about its data systems. At the same time, the other districts failed to adequately respond to unexpected challenges, such as disagreements about the value of data systems, problems of oversight and authority, and garnering assistance from the technology vendor. By thinking through both the rational and open system lenses, leaders open up new ways to evaluate how organization members collaborate and work together toward educational improvement.

CONCLUSION Many of the advancements of the digital age are cause for marvel. This chapter has attempted to demonstrate how different ways for thinking about the nature of organizations could help the field better understand the role

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of technological change in the work of schooling, as well as the approaches that leaders could take toward fostering positive change. By looking beyond the simple promises of new tools, one learns to see how everyday work is shaped by technologies, by people, and by their relationships, simultaneously. Our hope is that researchers and leaders will be able to build upon these perspectives, helping to pave the way for future educational initiatives.

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32 School-to-School Collaboration: Building Collective Capacity through Collaborative Enquiry Christopher Chapman

INTRODUCTION Almost half a century ago, Basil Bernstein (1970) argued that schools could not compensate for all the ills of society. While structural inequalities mean that the relationship between poverty and educational attainment remains as steadfast as ever, there is some evidence that offers a more optimistic perspective. Some schools can, and do, make a difference to outcomes for children from high-poverty settings and support the development of more equitable education systems (Sammons, 2007). There is also increasing evidence to suggest that when schools collaborate with and learn from each other then they can have more impact on outcomes than when they work in isolation (Ainscow, 2016). This chapter draws on the experience of the School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP), a three-year, school-toschool collaborative initiative. The SIPP is designed to use school-to-school collaboration and collaborative enquiry to build

collective capacity to create fairer and higher achieving educational systems. In doing so, the SIPP highlights the importance of evidence and research in giving teachers new and more diverse leadership opportunities, and therefore placing them at the centre of reform efforts. It illuminates the potential for leaders in networks to work collaboratively across schools to address key priorities and highlights the challenge of rethinking roles and responsibilities to enhance professional capital and teacher leadership both within and between schools to enhance collective capacity within the system. Numerous factors interact to determine children’s educational, health and well-being outcomes – and ultimately their life chances. Decades of investment and intervention have delivered some hard-won gains but the correlation between low socio-economic status and restricted life chances remains as seemingly intransigent as ever. Put simply, the odds are stacked against children being able to escape high-poverty settings.

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Payne (2008, p. 45) argues that this depressing situation is explained by the ‘ahistorical, non-sociological and decontextualized thinking [that] dominates the discourse’, which leads to policies based on stronger accountability mechanisms, with better paid, caring teachers committed to lifelong learning. Such policies are doomed to failure because of the simplistic thinking that underpins them. For others, a more optimistic perspective prevails in which education continues to be viewed as a mechanism to escape poverty traps. There is evidence to suggest ways in which schools and education systems can, and do, make a difference to outcomes and life chances, shifting the odds in favour of success, regardless of children’s background (Maden, 2003; National Commission on Education, 1996). It would seem that school improvement remains both technically and socially complex. This chapter offers theoretically sound and practically based suggestions for how this success could be achieved through focusing on building collective capacity through school-to-school collaboration and collaborative enquiry.

TRENDS IN SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT It is widely accepted that school improvement research, policy and practice is associated with making schools better places for students, teachers and the wider community (Reynolds et  al., 1996). More specifically, Hopkins, Ainscow, and West (1994) have argued that school improvement is concerned with enhancing student outcomes by focusing on the teaching and learning process, and by nurturing the conditions necessary to promote positive school cultures. This endeavour involves building the capacity to manage change effectively by developing a critical perspective rather than ‘blindly accepting the edicts of centralized policies’ (Hopkins et al., 1994, p. 3). In this sense, the school improvement movement has historically tended to

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adopt a bottom-up perspective to educational change, although this became less prevalent as proponents moved from the margins to the mainstream, engaged more directly with policy and policy makers and attempted to scale-up improvement efforts. More recently, Hopkins et  al. (2014) reviewed evidence of the effects of reform efforts at school and system levels, articulating five phases of improvement: • Phase 1 – understanding the organizational culture of the school; • Phase 2 – action research and research initiatives at the school level; • Phase 3 – managing change and comprehensive approaches to school reform; • Phase 4 – building capacity for student learning at the local level and the continuing emphasis on leadership; • Phase 5 – towards systemic improvement.

With some notable exceptions, most school improvement research, as outlined in Hopkins et  al.’s (2014) comprehensive review, has taken place in mature systems, although the appetite for school improvement in some new and emerging contexts is high. I now move on to explore some important key themes contributing to successful improvement.

CHANGE AS A SOCIAL COLLABORATIVE PROCESS Both research and experience tell us that improvement efforts that neglect the social dimensions of change tend to be limited in their lifespan and success. Put simply, effective school improvement is underpinned by a focus on evidence-based approaches and the generation of positive and sustainable relationships. Unsurprisingly, as more recent improvement efforts have focused on moving to scale, the nature of the local and global relationships required to generate improvement is becoming even more demanding. This situation requires ever more sophisticated

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approaches to networking and collaboration, and it is no coincidence that many of the East Asian systems placed near the top of international comparisons have a long tradition of collaborative approaches to teaching and continuing professional development (CPD). In the Global Fourth Way, Hargreaves and Shirley (2012) defined professional capital as the assets residing within teachers and teaching that yield the optimal quality of teaching and student learning. Professional capital is a trilateral form of capital incorporating human capital, social capital and decisional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). These three forms of capital are interdependent and utilized by educational professionals for the purpose of carrying out the complex and demanding work of teaching and learning. • Human capital – for an education professional this comprises individual talent, including skills, knowledge, empathy, passion, confidence, charisma and leadership. This form of capital resides within an individual. • Social capital – spans individuals, existing as relationships or ties between individuals, providing access to resources and leverage for change. • Decisional capital – is found both within and between individuals as education professionals and communities, individually and collectively, strive to make wise decisions in complex situations.

All three of these forms are dependent on relationships between individuals and communities (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). Building human, social and decisional capital simultaneously demands collaboration on a number of different levels, including between teachers and other educators working within schools, school districts and outside agencies within the wider system. Echoing the ideas that underpin the concept of professional capital, research has also demonstrated that the collective ability of teachers to effect change is influenced by the knowledge, expertise and resources embedded in their social relations and social structures (Daly, 2010; Moolenaar, Sleegers, & Daly, 2011; Penuel et al., 2009). The type,

quantity and position of teachers’ social relations or social ties are considered as a source of capital. In this context, social network theory helps to develop our understanding about building professional capital because it frames the learning of educational professionals as a flow of information through network ties. The development of both social capital and decisional capital is directly dependent on these social interactions and human capital is also influenced by them. Hattie’s (2009) international review of teaching and learning identified classroom practices that had significant effect sizes on student outcomes; and Day and colleagues’ (2011) work into successful leadership has presented increasingly detailed insights into the nature of effective leadership. But it seems that internal school improvement practice is a necessary but inadequate ingredient in tackling the larger relationship between low socio-economic status and poor educational and health and well-being outcomes. A key challenge for within-school improvement continues to be the development of systems and processes that will optimize the quality of learning experience of students while minimizing within-school variations. There is a growing body of initiatives that aims to connect internal school improvement and innovation with other schools and educational settings in order to move ideas and practice around the system through various networks and collaboratives. These initiatives may go some way to addressing the challenge of improving educational practice and outcomes. However, it is also likely to fall short of the wider challenge. Perhaps the most promising signs come from the latest wave of reforms that tie education into broader public service provision through a place-based approach in England (Kerr, Dyson, & Raffo, 2014) and some of the promising endeavours on collective impact in the USA (Henig et al., 2015). Research also highlights the importance of local ownership and leadership by teachers and school leaders, often in the form of collecting and using data appropriately and

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working in partnership and collaboration with like-minded professionals and stakeholders. Also highlighted is the value of schoolto-school networking, collaborative enquiry and cross-authority partnerships as levers of innovation and education system improvement (Chapman, 2016; Cochran-Smith, 2015; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012; Moolenaar et al., 2011; Wohlstetter, Smith, & Gallagher, 2013). Providing opportunities for the development of professional capital not only within and between schools, but also beyond schools suggests a means of reaching ‘into the school from the outside’ (Ainscow, 2016, p. 2). Only then can schools begin to facilitate partnerships for the purpose of achieving more equitable outcomes and experiences for all students. Illuminating the emergence of social phenomena that do not exist at the individual level is a key strength of social network theory (Muijs et  al., 2011). The process of building professional capital can be examined by tracking the substance and flow of information, advice, problem-solving, material resources, influence and interpretation through social interactions. However, despite the utility of social network theory for providing a lens through which the characteristics of effective collaboration can be examined, there remain a number of limitations to this approach, including the inability of social network theory to sufficiently expose the nature of ‘incommensurate yet meaningful relationships’ (Ball & Junemann, 2012, p. 13). There may therefore be a need to complement the collection of social network data with other qualitative data regarding social interactions for the purposes of triangulation in order to gather a more complete picture of social interactions.

COLLABORATIVE ENQUIRY AND SCHOOL-TO-SCHOOL COLLABORATION Research has demonstrated that the most effective school improvements are contextualized

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to fit local needs and often play out in different ways in different settings. Over 40 years ago, House (1973, p. 245) warned against ignoring the power of context in the ‘primary pursuit of transferable innovation … different innovations will be more or less useful under widely different specific circumstances’. In the pursuit of local relevance, there is increasing evidence in favour of investment in the use of collaborative enquiry to support professional learning and teacher leadership in schools in a range of contexts (Ainscow, 2016; Ainscow et al., 2012; Chapman, 2008; Chapman et  al., 2012; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Earl & Katz, 2006; Hadfield & Chapman, 2009; Kerr et al., 2003). McKinsey (2007) identified schoolto-school collaboration through learning networks, collaborative planning and crossschool CPD as key features of the very best systems. A review of the school effectiveness and equity literature (Sammons, 2007) concluded that studies show that on average the combined school and teacher effect may vary as much as 15–50 per cent. In addition, there is a growing body of research documenting the achievements of collaborative attempts to improve outcomes for schools serving disadvantaged communities (Chapman & Muijs, 2014; Matthews, 2009; Wohlstetter et  al., 2013). I argue that there may be a relationship between professional capital and collaborative enquiry-based approaches that promote educational equity. Many forms of collaborative enquiry involve a cyclical process of identifying challenges, experimenting with innovative practice, monitoring developments and making links to strategic improvement planning in schools and school districts. Other benefits of collaborative enquiry include the flattening of existing hierarchies (Drew, Priestley, & Michael, 2016); the breaking down of barriers to enable greater access to social capital; pooled resources (Lieberman, 2000); mutual support mechanisms; and preventing individuals or groups from taking an inward or myopic viewpoint. Collaborative enquiry

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has been highlighted as a valuable vehicle for positive change whether it takes place within a school (Drew et al., 2016; Snow, Martin, & Dismuke, 2015), across schools engaged in partnerships (Ainscow et al., 2016; Chapman & Hadfield, 2010; Cochran-Smith, 2015), or beyond schools, when educational professionals collaborate with like-minded stakeholders (Ainscow, 2016; Chapman et  al., 2015). These three types of collaborative enquiry broadly correspond to the different types of leadership – teacher leadership, middle leadership and system leadership – that are also the subject of this chapter, but here I focus on networked collaborative enquiry between schools and beyond them.

Between Schools When collaboration extends between schools, the benefits of school-to-school collaboration have included the disruption of ‘deeply held beliefs within schools’ (Ainscow et al., 2012, p. 201) and a greater willingness of educational professionals to take risks and reveal weaknesses or gaps in knowledge (Ainscow, 2016). These school-to-school partnerships are able to cut across boundaries and open up pathways for the exchange of new and innovative knowledge (Ainscow, 2016) as well as mobilizing a wider range of resources and expertise than a single school would be able to access.

Beyond Schools Beyond-school examples of collaborative enquiry involve partnerships between schools and other public services and agencies. The most effective educational changes leading to school improvements are led and owned by education professionals engaged in collaborative enquiry with other education professionals, and also with like-minded stakeholders (Ainscow et al., 2012; Chapman, 2008, 2015;

Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Earl & Katz, 2006; Hadfield & Chapman, 2009; Kerr et al., 2003). When schools work with other services, agencies and community members or groups, such as health and social care workers and families themselves, an environment can be fostered which is able to promote opportunities for the personal and social development of students and families. These ‘beyond-school’ approaches have been motivated by the complexity and enormity of the equity issues facing families and communities, such as economic realities, underlying socio-economic factors, decision-making at the district level, national policy-making and global processes. Ainscow (2016) summarizes the argument as – looked at in this way, it is clear that there is much that individual schools can do to tackle issues within organizations, and that such actions are likely to have a profound impact on student experiences, and perhaps some influence on inequities arising elsewhere.

LEADERSHIP Leadership across schools within networks can be categorized in many different ways. Here I outline the research on three of the most commonly used forms of leadership. These are not necessarily distinct categories; individuals may simultaneously operate at several different levels, adopting multiple roles and professional identities.

Teacher Leadership This concept has emerged from the broader ideas associated with distributed leadership (Spillane, 2015), and from teacher networks and professional learning communities (Lieberman, 2000). In practice, teacher leadership tends to be exercised by teachers who want to remain in classrooms, working with students, but are minded to play a role in

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leading change by working with colleagues to support the professional learning of others and creating professional learning communities. Like distributed leadership, teacher leadership challenges assumptions about ‘the nature of leadership, the community within which it occurs and the relationships about power, authority and influence’ (Harris & Muijs, 2005, p. 26). Reporting a study of union learning representatives, Stevenson (2012) takes an alternative position on teacher leadership to argue that an alternative understanding, not rooted in traditional managerialist hierarchies, is required. Stevenson argues that this alternative should not be concerned with ‘vision’ but with establishing a democratic professional voice to lever genuine transformative possibilities. While a body of research on teacher leadership is emerging, there remains a lack of conceptual clarity about the term and its use.

Distributed Leadership Distributed leadership has become a popular concept within contemporary leadership circles and, in particular, has been used to argue for developing the leadership capacity of educators (Harris, 2013) and teacher agency supporting school improvement and reform (Spillane, 2015; Spillane & Coldren, 2015). In education, the idea can be traced back to the early papers presented by Peter Gronn in the late 1990s, which argued for distributed leadership as the new unit of analysis (Gronn, 2002), and by Spillane, Halverson, and Diamond (2001), who argued that distributed leadership practice is extended across the social and situational context. Since this early work, distributed leadership has become part of the educational orthodoxy, widely known and enacted in various ways in different schools and systems. There has been much discussion and debate about the various merits, limitations and challenges of the concept. Harris (2013) and Gunter, Hall, and Bragg (2013) have attempted to ‘map’

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distributed leadership and knowledge formation into functional (descriptive and normative), critical and socially critical dimensions.

Professional Leadership Sammons, Mortimore, and Hillman (1995, p. 8) identified ‘professional leadership’ as a key characteristic of effective schools. The elements of professional leadership were summarized as • being ‘firm and purposeful’ • having ‘a participative approach’ • and being ‘the leading professional’ (1995, p. 8).

More recently, it has been claimed that leadership is second only to teaching and learning in terms of influencing student outcomes (Day et  al., 2011). Specifically, a review of the relationship between leadership practice and activity and student outcomes identified that promotion and participation in teacher learning and development had around twice the effect size (0.84) compared to other leadership practices, such as ‘planning, coordinating and evaluating, teaching and curriculum’ (0.42) or ‘establishing goals and expectations’ (0.42). Practices such as ‘resourcing strategically’ (0.31) and ‘ensuring an orderly and supportive environment’ (0.27) were identified as having even smaller effects (Robinson, Hohepa, & Lloyd, 2009). It is helpful to think about leadership as a collective capacity rather than an individual pursuit, where collective responsibility is supported by an appropriate collegial infrastructure that is responsive to the development phase of the organization (Chapman, 2005). In a similar vein, Day et  al. (2010) identified five phases of head teacher leadership in each of which successful head teachers use a combination of different strategies: • Early phase – improving the physical environment; implementing pupil behaviour standards; restructuring the senior leadership team; developing organizational values; and s­upporting

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distributed leadership through performance management. • Middle phase – wider distribution of leadership and leadership roles; more focused use of data. • Later phase – personalizing and enriching the curriculum; further distribution of leadership.

However, each of these leadership processes has primarily been analyzed in relation to activity within a single school. Previous work on emerging patterns of school leadership (Chapman et al., 2008) explored leadership practice within, between and beyond schools. This framework, taking a within, between and beyond perspective, has been adapted to offer insights on equity (Dyson et al., 2012), strategies for improvement and change (Chapman, 2015) and, most recently, collaboration (Ainscow, 2016).

THE SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PARTNERSHIP PROGRAMME Background The School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP) is a research and development programme that is designed to improve the attainment of children from more disadvantaged backgrounds in Scotland, thereby contributing to the Scottish government’s commitment to closing the gap in educational outcomes. The Programme is underpinned by a philosophy that encourages staff to take leadership responsibility for embedding collaborative enquiry in order to learn from each other, experiment with practice and monitor and evaluate practice to close the attainment gap. The knowledge that underpins this approach has been generated over decades of development and research activity in a diverse range of systems, including those in Hong Kong, Australia, the USA and Canada, and, more recently, South America, Russia and parts of Asia. There is also a strong tradition of this type of work within the United Kingdom.

The Programme, designed and launched in 2013, involves schools, local authorities and others working in partnership, drawing on a range of methods or ‘tools’, such as collaborative action research, Lesson Study, and instructional rounds, to provide a set of processes that teachers and others can draw on to research and implement change. It combines locally initiated and led practitioner collaborative enquiry in multiple classrooms within schools with a networked, school-to-school collaborative enquiry, frequently crossing local authority boundaries. Collaborative working across schools was externally supported and facilitated by the National School Improvement Agency (Education Scotland), the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change at the University of Glasgow and school district officers (local authorities). In an attempt to overcome the issues of decontextualization highlighted by Payne (2008), SIPP developed a research-practice partnership, similar in approach to that of Bryk et al. (2015). Partnership working promotes broader leadership opportunities and professional learning at all levels. The Programme seeks to promote disciplined innovation by fostering a culture of mutual respect, ‘co-­production’ and partnership, rather than replicating traditional hierarchies and ways of working. In this sense, the approach moves beyond the simple sharing of knowledge and ideas to what David Hargreaves (2010) argues is ‘joint practice development’.

Seven Core Principles • Partnership working is promoted across schools and local authorities, with a focus on exploring specific issues relating to educational inequity. • Action research and evidence are used to identify key challenges, experiment with innovative practices and monitor developments. • Leadership opportunities are created alongside the professional learning of staff at all levels. • Reciprocity and mutual benefit to all involved underpin planning and implementation of the Programme.

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• Planning for collaboration encompasses the development of arrangements to support longterm collaboration and new approaches to capacity building. • Strategic improvement planning in schools and local authorities is explicitly linked to SIPP activity. • Partners are diverse and include schools, local authorities, Education Scotland and other agencies.

The seven core principles provide an overarching framework, offering coherence across the Programme from which systemic lessons can be learned, while retaining the flexibility necessary to meet the needs of local contexts. Importantly, the SIPP seeks to avoid the traps of attempting to identify a ‘magic bullet’, offering predetermined solutions, applying a ‘one size fits all’ philosophy or becoming seduced by Smith’s (2013) notion of charismatic policy.

Design The SIPP involved eight Partnerships, some of which were made up of two schools working together within the same school district, while others involved several schools and up to three different school districts. In total, 14 different school districts have been involved in the Programme. Most of the schools began with only a very small number of teachers involved and expanded gradually. Initially four of the Partnerships involved secondary schools, two involved primary schools, and two involved both primary and secondary schools. Over the course of time, many Partnerships extended their scope and scale to include additional sectors, such as secondary, primary and early years teachers. The Programme is underpinned by the knowledge that effective school collaboration: • extends beyond the timeframe of a single school year; • involves collaborative enquiry; • invests time in building positive relationships; • promotes a risk-taking culture; • accesses external expertise;

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• is locally owned and context specific; • and uses evidence to inform practice and understand impact (Bryk et al., 2015; Chapman, 2008; Rincon-Gallardo & Fullan, 2016).

The SIPP aims to encourage staff to take leadership responsibility for embedding collaborative enquiry in order to learn from each other, experiment with practice and monitor and evaluate change. The work of the SIPP Partnerships also aims to promote broader leadership opportunities and professional learning at all levels. The Programme promotes focused innovation by fostering a culture of mutual respect, ‘co-production’ and partnership, rather than replicating traditional hierarchies and ways of working. The benefits of such ways of working, including greater efficacy of teacher collaboration between partnered schools, has been highlighted by the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) Networked Learning Communities (NLC) programme. Findings from NLC suggested that colleagues, outwith their own schools, might be more likely to take risks, and be more willing to reveal their own weaknesses and gaps in their knowledge than teachers collaborating within their own school (Department for Education and Skills, 2005).

Implementation The Programme employed a three-phase implementation strategy over three years: • Phase 1: preparing the ground – creating the conditions by building trust and relationships; • Phase 2: exploring the evidence – embedding projects into their context; • Phase 3: testing change – issues of sustainability, including strengthening and deepening connections within and between Partnerships to create a ‘networked improvement community’.

Each Partnership used the key principles to design and develop its own programme of work to tackle educational inequity, supported by a team of university researchers and staff from local authorities and Education Scotland

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(the Scottish school improvement agency) working as critical friends. The university research team facilitated regular ‘clinics’ for school and local authority staff to meet either virtually or at the university, a ‘safe space’ in which to problem-solve their concerns, challenges and methodological issues as well as discussing their ideas for development. Individual Partnership projects were also brought together at regular local and national events, which provided a forum for sharing ideas and generally making connections, and reinforcing positive relationships and the trust necessary to build effective partnerships and networks (Hadfield & Chapman, 2009). Within the SIPP, the precise approach to collaborative enquiry was not prescribed, but was rather negotiated between the schools and the research team to ensure it was fit for purpose. Approaches to collaborative enquiry that proved particularly valuable and popular were instructional rounds (City et al., 2009; Hopkins, 2012) and Lesson Study (Dudley, 2015; Fernandez &Yoshida, 2004; Stepanek et al., 2007).

OUTCOMES The Impact of the SIPP Social networking – building relationships between diverse groups and individuals with a shared purpose – is clearly integral to the seven core principles adopted by the SIPP. Growing interest in this area led Robert Owen Centre researchers to map leadership development opportunities for the participants of one of the Partnerships. The aspect of school leadership investigated was leading the distribution of ideas and approaches, particularly tried-and-tested ideas. Within the SIPP Partnerships various people took on the role of sharing teaching and learning approaches. This sociogram was constructed by asking the teachers, head teachers and local authority officers involved in the Programme the following question: With

whom have you shared tried-and-tested ideas [relating to effective teaching and learning approaches for the tackling of educational inequity]? It is evident from this social network map that participation in SIPP collaborative enquiry led to a number of opportunities to develop social capital through conversations about learning and teaching ideas. It is also interesting to note that although the school district staff was supporting both schools, they did not have a key role in bridging knowledge between the schools. Teachers in this Partnership reported that these professionals beyond the school provided support, but that they allowed teachers to take on the leadership. In the words of a teacher from one of the Partnership schools: ‘It was kind of just like a big team in terms of who we were, but we were the leaders.’ Some of the teachers have multiple lines connecting them to other people. Others have only a single line, suggesting their interactions were limited to a single person. Rather than a single individual occupying a central role in the sharing of ideas, a number of individuals are positioned centrally where they appear to be in leadership roles. Headteachers A and B each have prominent positions, but it is evident that the sharing of ideas is also distributed among other teachers. This pattern was confirmed in focus groups and interviews where teachers reported that the leadership roles were not the preserve of head teachers or local authority staff. The sociogram also highlights the involvement of the local authority officers (represented in black) as sources of support for this Partnership, but not necessarily taking on leadership roles. This involvement was also mentioned in one of the interviews in which a teacher explained the type of support that had been beneficial: ‘So we knew by the end of the first day that we had a focus, but after that the head teachers and the quality improvement managers were very happy to leave us to kind of see where we were going with the next steps.’

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Figure 32.1  A sociogram of Programme participants working with two different Partnership schools Notes: Light gray squares, teachers from school A; bright gray square, head teacher from school A; white squares, teachers from school B; red square, head teacher from school B; black squares, school district staff

Another teacher reflected: ‘People have come in at the right time. … At certain times we chose, or through discussion with the head teachers or just in our team we highlighted the people that we would need or we had a question that we needed support with and that was when we kind of involved more partners.’

Collaborative Enquiry The increase in participants’ social capital through their involvement in collaborative enquiry was supported by survey data, which indicated that 100 per cent of respondents experienced an increase in their collaborative working across the Partnership. This collaborative working included the use of systematic enquiry and evidence gathering to inform

practice and monitor developments, according to over 80 per cent of respondents. Survey evidence indicates that the SIPP activities contributed to growing partnership and networking among school staff involved in the initiative. Focusing on survey results between the first (February 2014) and fourth (June 2015) waves, we can see that the following activities tended to increase for the second wave or were maintained at a high level. For example, collaborative working across the Partnership, increased from 64 per cent in the first survey to 100 per cent in the fourth survey. The interview and focus group evidence also revealed the importance of building effective working relationships between teachers from different schools and/or authorities as well as across related professions. Partnership teams stated that this

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collaborative working was now beginning to demonstrate a positive impact on students’ outcomes and aspirations. Most believed that these networks and their impact would be sustainable and reflected in their planning. Practitioners in one Partnership commented: ‘It is great to be able to share experiences and work together.’ Teachers also commonly noted that being able to observe others’ teaching was extremely useful for improving their practice. Teachers saw the increased opportunity for networking as a key benefit of the SIPP: ‘Networking with colleagues from other schools and authorities … has broken down barriers and encouraged excellent opportunities for professional dialogue.’ ‘The most successful development in my school is the positive attitude developed towards collaborating with colleagues in other schools within and outwith the authority. This is a terrific foundation for a sustainable partnership and attitude.’ ‘Partnership working has been extremely beneficial as a CLD [Community Learning Development] worker in maximizing resources when working with young people.’

The collaborative partnerships meant that teachers were able to engage in professional learning, build confidence and develop leadership capacity. As the Programme matured, there was growing teacher engagement with the collaborative enquiry process. This increase is highlighted in successive surveys showing very substantial growth (32%) in the numbers of respondents using systematic enquiry and evidence gathering to inform practice and monitor developments. Similarly, there was a substantial increase (28%) in the percentage of respondents who reported increased teachers’ reflective practice and self-evaluation. While positive relationships provide the basis for developing trust and empowering teachers to take a lead, research-based, shared professional knowledge is the key to ensuring both effective learning processes and wholeschool improvement. School improvement is

much more likely to emerge as a result of collective capacity building than it is through the application of a series of ‘external’ accountability measures. For improvement to take place there needs to be a focus on the development of teachers’ knowledge, skills and commitment and for the process to be inspired by distributed, instructional and enquiry-minded leadership (Mincu, 2013). The Programme has facilitated greater professional dialogue, collegiality and networking between teachers involved in the Partnerships. This has helped drive the work of the Partnerships and led to the sharing of ideas and practice pertinent to specific project aims as well as to broader teaching and learning, in some cases beyond the scope of the Programme.

Building Leadership Capacity The Programme promoted leadership opportunities for those involved. It is interesting to note that they remained prominent throughout and the underpinning conditions improved as trust and relationships developed. It may be that these opportunities would not have been sustained if collegiality and opportunities for sharing had not increased. Early reports that the SIPP initiative had begun to support leadership development opportunities were subsequently borne out by changes to survey feedback to the point where the overwhelming majority of respondents indicated a positive response. For example, 88 per cent of respondents in wave four also indicated that involvement with the SIPP had resulted in the creation of leadership opportunities and professional learning of staff at all levels. Two-thirds of respondents (66%) had reported this at the wave one stage. There were many specific examples of leadership involvement. In Partnership 1, many teachers were afforded the opportunity to take on leadership roles by leading or participating in the nine development groups and/or the wider Partnership group. In addition, a number of staff presented their work and disseminated good practice at a residential conference.

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Partnership 5 head teachers and teachers from participating high schools organized a conference to share good practice. Two hundred and thirty staff participated in the conference’s 24 workshops. The leadership of this Partnership was shared among a group of head teachers, deputy head teachers, and teachers, who took on the roles of workshop presenters, conference organizers, working group leaders and personal support programme leaders. The capacity building principles and practices promoted by the Programme, including the development of research and evaluation skills, made a significant contribution to supporting the development of teacher leadership. The Programme injected new ideas and ways of working into classrooms and schools. These ideas and practices were adopted by a cadre of teachers who led change from their classrooms, in their schools and to other schools within their local authority, and in some cases across local authorities. For example, in one Partnership, teachers reported that their SIPP experience, particularly leading collaborative enquiry activity, provided evidence to support their professional updating and leadership development. Teachers in this Partnership organized themselves into working groups to develop a Personal Support Programme and Visible Learning Programme for targeted pupils that was supported by the local education authority psychology service. Reflecting on this process, one senior manager in the local authority emphasized the role of the SIPP as a catalyst for promoting teacher leadership in the context of school improvement and tackling raising attainment. ‘A variety of staff have taken leadership opportunities. For example, a teacher in her first year of teaching at [high school] is leading a group for the SIPP partnership, and a number of middle leaders have been given the chance to work at a strategic level between schools. The SIPP work has contributed to inspiring a number of teachers to join the [local authority] first steps to leadership programme and career-long professional learning opportunities.’

Teacher leaders have developed a wide repertoire of knowledge and skills, ranging from

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research methods, data use and understanding to project planning and management and opportunities to practise leadership and management tasks. These might not have been possible without involvement in the Programme. In effect, this development is a small but important step in building leadership capacity within the system, which in the past has sometimes been patchy or nonexistent. In addition to developing an expanded repertoire of knowledge and skills, teacher leaders received higher levels of exposure to a diverse range of professionals. One important outcome related to this increased engagement was that, as evaluative approaches became more sophisticated and higher quality data was gathered, capacity was being built within the Partnerships. This development necessitated further additional support to enable Partnerships to undertake more complex analyses and better synthesize evidence to gain deeper insights. This process involved teacher leaders working with a range of professionals, including university researchers, inspectors and educational psychologists to draw on a range of analytical expertise from different backgrounds and then lead local workshops within their Partnerships to share the new knowledge and insights gained from external sources. The evidence from the Programme is that the use of collaborative enquiry can be an enabler for teacher leadership in both formal roles as designated ‘research leaders’ or ‘data leaders’ or, more informally, working collaboratively as part of a team with colleagues on issues of mutual interest. Teachers also learned from one another. It was particularly evident that teachers who had undertaken ‘M level’ postgraduate courses were able to lead with confidence and authority. This evidence highlights the important role that ‘M level’ learning has in promoting teacher leadership. In their reports, the Partnerships referred to their improved capacity and expertise regarding the use of data and evaluation approaches, and in some cases, this went

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beyond the teaching workforce. For example, one Partnership reported that the CLD staff: ‘have increased knowledge in gathering and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data to evidence impact, identify themes and address community needs’.

Another partnership reported that: ‘Teachers and head teachers have had the opportunity to lead discussions and evaluations, and learn skills in data collection and analysis.’

Practitioners’ increased knowledge and experience of context-specific methods of assessment and data collection supported the generation and use of a more diverse use of data collection tools and analytical techniques. For example, teachers designed and analyzed pupil surveys for secondary pupils to determine key issues regarding attendance; they designed and analyzed surveys for educational professionals regarding staff knowledge and attitudes; teachers modified pupil attitudinal surveys and this was in addition to accessing and using a number of pre-existing data collection tools and undertaking a range of qualitative methods, including interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders. It was not only teachers who benefited from leadership opportunities to take on new roles and responsibilities, but also SfLAs (support for learning assistants) and CLD workers. For example, SfLAs took on teaching roles in the Programme by planning lessons, delivering lessons, and participating in shadow observations, benefitting professionally from these opportunities, but also investing their own time after hours to voluntarily contribute to lesson planning. ‘School D stated that the SfLA was always “super organized” which saved a lot of time as she ensured that time was used wisely and resources were also prepared for both staff and pupils.’

In this Partnership, CLD workers also said that they benefited from the opportunity to take on new roles and responsibilities. By learning new reading strategies, they were able to share these strategies with parents and

with pupils through the homework club. The CLD workers also said that they gained a better understanding of the issues teachers face in their work and the report from this Partnership stated that CLD workers: ‘are more confident in working collaboratively across disciplines and locality’ and ‘have shared skills and specialisms to enhance family learning and literacy provision’.

Middle leaders The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has suggested that local authorities should work more closely in partnership on issues of improving educational equity and building capacity through professional learning. It asserts that this way of working can be achieved by strengthening the middle tier: the ‘middle’ can be reinforced through fostering the mutual support and learning across local authorities, together with schools and networks of schools (OECD, 2015). The SIPP Partnerships are ‘proof of concept’ that disciplined collaborative enquiry provides a sensible way forward, avoiding a ‘one size fits all’ approach to change. The programme has played an important role in creating the conditions that might support the development of a nationwide Networked Improvement Community through the establishment of Regional Improvement Collaboratives. The SIPP has promoted leadership development and provided opportunities for teachers to develop greater responsibility as part of their ‘partnership team’, leading the work of the Partnership within and across schools. This process has included taking responsibility for leading developing interventions and projects, liaising with other professionals within the Partnership and beyond and advising and supporting efforts in other Partnerships. For example, one primary teacher worked with local authority, secondary and primary colleagues in another Partnership to develop Lesson Study as an approach to support their work.

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Staff across the Partnerships took on a number of diverse and varied leadership roles including: developing project plans, organizing collaborative enquiry, organizing and delivering parent engagement activity, leading and participating in Lesson Study cycles, writing reports, facilitating and video-recording pupil focus groups, creating pupil assessments, collecting data, analyzing data, involving various experts and researching, introducing and instructing staff in new pedagogies, leading a wide range of continuing professional development opportunities for colleagues and presenting at local and national events.

Leadership across schools Perhaps, the most significant dimension of teacher leadership development has been the opportunities for teachers to take on leadership roles beyond their own classrooms and schools. The opportunities have involved teachers leading collaborative professional development within and across schools. Put simply, the SIPP has developed a network of early and mid-career teachers who are leading a range of initiatives at relatively early stages of their careers, in some cases across local authority boundaries. The leadership experience they have gained within this Programme will place them in a position to develop into the next generation of system leaders. In the words of a local authority senior education manager. ‘Local authorities have to understand they cannot drive improvement … unless the school has clear vision, effective leadership in terms of what they need to do in terms of raising attainment … SIPP has worked with schools collaboratively and given schools the power. … It is the younger staff in the schools who have really seized the opportunities and it’s started to permeate upwards.’

In one Partnership, head teachers reported that, through their involvement in the SIPP, their schools were now in a position to share innovative approaches and develop leadership in other schools. One head teacher said, ‘We felt we had something to give’. Teachers in this

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Partnership also reported benefits from professional learning and leadership opportunities: ‘…leading our own professional development in order to develop an enhanced understanding of the core curricular area of numeracy, opportunities to lead our core group within the partnership at d ­ifferent times – taking charge of distributing ­responsibilities, leading CPD activities within home school, leading development at an authority level, opportunities for developing confidence, opportunities to observe in our own and other authorities with a view to sharing our observations with our own partnership group, building a larger network of colleagues.’

LEARNING FROM THE PAST TO LOOK TO THE FUTURE Current Progress After three years of development and implementation, the evidence suggests that SIPP has had an impact in the following areas: • Fostering collaborative working to tackle educational inequality. • Developing capacity at school and local authority levels to effect positive change, including enhancing leadership opportunities at all levels. • Building teachers’ knowledge, confidence and skills to challenge inequity. • Improving teachers’ understanding of evaluation and practitioner enquiry. • Increasing learners’ aspirations and achievement.

The SIPP has increased the sharing of ideas and professional learning across individual Partnerships, across the wider Programme and at times into national and international research and policy areas. The OECD (2015) review of school improvement in Scotland identified the SIPP as an important lever for change, describing the Programme as a ‘powerful national network focused on tackling educational inequity’ (OECD, 2015, p. 77). The review also noted the important work done by Education Scotland in collaborating with local authorities and university researchers to support these Partnerships and the commitment to professional learning at all levels within the system.

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In particular, the SIPP has built capacity by creating nodes of expertise within the teaching profession and local authorities across the system. It has provided an opportunity to create a new, agile middle tier with a cadre of differentiated expertise that can work across local authority boundaries. This regional resource could be located within inter-authority hubs and has the potential to offer a set of arrangements which, with national coordination from key stakeholders, could serve as a coherent professional learning/capacity building resource for in-service professional learning to support the ultimate implementation of national education policy.

Enablers and Barriers The experience of the SIPP, including some variations in degrees of success between Partnerships, has highlighted key enablers and barriers to successful networked collaboration. Some of these were already familiar from other, similar programmes – but they bear repetition. Others are more specific to the design and implementation of the SIPP but may yet be of relevance to other initiatives in diverse settings. Some key findings are shown in Table 32.1. While the barriers identified in Table 32.1 can lead to significant difficulty, the experience of the SIPP is that they may also create opportunities, for example by encouraging: • local authorities and school leaders to become more agile and creative in the arrangements and ways of working that underpin their activity. This approach can go on to influence thinking and developmental plans more widely across the participating local authorities. • teams to look for creative solutions – to think and plan further ahead and share tasks.

Next Steps We now have clear evidence of what successful Partnerships look like. Successful Partnerships:

• maintain a clear focus on closing the attainment gap; • develop approaches that are tailored and ­context-specific; • promote the meaningful use of data and evidence from numerous sources to inform practice and understand impact through a strong commitment to Collaborative Action Research (CAR) across partnerships; • provide structured opportunities for collaboration, including investing in time and space to build positive relationships; • quickly establish a group of committed practitioners, supported by school and local authority leaders, to drive the activity/project. This group is able to engage other staff and expand the influence of the Programme to affect behaviours more widely across schools and partnerships; • have a clear focus on literacy, numeracy and parental engagement; • gather support for improvement by exploring the potential for broader partnerships, including those with Further Education (FE), CLD, employability services, etc., in order to tackle educational inequity. This approach allows Partnerships to have capacity and expertise to work with and empower families and communities to allow them to actively participate in measures to promote learning. This is key to making a difference to learners’ attainment and wider achievement; • embed the collaborative projects/approaches in school and local planning; • are locally owned and led and have a commitment to developing empowered leadership at all levels; • establish an equitable partnership within and between schools, involving teachers, learners, families and other relevant stakeholders and organizations; • draw on external expertise where necessary, including colleagues from universities and other partner services; • promote a risk-taking culture; • use frameworks for change, not prescription, and allow high levels of autonomy; • invest in professional dialogue and networks to build the ‘infrastructure’ needed for CAR and change.

Moving forward, the SIPP has highlighted the need to promote more broadly-based partnerships, for example with College, CLD, employability service, and voluntary

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Table 32.1  Key enablers and barriers to successful networked collaboration Enablers

Barriers

Advance preparation •• Allows initial agreement of what works, for whom and in what context. •• Enables relationship-building and growth of trust in the early stages. •• Facilitates professional dialogue, agreement of common values. Committed practitioners who want to build new working relationships and take on leadership responsibilities for personal and professional satisfaction (not monetary reward).Teacher leaders supported by school and local authority leaders, drive forward projects with pace and focus, engage other staff and expand the influence of the programme to affect behaviours more widely across schools and partnerships. Dialogue and interactions with local authority staff, senior education officers and inspectors from Education Scotland, educational psychologists, community development workers and others. These •• give access to a range of insights and perspectives on issues that enrich teachers’ professional experience and understanding of the complexity of tackling the attainment gap; •• may offer ‘intermediary’ services, e.g., where committed local managers (school/local authority) have good local knowledge and power to sanction action. Interactions with university staff.Successful enquiry generates increasingly sophisticated demand for statistical and analytical skills development. Frequent and targeted whole-programme events organized by non-school partners, e.g., universities.These give relevant staff time for planning/ discussion. Using a range of approaches, including Lesson Study, instructional rounds, improvement science and collaborative action research.This strategy allows a particular approach to be matched to the specific aim, nature of enquiry questions and the local context being researched and developed. Teachers with advanced qualifications.Master’s degree education enables teachers to apply their knowledge and expertise to support others’ learning. Teacher ownership of improvement.Best when supported by local/district authorities who communicate developments and foster professional dialogue.

Poor communication, poor teamwork and coordination, poorly defined aims.

and community groups in order to tackle inequality across a wider front. Relevant research (e.g., Carter-Wall & Whitfield, 2012; Chapman et al., 2011; Egan, 2013) has also shown that measures to tackle educational inequity and the attainment gap need to look beyond learning and teaching to address: • pupil well-being; • enrichment experiences; • engaging parents and families in their children’s learning; • strengthening links with communities.

Practical barriers – time constraints, teacher cover, personnel changes, resources.

Shifting local and national policy priorities and changes in resources and staffing locally present a challenge to the pace of progress and sustainability of activity.

Scale of activity, e.g., number of schools involved and distance between them, distance from university research support. Lack of access to additional support from other specialist services, e.g., psychological services.

Parental and family engagement is the most important factor, outside of schools, in influencing the achievement of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Therefore, multi-agency working is key to partnership working to tackle educational inequity, e.g., in supporting school–family links, out-ofhours learning and mentoring interventions. There needs to be further coordinated work that links the full range of assets available both within and also externally to the community to achieve collective impact (Henig et al., 2015).

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Commentary We need to move on from the mindset of a linear, phased perspective on the development of school improvement (Hopkins et al., 2014), and develop a forward-looking holistic approach to improving the life chances of children. This approach requires deeper understanding not only about schoollevel improvement processes but, as I have highlighted in this chapter, it is also about building collective capacity through schoolto-school collaboration and collaborative enquiry. Furthermore, perhaps most importantly, we need to determine the most effective approaches to link schools into other public services and agencies. We need to shift the emphasis from within-school, to between-school and beyond-school improvement if we are to optimize improvement efforts in educational systems. This shift in emphasis is complicated by the challenge of working across organizational, geographical and professional boundaries and also by the fact that as we move from within- to between- and beyond-school improvement the knowledge base associated with effective improvement strategies becomes less secure. Put simply, we can be more confident about what needs to be done within schools, but we become less so as we move to between-school improvements, and even less so as we move into the territory of beyond-school improvement. Therefore, the focus of future research and experimentation must be the successful structures and processes associated with between- and beyondschool improvement. As previously noted, the knowledge that underpins this approach has been generated over decades of development and research activity and can be found in a diverse range of systems, including those in Hong Kong, Australia, the USA and Canada, and, more recently, South America, Russia and parts of Asia. Research has demonstrated that the most effective school improvements are

also locally owned and led by teachers and school leaders, collecting and using data appropriately, conducting enquiry, and working in partnership and collaboration with like-minded professionals and stakeholders (Ainscow et al., 2012; Chapman, 2008, 2012, 2015; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Earl & Katz, 2006; Hadfield & Chapman, 2009; Kerr et al., 2003). While collaborative enquiry-driven initiatives like the SIPP have an important role to play in delivering specific outcomes and acting as vehicles for meaningful professional learning, their real value may lie in their leverage for handing greater responsibility, ­decision-making, ownership and, perhaps most crucially, power over to teachers. Lawrence Stenhouse’s words on this issue are just as relevant now as they were over a third of a century ago: Only the pursuit of research directly applied to the curriculum and teaching puts the teacher in the power position; for he [sic] is in possession of the only valid laboratory, the classroom. (Stenhouse, 1980, p. 44)

Stenhouse (1980) reminds us that it is teachers who change classrooms, not policies or protocols. Initiatives based on networking and collaboration, such as SIPP, provide a positive context that places teachers at the centre of educational change and empowers them to lead the change at a time when so many policies place them at the margins, with little power or control. If schools are to play their full role in tackling educational inequities in an authentic way, we must place teachers and teacher leadership at the centre of reforms and provide the power and resources to undertake the task in hand within their own schools, in collaboration with other schools and in partnership with the communities and families they serve. This move to further empower teachers provides us with a significant opportunity to both raise the bar and close the gap in educational outcomes for all of our children.

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To close the gap in educational outcomes that results from disadvantage, we need to better understand the mechanisms, structures and processes needed to build professional capital across a range of service providers. Moving from thinking about building teachers’ professional capital or educator’s professional capital to what is required and how to optimize the support for building professional capital across the public services in more detail will open up new possibilities for supporting the holistic development of children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. Richer rewards will be gained from building collective capacity between schools through school-to-school collaboration. As this chapter has demonstrated, there is emerging evidence from a range of school-based networks to suggest that network-based collaborative enquiry-driven approaches, underpinned by the intelligent use of performance and contextual data, can improve not just the leadership experiences and opportunities available to teachers, but also, crucially, the learning outcomes for students. The opportunities for teacher leaders to work with other educationalists and professionals is a positive and undervalued aspect of teacher leaders’ work. The SIPP provided some opportunities for this to occur but more needs to be done if we are to develop a seamless holistic approach to our children’s education that moves beyond professional silos to create an inter-professional ‘community of inquiry within a community of social practice’ where there is a shared language, both literally and figuratively, in terms of values, knowledge and procedures (Argyris, Putnam, & Smith, 1985, p. 34). Stretching the focus from ‘within-schools’ to ‘between-schools’ will strengthen this collective capacity for better outcomes, but it is no panacea. We need to develop our approaches to ‘beyond-school’ improvement. There are interesting examples of this type of working in some systems and it would seem there are lessons to be learned

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from the work of the Harlem Children’s Zone in the United States: this project offers some promising ideas that have translated into positive outcomes on the ground. Place-based approaches, taking school-to-school collaboration to the next level by connecting schools to their communities and neighbourhoods, are experiencing a revival in many systems. For example, in the UK, Save the Children’s ‘Children’s Communities’ have gained traction, there are examples of similar efforts in Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, Children’s Neighbourhoods Scotland (see https://childrensneighbourhoodsscotland. com), a research and developmental collaboration between the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, is using the principles of collective impact to prototype a Scottish placed-based approach in the East End of Glasgow. Stretching from within- to between- and beyond-school improvement is difficult and complex, requiring a fundamental rethinking of roles and relationships within the system. Continuing as we have done until now will simply extend the problem identified by Payne (2008), leading to an exponential decontextualization, failure of implementation and replication of educational inequity. We need a significant cultural shift in how we construct our professional identities and perceive our positions within the education system if the social and educational changes we want are to become a reality. We will have to rethink not only with whom we work, but also how and where we work, blurring institutional boundaries. I argue that the key priorities for supporting the cultural shift that is required to optimize educational improvement can be distilled into three areas:

A renewed focus on professional ­development. This focus is the key to constructing a new genre of education professional. This new professional will grow from a linkage of initial pre- and in-service education in a way that challenges assumptions about traditional roles

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and responsibilities and has a profound effect on how new and established education professionals view themselves and understand their work. Most importantly, these new professionals will be well placed to challenge established cultural norms within the system. A commitment to ownership of ‘what works and why’. This area revitalizes professionalism and reinforces the appetite for change. Newly empowered education professionals will have freedom to invest in a range of evidence-based, localized experiments, monitoring their impact and using findings to inform refinements that promote locally-owned models of practice, which are tailored to specific contexts and are more likely to meet the needs of all students. A dedication to joined-up public service provision. This area is a prerequisite for optimizing educational outcomes for all students. Traditionally, we have focused on within-school improvement, which has delivered limited returns. At best, it has increased schools’ capacity to manage change for the longer term, while, at worst, it has tactically ratcheted up test scores at the expense of capacity building. Improving learning levels is crucial and within-school approaches rightfully have a place in an improvement agenda. However, it is becoming clear that the pursuit of within-school approaches alone will generate lower and lower returns for the energy invested. Mobilizing elements of public services to provide a coordinated framework for within-, between- and beyond-school improvement will have the effect of challenging inequities that the educational system cannot deal with in isolation.

Our findings highlight the potential for disciplined collaborative enquiry to be a key lever for change within, between and beyond schools. While our current experience of working in this area reveals an evidence base that is strongest for within-school improvement, the true potential for networked collaboration beyond schools is just beginning to emerge. The knowledge base about ‘what works’ and ‘why’ decreases as one moves away from classrooms and individual school settings, but the potential for improvement increases as the focus shifts towards collaborative improvement efforts between schools

and beyond them. For this reason, policy makers should invest even more heavily in developing research and development interventions between schools and beyond schools as holistic, place-based approaches designed to generate collective impact (Henig et  al., 2015) on children’s lives. As we look forward, this approach is an important area for future development and there are encouraging signs that policy makers are beginning to acknowledge some of the improvements and gains made through these collaborative approaches.

REFERENCES Ainscow, M. (2016). Collaboration as a strategy for promoting equity in education: Possibilities and barriers. Journal of Professional Capital and Community, 1(2), 159–172. Ainscow, M., Dyson, A., Goldrick, S., & West, M. (2012). Making schools effective for all: Rethinking the task. School Leadership and Management, 32(3), 1–17. Ainscow, M., Dyson, A., Goldrick, S., & West, M. (2016). Using collaborative inquiry to foster equity within school systems: Opportunities and barriers. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 27(1), 7–23. Argyris, C., Putnam, R., & Smith, D. (1985). Action science: Concepts, methods and skills for research and intervention. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Ball, S., & Junemann, C. (2012). Networks, new governance and education. Bristol: Policy Press. Bernstein, B. (1970). Education cannot compensate for society. In C. Stoneman et  al. (Eds.), Education for democracy (pp. 110– 121). London: Penguin Education Special. Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to improve: How America’s schools can get better at getting better. Cambridge, MA: Harvard ­University Press. Carter-Wall, C., & Whitfield, G. (2012). The role of aspirations, attitudes and behaviour in closing the educational attainment gap. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation [online].

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Chapman, C. (2005). School improvement through external intervention? London: Continuum. Chapman, C. (2008). Towards a framework for school-to-school networking in challenging circumstances. Educational Research, 50(4), 403–420. Chapman, C. (2012). School improvement research and practice: A case of back to the future? In C. Chapman, P. Armstrong, A. Harris, D. Muijs, D. Reynolds, & P. Sammons (Eds.), School effectiveness and improvement research, policy and practice: Challenging the orthodoxy. New York: Routledge. Chapman, C. (2015). From one school to many: Reflections on the impact and nature of school federations and chains in England. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 43(1), 46–60. Chapman, C. (2016). Networking for educational equity: Rethinking improvement within, between and beyond schools. In A. Harris & M. Jones (Eds.), Leading futures: Global perspectives on educational leadership (pp. 148–156). London: Sage. Chapman, C., Ainscow, M., Bragg, J., Gunter, H., Hull, J., Mongon, D., Muijs, D., & West, M. (2008). Emerging patterns of school leadership: Current trends and future directions. Nottingham, UK: National College for the Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services. Chapman, C., & Hadfield, M. (2010). Reconnecting the middle tier: Local authorities and school-based networks. Journal of Educational Change, 11(3), 221–247. Chapman, C., Lowden, K., Chestnutt, H. R., Hall, S., McKinney, S., Hulme, M., & Friel, N. (2015). The School Improvement Partnership Programme: Using collaboration and inquiry to tackle educational inequity. Report to Education Scotland. Livingston, UK: Education Scotland. Chapman, C., Mongon, D., Muijs, D., Weiner, S., Pampaka, M., Williams, J., & Wakefield, D. (2011). Evaluation of the extra mile (Research Report No. 133). London: Department of Education. Chapman, C., & Muijs, D. (2014). Does schoolto-school collaboration promote school improvement? A study of the impact of school federations on student outcomes.

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mathematics teaching and learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Gronn, P. (2002). Distributed leadership as a unit of analysis. The Leadership Quarterly, 13(4), 423–451. Gunter, H., Hall, D., & Bragg, J. (2013). Distributed leadership: A study in knowledge production. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 41(5), 555–580. Hadfield, M., & Chapman, C. (2009). Leading school-based networks. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Hargreaves, D. (2010). Creating a self-­ improving school system. Nottingham, UK: National College for the Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services. Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional capital: Transforming teaching in every school. New York: Teachers College Press. Hargreaves, A., & Shirley, D. (2012). The Global Fourth Way: The quest for educational excellence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Harris, A. (2013). Distributed school leadership: Developing tomorrow’s leaders. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Harris A., & Muijs, D. (2005). Improving schools through teacher leadership. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press. Hattie, J. A. C. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London: Routledge. Henig, J. R., Riehl, C. J., Rebell, M. A., & Wolff, J. R. (2015). Putting collective impact in context: A review of the literature on local cross-sector collaboration to improve education. New York: Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis, Teachers College, Columbia University. Hopkins, D. (2012). Theories of action for teaching and learning. Available at: www.rnlcom. com/Theories-of-Action-InstructionalRounds_PDH-HA (accessed 15 March 2016). Hopkins, D., Ainscow, M., & West, M. (1994). School improvement in an era of change. London: Cassell. Hopkins, D., Harris, A., Mackay, A., Stoll, L., & Stringfield, S. (2014). School and system improvement: A narrative state of the art review. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 25(2), 257–281. House, E.R.. (1973). An examination of potential change roles in education. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.

Kerr, D., Aiston, S., White, K., Holland, M., & Grayson, H. (2003). Literature review of networked learning communities. Nottingham, UK: National College for the Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services. Research commissioned by National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), Slough. Kerr, K., Dyson, A., & Raffo, C. (2014). Education, disadvantage and place: Making the local matter. Bristol: Policy Press. Lieberman, A. (2000). Networks as learning communities: Shaping the future of teacher development. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 221–227. Maden, M. (2003). Success against the odds: Revisiting successful schools in disadvantaged areas. London: Routledge. Matthews, J. (2009). Work hard be nice: How two inspired teachers created the most promising schools in America. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books. McKinsey (2007). How the worlds best performing school systems came out on top. Final Report, September, www.mckinsey.com/ industries/social-sector/our-insights/how-theworlds-best-performing-school-systems-comeout-on-top (accessed 20 September 2017). Mincu, M (2013) Inquiry paper 6: teacher quality and school improvement – what is the role of research? in the British Educational Research/ RSA Inquiry accessed 15th March 2018 at https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/316663882_BERA_Inquiry_ paper_6_Teacher_Quality_and_School_ improvement_What_is_the_role_of_research Moolenaar, N. M., Sleegers, P. J. C., & Daly, A. J. (2011). Teaming up: Linking collaboration networks, collective efficacy, and student achievement. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(2), 251–262. Muijs, D., Ainscow, M., Chapman, C., & West, M. (2011). Collaboration and networking in education. London: Springer. National Commission on Education. (1996). Success against the odds: Effective schools in disadvantaged areas. London: Routledge. OECD. (2015). Improving schools in Scotland: An OECD perspective. Paris: Organizaton for Economic Cooperation and Development. Payne, C. M. (2008). So little change: The persistence of failure in urban schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

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Penuel, W., Riel, M., Krause, A., & Frank, K. (2009). Analysing teachers’ professional interactions in a school as social capital: A social network approach. Teachers College Record, 111(1), 124–163. Reynolds, D., Creemers, B. P. M., Hopkins, D., Stoll, L., & Bollen, R. (1996). Making good schools. London: Routledge. Rincon-Gallardo, S., & Fullan, M. (2016). Essential features of effective networks in education. Journal of Professional Capital and Community, 1(1), 5–22. Robinson, V., Hohepa, M., & Lloyd, C. (2009). School leadership and student outcomes: Identifying what works and why – best evidence synthesis iteration. Wellington, NZ: Ministry of Education. Sammons, P. (2007). School effectiveness and equity: Making connections. Reading, UK: CfBT Education Trust. https://www.educationdevelopmenttrust.com/∼/media/ cfbtcorporate/files/research/2007/r-schooleffectiveness-and-equity-full-2007.pdf (accessed 7 July 2018). Sammons, P., Mortimore, P., & Hillman, J. (1995). Key characteristics of effective schools: A review of school effectiveness research. London: Institute of Education/ Ofsted. Smith, K. (2013). Beyond evidence-based policy in public health: The interplay of ideas. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Snow, J. L., Martin, S. D., & Dismuke, S. (2015). ‘We do more than discuss good ideas’: A

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close look at the development of professional capital in an elementary education liaison group. Teacher Education Quarterly, 42(2), 43–63. Spillane, J. P. (2015). Leadership and learning: Conceptualizing relations between school administrative practice and instructional practice. Societies, 5(2), 277–294. Spillane, J. P., & Coldren, A. F. (2015). Diagnosis and design for school improvement: Using a distributed perspective to lead and manage change. New York: Teachers College Press. Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2001). Investigating school leadership: A distributed perspective. Educational Researcher, 30(3), 23–28. Stenhouse, L. (1980). Curriculum research and the art of the teacher. Curriculum, 1(1), Spring. Stepanek, J., Appel, G., Leong, M., Turner Mangan, M., & Mitchell, M. (2007). Leading Lesson Study: A practical guide for teachers and facilitators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Stevenson, H. (2012). Teacher leadership as intellectual leadership: Creating spaces for alternative voices in the English school system. Professional Development in Education, 38(2), 345–360. Wohlstetter, P., Smith, J., & Gallagher, A. (2013). New York City’s children first networks: Turning accountability on its head. Journal of Educational Administration, 51(4), 528–549.

33 Achieving Education for All: Organizational Issues in African Primary Schools Daniel N. Sifuna

INTRODUCTION The Education for All (EFA) movement is a global commitment to provide quality basic education for all children, youth and adults. The purposes and aims of EFA are many and varied, although they can be generally categorized into three, namely: human rights, equity, and socio-economic development. The right to education in developing countries receives its inspiration and platform from the 1948 United Nations General Assembly, which adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There have been more recent international instruments which call for increased access to education for all the children, and among the key ones are the International Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 and the Dakar Framework for Action, adopted in 2000 (UNESCO, 2000).Second, the economic motives for EFA are tied to the fact that primary education increases economic development, and hence, primary education is central to any long-term

strategy for economic, social and political modernization. Recognizing disparities in educational access within communities, planners in many developing countries have embarked on various strategies for expanding access and increasing school participation (Hill & King, 1993). At various international forums governments pledged to achieve EFA through meeting the identified six goals by 2015. Governments, development agencies, civil society and the private sector were intended to work together to reach the EFA goals (UNESCO, 2002, 2015). For education to achieve EFA purposes and aims, schools need to be properly organized, which refers to the arrangement of their resources of time, space and personnel for maximum effect on student learning. The school’s organization plan addresses those issues that affect the school as a whole, such as the master schedule or time-table, allocation of staff in different classrooms and the assignment of other teaching and learning resources (Danielson, 2002). With reference

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to the implementation of EFA programmes in Africa, this chapter briefly discusses: the influence of international agencies in promoting EFA; policy implementation; the educational administrative structure;and organizational issues in primary schools, which include among others facilities and the learning environment, teaching and learning resources, and parental and community participation.

POLICY CONTEXT: INFLUENCE OF INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES In the broad context of development in Africa, the 1960s and early 1970s were recognized as the ‘era of optimism’ All the indications were that for the newly independent countries, there was no limit to their expectations and plans for reaching the set targets of development. To achieve this end, both the national governments and donor agencies invested massive resources in human resource development, with much of it going into secondary and tertiary education. However, the era of optimism ended with the oil shocks of the mid-1970s and the end of the golden era of low unemployment and low inflation in the Northern economies, which in turn led to continued crisis throughout the 1980s. The late 1970s ushered in an economic crisis that accelerated after 1980 and left most African economies in serious disarray. The investment rate in the region fell from more than 18 percent of national income in the 1970s to less than 15 percent in 1983 (Levinson, 2016, p. 252; Sifuna, 2016). In reaction to the economic situations prevailing in the Northern and Southern countries, the donor community in the mid1980s established structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) as a recipe for weathering economic crises and nurturing macroeconomic conditions for technical support. Fundamental restructuring then became the dominant discourse for both education and

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general development and has remained so for more than three decades. With pressure from the InterntionalMonetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, African governments embarked on micro-economic policy reforms. They reconstituted their exchange rate policies, and instituted wage and salary reforms (World Bank, 1993). This discourse was not just confined to economic structures, but also focused on the state provision of basic social services, which included health and education. Governments had also to reduce public spending on these services (Levinson, 2016). In education, in particular, some studies, which empirically measured the rates of return to education(RORE), were said to consistently reveal that primary education had the highest private and social rates of return (Colclough, 1982; Glewwe, 1996; Psacharopoulos, 1994; Rosenzweig, 1995). As far as African education was concerned, the World Bank seemed to draw the attention of the countries to these findings (Psacharopoulos, 1981; World Bank, 1999) to determine the funding priorities in their education policies. The RORE represented an attempt to use a market compatible rationale of state expenditures on education. The World Bank concluded that the social rates of return on primary, secondary, and tertiary education were 24 percent, 18 percent and 11 percent respectively (Mkandawire & Saludo, 1999). Since higher education offered a lower rate of return, the argument was that it was not worth supporting. This conclusion, in part, explained the World Bank’s emphasis on basic education to the neglect of secondary and tertiary education in many African and other developing countries. However, based on the findings of many researches, economic efficiency demanded that primary education should be the key priority in public resource allocation to the education sector. This argument, coupled with the need to achieve equity, strongly justified the need for universal primary education (UPE) in the less industrialized countries (Mutangadura& Lamb, 2003).

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Furthermore, despite growing populations, the mounting debt burden and economic decline as well as SAPs caused enrolments to stagnate and educational quality to decline in much of the African region in the early 1980s. Between 1980 and 1990, for example, the proportion of primary school-aged children in school declined from 78 to 70 percent. The state of basic education in the less industrialized countries in general, and in Africa in particular, led to the convening of the World Conference on Education for All (EFA) in March 1990. The overall aim of the organizers for the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand, was therefore to encourage developing countries and donors to turn around the downward trend of falling enrolments, falling completion rates and poor learning outcomes within primary education in the developing countries. The aim was targeted to be reached by the beginning of the new millennium, namely, by 2000 (McGrath, 1999). Among the key targets set to be achieved were universal access to, and completion of, primary education by the year 2000 and improvement in learning achievement (World Conference on Education for All, 1990). As part of the strategies to achieve EFA, the World Education Forum, which was held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000, was sponsored by five convening agencies, namely, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank. It was noted that, while the World Conference on Education for All in 1990 had set the goal of achieving Universal Primary Education (UPE) by 2000, and while some progress had been made in some regions, the goal had not been realized by all the countries (UNESCO, 2000). The Forum noted that it was unacceptable that in 2000, more than 113 million children had no access to primary education, that 880 million adults were illiterate, that gender discrimination persisted, and many children and adults were denied access to the skills and knowledge necessary to fully exploit their potential. The Forum therefore set new targets, among them: ensuring that by

2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities had access to, and could complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality. These ideals were also embraced by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which targeted achieving Universal Primary Education (UPE) as well as promoting gender equality by 2015 (UNESCO, 2000).

EFA POLICY IMPLEMENTATION It is important to mention that good numbers of the African countries had experienced UPE a couple of years following the achievement of independence. Although the consequence of the emphasis on human capital, modernization theories and the localization of personnel after independence was that there was much more emphasis on the expansion of secondary and tertiary education, there was a modest expansion in primary education. Despite the focus on tertiary and secondary education, primary education was allowed to expand at a relatively steady rate in most of the sub-Saharan African countries. African countries’ expansion of their education systems was in response to a number of concerns,the chief of them being to combat ignorance, disease and poverty, and the belief that every child has the right of access to basic welfare provisions. However, the UPE schemes began to suffer serious setbacks as the capitation grants began to dry up due to governments’ drastic cutbacks in expenditures on social services, which were occasioned by the severe economic recession. Among the effects of the budget cuts were the introduction of cost-recovery and containment measures in education, including the reintroduction of school fees in primary education (Obasi, 2000; Riddell, 2003; Sifuna, 2016). In response to the globalized frameworks of Jomtien and Dakar, as well as the

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Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for achieving EFA by 2015, discussed in the previous section, many sub-Saharan African governments abolished school fees in public primary schools under the banner of the free primary education policy. Following the introduction of free primary education, many countries have experienced robust increases in primary education enrolments. The EFA Global Monitoring Report (UNESCO, 2015), for example, estimates that since 1999, the number of children enrolled in primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 75 percent to 144 million in 2012. This translated into a significant rise in the adjusted net enrolment ratio from 59 percent to 79 percent in 2012 (UNESCO, 2015). Despite such enrolment increases, especially over the last decade, many countries have fallen short of achieving the goal of primary schooling for all in both quantitative and qualitative goals (Kadzamira & Rose, 2003; Sawamura, 2004). The evidence of the actual impact of EFA is mixed. While some studies indicate that the EFA policy effectively improved access to primary education for the children of poor families by removing tuition for public primary education (Deininger, 2003), others show that various fees are still charged under the EFA policy (Suzuki, 2002). With regard to financing, some empirical studies now show that under the EFA policies, besides the capitation grants, the remaining private costs of education are still impediments for enrolment and equity as well as the quality of education. The EFA policy normally subsidizes tuition fees only, leaving other direct and indirect costs to be borne by parents and communities. Households, therefore, still incur substantial direct costs of sending their children to school, which often means that the disadvantaged groups are unable to receive the full benefits of EFA (Wedgwood, 2005). In many cases, while governments are supposed to provide certain materials, these are often insufficient, such that households have to supplement the supply from the governments. In addition,

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studies show that despite the abolition of fees, schools continue to request contributions to meet some essentials as well as labour and materials for school construction and maintenance. These additional costs turn out to be obstacles for the disadvantaged groups to attend school (Kadzamira& Rose, 2003).

EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURE This section briefly outlines the educational administrative structure through which EFA was implemented and the challenges faced in its implementation. In most African countries, schools and other educational institutions are governed by the Ministry of Education, headed by the Minister or Cabinet Secretary for Education, who is normally a political mouthpiece for the government. The Minister of Education deals with educational matters, which, at times, have important political implications. Unlike the Minister,the officials who work under the Minister are permanent officials. They are civil servants who are in constant touch with the national educational agencies, schools and interested groups in education. They advise the Minister of Education on professional matters and are therefore responsible for executing educational policies, preparing estimates for planning research and disseminating research findings and, in some countries, they assume managerial roles as well. Such officers also administer government schools and monitor teachers’ certification as well as their promotion (Asiedu-Akrofi, 1978). In some countries, the governance of schools is decentralized through the establishment of regional or district boards of education, which are legal representative bodies of the people in educational matters and thus become more accountable to parents for the quality and suitability of the education given to their children. Since the boards represent the people of the area, their members reflect

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a cross-section of the community. They may be elected or appointed upon the recommendation of the educational authorities, but they usually have professional experience in teaching and school administration. Their duties include appointments, promotions, transfers and the disciplining of teachers, the distribution of grants and the general administration of teachers’ welfare, such as retirement, emoluments, confidential reports and leaves of absence. In many countries, they give teachers the opportunity of influencing the educational policies affecting their profession and they encourage efficient school management and administration (AsieduAkrofi, 1978). At the school level, there are also school boards or committees whose members represent the community in which the schools are situated. Generally, some school board members are selected while others are elected. The selection of board members is carried out by the Ministry of Education upon the advice of the head teacher of the school. The boards’ duties are two-fold, namely, responsibility to the school and the community served by the school. In some countries, the boards have the duties of appointing the head teacher of the school, approving of the school’s budgets, implementing educational policies and advising the headteacher and staff on educational matters. The boards have also the responsibility of encouraging and establishing good working relationship between the community and the school (Asiedu-Akrofi, 1978). In the implementation of EFA,Ministries of Education were expected to give guidelines on the policies to be channelled down to the school boards or management committees. They were also expected to advise on teachers’, parents’ and students’ roles. Regional or county education officers were to be in charge of education matters in the appropriate units and were to be assisted by the local education officers in the various divisions in the administrative units. In some countries, there were Teacher Advisory Committees (TACs), which had been set

up to play an advisory role to the teachers and the school boards. Under EFA policy, the teachers’ role was to be curriculum implementation as per the approved syllabus. Teachers were also expected to support school management through membership on the school boards. Parents were regarded as stakeholders in the new policy and were to assist in school management through meetings of the parent-teachers’ associations (PTAs) and their board membership, as well as to assist in providing physical infrastructure, which was not offered by government under EFA. The school boards were to be responsible for managing funds, settling disputes in the school or making recommendations to the regional/county body, conducting tendering interviews/approvals for supplies and receiving school supplies. Ministries of Education were also expected to give guidelines on recommended textbooks under the approved syllabus. The regional/county education officers were to receive monthly enrolment figures from schools, which were to be used to determine funding (Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, 2003). Despite such a clearly outlined policy on the roles of the different administrative structures, in most countries there was a lack of a sustained and comprehensive communication strategy of the EFA programmes, which was critically reflected in the implementation at the school level. Following the initial euphoria and media publicity at the time of their launch, little was officially said about EFA in most countries. Although in some countries attempts were made by the Ministries of Education after the introduction of EFA to inform schools through circulars, this was not sustained. The consequence of the lack of sustained information about EFA resulted in considerable confusion over its meaning and the roles other stakeholders were expected to play. From the outset, both parents and teachers perceived EFA as a system whereby children go to school and learn without having to pay or buy anything

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because the government provided all facilities and the teaching and learning resources required by schools as well as their maintenance. The EFA policy was generally perceived as a way of relieving parents of their heavy financial burden. This was largely because the available information was quite vague on the roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders. With parents’ burden assumed by the government, they could now cater for the other needs of their children, such as uniforms, although some believed that this should be the responsibility of the government as well. In other words, for many years since the programmes were introduced, parents and teachers were and still are figuring out what EFA is all about (Sifuna&Sawamura, 2015; World Bank & UNICEF, 2009).

ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES IN SCHOOLS This section focuses on facilities and the learning environment, teaching and learning resources, and parental and community participation as these are the key organizational issues in schools in the EFA implementation.

Facilities and the Learning Environment Since the colonial period, in most parts of the African countries, especially outside the gazetted municipalities, parents and communities have had the responsibility of providing school buildings, including teachers’ houses, and other physical facilities in primary schools. In countries where vocational subjects are offered, they are also expected to build, equip and maintain workshops, special rooms for home science and, in some cases, science laboratories. This means that parents are required to dig deep into their pockets to finance the education of their children. As a

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consequence, where parents have not been able to raise the necessary resources, these facilities have not been provided, and thus the practical, vocational and other aspects of the curriculum cannot be effectively implemented. Given the uneven distribution of household income in many parts of the countries, it is usually likely that the patterns of disparity are repeated within the different regions of the countries. The mode of mobilizing resources for the physical development of schools is expected to be through the community effort of self-help. In many schools, as a condition for enrolment and continued stay in school, parents are required to pay a stated development levy, which in many cases is beyond the ability of the households. Hence, in many countries, the provision of school facilities was normally a major challenge, long before the provision of UPE. In most countries, the mass influx of pupils into schools due to EFA stretched school facilities to the limit. Classrooms were congested, and, especially in the lower classes, this was common in most primary schools. Many schools were unable to cope with the high influx of pupils. It was not unusual to find classes being conducted in the open, under trees or in church buildings, to supplement the available space. Many schools introduced double shifts/sessions for both mornings and afternoons to cope with the upsurge, while others introduced several streams. The afternoon sessions were not particularly comfortable for many areas because of the heat and rain in many parts of Africa. It was not uncommon to find that the number of pupils had increased, but the number of desks and chairs had remained the same. There were many classes which needed to be divided into three or four new classes, but this could not be done due to the shortage of classrooms, desks and teachers. Pupils in the lower classes were often forced to sit on the floor, stones or on mats in some of the schools and wrote on their laps. Toilets were also lacking in many schools and wherever they existed, they were inadequate and in a

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very poor condition. This seriously affected mostly girls and disabled children. There were some cases of pupils resorting to relieving themselves in the nearby bushes, which was quite unhealthy. Such overstretched facilities and congested classrooms provided unhealthy and uncomfortable learning conditions (Ogola, 2010). For many primary head teachers, one of the major administrative challenges of implementing EFA, therefore, was the construction and rehabilitation of their schools. The demand for more and better school facilities was quite urgent due to increased enrolments. In Ghana, for example, such head teachers could only make a request for more and improved facilities to the District Directors of Education (DDEs). However, the DDEs had no control over the funds for the construction and rehabilitation of schools, as it was the responsibility of the Districts to build and rehabilitate schools, which also depended on the national government to provide such funds. The process for obtaining school funds for construction and rehabilitation was long, as requests had to be channelled through the DDEs to the District Assemblies. The other source for head teachers to obtain funds for construction and rehabilitation was from the contributions of the parents and school communities, which was equally difficult, as they had a perception that, since there was completely free education under the EFA policy, they had been absolved of all responsibilities towards their children’s schooling, not only financially, but also administratively (Ampiah& Yamada, 2015). In Ghana, it was further noted that while many head teachers made efforts to persuade parents and the communities of the need to contribute to the education of their children, the introduction of capitation grants to support EFA reinforced their perception that they were not expected to pay any levies to the schools. Consequently, any appeal to support school development and improvement was met with strong resistance. Furthermore,

since 2007, schools and school management committees (SMCs) were prohibited from soliciting any contributions from parents and communities, except for fund-raising initiated by the parent-teachers’ associations (PTAs). As such policies were being enacted, the demand for classroom construction and rehabilitation was becoming critical. Ghana had also introduced double or triple shifts of teaching to cope with the situation. Multiple shifts were actively discouraged by teachers,parents and SMCs in most districts because they were seen as being unproductive, due to the fewer contact hours between children and their teachers, the reduced time for curriculum delivery, the promotion of truancy among children, and not making room for extra- and co-curricular activities in schools (Ampiah& Yamada, 2015). The Ghanaian learning environment following the launch of the EFA policy was common in many countries which had introduced free primary education. It became apparent that the implementation of UPE in many countries indicated a real commitment by governments to primary education, and it was supported by a substantial increase in resources to the sub-sector. However, the impact of the abrupt increase in enrolments meant that access to facilities could not expand concomitantly. Instead, it led to an increased number of children using existing facilities more intensively, resulting in a substantial increase in class sizes, particularly in the early standards, and more classes being taught in the open air. In some countries, individual schools had classes of as many as 200 pupils or more (Kadzamira& Rose, 2003).

Teaching and Learning Resources Various studies have attested to the importance of having access not simply to school, but to a minimum level of resources (Lockheed &Verspoor, 1991; UNESCO, 2009; World Bank, 1980). With regard to the

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teaching force, in many countries before EFA, there had been a steady improvement in the training of primary school teachers since independence, with the proportion of professionally unqualified teachers declining by as muchas 30 percent. However, the EFA intervention has contributed to an increase in numbers of unqualified teachers. In Malawi, for example, the government responded to the increased demand for teachers by recruiting around 18,000 untrained teachers, but these were both insufficient to provide classes of an acceptable size and also meant that a large proportion of the teaching force were inexperienced and unqualified (Kunje, 2002). In 2012, the sub-Saharan African region had about 3.4 million primary school teachers, an increase of 1.5 million since 1999. Despite this increase, teacher shortages have constantly remained a serious concern, with the region accounting for 63 percent of the 1.4 million additional teachers needed to achieve universal primary education by 2015. In 2012, the average pupil/teacher ratio was estimated to be 42:1, being the same as in 1999. However, some countries had a much higher ratio, especially the Central African Republic, which recorded a pupil/teacher ratio of 80:1. The shortage of trained teachers was even more severe as it was 79 percent in 2012 (UNESCO, 2015).Such shortages have also impacted on the quality of teaching as pupils end up receiving fewer assignments from teachers because they lack the time for marking them. In Kenya, at the time of the intervention to provide free primary education in 2003, the country was reeling under one of the severe World Bank conditionalities to reduce public service personnel and to enforce a total clamp down on recruitment. As a result,the existing teaching force had to cope with increased enrolments in primary schools. To address the worsening teacher– pupil ratios most SMCs instituted a levy to employ their own teachers. In many countries, due to the unequal distribution of teachers within the countries and schools, class sizes are considerably larger

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than in the earlier standards. For example, in Malawi, it ranged from 113 pupils per class in standard one, on average, to 27 pupils per class in standard eight (Kadzamira& Rose, 2003). In addition to the proportions of untrained teachers, continued teacher development through in-servicing, in both pedagogy and management, which in the literature on school effectiveness is considered a necessary condition for sustaining and improving achievement, is neither regular nor systematic. The EFA implementation increased head teachers’ responsibilities, which also contributed to understaffing in many primary schools. In ensuring the smooth running of school activities and successful implementation of EFA, head teachers no longer have adequate time to teach, although, due to widespread teacher shortages, they are expected to be full-time teachers in addition to their administrative responsibilities. Most head teachers also lacked sufficient managerial skills to handle the multiple tasks, such as bookkeeping, supervising curriculum implementation and teaching at the same time. Heavy workloads left them with insufficient time to supervise class teachers as well as to prepare and maintain professional records, work schemes and lesson plans (World Bank & UNICEF, 2009). In Tanzania, the increased enrolments arising from EFA were such that there were not enough secondary school graduates to supply the demand. Primary school teachers were therefore drawn from populations who had not attended secondary school and had trained through distance education programmes (Wedgwood, 2007). The problem of poor professional qualifications compounds the inadequacy of teachers. The challenge of teacher quality is not confined to professional qualifications and training, but it is also anchored in motivation and aspiration. According to a Kenyan study on Teacher Motivation and Practice (Waudo et  al., 2002), overall teacher motivation appeared low. Key concerns expressed by

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teachers were: poor conditions of service, the lack of housing, especially in the high-cost urban areas, the lack of promotion on merit, inadequate involvement in school planning, the poor quality of school management and support systems as well as poor relations with parents. The same authors found that these low levels of motivation seemed to manifest themselves in poor performance in the classroom. Studies in Malawi seemed to suggest that teacher performance has deteriorated following the introduction of free primary education due to low morale, which also has implications for the quality of education that is delivered. In addition, parents blame the increased problems of indiscipline in schools on teachers as the parents no longer feel that teachers are accountable to them, since parents are not paying for the schooling of their children and therefore cannot make demands on teachers (Kadzamira& Rose, 2003). The low levels of motivation are a major contributory factor to teacher absenteeism, which has been shown to negatively impact on student learning. In Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and Uganda, for example, teacher absenteeism in primary education was estimated to exceed 20 percent. Closely related to teacher absenteeism is instructional time, which has been shown to enhance learners’ exposure to knowledge and result in significant learning gains. In the early 2000s, countries in the region spent 720 hours of instructional time per year in the early primary grades, increasing to 830 hours in grade eight as compared to the international recommendation of 850 and 1,000 hours per year, respectively (UNESCO, 2015). In terms of other teaching and learning resources, following the economic recession,the severe reduction of public budgetary allocation of the 1980s and 1990s signalled many governments’ discontinuation of the provision of textbooks, stationery and other instructional materials to schools. Parents were required to take over these expenses. With a rapidly rising rate of inflation and an inability of an increasing

proportion of households who were unable to meet the higher costs of education, the provision of instructional materials seriously deteriorated. For instance, in Kenya, a Ministry of Education survey found that nationally the primary school textbook to pupil ratio had gone up to 1:17. Hence, in contrast to increased enrolments, teachers and parents tend to perceive the provision of teaching and learning materials, especially textbooks, by the government as one of the greatest achievements of the EFA, since it has contributed measurably to improving the quality of education in the country. The availability of materials saves time for both teachers and pupils by eliminating the need to write and copy long notes from the board. In addition to textbooks, pupils now receive free exercise books, pens and rubbers as well as mathematical sets, all of which aid the learning process. Some schools have also improved the learning environment by upgrading their facilities through repairs, renovation and minor construction from the EFA grant. Others have also managed to employ support staff such as guards, thus boosting the safety and security of schools. These factors to some extent have enhanced the learning experiences and have reduced absenteeism in some parts of the country (Sifuna, 2007). While, under the EFA intervention in some countries, the supply of teaching and learning materials has considerably improved, there are still fewer materials compared to the number of pupils. Students have to share books in the ratio of 1:3 and in some subjects in the ratio of 1:5 or higher, which makes it difficult for the pupils to do their homework and other assignments. In Kenya, despite the EFA intervention, the textbook situation is generally still poor in many schools. This is said to be largely due to the seepage of funds by head teachers and education officers. There are also situations where the storage of books has been poor and books have been eaten by ants or lost in one way or another. The textbook situation in many districts is therefore still pathetic. This also applies to other

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teaching and learning materials (Canadian International Development Agency(CIDA), 2011). On the whole, in many countries, the availability of textbooks and other teaching and learning materials remains severely limited. For example, in 2012, Cameroon had only one reading textbook for every 12 grade two pupils, and one mathematics textbook per 14 students (UNESCO, 2015). The lack of teaching aids is also one of the key challenges of teaching in primary schools. Although the nature of shortages varies from one country to another, the teaching aid most often used, and often the only one, is the chalkboard. It is generally described as the main teaching resource at the primary school level (Ntoi&Lefoka, 2002). However, in the highly disadvantaged schools, even the chalkboards are either unavailable or extremely small and dilapidated. Charts are either unavailable or old and are almost illegible for the pupils to grasp what they are expected to depict. Teachers also hardly make use of pictures in pupils’ textbooks in cases where pupils have such books. Pictures could make lessons more interesting and easy to understand. In many cases where attempts are made to use teaching aids, they are often too small to serve the purpose (Moloi, Morobe, &Urwick, 2008). In some countries where teaching and learning resources are available, there are serious problems of distribution. Books are supplied to schools, but, in many cases, they do not arrive on time or are too few. This normally arises due to a lack of means of transportation or logistical terrain problems, especially for schools in the remote parts or hard-to-reach areas of the countries. In some schools, head teachers opt to keep books safely in the stores or cupboards for fear of them being lost or torn by pupils if they are provided for use. In other cases, some books are torn or have lost pages, making it difficult to use them in teaching. As a result of the prevailing attitudes to ‘free primary education’, parents do not seem to see the need to pay for the purchase of more books or for books

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to be repaired so that other children can have access to them in subsequent years. The general perception is that governments have the duty and responsibility to supply everything to schools (Sifuna&Sawamura, 2010).

Parental and Community Participation Parental and community support is key in the development and maintenance of primary education in many countries. It is achieved through the school management committees (SMCs) or school boards and parent-teachers’ associations (PTAs), which have been established by legislation. Each school is expected to constitute its own SMC or board and PTA, which are composed of parents, teachers, pupils and community members. SMCs or boards are expected to assist in the management of the school and are mandated to meet regularly to address school issues. They also have the responsibility to plan development projects in their schools, oversee school operations, teachers’ welfare, including housing, and they act as bridges between the schools and communities and maintain good relations between the two. Head teachers and teachers are expected to work closely with the SMCs in the day-to-day running of the schools. PTAs are composed of parents, teachers and those members of the community who are around or who work in the school. They are expected to assist in instilling discipline among teachers and pupils, in managing the infrastructure and in laying down rules for communities involved in school activities. They also have the mandate to mobilize communities to support schools as well as holding the SMCs or boards accountable (Chimombo, Kunje, & Ogawa, 2015). The launch and operationalization of EFA to a great extent seems to have undermined these traditional arrangements in the management of primary schools in many countries. In Kenya, for example, under the free primary education arrangements, the government

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decided that it would provide 1020 Kenya Shillings (Kshs. or US$20) per primary school pupil in public primary schools, which would be disbursed directly to the schools. Each school was therefore directed to open two bank accounts to enable the capitation grant funds to be managed by the school management committee (SMC). The first was the School Instructional Material Bank Account (SIMBA), which was intended to cover direct teaching and learning materials. The second was the General Purpose Account (GPA) to be spent on wages for support staff, repairs, maintenance, quality assurance, utilities and other miscellaneous expenditures. The SIMBA account receives a payment of Kshs. 650 per pupil twice a year and the GPA of Kshs. 370 per pupil. Since the grant is awarded per pupil, the total disbursement in the two accounts is determined by pupils’ enrolment. In accordance with the Ministry of Education guidelines, the planning and expenditure of the capitation funds was the responsibility of the SMCs. They were to plan school activities, oversee the expenditure of free primary education (FPE) funds, audit school finances, employ part-time teachers and perform school maintenance (Sifuna&Sawamura, 2015). However, under the FPE guidelines, head teachers seem to have assumed greater responsibilities in the implementation of EFA. They admitted new pupils, informed teachers and parents about FPE issues, and managed funds, which included budgeting and ensuring the purchase and delivery and account keeping of FPE materials. These were in addition to their normal roles of supervising teachers, disciplining students and attending to parents and other visitors. Therefore, ironically, while, on the one hand, the Ministry of Education was directing SMCs to take full responsibility for implementing the FPE, on the other hand, the guidelines vested immense powers in the head teacher to single-handedly implement the programme. In this arrangement, SMC members were virtually rendered inactive, with some committee members

being only involved in the signing of bank documents, and not in decision-making. In most schools, FPE made SMCs completely irrelevant in the school management. While in the past SMCs collected and managed tuition payments, now the funds come straight from the exchequer with fiscal management being performed entirely by the head teacher (Sifuna&Sawamura, 2015). It is a common experience in Africa that those selected as head teachers have been good teachers or are good academically or have taught for quite a long time or have good connections with the authority. Qualities in educational leadership, good judgement, sociability, responsibility and dependability have played an important role, as they should, in the selection of educational leaders. Although it is not easy to measure these qualities, the selection of a good head teacher undoubtedly guarantees the good organization of the school (AsieduAkrofi, 1978). Without tight controls, some head teachers abuse their position of fiscal power, in collusion with senior education administrators, by engaging in corrupt practices and mismanaging EFA funds. As a result, in many schools in Kenya, there is very little to show in terms of EFA achievements, despite many years of FPE capitation grant disbursements (Sifuna&Sawamura, 2015). Corruption and the mismanagement and misuse of financial and other education/school resources by politicians, local leaders and school managers continue with impunity. This denies schools the badly needed resources for sustaining quality education. A recent example saw a donor withdrawing the provision of funds for free primary education and support to the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP) due to rampant corruption in the Ministry of Education. This partly contributed to the collapse of the School Infrastructure Investment Programme (SIIP) under KESSP, which was meant to construct new classrooms and rehabilitate old buildings. The seepage of funds is also common at the school level because of poor monitoring

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by the District Education Officers (DEOs) in the districts and counties (Canadian International Development Agency, 2011). As most of the financial accounting details have been left to the head teachers rather than being part of the SMCs work, parents also tend to feel pushed to the periphery of the school fiscal management system. This has created serious mistrust between the parents and head teachers in many primary schools in Kenya. Furthermore, considering that the modalities used by the government in the introduction of the FPE programme are not well understood by parents, it is difficult to convince them to supplement aspects of schooling which are not adequately funded in the programme. Consequently, there is parental reluctance to provide anything for schooling, including book bags and stationery, in the belief that such items should be provided by the government. The participation of communities and parents in the governance and management of the education sector and schools remains minimal, in rural areas in particular. This is so because, while the Education Act mandates parents and communities to participate in the management of their schools through SMCs and PTAs, school heads normally marginalize and reduce them to the roles of collecting levies for schools. This situation was exacerbated with the government’s decision to provide free primary education without first and foremost sensitizing communities and parents as to what was entailed. They interpreted the FPE intervention as freeing them from most of their school responsibilities (Canadian International Development Agency, 2011).

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS This chapter has attempted to show that many sub-Saharan African countries responded to the EFA global movement by abolishing school fees in public primary

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schools under the banner of the free primary education policy. Following the introduction of free primary education (FPE), most of these countries have experienced robust increases in primary education enrolments. The FPE policy removed one of the major barriers of access to education for children of parents with limited resources and reversed a trend of declining enrolment rates. However, since the implementation of the EFA policy was not adequately planned, it precipitated some serious organizational issues in primary schools. In most countries, the mass influx of pupils into schools due to EFA stretched school facilities to the limit. Classrooms were congested, and congestion, especially in the lower classes, was common in most primary schools. It was not uncommon to find that the number of pupils had increased, but the number of desks and chairs had remained the same. For many primary head teachers, one of the major administrative challenges of implementing EFA was therefore the construction and rehabilitation of their schools. The demand for more and better school facilities was urgent due to increased enrolments, but resources remained limited. The situation also applied to the teaching and learning resources, which have continued to be critical in many schools. EFA implementation has placed greater responsibilities on head teachers in the management of schools as well as an increased burden on parents and communities in their support of education. To improve the quality of the teaching and learning environment, it is important to address these issues. Measures which need to be taken include infrastructural development and the provision of teaching and learning materials. In terms of the infrastructure, while some governments in the region have successfully embarked on national infrastructure programmes to provide public primary schools with new classrooms, latrines and teachers’ houses, it seems to be an aspect which has generally been neglected in most countries, despite requiring urgent attention.

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A cost-effective approach has been demonstrated in some countries. This involves the central and local governments mobilizing communities through school management committees to provide cheap construction materials, while the governments support them with technical construction skills and roofing materials. With regard to the scarcity of teaching and learning materials, an objective common to all African countries should be to develop national skills for adapting and editing written materials. For most countries, in addition, an increased capacity to write and publish classroom materials should be a major objective.

REFERENCES Ampiah, J. G.,& Yamada, S. (2015). Universal Primary Education policy assessment in Kenya. In K. Ogawa & M. Nishimura (Eds.), Comparative analysis on universal primary education policy and practice: The cases of Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Asiedu-Akrofi, K. (1978). School organization in modern Africa. Tema: Ghana Publishing Corporation. Chimombo, J., Kunje, D.,& Ogawa, K. (2015). Universal Primary Education policy assessment in Malawi. In K. Ogawa & M. Nishimura (Eds.), Comparative analysis on universal primary education policy and practice: The cases of Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Canadian International Development Agency(CIDA) (2011). Scoping study on the provision of quality education and governance/accountability issues in education: Kwale County and Kinango District of Kenya. Nairobi: CIDA. Colclough, C. (1982). The impact of primary schooling on economic development: A review of the evidence. World Development, 10(3), 167–185. Danielson, C. (2002). Enhancing student achievement: A framework for improvement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).

Deininger, K. (2003). Does cost of schooling affect enrolment by the poor? Universal primary education in Uganda. Economics of Education Review, 22(3), 291–305. Glewwe, P. (1996). The relevance of standard estimates of rates of return to schooling for education policy: A critical assessment. Journal of Development Economics, 51(2), 267–290. Hill, M. A., & King, E. M. (1993). Women’s education in developing countries: An overview. In E. M. King & M. A. Hill (Eds.), Women’s education in developing countries: Barriers, benefits and policies. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kadzamira, E.,& Rose, P. (2003). Can free primary education meet the needs of the poor? Evidence from Malawi. International Journal of Educational Development, 23(5), 501–516. Kunje, D. (2002). The Malawi Integrated InService Teacher Education Programme: An experiment with mixed mode training. International Journal of Educational Development, 22(3&4), 305–320. Levinson, M. (2016). An extraordinary time. London: Penguin. Lockheed, M.,&Verspoor, A. (1991). Improving Primary education in developing countries. Washington, DC: World Bank. McGrath, S. (1999). Education development and assistance: The challenge of the new millennium. In K. King & L. Buchert (Eds.), Changing international aid to education: Global patterns and national contexts. Paris: UNESCO/Norrag. Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2003). Free primary education. Nairobi: Kenya Mkandawire, T.,& Saludo, C. C. (1999). Our continent, our future: African perspectives on structural adjustment. Ottawa: Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Moloi, F.,Morobe, J.,& Urwick, J. (2008). Free but inaccessible primary education: A critique of the pedagogy of English and Mathematics in Lesotho. International Journal of Educational Development, 28(5), 612–621. Mutangadura, G. B., & Lamb, V. L. (2003). Variations in rates of primary school access and enrolments in Sub-Saharan Africa: A pooled

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cross-country time series analysis. International Journal of Educational Development, 23(4), 369–380. Ntoi, V.,& Lefoka, J. P. (2002). NTTC under the microscope: Problems of change in primary education in Lesotho. International Journal of Educational Development, 22(3&4), 275–289. Obasi, E. (2000). Impact of economic recession on UPE in Nigeria. International Journal of Educational Development, 20(3), 189–207. Ogola, F. O. (2010). Free education in Kenya’s public primary schools: Addressing the challenges. Addis Ababa: Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA). Psacharopoulos, G. (1981). The return to education. Comparative Education, 17(3), 321–341. Psacharopoulos, G. (1994). Returns to investment in education: A global update. World Development, 22(9), 1325–1343. Riddell, A. (2003). The introduction of free primary education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Paris: UNESCO. Rosenzweig, M. R. (1995). Why are there returns in schooling? American Economic Review, 85(2), 153–158. Sawamura, N. (2004). Japan’s philosophy of self-help efforts in international development cooperation: Does it work in Africa? Journal of International Cooperation in Education, 7(1), 29–40. Sifuna, D. N. (2007). The challenge of increasing access and improving quality: An analysis of universal primary education interventions in Kenya and Tanzania since the 1970s. International Review of Education, 53(5&6), 687–299. Sifuna, D. N. (2016). Universal primary education and the challenge of quality in SubSaharan Africa. In I. I. Munene (Ed.), Achieving education for all: Dilemmas in system-wide reforms and learning outcomes in Africa. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

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Sifuna, D. N.,& Sawamura, N. (2010). Challenges of quality education in Sub-Saharan African countries. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Sifuna, D. N., & Sawamura, N. (2015). UPE policy assessment in Kenya. In K. Ogawa & M. Nishimura (Eds.), Comparative analysis on universal primary education policy and practice: The cases of Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Suzuki, I. (2002). Parental participation and accountability in primary schools in Uganda. Compare, 32(2), 243–259. UNESCO (2000). World Education Forum: Final Report (Dakar, Senegal). Paris:UNESCO. UNESCO (2002). EFA Global Monitoring Report 2003/2004. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO, (2009). Universal primary education in Africa: The teacher challenge. Dakar: UNESCO. UNESCO (2015). Education for all: Global Monitoring Report. Paris: UNESCO. Waudo, J., Juma, M., Herriot, A., & Mwirotsi, M. (2002). Headteacher Support Groups Initiative within the PRISM Project, Kenya. Eastern Africa Social Science Research, 18(1). Wedgwood, R. (2005). Post-basic education and poverty reduction in Tanzania. Edinburgh: Centre for African Studies, University of Edinburgh. Wedgwood, R. (2007). Education and poverty reduction in Tanzania. International Journal of Educational Development, 27(4). World Bank (1980). Education: Sector policy paper. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank (1993). The Asian miracle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. World Bank (1999). Education sector strategy. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank & UNICEF (2009). Abolishing school fees in Africa: Lessons from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Mozambique. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA) (1990). Meeting basic learning needs: A vision for 1990s. New York: WCEFA.

34 The School Building as Organizational Agent: Leveraging Physical Learning Environments to Advance the Educational Enterprise Pamela Woolner and Cynthia L. Uline INTRODUCTION To improve education, we need to understand how to use all the tools at our disposal, and it can appear that the potential of the physical setting to enhance educational experiences and outcomes is being overlooked. This chapter interrogates this idea by engaging with the varied research evidence related to the importance of the school physical environment for education. We initially consider research that has examined the relationship between the quality of the school premises and educational outcomes together with experimental work that has investigated the impact of physical variables on learning. This first section is necessarily brief because there appear to be limited direct impacts on learning. Vital as it is for school architects, administrators and leaders to understand these direct effects, and so avoid putting students in environments that are detrimental to learning, this is far from the complete picture

of the influence of school space on educational quality. As will become apparent, the resulting underestimation of the importance of school space is produced because this perspective conceives the physical environment as isolated and unchanging. On the contrary, school spaces are inevitably entwined with other aspects of school life, such as curriculum, timetabling, staff practices and student attitudes, to create an educational environment (Gislason, 2009, 2010). Further, the relationship between space and users is dynamic, rather than static, with settings influencing what activities are undertaken (Horne Martin, 1999, 2002; Sigurðardóttir & Hjartarson, 2011), but users are also able to alter their environment to fit the practices they want to pursue (Briggs, 2001; Uline, TschannenMoran, & Wolsey, 2009). This relationship has been explained by some scholars in terms of interactions between the built environment and school ‘climate’ (Maxwell, 2016; Uline

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et al., 2009) or ‘culture’ (Briggs, 2001; Horne Martin, 2002). Therefore, as we attempt to identify the conditions that foster excellence in education, we need to consider the human, social, technical, and physical dimensions of our schools’ capacity.

THE IMPACT OF THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT ON LEARNING As educators, researchers, policy makers, and publics consider our schools’ capacity to ensure accountability and excellence in curriculum, instruction and assessment for all students, rarely do they foreground the physical environment within which these activities take place. School buildings stand as a physical manifestation of the educational enterprise and in some cases, they reflect persistent disparities in investment across locations and communities (Building Education Success Together, 2006; Filardo, 2016; Vincent & Jain, 2015). Even as some challenge the relative impact of such investments on student achievement when compared with other factors, such as highly qualified teachers and effective educational leaders (Bowers & Urick, 2011; Picus et  al., 2005; Wei, Clifton, & Roberts, 2012), common sense and mounting empirical evidence suggest that either/or decisions about where best to invest our resources may be shortsighted (Crampton, 2009).

An Initial Look at the Evidence Base In essence, two approaches have been taken over the past half-century to investigate the effect of the built school environment on learning: correlations of building quality measurements with student outcomes, such as test results, and more focused, sometimes experimental, examination of potential causal links between specific physical elements and learning. Although the logic of these two

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approaches is different, perhaps hinting at their origins in sociology and psychology, respectively, in practice they often overlap; it is necessary to consider both types in evaluating the impact the building might be having on learning. The findings of the correlational work are somewhat inconsistent, and substantial variation in the size of relationships has been found, with, occasionally, a study that proposes no relationship (e.g., Picus et  al., 2005). However, the overall picture is of small, but positive correlations between school build quality and student outcomes, generally test scores (Tanner, 2000, 2009; Tanner & Lackney, 2006), but also measures of behaviour (Kumar, O’Malley, & Johnston, 2008) and attendance (Durán-Narucki, 2008). Where minimal or no correlations are found, it is sometimes proposed that this reflects limits to the method of assessing environmental quality, with the emphasis being on technical aspects, such as boiler efficiency, that could not be expected to impinge much on educational effectiveness (Roberts, 2009). In addition, correlations can fluctuate due to the extent of the variation across each variable within the sample: crudely, if all the schools are much the same, there will be no correlation found unless the relationship is extremely strong and no other influences are at work. Even those who are convinced of the importance of the building quality would not suggest it is the sole determinant of effective learning. A recent UK development of this correlational work attempted to measure environmental quality at the classroom, rather than at the school level, and took care to include in the assessment many of the aspects of the environment that have been shown to be linked to learning (Barratt et al., 2015). This research revealed convincing correlations but, despite the imaginative statistical manipulations employed in this study and also with the data collected by a recent US study (Maxwell, 2016), considerable uncertainty remains about the exact mechanisms that might produce such a relationship.

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This is where the more focused work can be useful. Historically, psychological, laboratorybased research has revealed negative effects of extremes of noise, poor air quality and temperature. These effects have since been related to those found in naturally occurring school environments, and there has been recent work to manipulate these physical variables in more lifelike classroom settings. Thus, laboratory work showing that noise disrupts cognitive functioning, producing deficits in memory tests, can be linked to findings that emerged of reading problems among children exposed to chronic noise levels at school, due to the location of their schools near flight paths, highways or railway lines (Bronzaft & McCarthy, 1975; Cohen et al., 1980; Evans & Maxwell, 1997; Haines et al., 2001). Some studies have since tried to test the impact of different sorts of noise in more naturalistic settings (Hygge, 2003; Knez & Hygge, 2002), but noise is a complicated phenomenon, making its relationship with teaching and learning very complex: in addition to interfering with cognitive functions, noise can be immediately distracting for students (Cohen et  al., 1980), cause teachers to pause (Bronzaft & McCarthy, 1975) and be upsetting or annoying in the longer term (Haines et  al., 2001). The work of Dockrell and Shield (Dockrell & Shield, 2004; Shield & Dockrell, 2004) on school noise levels and acoustics demonstrated that noise within school is frequently more of a potential problem than external noise. Yet, many valuable learning activities can be noisy, so it is important not to be too reductionist about noise (this argument is developed in Woolner & Hall, 2010). The negative effects of extreme temperature and poor air quality appear to be more straightforward in their application to educational settings. It’s hard to conceive of a pedagogy that requires extreme temperatures or a stuffy classroom, so building design simply needs to ensure moderate temperatures and effective ventilation. Some caution is required in proposing international maximum temperatures: there was a tendency for research

conducted in the US or northern Europe to suggest that cognitive functioning declines if temperatures rise above 23°C, but it seems likely that people living in consistently hotter climates might respond differently. In fact, a piece of Australian research used a benchmark of 20–27°C to assess the learning environments provided by new classrooms in Victoria (Newton et al., 2012). A better case for a direct, unmediated effect on cognition can be made for air quality. Previous studies have shown the impact of raised levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) on cognition, and some ingenious research demonstrated both the severity of the problem in standard classrooms under normal usage and the actual impact on more naturalistic learning tasks (Bakó-Biró et al., 2012). Taken together, the two dominant types of research in this area are very clear about the potential for a badly designed or poorly maintained school building to affect occupants’ well-being and learning negatively. The more focused work clearly shows how some elements of building quality, which may be picked up by the assessments of the correlational studies, can cause learning problems, as well as suggesting possible mechanisms for other physical inadequacies to have educational effects. However, this reading of the research would tend to suggest that our main concern should be with inadequate buildings. Although such an understanding is an important part of the moral argument for ensuring adequate provision across different sectors of society and for justifying spending public money on renewing school stock, to stop at the point of providing functional buildings risks limiting the educational potential of the learning environment. It seems important to move beyond asking how we can minimize the harm done by a school setting to question how we can develop it to be a positive contribution to quality education. This is, at least in part, the logic of a range of researchers and practitioners across education and architecture. The idea that good architecture is not about the perfect setting so much as maximizing fit between building and user underpins

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participatory design (see, for example, Parnell, Cave, & Torrington, 2008; Sanoff, 1990; Woolner, 2011). Similarly, there have been recent appeals by environmental scientists to move away from a deficit view of the school environment, where improvements centre on limiting contaminants, to develop ‘green schools’ that are ‘part of the solution rather than the problem’ (Kensler & Uline, 2017, p. 14). In essence, these recent interpretations suggest the important organizational benefits of high-quality facilities, and understanding these may enable us to address issues of equity across schools and localities.

Complexity of the Relationship between People and their Environment In her seminal review of research on the physical environment of school, Weinstein (1979, p. 600) warned: ‘It is imperative that researchers not only acknowledge the complexity of the environment–behavior relationships but also design and interpret studies to reflect this complexity.’ While investigations of the discrete characteristics of the school’s physical environment, such as those discussed above, have been informative and useful, studies that seek to isolate the independent effects of school facility features and conditions on students’ achievement miss important questions about how school facilities enhance or detract from the learning process and what constitute mediating variables (Woolner et  al., 2007). Therefore, we now move to an exploration of school space that attempts to understand, rather than seeing as confounding, the complex, dynamic relationships between physical setting and educational use. In this effort to understand the influence of the physical school setting more completely, it is useful to consider perspectives developed within a range of disciplines. Scholars of environmental psychology underscore the complex relationship between people and their physical settings (Proshansky,

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1978), observing that the physical environment is also a social environment and vice versa (Ittleson et  al., 1974). This means that experiences within a given environment are created by the setting itself in combination with what people bring to it (sense of place) (Buttimer, 1980; Hart, 1979; Jorgensen & Stedman, 2001; Steele, 1981; Tuan, 1980); that people establish bonds to particular places and settings (place attachment) (Altman & Low, 1992; Hidalgo & Hernandez, 2001); and that certain dimensions of self are developed in relation to the physical settings they inhabit (place identity) (Proshansky, 1978). Scholars in the fields of architecture (Dudek, 2000; Hertzberger, 2008; Lackney, 1996), education (Gislason, 2010; Uline & Tschannen-Moran, 2008; Uline et al., 2009; Wolsey & Uline, 2010; Woolner, 2015) and psychology (Weinstein, 1979) have explored this person/place relationship within built learning environments. Various elements of school facilities have been shown to be related to student attitudes and behaviour, including motivation, self-esteem, peer and student–teacher interactions, discipline, attention, motivation, attendance, and interpersonal relations, as well as student achievement (Evans, 2006; Lackney, 2005; Schneider, 2003; Woolner, 2015). Given the complexities of this person/environment relationship, it seems clear that ‘any outcomes from a change in setting are likely to be produced through an involved chain of events … tak[ing] account of issues relating to ownership, relevance, purpose and permanence’ (Woolner et al., 2007, p. 61). A growing body of recent research acknowledges and examines various possible mediating chains.

The mediating influence of school climate A two-phase investigation by Uline and colleagues examined the proposition that at least part of the explanation for the link between school building quality and student achievement may be the mediating influence of school climate (Uline & Tschannen-Moran, 2008).

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The Walls Speak, phase one, focused on 82 middle schools in one mid-Atlantic state. The relationship of school climate, the quality of the school facilities and their maintenance, and the impact of both on student achievement were studied. The results of this study reaffirmed the link between quality of school facilities and student achievement in both English Language Arts and Mathematics. After controlling for the percentage of the student body that is eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, findings revealed that high-quality facilities were significantly and positively related to three of the four school climate variables examined, including academic press, teacher professionalism and community engagement. The researchers suspected that school climate was mediating the earlier relationship found between the quality of school facilities and student achievement; thus, mediation was tested using the product of coefficients procedure described by Wuensch (2007). The three tests conducted – Sobel, Aroian and Goodman (Preacher & Leonardelli, 2006) – demonstrated that school climate mediated the relationship between perceptions of the quality of school facilities and student achievement. Phase two of The Walls Speak research (Uline et al., 2009) applied case study methods within two schools, one urban and one rural, chosen from among phase-one participants and rated in the top quartile of faculty ratings on facility quality. More than 50% of the student population in the case study schools received free and reduced-price meals, allowing for an examination of the ways in which high-quality facilities fostered positive school climate and high levels of student achievement in schools that serve primarily socio-economically disadvantaged student populations. Phase-two findings revealed interactions between the building design and the building’s occupants that helped to define the learning climate of these schools. Flexible building designs, combined with facilitative leadership, allowed occupants to modify the physical environment in order to

better meet their needs. The buildings themselves were of good quality, without being architectural prize-winners, but it was the relationship that developed between users and settings that supported educational success. This occupant/design interaction helped to foster students’ and teachers’ environmental understanding, competence and control. The ongoing dynamic bolstered a positive school climate and supported academic learning. Several broad themes related to building quality and school climate emerged as central to this interaction between the built environment and building occupants. These included movement, aesthetics, play of light, flexible and responsive classrooms, elbowroom and security. A grounded School Leadership-Building Design Model (presented later in this chapter) describes this dynamic interaction.

The mediating influence of attendance and climate Durán-Narucki (2008) studied 95 New York City elementary schools, exploring school attendance as a ‘likely candidate’ for mediating the relationship between school building condition and academic achievement (p. 280). Study findings suggest at least three levels at which educational facilities can effect students’ performance, including: the material level building conditions, such as lighting, temperature control and indoor air quality, which support or impede the learning process directly or influence the health of building occupants; the social interaction level, where daily interactions can be influenced by the conditions of the school building; and the level of environmental meaning, wherein occupants come to understand themselves and their own potential through interactions with the physical and social environments of school (Durán-Narucki, 2008, pp. 284–285). It is these latter two levels that relate to the complex interaction between school communities and their space, and which we, together with other researchers, consider in terms of school climate.

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Conditions of the school building predicted both attendance and achievement after controlling for other possible predictors, including the percentage of the student body eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, the percentage of the student body identified as minority, school size, and teacher quality. Durán-Narucki applied an analytical procedure advanced by Baron and Kenny (1986) to test mediation. Results confirmed that school attendance mediated the relationship between school building condition and academic achievement, that is ‘[i]n run down school buildings, students attended fewer days and had poorer performance in mathematics and English Language Arts standardized tests’ (Durán-Narucki, 2008, p. 283). As DuránNarucki observed, ‘Children might not want to attend schools that look ugly, scary, dangerous’ (2008, p. 280). In fact, research on middle schools suggests that such physical disorder and neglect is significantly related to a climate of social disorder within schools, as these conditions can invoke fear among students and erode a school’s sense of collective efficacy (Plank, Bradshaw, & Young, 2009). Maxwell (2016) examined data from 143,788 students within 236 middle schools (6, 7 and 8 grades) across all five boroughs of Manhattan, to examine how social climate and student attendance are related to school building condition and to each other in ways that could affect academic achievement. The same school district and school building condition data sources were utilized as were used in Durán-Narucki’s (2008) study, this time hypothesizing that student attendance, as well as students’ perceptions of school climate, would mediate the relationship between school building condition and academic achievement. Structural equation modelling (SEM) (Bryne, 1994; Kline, 1998) was used to test the fit of the hypothesized model to the data. Results indicated ‘that a path from school building condition to academic achievement is mediated by student perceptions of the school’s climate and student attendance’ (Maxwell, 2016, p. 212). After controlling for the percentage of

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the student body eligible for free and reducedprice lunch, and the percentage of the student body identified as minority, school building condition indirectly predicted student test scores. Better school building conditions predicted higher student assessment of school social climate, higher ratings of school social climate predicted lower student absenteeism, which in turn predicted higher standardized test scores. As Maxwell concludes, the next stage should be detailed and longitudinal research in schools to see how this happens in practice. Bowers and Urick (2011) sought to isolate the independent effects of high school facility maintenance and disrepair on students’ achievement in Mathematics during the final two years of high school. The researchers analyzed the public school component and the facilities checklist of a large, nationally representative US database, the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (8,110 students in 520 schools), using a two-level hierarchical linear model to control for the nested nature of students within schools. Multiple student and school-level covariates were also accounted for in the analysis. Results failed to establish a significant relationship between facility disrepair and student Mathematics achievement. Still, unlike other researchers who reported no link between facility conditions and student achievement (Picus et  al., 2005; Wei et  al., 2012), Urick and Bowers warned against conclusions that dismiss facility quality and condition as related to student outcomes. Instead, they advanced a mediated model explaining how ‘actual facility quality, albeit structural or maintenance, directly effects educators’ perceptions of their facilities. The perceptions then influence the overall academic and motivational climate of the school, which influences student achievement up or down’ (Bowers & Urick, 2011, p. 91). In order for building occupants to reach their full potential in both cognitive and affective growth, it behooves us to acknowledge and understand this complex interplay between the physical environment and occupants’

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conceptions of the activities and behaviours contained therein, the social climate of the place, and the relationship of both to occupants’ developing a sense of themselves and their capabilities. In what ways does the meaning that participants make of their physical surroundings impact the seriousness with which students and teachers approach their work? How do specific structural and furniture arrangements impact the quantity and quality of interactions between teachers, between students and teachers, and between and among students? How do these features of the physical learning environment impact connections between schools and the communities that support them? There are organizational benefits to be realized when educational leaders acknowledge, and preferably utilize, all the ways physical learning environments support the primary functions of the educational enterprise.

SCHOOL PREMISES AS ACTIVE ORGANIZATIONAL AGENT Classrooms as Active Organizational Agents In their study of teacher–pupil interactions within classrooms in Uruguay, Cardellino, Araneda, and Alvarado (2017) observed that the classroom exists as much more than a ‘neutral configurational physical entity’, but, in fact, functions as ‘an active organizational agent’, with physical characteristics influencing student and teacher actions, mediating social relations, and holding ‘a predominant position within the physical structures of society’ (Cardellino et al., 2017, p. 418). This characterization of the role of the classroom is helpful in considering the results of previous pieces of research focusing on classrooms. In a classic study, Horne (1999; see also Horne Martin, 2002) carried out detailed observations of activities in a range of differently organized classrooms in the

UK and showed that classroom layout was intimately linked to teaching style. Research in Iceland found that in schools designed in accordance with innovative, child-centred principles, there were statistically significant differences in the proportions of teacherfocused activities as compared to collaborative learning (Sigurðardóttir and Hjartarson, 2011, 2016). Observational studies in a range of educational settings in a number of countries have similarly shown that altering the learning space changes the teaching and learning activities practised within that space (Brooks, 2012; Imms & Byers, 2017; Sztejnberg & Finch, 2006). Clearly, the classroom, ‘provides the setting for learning and at the same time acts as a participant in teaching and learning’ (Horne Martin, 2002, p. 79). As Horne Martin is keen to emphasize, teachers have an important role to play in shaping this physical participant in the learning process through their arrangement of the furniture and resources in their classroom. Individual teacher differences in how this is approached, and the resulting impact on learning activities and student attitudes, were found in an investigation of carpet space in a UK primary school (McCarter, 2009). This concern with the impact of people on the school space, as well as how this space then influences educational practices, underpins Briggs’ discussion of learning spaces that have been developed to support specific pedagogic approaches, such as project-based learning (Briggs, 2001). In her treatment of the issues, however, Briggs, as a researcher in school leadership, is keen to focus on schoollevel organization, and it is to considering the school that we now turn.

Schools as Active Organizational Agents If a classroom can be an active organization agent in the educational process, the same can be said for the school building and its attendant schoolyard, athletic facilities, and

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specialized spaces accessed by parents and community members, including learning gardens, cafeterias, auditoriums, and parent resource centres. Too often school buildings are viewed as mere backdrops for teaching and learning, their design and construction as inconveniences to be endured, and corresponding infrastructure investments as unnecessary expenses. And yet, [s]chool settings, as significant participants in the person–environment system, bear great relevance for the intellectual processes that take place in them because developmental and learning processes occur not only in a specific school with specific characteristics; but the characteristics of the school are an intrinsic part of these processes. … The quality of schools as environments specifically created for learning is then related to the quality of the learning activities that take place in them. (DuránNarucki, 2008, pp. 278–279, emphasis in original)

In addition to the quality of the educational spaces provided in schools, attention must be paid to the suitability of a setting for the chosen curriculum and pedagogy. As Gislason concludes in relation to one of the schools he studied, ‘[the school’s] design contributes to the teaching and social climate in the school, but this does not mean that the same design would necessarily succeed for all school programs’ (Gislason, 2009, p. 31). Furthermore, as this quote suggests, the school premises can contribute to the educational experience not just through enabling formal teaching and learning, but also by facilitating informal, social encounters. For example, research in two Swedish schools, built at differing times to different designs, investigated the way that non-teaching, support staff use the circulation spaces and recreation areas to develop trusting relationships with students to support their learning and prevent individuals being excluded (Grannäs & Frelin, 2017). It seems clear that within education, as elsewhere, ‘buildings give structure to social institutions, durability to social networks and persistence to behavioral patterns, thereby stabilizing social life’ (Veloso & Marques, 2017, referring to Gieryn, 2002).

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FRAMEWORKS FOR UNDERSTANDING Having arrived at an appreciation of the physical setting as an intrinsic part of the learning environment, an active organizational agent entwined in dynamic interaction with school users, we now move to consider how to conceptualize this.

Moos’ Model of Classroom Climate Moos’ (1979) model of the determinants of ‘classroom climate’ was an early attempt at a general model, and proposes ‘organizational factors’, ‘aggregate student characteristics’, ‘teacher characteristics’ and ‘physical and architectural features’ as mediating between ‘school and classroom context’ and ‘classroom climate’ (see Figure 34.1). Although he points out that the model is simplified by the use of unidirectional arrows, this recognition that causal influence can in each case work in both directions is not immediately apparent. Subsequent attempts at such flowchart models (e.g., Cash (1993) to model determinants of student outcomes) miss this important element and lose the sense that positive changes, made by school leaders, teachers and learners, might tend to beget further positive changes in a ‘virtuous cycle’, whereas negative elements might cause a vicious circle of decline.

Gislason’s Framework For Evaluating Educational Environments In contrast, the framework that Gislason proposes for evaluating educational environments recognizes the complex, multi-directional influences between aspects of the environment, as suggested by Moos (1979). Through avoiding a flowchart presentation, however, Gislason foregrounds the alignment of the physical,

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Figure 34.1  Moos’ model of classroom climate (from Higgins et al., 2005, p. 35)

organizational and social elements, rather than suggesting causal order (see Figure 34.2). He argues that the success of a learning environment is determined by how well the factors that he terms ‘ecology’, ‘organization’, ‘student milieu/dynamics’ and ‘staff culture’ fit together (Gislason, 2009, 2010, 2015). His case studies of American high schools include an innovative school where ‘design, instruction and curriculum are all linked in a mutually supportive fashion’ (Gislason, 2009, p. 17), but also two schools where more tensions were evident between their open plan designs and the preferred practices of the teachers and students (see Gislason, 2010, 2015). This model has been useful in understanding the success of a pedagogical innovation programme, ‘Open Futures’, pursued by some UK primary schools. Analysis using the framework demonstrated how initial, mandated changes in curriculum, timetabling and school space enabled subsequent changes in staff culture and student dynamics. It is notable that once the programme was established there was ‘on-going, mutually dependent development of curriculum, organisation and space’ (Woolner & Tiplady, 2016, p. 78) that underpinned developments and diversification within teaching and learning practices.

In all these very different school settings, the overall success or failure of their educational endeavours could be understood through considering how the elements of the model relate to each other, with alignment enabling continued successful development.

Uline’s School Leadership-Building Design Model As mentioned earlier, Uline, Tchannen-Moran, and Wolsey’s (2009) case study research within schools where 50% or more of their students lived in poverty but achieved high levels of attainment, and where teachers rated their facilities to be of high quality and their learning climate positive, demonstrated the importance of the interaction between school leadership and building design. Where the spaces were flexible enough to permit leaders and teachers to make good use of the space, occupants were more likely to construct a positive identity for the places in their minds, individually and as a community. We advanced a School LeadershipBuilding Design Model as a means to describe this dynamic interaction (see Figure 34.3). Because the themes related to school facility quality, as experienced by the users, are complex and interlocking, an arch metaphor was

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Figure 34.2  Gislason’s School Environment Model (Source: adapted by author from Gislason, 2009, 2010, 2015, p. 115)

Figure 34.3  Quality School Facilities: School Leadership-Building Design Model (from Uline et al., 2009)

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employed to describe them. Like Gislason’s model, this presentation expresses the interdependence between the elements of the arch, but additionally conveys the interaction of building design, understood in this way, with school climate and school leadership. In the arch metaphor, community and a sense of local history combine to serve as the keystone on which all else rests. A semicircular stone arch also consists of pillars and wedge-shaped stones that use compressive force, keeping the structure intact. The ­leadership-school design arch is built on pillars of school design and the influence of the occupants on the one hand, and the interaction of the occupants’ identity and the personality of space on the other. Personality of space may be viewed as the amalgam of the various attributes of the space; these include changes to the building over time, historical events, effect of the people who inhabit and modify the space, the organization of the space as designed, and so on. The self-identities individual occupants construct result, in part, from the built environment, which in turn was created by past occupants, designers, and community supporters, whose previous interactions continue to influence learning over the life of the building. Over pillars, six themes provide the interlocking characteristics of facility quality: movement, aesthetics, flexible and responsive learning spaces, the play of light, elbow room, and a sense of safety and security. Entering the span, or opening, the school’s climate (academic press, teacher professionalism, and community engagement) interacts with all these characteristics of facility quality, mediating their combined influence on student learning and achievement (Uline et al., 2009, pp. 417–419).

HIGH-QUALITY SCHOOL FACILITIES AS ORGANIZATIONAL AGENTS OF CHANGE It is clear that the built learning environment influences education, and that this is best

understood in terms of models that recognize the complex interactions involved between physical, social and cultural factors. These suggest that although school premises should not be seen as a magic bullet with which to ensure educational change, they will have a part to play in attempting change or improvement. The potential for changed space to be a powerful driver of other change within a school is currently being discussed elsewhere in terms of pedagogical innovation (Imms & Byers, 2017; Newton et  al., 2012; Woolner, Thomas, & Tiplady, 2018). In this final section, however, we concentrate on how improvements to school premises can be part of organizational change and development at the school level to enhance the teaching and learning, of whatever style is being offered. Studies show that the nature and quality of the school facility is related to teacher attitudes, behaviours and performance (Buckley, Schneider, & Shang, 2004; Dawson & Parker, 1998; Lowe, 1990; Schneider, 2003). New and renovated school facilities have been shown to provide opportunities for community engagement and neighbourhood revitalization (Fuller et al., 2009; Neilson & Zimmerman, 2014). It appears that when school facilities are acknowledged as a key organizational agent within the educational enterprise, they can become a vehicle for school and community change and renewal.

Leveraging Facilities as a means to Recruit and Retain Highly Qualified Teachers As stated above, the built learning environment has been shown to affect teacher attitudes, behaviours and performance (Buckley et al., 2004; Dawson & Parker, 1998; Lowe, 1990; Schneider, 2003). In a study of a large sample of teachers in Chicago and Washington, DC schools, researchers found that teacher retention/attrition decisions were significantly related to the quality of school facilities, even when controlling for other

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factors that might be perceived to impact attrition (Buckley et  al., 2004, p. 8). One third of Chicago teachers and more than half of the DC teachers were dissatisfied with their physical working conditions. Factors that most directly affected the quality of teacher work life included indoor air quality (IAQ), thermal controls, noise level and acoustics, adequate classroom lighting, and the amount of natural daylight. These include the factors that are known to have direct detrimental impacts on cognitive functioning, as well as other aspects that clearly impinge on teacher morale. Teachers who perceive a detrimental effect on their health due to building conditions, or who are stressed by high noise levels, poor acoustics, and lack of thermal controls are more likely to seek employment elsewhere, which concurs with the findings of Buckley and colleagues (2004). Earthman and Lemasters (2009) investigated the relationship between school building conditions and teacher performance. Using their My Classroom Appraisal Protocol© (MCAP), they measured teacher perceptions and attitudes in buildings rated satisfactory as compared with those rated as unsatisfactory in an earlier study. Results of this research suggest that, although teachers may tend to exhibit persistence in the face of physical work conditions that have deleterious effects on their ability to teach, their morale and performance suffer. Indeed, it may be that highly qualified teachers eventually seek out high-quality teaching environments that support and celebrate their ongoing investment in the learning process. Preliminary findings from research on ‘the largest U.S. public infrastructure effort since construction of the interstate highway system’ (Fuller et al., 2009, p. 339) uncover teacher perspectives of the benefits they receive in new educational facilities. Between 1997 and 2008, Los Angeles voters approved $26.7 billion in revenue bonds to finance the construction of 130 new school facilities and renovate hundreds of existing schools. The new elementary schools in Los Angeles

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attracted younger, more recently trained members of the teaching ranks. Interview data from teachers employed at new school buildings revealed design features they felt best supported their work. These included new work spaces created between classrooms where teachers plan lessons and store a variety of materials; high classroom ceilings and the abundance of natural light that together create an open feeling; quiet and built-in air conditioning; and comfortable conference rooms or teacher lounges that supported ­collaborative planning. In a study of 20 new schools in Iceland, teachers in one similarly flexible and, in this case, open-plan building, reported significantly higher levels of teamwork and professional collaboration than in other schools from the sample. Further, the teachers expressed satisfaction with the ways this collaboration supported their ability to readily implement changes in their instructional practice (Sigurðardóttir & Hjartarson, 2016). Campbell, Saltmarsh, Chapman, and Drew (2013) also studied teacher professional learning within non-traditional classroom environments in Australian parochial schools. In addition to recent renovations, the schools were also implementing a new professional learning model that included professional learning communities and the sharing of best practices. The researchers sought to understand the relationship between new habits of professional learning and the new physical learning environments at various phases of implementation. Findings from a collaborative ethnographic study suggest that the new learning environments facilitated the change in professional learning routines and habits, which, in turn, encouraged changes in pedagogy. Horng (2009) surveyed 531 California elementary teachers, asking them to choose between various workplace characteristics. She employed a conjoint analysis methodology, asking teachers to ‘trade off’ student demographics, salaries and working conditions, including school facilities, administrative

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support, class sizes and salaries. In response to earlier studies that suggested teachers avoid schools with significant populations of low-income, minority and low-­ performing students, Horng (2009, p. 690) sought to ‘disentangle student characteristics from other characteristics of teaching jobs’. She was interested to know if student characteristics served as proxies for the working conditions common in schools attended by low-income, minority and low-performing students. In fact, data from this study suggest that when teachers choose among schools, on average, the condition of the school facility is more than twice as important as student demographic variables and 30% more important than salary. The places where teachers teach make a difference to their performance, their sense of themselves as professionals and their overall well-being. Specific design features, such as space to plan together, may also support them to collaborate with colleagues and develop their practice. The enhanced image of a school designed to ecological principles (green schools) may help to recruit and retain highquality, 21st-century-trained teachers (Kensler & Uline, 2017). Research suggests that these professionals are drawn to workplaces that deliver a clear message about the value of learning and teaching (Edwards, 2006).

Leveraging Infrastructure Investments on Behalf of Student and Community Outcomes A growing body of evidence links capital investments with highly valued organizational and community effects. Crampton (2009) developed and tested a unified theory that took account of human capital (defined as instructional expenditures), social capital (defined as expenditures for instructional support) and physical capital (defined as school infrastructure) as the foundation for an analysis of the factors contributing to student achievement. Data for the study were drawn from 2008 US databases maintained

by the Institute for Education Sciences and the US Census Bureau, specifically the Common Core of Data (CCD), the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the Census Bureau’s public elementarysecondary education finance database. Crampton’s theoretical framework posited that investment in human, social and physical capital enhances student achievement, a proposition supported by the analysis, which utilized descriptive statistics and canonical analysis, a multivariate statistical approach that allows for multiple independent and dependent variables. In total, these investments explained between approximately one-half to two-thirds of the variations in student achievement on fourth and eighth grade mathematics and reading assessments. Controlling for poverty, investment in human capital was consistently the largest influence on student achievement, followed by social capital. However, the impact of investment in physical capital, or school infrastructure as defined in the study, was also a significant contributor. Crampton concluded that spending on school infrastructure does matter when it comes to student achievement and that the impact of investments (human, social and physical) ‘is maximized when they are made in tandem’ (Crampton, 2009, p. 318). As discussed above, applications of Gislason’s model also support the importance of ensuring that the various sorts of development are aligned in their intentions and priorities. Focusing on the issue of funding, Crampton (2009, p. 318) argues: ‘Prudent investment in education to maximize students’ academic success is a balancing act including all three forms of capital, as opposed to a zero sum game where greater investment in one form of capital comes at the expense of another.’ Neilson and Zimmerman (2014) took advantage of a unique natural-occurring experiment within which a poor, urban school district (New Haven, Connecticut) embarked upon a comprehensive, 15-year, $1.4 billion school construction programme to study the effects of infrastructure investments, in such

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things as improved heating and air conditioning, increased classroom technology, new science and media facilities, improvements in the livability of school spaces, and access to natural light, on student and community outcomes. The study results confirm a link between the school construction programme and sustained gains in reading scores for elementary and middle-school students. Controlling for students present in neighbourhoods prior to the occupancy of new facilities, achievement trends, which were flat in years leading up to construction, turned upwards in years of construction and continued to increase for at least the next six years. Housing prices and neighbourhood public school enrolment also responded positively to school construction. Neilson and Zimmerman advance several possible pathways through which school construction could improve educational outcomes, including ‘the direct effects of new facilities on pedagogy, effects on student and teacher motivation during school hours, and the effects of student and parent motivation to invest in academic production at home’ (Neilson & Zimmerman, 2014, p. 19). Cellini, Ferreira, and Rothstein (2010) studied the effects of school facilities investments on housing prices, student achievement and school district composition. The researchers found evidence of effects on student achievement several years after the facilities funding had been approved but no sign of effects on the racial composition or average incomes of district residents. The effects of the facilities funding on third grade reading and mathematics scores were small and insignificant for the first several years, as might be expected given the extended timeline for executing capital projects. Scores then gradually trended upward for the first few years, and, by year six, they reflected marginally significant effects. In addition to student outcomes, Cellini and colleagues underscore the importance of communityrelated outcomes realized by infrastructure investments, as follows:

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Parents may value new playgrounds or athletic facilities for the recreational opportunities they provide, enhanced safety from a remodeled entrance or drop-off area, and improved child health from asbestos abatement and the replacement of drafty temporary classrooms, even if these do not contribute to academic achievement. (Cellini et al., 2010, p. 356)

They maintained that improvements in these dimensions of the physical learning environment ultimately lead to community revitalization and increases in the value of local real estate. Finally, investments in ecologically responsive (green) school buildings present a ­significant opportunity for K-12 education to assist in creating more sustainable socioecological systems, both locally and globally (Kensler & Uline, 2017; Uline & Kensler, 2017). In a review considering the potential for city schools to address issues of environmental and social injustice, Woolner (2016) discusses how school spaces can be developed to create centres for sustainable living and provide an environmental resource for the wider community. As we work to green existing school facilities, and apply green principles to the design and construction of new schools, we articulate and advance sustainability goals and purposes. Likewise, when we utilize these green schools as teaching tools, we extend our capacity to model socio-­ ecologically aware norms and practices. Beyond conserving energy, decreasing stress on natural resources, preserving surrounding habitats, and reducing waste, we improve the ecological literacy of our students, teachers, administrators and community members. Students and teachers can experience the school building as a three-dimensional textbook, modelling socio-ecologically aware norms and practices (Kong et al., 2014; Taylor, 2009).

Leveraging High-Quality School Facilities as a Means of Sustaining Community Engagement The relationship between the quality of a school facility and that school’s engagement

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with their community presents an important focus for research. Berner (1993) found that parent involvement was related to the condition of school buildings in Washington, DC, with parent-teacher association (PTA) budgets being the most significant of the variables tested. In fact, this is likely to be a complex relationship, involving reciprocal forces, as is the case for US schools where the community largely funds school building projects, renovation and maintenance. As communities actively engage with their schools, they come to understand the various needs associated with teaching and learning, including physical environments conducive to these primary school functions. Thus, they grow more willing to make the sacrifices necessary to provide for adequate school buildings. Studies of school–community partnership efforts reveal long-held organizational habits and structures that impede the development of necessary inter-organizational relationships (Crowson & Boyd, 2001). Further, teachers, parents and community members can grow cynical about the many contrived forms of participation they have experienced over time (Anderson, 1998, p. 573). Potentially, we can renew civic behaviour by identifying school design and construction as a vehicle for participation. We have a chance to weld commitment when we extend the community’s involvement to include deliberations about how we best realize the full potential of school facilities (Uline, 1997). In fact, students themselves have a vital role to play in the design process (Burke & Grosvenor, 2003; Taylor, 2009; Woolner & Clark, 2015). This practice of linking the physical environment to pedagogical theory, of joining students’ and the community’s aspirations with the educator’s expertise and the architect’s vision, frames the essential lesson of participatory design (Sanoff, 1990, 1996; Singer & Woolner, 2015; Uline, 2000). As vocabularies are enriched and knowledge is openly shared, new connections, relationships and levels of meaning may be established. As elements of design become

more familiar to educators and citizens, architects become more knowledgeable of the aims of education and the disposition of the community. The ‘design process has the potential to animate’ the environments and interactions within schools ‘encouraging all of the stakeholders to inform the change as an iterative process’ (Higgins et al., 2005, p. 36)

CONCLUSION Findings from the studies described here underscore the complexities of the relationship between the physical environment of schools and the experiences of the buildings’ occupants. They further reveal some possible mechanisms within these interactions and relationships that deserve to be researched further. We are reminded that schools exist within larger social, political and fiscal circumstances, all of which influence decisions about how we will invest in the design, construction and ongoing support and maintenance of our schools. These same dynamics also influence the ways we assess, or fail to assess, the outcomes of our decisions, both in terms of bricks and mortar and in terms of our larger educational intentions. Thus, students, teachers, parents and communities may either enjoy learning places that maximize the unity of form and purpose, or they may persevere within spaces that stand at odds with the goals of teaching, learning and community health and well-being. As we confront the challenges of educational accountability, assuming responsibility for educating all students to high levels of achievement, we face fundamental issues of equity across schools and localities. In our efforts to ensure that all students have access to highly qualified teachers and rigorous curriculum, we are wise to consider the features and conditions of the physical environment within which teachers teach and students learn. Indeed, educators may benefit from continued research on facility conditions as a

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contributing factor to the achievement gap, a largely neglected aspect of this persistent problem (Uline, Tschannen-Moran, Wolsey, & Lin, 2010). Fundamentally, school premises need to be of sufficient quality to support occupant well-being and enable a positive, dynamic relationship between curriculum, timetabling, staff culture and student experience. Research demonstrates the additional importance of physical resources and school design that are aligned with the other elements that make up the learning environment, so the premises support, and may even ‘demand’ (Gislason, 2009, p. 29), particular educational and organizational practices. Over the longer term, it seems to be important for school communities to be able to modify and adjust their premises to reflect needs and values (Briggs, 2001; Uline et  al., 2009), with recognition given to spaces for informal social interaction (Grannäs & Frelin, 2017) as well as for formal teaching and learning. This requires school users to be enabled and empowered to engage with their space and their use of it, which has immediate practice implications for teachers and principals. To explore fully the policy implications of the understanding we have developed here of the school building as organizational agent is beyond the scope of this chapter, but it is worth noting that, as a minimum, school premises need to be seen as more than a neutral container for education. Disregarding the important organizational benefits of highquality facilities may also provide cover for our failure to address issues of equity across schools and localities. Further, policy-led school reforms and attempts to initiate change need to ensure that consideration is given to how new curricula or innovative school space are aligned, or not, with the existing buildings, curriculum and practices. The public dynamic that directs the funding, design and construction of a school building continues to direct the business of that school long after the construction is completed. School leaders, who occupy

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a critical position in this dynamic system, have the opportunity to make the school building an active agent in their comprehensive educational plan. Research presented here suggests that educational facilities have the capacity to support specific organizational and community outcomes, including, for example, the academic achievement of students, the hiring and retention of a highly qualified teaching force, productive engagement with the attendant community, and even the revitalization, renewal and ecological sustainability of that community. In conceiving well-crafted classrooms, offices, libraries, meeting rooms, auditoriums and school playgrounds, and in inviting citizen input from across age, gender, profession and cultures, school leaders have the opportunity to advance the educational enterprise and build continuity with their community, developing a sense of ownership, ensuring relevance, defining purpose and establishing permanence, all on behalf of their larger educational goals.

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PART V

Researching Schools as Organizations

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35 Defining Schools as Social Spaces: A Social Network Approach to Researching Schools as Organizations Joelle Rodway and Alan J. Daly

Schools have long been the subject of research across many fields, including (but not limited to) education. For more than a century, scholars have queried the role of schools in society in terms of their contribution to the collective health and well-being of communities and democracies. Research on schools is abundant. Researchers are seeking to understand schools as organizations from a multitude of different viewpoints. And while this work historically has been subject to the quantitative/qualitative divide that has persisted in social science research, calls for increased methodological diversity in investigating educational problems (Raudenbush, 2005) are being heeded. As the research community begins to shift its thinking about the ways in which we can address educational issues, it opens up an opportunity to reconsider the ways that we have defined educational phenomena – an opportunity that creates a space to discuss ontological and epistemological issues related to schools as organizations.

What is missing in the current education literature – particularly in the organizational research on schools – is a relational perspective, an approach that focuses on the interdependence of people, policies, and processes within schools. While important work that focuses on relationships such as trust (e.g., Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Tschannen-Moran, 2014) and parent involvement (e.g., Epstein, 2010) provides rich and important insights, a comprehensive approach to studying the social organization of schools across multiple relational dimensions is missing. As a result, the social dimension of organizations remains largely ignored, absent in discussions of policy and practice as it relates to issues of equity, teaching, and learning in schools (Quintero, 2017). In this chapter, we offer social capital as a theoretical frame through which the research community can begin to make sense of the ways that educators’ interactions with each other shape the organization of schools. Within this context, we argue that schools are

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more than an institution where children go to be educated (as say most standard dictionary definitions of a school), more than bricks and mortar, more than the policy and funding that operate them. We extend the ontology of schools (and schooling) by asserting that the patterns of interaction among and between teachers, students, administrators, and community members within a school – that is, the amount and depth of social capital that exists and is exchanged within a school – defines the school as an organization. We propose a theoretical and conceptual framework through which to understand the social dimensions of schools as organizations and, using empirical examples, demonstrate how evolving research methodologies – social network analysis, in particular – can help us to better understand how the social organization of schools is facilitating and (or) constraining its work. We begin with an overview of social capital, a theoretical perspective that highlights the resources exchanged through social interaction. From there, we introduce social network theory, focusing on three important concepts (cohesion, prominence, and brokerage) and explaining their theoretical and conceptual significance in the study of schools as organizations. We deepen this understanding by using social network data from a current study to illuminate the insights that a social network approach brings to researching schools as organizations. And we conclude with a discussion of our argument, offering suggested next steps in moving the social capital agenda forward through a social network lens in the context of K-12 schools.

SOCIAL CAPITAL: THE ENGINE THAT DRIVES SCHOOL SYSTEMS Focusing on the exchange of social capital brings our attention to what is happening in social spaces of organizations – what might be called organizational ‘open space.’ Broadly defined, social capital refers to the

resources that are embedded in and exchanged through interactions within a social network (Burt, 2000; Lin, 2001): it ‘exists in the relations among persons’ (Coleman, 1988, S100–101). All definitions of social capital – and there are particular nuances ascribed across different fields of study (see Adler & Kwon, 2002) – emphasize the availability and access of resources through social interaction. Examples of social resources include, knowledge, expertise, advice, friendship, influence, social support, and so on. Social capital is about who you know, the resources that are available through those connections, and the advantages (or disadvantages) that may result from these relationships. As a concept, social capital has been linked to education for about a century, although relatively few scholars have focused specifically on its role in school contexts. James Coleman, who did early work in the field, studied the role of social capital in the creation of human capital, emphasizing the relationship between social capital and student achievement (see Coleman, 1988). Coleman, and others who share similar views (e.g., Putnam, 2000), posited that the extent to which people in a network are tightly connected to each other is an important social structure in the development of social capital such as shared norms and expectations, and trustworthiness. This is referred to as network closure in the literature. From this view, emphasis is placed on what is known as bonding social capital, which centers on relationships that strengthen connections among people within a group. Environments rich with strong ties (and therefore high in bonding social capital) have been empirically shown to provide the social conditions necessary for the exchange of complex information and the concomitant sense-making processes required to put it to use (Hansen, 2002). While Coleman’s and Putnam’s points of view emphasize the strength of ties, other scholars, such as Ronald Burt and Mark Granovetter (see Burt, 1992, 2005; Granovetter, 1973), have focused their

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work on the value of weak ties for cultivating innovation, accessing new information, and developing new forms of social capital. This viewpoint focuses attention on bridging social capital, or relationships that ‘bridge the gap’ between otherwise unconnected groups. In a large school system, for example, instructional coaches and other centrally located staff may facilitate relationships across teachers in different schools. These coaches are known as boundary spanners or brokers, given that their work is situated both in schools and central offices (Daly, Finnigan, Jordan, Moolenaar & Che, 2014). The very nature of their work puts them in a favorable position to cultivate new relationships among and between schools within the wider system. Whether through strong relationships with close friends, family, or colleagues (i.e., bonding social capital), or through weak ties with acquaintances that span structural holes within a social network (i.e., bridging social capital), social capital benefits members of a community by providing access to resources they would otherwise not have on their own. Research that brings a relational perspective to examining how and in what ways the development and exchange of social capital within schools and school systems is providing us with new and provocative understandings of schools as (social) organizations. Researching the social dimensions of schools is a path towards better understanding why some policies and programs work well in some contexts, but not in others. It is not just the individual characteristics of the buildings (i.e., physical capital) and the faculty and communities they serve (i.e., human capital), but also the ways in which they interact among and between each other (i.e., social capital) that plays a critical role in school success. Social capital enables human capital to function and plays a key role in its development (Spillane, Hopkins, Sweet, & Shirrell, 2017). It provides (or restricts) the social conditions necessary for people to work effectively together (Schuller, 2007). So, while the characteristics of individual actors

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(people, communities, classrooms, schools) are indeed very important – and constitute the dominant perspective in social science research – the characteristics of the interactions between actors is equally important, because these relationships mobilize human resources for action. It is only in recent decades that social capital has garnered much attention in schoolbased research – and even then, this research is limited to a small number of researchers internationally. Contemporary educational research on the role of social capital in schools has focused on aspects of school life such as teacher collaboration (Moolenaar, 2012), school and district leadership (Daly & Finnigan, 2012; Pitts & Spillane, 2009), instructional improvement (Coburn, Mata, & Choi, 2013; Spillane, Hopkins, & Sweet, 2014), teacher professional interactions (Baker-Doyle, 2011; Penuel, Riel, Krause, & Frank, 2009), innovative climates in schools (Moolenaar, Sleegers, & Daly, 2011), and education policy implementation (Coburn & Russell, 2008). The evolution of research methods, and particularly social network analysis (SNA), is enabling researchers to examine the role and effects of social capital in schools and school systems more closely. From this research, we are learning that social networks are dynamic, always shifting and responding to the varying needs of educators at different time points in their career (Baker-Doyle, 2011). Different network structures (or patterns of interactions) benefit educators in different ways depending on career stage, and as such, the conditions for the development of social capital also vary over time (Spillane et  al., 2017). SNA is also illuminating the social costs of the maintenance and dissolution of relationships within a school or system (Daly, Finnigan, & Liou, 2017). A social capital view shows how schools, as organizations, are constantly changing – a characteristic that poses significant challenges for researchers. This should be of enormous interest to policy-makers and school leaders given that recent research has

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demonstrated the significant role and impact of social capital on student achievement (Daly, Moolenaar, Der-Martirosian, & Liou, 2014; Leana & Pil, 2006). Collectively, this small, yet insightful body of school research (across multiple dimensions of schools and school systems) presents a compelling argument that social capital just may be the missing link (Leana & Pil, 2017) in research on school organization and reform. The importance of relationships in schools is uncontested; one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would suggest otherwise. There are a wide variety of approaches and tools that enable organizational researchers to study relational space (see Bradbury & Lichtenstein, 2000); and, like all theories and methods, they each have their own limitations. In our work, we use social network theory and analysis to provide a framework and set of methodological tools to examine the role social capital plays in facilitating organizational learning and system-wide improvement. It allows us to make the social organization of schools visible, enabling a rigorous and robust exploration of the connections between social capital and other capital forms that are more dominant in the literature (e.g., human and financial capital). In the next section, we introduce SNA and provide a review of current education literature that takes a social network approach in understanding what is happening inside schools.

NAVIGATING OPEN SPACES: SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS AS AN APPROACH TO STUDYING SCHOOL ORGANIZATION A relational perspective requires a paradigm shift. While schools are most frequently characterized as physical spaces situated within particular policy arenas and communities, a social network approach requires researchers to consider the space between

(Daly & Finnigan, 2012), focusing on the relationships and interactions that connect people, policy, and resources within and between the schools that comprise education systems. In other words, researchers are shifting from what they can see to more closely examining what has been hidden in plain sight – the complex web of interactions between actors within the system. Relationships are comprised of various dimensions (Borgatti & Ofem, 2010): people are neighbors or friends, they like each other (or not), they trust each other (or not), they exchange knowledge among one another, they help each other, and so on. A relational perspective requires that schools be conceived of as constellations of simultaneous social networks, each bringing with it a variety of social consequences, both positive and negative. Every classroom, every school, every district, and every education system reflects a relational ecosystem where the patterns of interaction among the people within it present a unique context that influences school organization (Daly, 2010). The term ‘network’ is one that has become en vogue recently in some areas of educational research (e.g., professional learning and educational change). And while the term is almost always used to signal connections within a defined group of people, there remains a lack of conceptual clarity about what a network actually is (Daly & Stoll, 2018). Social network theory and analysis moves the field forward by offering a specific definition of network: at its most rudimentary level, a network is comprised of a group of actors (sometimes also referred to as nodes) who are connected to one another by the exchange of social resources (i.e., social capital) through connections called ties (Carolan, 2014; Scott, 2001). Actors can be individual people, or they can be collectivities, such as organizations, countries, or events, for example. Researchers define the network they are studying ‘by choosing a set of nodes and a type of tie’ to examine (Borgatti & Halgin, 2011, p. 1169). From this point of view, the

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network is defined not by the common goals or joint work of a defined group, but rather by the activities (i.e., the exchange of resources) that occurs within and across the sets of interactions between individuals. Schools simultaneously comprise many different types of networks; the decision about which social networks are the object of focus is left up to researchers and their specific interests. Coburn and Russell (2008), for example, focused on access to expertise in mathematics instruction in their study of the implementation of a mathematics reform initiative, while others have focused on the exchange of advice and information within other school reform contexts (Rodway, 2015; Spillane & Kim, 2012). It is the identification of the relational dimensions that comprise relationships within the school (or classroom or district) that defines the network of focus. Conventional sociological research often focuses on the individual attributes of actors (e.g., age, sex, socioeconomic status), whereas a social network approach considers the properties of the relationships that connect actors within a network in addition to the consequences of the relational patterns (Borgatti & Halgin, 2011). Social network researchers seek to unpack to what extent relational patterns provide opportunities for members to exchange resources within a network (Borgatti & Ofem, 2010). By focusing on the structure of ties within a network, social network research emphasizes the interdependence of actors (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Individual attributes are not ignored, but rather are considered in relation to the patterns of interaction within the social network. In a study about school leaders, for example, Daly and colleagues found that those school leaders who scored higher on the neuroticism dimension of the Big Five personality survey were also more active within the social network (Daly, Liou, Tran, Cornelissen & Park, 2014). In this way, individual actor attributes can be used to gain deeper insights into the relational patterns within a school or school district.

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The tie is a foundational concept in social network theory and many different types of ties exist within organizations. Ties are often classified based on their function. Ibarra (1992) identified three types of relational ties. Prescribed ties are interactions that are directed by an external entity (e.g., management, school leadership). If it is a formal requirement to meet regularly to discuss student data, the exchange of information in this context constitutes a prescribed tie – teachers are mandated to interact in this way. Instrumental ties account for relationships that directly affect the ways in which actors carry out their work, such as when people seek out information, advice, or expertise to help them with instructional or classroom management issues, for example. Expressive ties encapsulate the affective dimensions of relationships, such as social support, friendship, or trust, that are necessary to work effectively. Researchers may ask about who one might vent to about work-related frustrations or with whom one might have a close professional relationship (see Liou et al., 2018, in press) as ways to measure more affective dimensions of social networks. Different types of ties function differently (Borgatti & Foster, 2003), and many social ties can serve both instrumental and expressive functions within a network (Ibarra, 1993). Given the relative nascency of social network analysis in education research, the range of relational dimensions investigated in most studies remains quite narrow. The exchange of advice and information – instrumental resources – are perhaps the most commonly interrogated relationships within schools and school systems. As the field grows, researchers are more and more often exploring a wider variety of relational dimensions. The quantity and quality of ties are also important aspects to be considered. The quantity of ties is easily determined by simply counting the number of instances one actor interacts with another around a defined relational dimension. This is a necessary first step in network analysis; however, examining

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the quality of the ties contributes to a richer understanding of the ways in which relational patterns affect desired outcomes (Siciliano, 2016). Reciprocity is one way of looking at tie quality. Reciprocal ties are counted when two actors share a mutual relationship with each other. When grade-level teachers mutually share with each other tips and tricks for engaging reluctant readers in language arts or instructional materials for an upcoming science unit, these are considered reciprocal ties. Each person is both receiving resources from and providing resources to their colleagues. This type of tie is considered to be much stronger because it is more likely to be imbued with trust as the individual is provided with an opportunity to better ‘predict’ how the other will respond and as such reduce the ‘transaction costs’ for interactions (Daly, 2012). This high trust, or strong ties, are valuable to the learning process as they allow individuals to establish deeper relationships (Honig & Ikemoto, 2008). While reciprocal relationships are considered to be of ‘higher quality’ because they create the conditions necessary for the exchange of more complex information (Hansen, 1999, 2002; Uzzi, 1996, 1997), they are not without a dark side. Research has shown that people are more likely to seek out resources from someone with whom they already share a tie over an outside expert (Cross, Parker, Prusak, & Borgatti, 2001; Moolenaar, Daly, & Sleegers, 2011), and in many cases, this is a good thing. However, reciprocal ties may also risk reinforcing group norms that may inhibit desired outcomes (Krackhardt, 1999). A school may be rich with strong social ties. Teachers may be interacting with each other regularly, exhibiting high levels of trust and collaboration; yet, their behavior may, in fact, be restricting change efforts, such as in the case of group think or gossip networks (Erdogan, Bauer, & Walter, 2015). It is a delicate balance that needs to be considered as strong, mutually shared ties are sometimes constricting or hold organizations back from evolving into healthy learning organizations.

Better quality ties are also present when they exist along multiple relational dimensions. When two actors share ties of many different types (for example, people may share advice, information, and social support ties), they are considered to be stronger than those where only one type of relationship exists (Daly, 2010). These multidimensional ties, called multiplex ties, allow ‘the resources of one relationship to be appropriated for use in others’ (Coleman, 1988, S109), making them more durable over time. Thus, networks comprised of high-quality, multiplex ties are more robust and more likely to persist despite the dissolution of one particular kind of relationship (Hanneman & Riddle, 2005; Haythornthwaite, 2005). Actors and ties are the basic building blocks of a social network. Whether individuals or collectives, actors are connected to one another by the relationships (i.e., ties) through which social resources flow. Ties are classified by the function of the social capital that is exchanged through them. By closely examining the patterns of these interactions, social network researchers strive to understand how these relational patterns affect the work of organizations. In the next section, we outline three key network concepts – cohesion, prominence, and brokerage – and explain how their insights build our understanding of the social side of schools as organizations.

UNDERSTANDING SCHOOLS AS SOCIAL SPACES: A SOCIAL NETWORK VIEW OF SPRINGHILL ELEMENTARY AND THE BELLEVUE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DISTRICT Foundational network concepts such as cohesion, prominence, and brokerage enable researchers to identify relational patterns within schools and the contributions they make to the overall functioning of the school. Here, we use the example of Springhill

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Elementary School, a typical school in Bellevue Elementary School District, a midsize, urban school district that is participating in a longitudinal study of a district math network focused on developing the instructional capacity of fifth and sixth grade mathematics teachers. Teachers, resource teachers, and administrators in this school (and across the district) were asked a series of questions about their interactions with their colleagues as they relate to their mathematics teaching practice along several relational dimensions (e.g., advice, collaboration, new ideas, energy), in an effort to better understand how the social infrastructure of the school (and the wider school district) is facilitating and/ or constraining the achievement of the broader math network’s objectives.

Cohesion Social capital is generated within closely connected, or cohesive, networks (Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 2000). The greater one’s social capital, the greater the opportunities for reward. As a theoretical concept, the premise of cohesion is that the better-connected actors are to one another, the more easily resources will flow within the network and the more unlikely a

network will become disconnected as relationships dissolve (Moody & White, 2003). Cohesion is ‘the extent to which a network “stays together” versus the extent to which a network breaks apart’ (Prell, 2012, p. 166) given particular circumstances. Cohesion can be measured using social network measures, such as density, centralization, and reciprocity.

Density Density is a measure that considers the level of activity within a network and it is considered an indicator of network cohesion (Borgatti, Everett, & Johnson, 2013; Scott, 2001). Dense social networks – that is, networks with high levels of activity (i.e., more connections) – move resources more quickly and efficiently than less connected networks (Kadushin, 2012; Reagans & McEvily, 2003). Density is sensitive to network size: the greater the number of actors in a network, the more challenging (and unlikely) it is for a network to reach maximum levels of activity (Prell, 2012). Table 35.1 provides cohesion statistics for the advice and collaboration networks at Springhill Elementary School as well as for the entire Bellevue Elementary School District at different time points. Longitudinal

Table 35.1  Cohesion statistics for Springhill Elementary School and the Bellevue Elementary School District Network Measure

Advice Density Centralization  Out-centralization  In-centralization Reciprocity Collaboration Density Centralization  Out-centralization  In-centralization Reciprocity

Springhill Elementary School

Bellevue Elementary School District

T1

T2

%Δ

T1

T2

%Δ

35.7 90 75 16.7 25

54.8 63.3 52.8 13.9 43.8

53.5 (29.7) (29.6) (16.8) 75.2

6.5 91.4 89.8 14.4 10.3

10.4 92.7 91.1 17.5 22.8

60 1.4 1.5 21.5 121.4

40.5 83.3 69.4 11.1 30.8

33.3 93.3 77.8 38.9 40

(17.8) 12 12.1 250.1 29.9

6 95.6 93.9 13.2 11.5

5.8 20.8 20.4 13.4 32.7

(3.3) (78.2) (78.3) 1.5 184.4

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social network studies enable researchers to visualize shifts in school and district social structures. We use data collected near the beginning and the end of one academic year here. Throughout this time, all participating educators were invited to attend multiple professional development events that focused on mathematics instruction that were organized by the broader multi-district math network initiative. In terms of activity within each relational dimension of the Springhill Elementary social network, there were similar levels of interaction around advice and collaboration (at least on a monthly level) within the school at the beginning of the year, with densities sitting at about 36% and 41% respectively. This means that for every ten possible interactions within each network, approximately four interactions were reported. Given the sensitivity of density to the size and context of the network and the few studies that have been done on networks in schools, one cannot say whether or not this is a ‘typical’, ‘positive’, or ‘negative’ result. Rather, the time point 1 data can be used as baseline data to which future network densities can be compared. At Springhill Elementary, we remarked that while there was substantial growth in activity in the advice network (54% increase), there was actually a decline in activity (-18%) in the collaboration network. There are many other more sophisticated social network analysis tools available to enable a more in-depth look at the relational landscape within schools. Statistical procedures that account for the interdependent nature of sociometric data (see Carolan, 2014, and Hanneman & Riddle, 2005, for an introduction to these tools) allow researchers to determine whether or not there are statistically significant differences in activity levels (i.e., density) across relational dimensions and whether or not there is a relationship between one type of interaction with another. While these tools are outside the scope of this chapter, basic social network measures, such as density across multiple relational

dimensions, enable sophisticated analyses of the social spaces within organizations (Borgatti, Everett, & Johnson, 2013).

Centralization To complement density as an indicator of cohesion, centralization is another network analysis metric that describes the distribution of ties across a network. It considers the degree to which network activity focuses on a specific actor or group of actors. A centralized network is more susceptible to falling apart once these central figures, or ‘key players,’ are removed (Borgatti, 2003). In this way, centralization provides insight into network cohesion because the removal of central actors has significant consequences for the overall health of the network. In our example, the advice network is becoming less centralized. Over the course of the year, the patterns of interaction focused less on a subset of people within the school. In the fall, for example, 90% of the interactions within the advice network focused on a subset of individuals, particularly in terms of who was seeking advice within the school. Nearing the end of the school year, however, that proportion had reduced by nearly 30%, having fallen to 63.3%. This indicates that the pattern of advice-seeking among the fifth and sixth grade math teachers, schoolbased math coaches, and administration are becoming more widely distributed across the group. More people are seeking advice and a greater number of people are being turned to for advice. This negative trend in terms of network centralization is a positive indicator of network cohesion (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Conversely, the collaboration network became more sparse over the course of the year. Not only did the amount of activity decrease (evidenced by the decline in density described earlier), the pattern of interaction around collaborative work became more centralized overall, increasing 12% to 93.3%. In particular, there is a remarkable 250% increase in the proportion of ties

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that are directed towards a subset of people. There is a tendency in the collaboration network for people to reach out to the same individuals to collaborate. There are ways to identify these popular actors – and we will demonstrate this in the upcoming section on network prominence – but for now, suffice it to say that while things are on the move in a positive direction in terms of advice-seeking about math instruction within the school, the opposite is true in terms of the amount of collaboration that took place over the course of the year. Thus, it appears that the advice network is strengthening over time while, based on these data, the collaboration network is weakening.

Reciprocity Reciprocity is another cohesion measure that focuses on instances where both individuals in a relational pair are seeking resources from and providing resources to each other. Reciprocal ties between actors have been shown to be much more durable and conducive to the exchange of more complex resources (Hansen, 1999, 2002). Over 40% of interactions within the advice and collaboration networks are reciprocal. And while both networks saw growth in reciprocal ties between time points, there was substantial growth (+75%) in the advice-seeking network. While the cohesion statistics for Springhill’s collaboration network suggest a decline in network strength, this increase in reciprocity provides evidence that not all is lost, and that in some individual instances, relationships are strengthening. The cohesion measures for Springhill’s advice and collaboration networks generally show improvement in the depth of cohesion. There is considerable growth – an increase of more than half – in the density of advice ties. People are much more frequently exchanging advice among each other. Furthermore, the activity is becoming more widespread across the network given the decrease in centralization. The quality of ties is also improving, as evidenced by the substantial increase in

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the number of reciprocal ties. The Springhill Elementary School advice network is on the move in a positive direction. This increase in network cohesion is showing that the school is beginning to cultivate the strong foundation necessary to build other relationships (e.g., information, social support) necessary for school improvement (Daly, 2010). Adviceseeking is a relationship that is imbued with trust – when people seek advice, they are exhibiting vulnerability and tend towards turning to people whom they trust for guidance (Cross & Parker, 2004). Based on these findings, one might reasonably hypothesize that the collaboration network will become more robust over time. What these data show is that the social fabric of the school is shifting its organization in ways that will facilitate the exchange of social resources in more beneficial ways to improve mathematics instruction moving forward. Further qualitative work informed by the social network analyses would provide even richer insights into what is happening within the social dimensions of the school.

Prominence Early network scholars were preoccupied with the idea that there are some actors within a network who are more important than others, and thinking about network prominence persists today. When an actor is considered to be ‘particularly visible to other actors’ (Wasserman & Faust, 1994, p. 172), that individual is considered to be prominent in the network. Central actors occupy positions of advantage because they enjoy privileges (e.g., easier access to resources) that others do not as a result of their patterns of interaction (Borgatti, Everett, & Johnson, 2013; Freeman, 1979). To better understand what it means to be visible in a network, there are two classifications of prominence: centrality and prestige (Knoke & Burt, 1983, in Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Centrality highlights actors who are

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at the center of activity, or rather, the most central individuals within a social network. We are better able to understand what is happening in a network when we identify who are the central actors within it (Prell, 2012). Centrality is a ‘family of concepts’ (Borgatti et  al., 2013, p. 164) that helps researchers understand how an actor contributes to the network structure (Carolan, 2014). There are many different measures of centrality, each of which focuses on the different ways actors can occupy key positions within a network. Degree centrality is one of the simplest and most frequently used centrality measures. It measures the level of activity or involvement by calculating the number of direct ties each actor has in a social network. Therefore, it enables researchers to identify who are the most popular people in a network. Individuals with higher degree centrality are seen as having more opportunities to access resources, thereby occupying positions of advantage within the network. Prestige/popularity, the other type of network prominence, can be determined only when researchers are able to identify the direction of a relationship – that is, when it can be determined who is seeking out resources (called out-degree centrality) and who is providing resources (called in-degree centrality). When actors are sought out more frequently to provide resources to others (i.e., they have higher in-degree centrality), there are considered to be more prestigious. In this way, actors can be central in a network because they are very active in the network, but they may not be prestigious if they aren’t providing resources in a network (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Prestigious actors may also have greater control over resources in the network (Scott, 2001). Figure 35.1 provides an illustration of the social structure for Springhill Elementary School’s advice and collaboration networks at time point 2 (spring 2017). In this graph, the size of the nodes (the shapes representing each person who is included in the social network) corresponds to centrality and prestige.

In the out-degree maps, the larger nodes highlight who are the people who are most frequently seeking out advice within this group. These individuals are considered central figures because they are the most active in terms of who is looking for advice. In the in-degree maps, the larger nodes highlight the people who are providing advice to others – they are the people to whom other people turn to when advice is needed. People with high out-degree centrality (the seekers) and (or) high in-degree centrality (the providers) are both considered central figures in the network. However, the most ‘prestigious’ or ‘popular’ actors in the network are those individuals who provide the resources because they have the potential to shape the work of others through their advice-giving. The advice network maps illustrate that the classroom teachers seek advice more frequently than others (although one teacher, #48, does not seek advice at all). It is encouraging to see that the school principal (#57) and one of the instructional resource teachers (IRT, #34) are also active in terms of seeking advice about math instruction within the school. In terms of who is providing advice within the school, the in-degree pattern of interactions shows that almost all people are providing advice to their colleagues (the exception is teacher #14). This finding suggests a robust advice network that is likely comprised of highly trusting relationships across the school given that no one particular person (or small group of people) stands out as a dominant voice in terms of providing guidance to colleagues within Springhill Elementary. The collaboration network tells a different story as it is far more centralized than the advice network. In terms of who is seeking opportunities to collaborate, it is evident that two teachers (#14 and #53) are more open to collaboration than their peers in this context. The principal is also a central figure in terms of seeking collaborative work. Given the multitude of roles and responsibilities that come with this formal position of responsibility, one might not expect the principal to

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Figure 35.1  Springhill Elementary School’s advice and collaboration networks. The outdegree maps highlight who are the seekers of the identified resource in the school; the bigger the node, the more often that person seeks a resource. The in-degree maps highlight who are providing resources within the school; the bigger the node, the more often that person provides a resource. Grey diamonds = teachers; white diamonds = resource teachers; black diamond = principal. Thick blank lines represent reciprocal ties.

be a key seeker of collaborative opportunities around mathematics instruction, but in this case, the principal is central in the network. The people who are being asked to collaborate with colleagues is also a small group; two teachers (#53 and #74) and an instructional resource teacher (#34) are most often sought out by others for collaborative work. Thus, as was suggested by the cohesion statistics (see Table 35.1), the collaboration network is highly centralized – that is, only a small group of folks are collaborating with each other about mathematics instruction within this school. Ultimately, what these analyses suggest (i.e., cohesion and prominence) is that while the advice network is flourishing, the culture of collaboration in this school is relatively weak. This type of analysis provides insights into the sets of relationships that are typically hidden in plain sight. Although individuals in systems may have a sense of the ecosystem of relationships around them, their ability to

accurately portray the entire system is inhibited by the complexity of relationships that potentially exist in school as an organization. Consider that in a typical sized school of only 25 educators there are 600 (N*(N-1)) possible combinations of relationships. This number alone makes grasping the quantity, quality, and overall structure of a network difficult. Examining schools as social network ecosystems provides researchers and practitioners with a clear structure of relationships and, as such, provides both analytic purchase as well as a set of metrics and insights for improvement. The other notion that arises from this perspective is the idea that formal and informal systems may not be fully aligned. For example, one may have an instructional coach in the formal role of providing support, but in the informal social system that person may not be accessed, and another may actually be playing the instructional coaching role and not be formally named. These actors are

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playing informal leadership roles and may not show up on organizational charts, but they are clearly influential in these schools as social systems. The overall take away for this work is that we must better understand the overall infrastructure of social ties that creates a larger network structure, which supports and constrains the flow of resources as well as focus on those individuals who may be playing unrecognized, uncodified, and influential leadership roles within schools.

Brokerage Thus far, emphasis has been placed on direct relationships between actors. There are, however, several social network measures that take indirect relationships into account. Brokerage is a network concept that focuses on who are ‘connectors’ or ‘bridges’ within a network (Freeman, 1979; Wasserman & Faust, 1994). It refers to those people whose position within a network serves to connect others who otherwise would not be connected. This person is the ‘man-in-the-middle’ so to speak, or the person who lies between two others in a network, facilitating relationships between others within the network. This is the essence of brokerage from a social network perspective, and it is important because actors in brokerage positions may act as gatekeepers and control the flow of resources in a network (Carolan, 2014; Scott, 2001). In other words, they also occupy prestigious positions in the network. Brokerage offers a different notion of centrality. With brokerage, the idea of betweenness – that is, who is connecting two otherwise unconnected actors – is the central criterion of centrality. Betweenness centrality measures the brokerage potential for each individual within a network (Freeman, 1979). It is a much more complex measure than its counterpart, degree centrality (Scott, 2001), and it yields much more highly variable results, making it a much more discriminate measure of who are the most important actors

within a network (Borgatti et al., 2013; Prell, 2012). This is an important concept (and measure) in studying schools as organization as, often times, the most central figures in a network – or rather, those with the most power and control over the flow of resources – are not necessarily those at the top of the formal hierarchy or those people with the most direct connections to others. Figure 35.2 presents network sociograms of all of the schools in Bellevue Elementary School District that are participating in the math network. In these graphs, the size of the nodes corresponds with betweenness ­centrality – that is, it highlights who are the people bridging the gaps (i.e., the brokers) within and between the schools and central office. The bigger the node size, the more potential that person has to broker resources across the network. By spring of the academic year (time point 2 in our data collection), only a small number of people had higher betweenness centrality scores, with #31 and #43 being the most obvious. When we remove the four individuals with the highest potential for brokerage, the number of ties within the network reduces by nearly 33% (dropping from 132 ties to 87 ties). Notice in the network maps that once these four prominent actors are removed from the network, the preponderance of across district ties are lost. For the most part, the social structure within individual schools remains essentially intact (although there are noticeable shifts in the two home schools of #70 on the bottom left, and #52 on the bottom right). The removal of these individuals constrains the network to within-school advice exchange. This is greatly limiting in some cases, given that the ability to access colleagues’ knowledge and expertise through advice relations from other schools within the board is restricted: access to the human capital within the school system is reduced. Attribute data collected on each individual (and not used in these graphs) indicate that three of these individuals are resource teachers within the district (#31, 43, and 52). This

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Figure 35.2  Map of the district-wide advice network with nodes sized by betweenness centrality. The larger the node, the more often that person is structurally situated between two otherwise unconnected people within the district-wide social network. In other words, the greater the opportunity for that individual to broker resources between others. The shape of the node corresponds to each different school in the school district.

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would suggest that they play an important boundary-spanning role within the network, and are better able to move (or broker) resources across the entire school district, opening up opportunities for classroom teachers to benefit from their colleagues’ knowledge and experience from schools outside of their own.

Summary of SNA Insights From the social network analyses, it is evident that while the advice network is thriving within Springhill Elementary School and across the Bellevue School District more widely, collaboration is not developing as quickly. While there are some positive indicators of cohesion within Springhill’s collaboration network (i.e., the proportion of reciprocal ties), over the course of the school year, it has, in fact, become weaker. There is less collaborative activity among the math educators in the school, and where it is happening, a small group of people are at the center. Advice relations tend to be more evenly spread across all the educators, whereas collaborative work tends towards focusing on a few key individuals. There are noticeable differences between the advice and collaboration dimensions of the social space within this school. Given that these are two key areas of focus for the broader math network initiative, these data provide a rationale for further qualitative investigation to determine what the enablers and barriers to interactions within this group might be. When the results at Springhill Elementary are compared with the network findings for all participating schools across the district, we find that they generally mirror what is happening across the district more broadly. The brokerage analysis of the advice network revealed that the majority of interactions occur within schools and that the cross-­district interactions are mediated predominantly by four individuals who are brokering advice across schools. This highlights an important

leadership challenge and an area for continued future growth. Moving into year two of the math network initiative, school, district, and math network leadership could use these findings to inform future planning. While inter-school interactions are on the rise, they remain highly connected to a few key individuals and, as such, may limit the availability of relational resources available to the schools. This not only provides those educators with an immense amount of control over which advice gets exchanged across the network, this network pattern is highly restrictive in that access to social resources in other schools is not yet easily accessible to everyone. Given that one of the key goals of the math network is to increase school-to-school interactions, these social network analyses provide necessary feedback to ensure that activity within the network corresponds/meets the needs of the network design.

THE VALUE OF A SOCIAL NETWORK PERSPECTIVE ON SCHOOL ORGANIZATION RESEARCH Schools are learning spaces and learning is a social process (Bandura & Walters, 1977). As such, a social approach to researching schools is warranted in order to understand the social dimensions of their organization. While the individual characteristics of stakeholders within educational systems are important, the activity that connects actors within the system is equally (and dare we suggest more) important. Yet, the social dimension of schools, at worst, often remain in the background or, at best, are viewed as some secondary feature of the research. In our work we are not suggesting that the study of social relations pushes aside other lines of inquiry; rather, we are arguing, given a compelling line of growing research, that the role of social ecosystems be given equal footing. From our view, the real work of schools is comprised of the constellations of different

DEFINING SCHOOLS AS SOCIAL SPACES

types of interactions that take place between everyone (i.e., administrators, teachers, students, support staff, community members) across a variety of settings. The presence, and as importantly the absence, of these social ties comprise a critical dimension of these organizations. Social capital – the resources exchanged through those ­interactions – is an essential element in the daily functioning of schools that has been empirically shown to positively affect student achievement (Leana & Pil, 2017; Pil & Leana, 2009). There is widespread acknowledgement of the importance of collaboration and knowledge exchange to the work of school systems (e.g., Goddard, Goddard, & TschannenMoran, 2007; Spillane et  al., 2017). Within this context, many researchers are turning their attention to ‘networks’ – a term that is left broadly defined. Across Western education systems (e.g., in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom), there is a push for schools and school systems to develop the skills necessary to be successful in the fast-changing, 21st-century world (Schleicher, 2012) and a concomitant shift towards harnessing the professional capital available within and, more importantly, between schools to leverage the knowledge and skills of educators across entire systems (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). The addition of social network analysis in researchers’ toolboxes represents an increasingly growing set of sophisticated new theories, methods, and findings that account for the interdependence of dyadic (and even triadic) data and enable researchers to elaborate on the role of relationships in organizational systems. Technological advances (e.g., easy access to powerful computing technology) are making it possible for advanced tools, such as social network analysis, to come out of the recesses of the scholarly world into the work of many social scientists who endeavor to bring more understanding about how our relationships with each other – that is, the social capital within systems – mediate the

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outcomes we seek. These new methods bring with them important new concepts (e.g., network closure and structural holes) and new tools (e.g., software programs, metrics, and data visualization techniques) that enable us to explore and examine schools in ways different from our approaches in the past. In this chapter, we have introduced a social network perspective as a way of researching the social side of schools in hopes that more researchers will begin to incorporate a relational view in their studies. We do so in an effort to bring the invisible work of schools into the discussion of schools as learning organizations. Much of the literature on schools as organization focuses on the independent characteristics of the people and systems that influence them. Here, our goal is to emphasize the interdependent nature of schools, arguing that, in fact, schools are human ecosystems where it is the quality of the relationships and the resources flowing through them that enable or disable schools from achieving their desired outcomes. As the world becomes more and more connected, and the opportunities globally for human connection increase exponentially, there is a greater need for us to pay attention to the ways that people (and systems more broadly) interact and relate to each other. This adds a new dimension to the ontology of schools and presents new challenges in the ways that we research and learn about them. Ontological discussions of schools bring with them concomitant epistemological issues that need to be considered. Specifically, we have provided an introduction to social network theory and analysis as a way to illuminate the development and exchange of social capital. SNA provides a robust methodology by which to generate ‘organizational x-rays’ of sorts, which highlight the relational dimensions of schools and school systems. By focusing on these social dimensions, the dynamic social forces that can both facilitate and impede education efforts are made visible and can be examined. These forces are always at play, but, to their peril,

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are most often not considered to be a part of the formal organization. These insights are critical to understanding fully the ways in which schools, as organizations, function and carry out their work. While research on school culture, trust, professional learning communities, and other educational phenomena that emphasize interpersonal connections has continued over multiple decades, the focus is often on the conditions under which people come together and not necessarily on what the patterns of social interaction look like and what the consequences of such social structures may be for the work of the organization itself. It is our hope that this chapter will incite interest in relational spaces within organizations and offer the tools necessary for others to incorporate a social network perspective into their school research agendas. Relationships matter. A social network perspective opens up new vistas of understanding and exploration for both researchers and practitioners. Consider that a school system may want to engage a new math instructional program. This program may require professional development, adherence to a specific approaches, regular assessments, and collaboration between, within, and across school teams. This strategy assumes educators have equal curricular ability prior to and after the training as well as the skills and knowledge in working with, and in, different teams. While coaching and mentorship may be of assistance to mediate differences in skill sets, it is equally likely an educator will obtain information from another trusted colleague in their social network who may or may not be as well versed in the program as the coach or identified mentor. Although individuals in the formal system may be assigned to be coaches, as we mentioned before, often these relationships are something that form more organically and over time. Relying strictly on formal mechanisms to diffuse information and knowledge, through coaches, or even mandates to ‘work together,’ may leave critical practice gaps in the organization and potentially lead to a lack of depth and fidelity

of the effort, resulting in uneven implementation. Without a social network perspective, this may be difficult to assess, and incorrect conclusions may be reached. There is a recognition of the role of relationships in organizations such as schools. However, that role is often not systematically or rigorously examined, leaving a host of potentially explanatory variables on the table. Careful study of the set of relationships has led us to the understanding that change and improvement efforts that are engaged in schools as organizations are layered onto an existing base state/structure of relationships and it is the relational ecosystem that may well determine the speed, depth, and ultimate uptake of efforts. Without that perspective, one might attribute the failure of change efforts to be about the lack of knowledge in the system or the program itself, but, in reality, the lack of forward progress may well be due partially, or even totally, to the quantity and quality of the social infrastructure within which change occurs.

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36 Research Use in Schools: A Framework for Understanding Research Use in School-Level Decision Making A l i c e H u g u e t , L o k - S z e W o n g , C h r i s t o p h e r W. H a r r i s o n , C y n t h i a E . C o b u r n a n d J a m e s P. S p i l l a n e

Calls for evidence-based decision making in the educational sector have drawn attention to ways that schools employ data and research in their operations. While promoting better decision making at the school level has become a priority, our knowledge of how educators leverage information as they make important decisions about instruction is uneven. The study of data use in education, for instance, is relatively well trodden when compared to what we know about educators’ use of research in their day-to-day practice. With regard to the latter, a common conclusion in the literature is that a significant gap exists between the worlds of research and practice (Coburn & Stein, 2010). Some suggest that, in order for research to reach practitioners, characteristics of the research itself must change: research oversimplifies complex problems (Lather, 2004) or is not written in a manner that is easily digestible for practitioners (Rickinson et  al., 2004; Vanderlinde & van Braak, 2010). Others suggest research should be more pertinent to

topics that teachers care about (Vanderlinde & Van Braak, 2010), or disseminated in a fashion more suited to reaching teachers and leaders (Cook, Cook, & Landrum, 2013). At the same time, still other studies of research use tell us that it is the practitioners who must change – that they must find the time or the motivation to consume research or would benefit from graduate-level courses to deepen their capacity to understand and use research (Ion & Iucu, 2016). While these suggestions may serve to lessen the gap between research and schoollevel actors, they miss some important contextual layers that mediate practitioners’ ability to engage with research. Perhaps it is not the research as central object that must be isolated – nor the researchers, nor the practitioners individually. Taking a different approach, in this chapter we draw attention to the organization as a mediator of research use in schools. We argue that applying an organizational lens may contribute to our understanding of whether or not – and why, and

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how – teachers and school leaders interact with research. Schools as organizations exert influence in myriad ways upon the actors operating within them; similarly, schools are influenced by the systems they exist within (Penuel et  al., 2013). Therefore, we also address the relationship between schools and their district central offices. While it may be tempting to assume that research reaches educators in a relatively linear fashion, our objective is to complicate matters by introducing this organizational lens, highlighting influencing factors associated with the school and its interactions with the school district. In addition, while the topic of research use in education may have recently grown in popularity, possibly linked to policy calls for evidence-based decision making, there remains a need for a conceptual framework to structure studies in this area. The field of datadriven decision making, for instance – one that is in many ways comparable to the study of research use – has a number of established frameworks from which researchers and practitioners can draw when designing inquiries (see Coburn & Turner, 2011; Marsh & Farrell, 2015). Yet there is no research-use framework from which to do the same. In designing a multi-district study of educators’ evidence use in education, our research team therefore developed an original conceptual framework to guide our investigation of school-level research use. In the following chapter, we introduce this framework and some of the literature that undergirds it. To do so, we focus on research as a central form of information that can contribute to decisions made within schools. Importantly, we view decision making as an inherently social process, one that is influenced by facets of the school organization and its broader system. Though studies on the topic seldom adopt this perspective, our endeavor is to demonstrate the utility of an organizational approach for understanding ways that research reaches and is used within schools. Organizational theory delineates how ­factors inherent to organizations such as

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schools – and the systems they exist within – influence their functioning. Therefore, in this chapter, we synthesize findings from existing studies and draw upon organizational theory to build a framework for understanding research use in schools. In so doing, we answer the question, what organizational factors and district–school arrangements may influence school actors’ use of research? We begin by defining several ideas that are foundational to our framework, first explaining how we conceptualize of schools and their relationships with district central offices. We then outline what we mean when we use the terms ‘research’ and ‘decision making’. Briefly, we review key studies regarding decision making and research use in schools, specifically focusing on teachers and school leaders. Next, we apply an organizational lens to the issue of decision making and research use in schools, and highlight studies that emphasize factors influencing the work of educators. Finally, we draw upon that knowledge base to synthesize a cohesive conceptual framework that articulates how these components work together to mediate research use in schools. We conclude by suggesting ways in which this framework may prove useful to the research community moving forward.

KEY DEFINITIONS: SCHOOLS, DISTRICT–SCHOOL ARRANGEMENTS, RESEARCH, AND DECISION MAKING Our framework is informed by a particular view of schools, district–school arrangements, research, and decision making. First, we view schools as complex organizations, whose internal structure, operations, and routines function in an attempt to serve students’ learning needs (Sherer & Spillane, 2011). Core activities in the school are managed by both formal and informal leaders (Spillane & Zuberi, 2009; Sun et  al., 2013). School organizations are themselves components

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within broader educational systems; decision making often stretches across levels of the system, involving actors from schools and district central offices, among other organizations and stakeholders. School district central offices can exert varying degrees of control over the range of decisions available to their associated schools, the information that reaches school decision makers, and accessible solutions (Honig & Venkateswaran, 2012; Ikemoto & Marsh, 2007). In particular, we zoom in on how district–school arrangements influence schoollevel research use. These arrangements are norms of practice, formally or informally agreed upon between school and central office actors, that provide opportunities for interaction between them. In particular, we identify how jurisdiction, routines, and informal networks may shape the role of research in school-level decision making. While we are specifically interested in how research is used at the school level, we are cognizant of the role that the district plays in influencing the actions of teachers and school leaders. The term research also calls for clarity. We adopt a broad interpretation, defining research as an activity, or the product of an activity, in which people employ systematic, empirical methods to answer a specific question. Research may be conducted by university researchers, but may also be undertaken by others, such as district officials or practitioners within schools. Investigations may draw upon qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. Research can appear in books, academic journals, practitioner-­ oriented journals, and in policy and evaluation reports developed by researchers within a district (Penuel et  al., 2016). By focusing on research, we choose to exclude other forms of information often discussed in evidenceuse literature, such as data, which are collected internally or by entities external to the organization. We understand that data use in school-level decision making can be linked to research use but choose to keep the categories separate as much as is possible – as

school-level data use is a more oft-studied topic, we bring attention specifically to literature focused on research use. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we are concerned with the role of research in decision making. Following the examples of Weiss (1988), Weiss and Bucuvalas (1980), and others (Cohen, March, & Olsen, 1972; Hannaway, 1989; Kennedy, 1982; Majone, 1989), we conceptualize decision making to be complex, multifaceted, and inherently social endeavors. Decision making includes a variety of activities – including selecting, designing, and maintaining policies and programs (Weiss & Bucuvalas, 1980). In the process of selecting, designing, and maintaining, decision makers interact in a complex social dance, in which they engage with one another to ‘recommend, advise, confer, draw up budgets, testify, develop plans, write guidelines, report, supervise, propose legislation, assist, meet, argue, train, [and] consult’ (Weiss, 1980, p. 163). In this view of decision making, decisions are not singular, momentary choices, but instead a series of choices and actions that ‘accrete’ over time (Weiss, 1988). Moreover, this accretion is not confined to one place within an organization; instead, decision making stretches across organizational subunits and levels (Hannaway, 1989; Kennedy, 1982; Majone, 1989).

DECISION MAKING AND RESEARCH USE IN SCHOOLS Having defined several core constructs, we now turn our focus to the process of decision making as it unfolds in the context of schools, and how research may shape and inform that work. For the most part, existing research indicates that school-level decision making adheres to the broader definition offered above – it is a social process that may include selecting, designing, and maintaining policies and programs (Weiss & Bucuvalas, 1980).

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Decisions in schools, for example, often involve numerous individuals – including, but not limited to, school principals, coaches, and teacher leaders (Spillane, 2006). These educators make important choices every day within the context of their individual work, such as when a teacher makes an instructional decision for her classroom. While such decisions may be made within the context of individual practice, they are also influenced by the social interactions that occur throughout the organization (Gamoran, Secada, & Marrett, 2000). In addition, school-level decisions are often collaborative endeavors, made in teams of staff members, administrators, and teachers. Finally, decision making in schools accretes over time, through a combination of these individual and collaborative decisions by educators. Much of the existing research on the role that research plays in school-level decisions focuses on individual teachers’ and leaders’ use of research as they deliberate. Below, we summarize literature surrounding how two key sets of school actors – teachers and school leaders – use research, and the factors that may mediate their individual use of it in day-to-day work.

Research Use among Teachers The literature regarding how teachers use research has been historically scant. Much of the early research, for example, focused less on understanding how teachers made decisions in the context of their classroom practice, and more on the outcomes of their behaviors, and the extent to which those behaviors aligned with the recommendations of empirical research regarding teaching and learning (Shavelson, 1983; Shavelson & Stern, 1981). The gap between teacher practice and research-based knowledge heralded calls for an increase in evidence-based practices. Research largely explored this gap in two ways. First, studies focused on identifying the most effective strategies for encouraging the

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implementation of evidence-based practices with fidelity – for example, coaching and professional development (Kretlow, Cooke, & Wood, 2012). In addition, studies endeavored to understand factors that might help to explain the research–practice divide, pointing to mediators like teachers’ professional beliefs and values, their perceptions regarding the validity of research findings and their relevance to professional practice, and their limited access to sources of empirical research (Bickel & Hattrup, 1995; Boardman et  al., 2005; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990; Fenstermacher, 1987; West & Rhoton, 1994; Williams & Coles, 2007). Alongside explorations of the research– practice gap, a substantial branch of the literature emphasizes the importance of merging practitioner knowledge with knowledge generated by researchers to create a more comprehensive and relevant knowledge base for teachers. As part of this, advocates argue that teachers be situated as knowledge creators, and active partners in the process of research, in addition to knowledge consumers (Hiebert, Gallimore, & Stigler, 2002; Stanovich & Stanovich, 2003; Vanderlinde & van Braak, 2010). Action research has, in particular, been positioned as a framework through which teachers might approach systematic inquiry and reflective practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990, 2009; Hiebert et  al., 2002). More recently, frameworks like design-based methods and improvement science have been forwarded as tools for guiding practitioners efforts to engage in systematic inquiry (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012; Bryk, 2015; Cohen-Vogel et al., 2015).

Research Use among School Leaders Examinations of school leaders’ research use find that most claim to value and use research regularly (Levin, 2010; Saha, 2009) – ­particularly when the research is perceived as relevant to their school (Vanderlinde & van

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Braak, 2010). Many leaders report accessing research through journals and books; in many cases, however, they may rely upon secondary sources such as colleagues and professional meetings to highlight worthwhile studies (Biddle & Saha, 2006; Levin, 2010). Moreover, research indicates that many leaders may lack easy access to research, and the time and support needed to read and reflect on it (Hemsley-Brown & Oplatka, 2005; Sheard & Sharples, 2016). Studies point to a number of factors that may mediate school leaders’ use of research in informing their work. To begin, the nature and format of research can affect its use, such as its perceived quality, credibility, relevance, communication quality, content, and timeliness (Cousins & Leithwood, 1993; Levin et  al., 2011). For instance, Vanderlinde and van Braak (2010, p. 306) report that ‘…many researchers speak and write in a language that is unintelligible to practitioners’, and that the use of such technical language may impede principals’ efforts to use research. Moreover, this work indicates that leaders prefer research with clear, practical suggestions about what works (Vanderlinde & van Braak, 2010). Coburn and Talbert (2006) find that principals are more likely than teachers and central office leaders to be skeptical of the value of research, and to prefer multiple forms of evidence. The authors surmise that principals’ responsibilities ‘place demands on them to bring coherence among multiple kinds of validity standards represented in various assessments and data’ (Coburn & Talbert, 2006, p. 485). Indeed, many school leaders report personal experience and the input of colleagues to be more powerful influences on their beliefs than research (Levin et al., 2011). Finally, some studies identify organizational characteristics that may also mediate the role research plays in decision making (Cousins & Leithwood, 1993; Levin et  al., 2011; Sheard & Sharples, 2016). For instance, Cousins and Leithwood (1993) find that an organization’s information needs, focus for

improvement, political climate, and competing information shaped whether and how school leaders used research. Research is also more likely to be used when organizational structures, processes, and culture support it (Levin et al., 2011; Sharp et al., 2006), such as when school leaders are explicitly guided on how to apply research, or when they have knowledgeable mentors who help create research-engaged environments. However, as we discuss later in the chapter, research use is likely shaped by other organizational factors not yet examined in this literature.

ORGANIZATIONAL FACTORS INFLUENCING TEACHER AND LEADERS’ USE OF RESEARCH IN DECISION MAKING The above review builds important context for understanding what decisions in schools often look like, and how individual actors may draw upon research as they make important decisions. However, extant literature does not provide substantial guidance regarding organizational factors that may shape decision making in schools and the use of research within the process. Below, we apply such a lens to the study of research and school-level decision making. In doing so, we synthesize existing organizational literature to highlight several important factors – such as authority, status, and routines – that likely shape decisions. We begin at the school level, and later broaden our discussion to the district. Following this section, we demonstrate how these varied elements work in conjunction with one another in our proposed conceptual framework.

Formal and Informal Authority Decision making, and the role of research and other information therein, is influenced by formal and informal authority relations.

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Formal authority is power ‘coded into structural design’ (McAdam & Scott, 2005, p. 10) as comes with hired positions. Most commonly, we think of formal authority at the school level belonging to principals. Indeed, studies exploring research use at schools often reference this authoritative position; in Levin’s 2010 review of the literature, for instance, he found that across studies, schoollevel research use was influenced by social setting, and, in his account, principals were a key influence on that setting. Sharp et  al. (2006) also found that school staff recognized when their leaders valued and held knowledge about research, suggesting that leaders’ knowledge may be a strong predictor of research use throughout the school. In a mixed-method study of principals in Australia and the United States, Saha (2009) found that principals passed on their own research literacy skills to teachers at their schools. Another way to state this could be that school staff are exposed to research through their principals’ knowledge – or lack thereof – emphasizing the importance of this formal position. One could imagine a principal being a gatekeeper, bringing research into the organization and influencing staff’s exposure, and an agenda setter, calling for particular research use in meetings or professional developments. In this way, the principal can influence the flow of research into the school as well as its use within the school. At the same time, he or she may also serve as a limiting factor, choosing only research that fits with his or her individual preferences. However, administrators are not the only actors to exert influence on schools’ decisionmaking processes. Any effort to understand school-level decision making must go beyond the principal to explore the role of informal leaders in the process. These individuals may have informal authority, or authority ascribed to an actor related to characteristics other than their officially recognized position (Scott & Davis, 2007). Informal authority belongs to those who actually take responsibility in practice, which may deviate from

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official arrangements. Individuals who have no formal leadership designation, but may have informal authority, may influence the role of research in decision making. While this has not yet, to our knowledge, been studied in relationship to research use at schools, a selection of broader educational literature indicates that informal authority does carry influence in schools. Evidence suggests that instructional decision making at the school level, in fact, involves an array of actors (Gronn, 2003; Leithwood, 2007), indicating the need to look beyond formal authority as an influence in decision making and research use.

Status Status refers to power associated with ‘unobserved performance expectations’ (Balkwell, 1994, p. 124) that often result in prestige and may influence interactions within groups. Status is typically negotiated in a social situation, and can be rooted in fundamental characteristics (i.e., gender or age) or achieved ones (i.e., academic background or occupational history) (Coburn, Bae, & Turner, 2008; Dornbusch & Scott, 1975). Though not explicit, there are echoes of status in existing school research-use literature. In a study by Sheard and Sharples (2016), the authors partnered with three English primary schools on a process of research engagement. Among other factors, they found that ‘recognition of professional experience and expertise’ (p. 682) among the involved school actors contributed to a climate more supportive of in-depth research use. In this example, status led to a culture more conducive to research use. One could imagine status working in other ways; an individual with a prestigious background, for instance, could influence which, when, and how research gets interpreted. Based on organizational literature, there is more to status than has thus far been captured in investigations of school research use.

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For instance, studies demonstrate that authority and status relations do privilege particular individuals’ perspectives in decision making, creating imbalances in interpretive contexts (Coburn et al., 2008) and allowing them to hold sway in negotiations (Camburn, Rowan, & Taylor, 2003; Leithwood & Mascall, 2008; Spillane, Camburn, & Stitziel Pareja, 2007).

Organizational Routines Organizational routines are ‘repetitive, recognizable pattern[s] of interdependent actions, involving multiple actors’ (Feldman & Pentland, 2003, p. 95). In schools, routines related to decision making might include such activities as school improvement planning, leadership team meetings, or instructional rounds, among countless others. These routines are both mediums for and outcomes of decision making; they can emerge from everyday practice or can be intentionally designed by school and district decision makers (Cohen & Bacdayan, 1994; Pentland & Feldman, 2008). Some routines are developed at the school site, while others are district-mandated. Organizational routines may shape who interacts with whom and are often the forums in which decisions are negotiated and finalized. Routines are one aspect of organizational structure that may influence decision-making processes. Investigations into school-level research use commonly – though not always overtly – demonstrate that organizational structure has the potential to improve school actors’ use of research (Datnow & Park, 2010; Sharp et al., 2006; Sheard & Sharples, 2016). According to Levin (2010, p. 312), leaders who want to build a culture of research use at their schools should consider organizational structure: ‘The very fact that research findings and implications have a place on the agendas of staff meetings or principal meetings changes the way people in the organization think about research and, if done in ways respectful of professional responsibility, is

likely to increase receptivity.’ Yet, studies have not investigated research use explicitly in light of routines. To understand research’s role in schools, it is important to incorporate routines as they relate to decision-making practices.

DISTRICT–SCHOOL ARRANGEMENTS INFLUENCING TEACHER AND LEADERS’ USE OF RESEARCH School district central offices play a role in determining the types of evidence that reach school organizations. District leaders may influence school-level access to research (Ikemoto & Marsh, 2007), and district-level actors’ ability to interpret and utilize research may differ from that of the principals. For instance, Coburn and Talbert (2006) found that two-thirds of district administrators had well-developed understandings of research, while only one-third of principals in their sample did. Such findings suggest that a connection to district leaders may spur learning for principals where research is involved,1 making them an important aspect of our research-use framework. We highlight three types of arrangements that link district actors to schools, including jurisdiction, district– school routines, and district–school informal social networks.

Jurisdiction Districts differ in the domains over which central office administrators have authority, and which aspects are controlled by school administrators. That is, districts vary in patterns of jurisdiction; in one, schools may be responsible for the majority of their instructional decisions, while in another, the central office makes the preponderance of calls related to instruction. Jurisdiction over decision making may also vary within school districts, where different schools may be

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given varying levels of autonomy related to a given decision (e.g., who they can seek out for professional learning). Jurisdiction may be formal or informal; while a district may officially have authority over one aspect of instruction, schools may informally make decisions about it themselves. Further, there may be ambiguity with respect to which level has jurisdiction over a given issue. In some districts, the central office might be responsible for selecting research, compiling summaries, and facilitating meetings in which research is discussed (Levin et al., 2011). Schools in such districts would potentially gain access to research that they may not otherwise have had, but the district would in this case be responsible for narrowing the content to which school actors were exposed. This stands in contrast to schools where professional development is almost exclusively managed at the school site. This is one explicit example of how district and school jurisdiction over particular decisions may influence their use of research, but jurisdiction may be influential in less direct ways – for instance, who has the final word about curriculum selection, or who designs discipline policies, both cases in which research may arise.

District–School Routines In districts where central office administrators do have jurisdiction over professional development, the planning and delivery of the training are examples of routines that connect the school with the district central office. If individuals from both of those levels work with one another at different steps of the process, there is further opportunity for access and exposure to research. Of course, training is only one illustration of a routine connecting the school and district; other examples of connecting routines include teacher evaluation processes, district walkthroughs, cross-district meetings for teacher leaders or school-based coaches, or

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principal professional development sessions. Such routines influence who is involved in discussions, around what forms of research and other information, and in what ways (Coburn & Turner, 2011; Little, 2012).

District–School Informal Social Networks District–school connections may occur through informal social networks. Ties that span boundaries allow for new information to enter each organization and minimize ‘groupthink’ among organizational members (Burt, 2000; Hansen, 1999; Krackhardt & Stern, 1988). The greater the trust built within these networks, the more willing participants may be to share and exchange information in situations that require them to be vulnerable and take risks (Lane et al., 2001). When connections between central office and schools are weak, they tend to handicap schools’ use of research (Daly & Finnigan, 2010). The nature of information passed through a network, and the likelihood that it will influence decision making at the school level, may depend upon the structure of social networks beyond the formal connections already discussed in this chapter. School actors may be exposed to research through a friend or past colleague, or a district actor with whom they share an informal association.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: A PROPOSED HEURISTIC FOR STUDYING RESEARCH USE IN SCHOOLS There is untapped utility in applying an organizational lens to studies of research use in schools. We brought together key concepts from organizational literature in a single framework for this reason; the framework clarifies how such a lens can be applied to studies in this field. In conjunction, these

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dimensions provide an approach for understanding research use in schools – one that we are currently using in our own studies. Figure 36.1 illustrates ways that these organizational elements of the school and school district interact to influence the role that research plays in school-level decision making, accompanied by an extended example. While the anecdotes provided are hypothetical, they are rooted in composite experiences our team has observed throughout various studies, combined to illustrate the application of this tool in a simple prototype. The dashed box in the upper right corner of the school level in Figure 36.1 represents the decision-making process as it occurs within the school. Each smaller square within this box is a point of deliberation within the process, connected to one another through varied linkages, and not occurring in a predictable or linear manner. These squares represent planned points of deliberation, such as meetings, but also casual conversations in school and district hallways, among innumerable other variations. At some of these points, research – represented by the uppercase R – may enter the conversation. Also, the introduction of research does not always happen in

a predictable way. When decisions are made to select, design, or maintain educational policies and practices at the school level, it is most often a social, irregular process that occurs over a period of time as individuals deliberate in varied groupings. To illustrate, consider this example: an elementary school leadership team must decide what math curriculum they should adopt in the upcoming school year. They have a number of options on the table and, given that this is a potentially expensive and impactful decision, the topic is introduced and reintroduced in full-staff meetings, at math department meetings, and in leadership meetings among administrators. At other meetings and in informal conferencing, the topic of this curricular decision is deliberated. In a few of these conversations, research is introduced. At one point, the math department chair introduces research that she was given during an evening graduate-level class, which appears to support one program over the others. A third-grade teacher searches online for expert reviews on the potential options available, then mentions them to colleagues over lunch. Over the course of months, the conversation begins to take shape around a particular set of ideas, some informed by research.

Figure 36.1  Conceptual framework for studying research use in schools

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This seemingly messy process exists, in our diagram, in the dashed box in the upper right corner. The process we illustrate here is influenced by a number of factors within the organization, as discussed in earlier sections of this chapter. These elements in our diagram are present at the school level – the larger box on the right. Formal and informal authority, status, and organizational routines each have the potential to influence the role research plays in these processes. For instance, in the hypothetical example above, authority may determine to some degree which research is introduced into deliberations about mathematics curriculum. The principal, for instance, may include time on a staff-meeting agenda to discuss opinions about new math curriculum, including the introduction of an article she believes to be relevant. Given her position as principal, one which is imbued with formal authority, the research she introduces is not questioned publicly, though a number of teachers may find flaws with its premise. Perhaps while discussing this particular piece of research in the staff meeting, the principal’s interpretation of how its findings apply to their selection of curriculum is either the only interpretation discussed, or the one given the most attention. In these ways and myriad others, an individual in a position of authority may influence which research reaches deliberations, and how it is interpreted. Other organizational factors – such as status and routines – also play a role in how research may be used at the school level. For instance, in our hypothetical example, a teacher with a graduate degree may leverage her status to challenge the principal’s interpretation of research, publically or in private. And the principal’s inclusion of research on the staff-meeting agenda is one instantiation of how research use may be supported through the employment of organizational routines. But, as the organization is porous and influenced by elements outside its own boundaries, the school’s use of research in

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decision making is also permeable, meaning that research can enter through other channels as well. Our conceptual framework focuses on three particularly generative channels through which research use may be influenced. These are dimensions of interaction between the school and the central district office: jurisdiction, district–school routines, and informal networks. Jurisdiction influences research use at a number of points in our hypothetical example of school-level decision making. If the school district, for instance, mandated a particular mathematics curriculum, the question of selection would be moot. Research regarding mathematics curricula may not be pulled into the school’s decision-making arena at all, in this case. In addition, it is possible that the district office could mandate a particular professional development series, therefore limiting the degree to which the principal could introduce her own selection of research to the staff at large. Routines that connect the school and district, such as the planning and implementation of professional development, might favor a different set of research based on the training and preferences of the district-level team involved. Finally, informal social networks that connect school-level actors with those in the district serve as another channel for research – and interpretations of research – to enter the deliberative field. These networks – sometimes social, sometimes professional though voluntary – are again a means for sharing information that may influence the types of research on the table and how they are leveraged in discussions. Again, the examples provided above are compiled from a variety of research experiences and are selected for illustrative purposes – it is not often that such clean-cut instances of research use arise in reality. Although we focus in this chapter on the school-level, the bidirectional arrows between the school and the district serve as recognition that interactions with the school can influence district-level deliberations as well.

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APPLICATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF OUR MODEL, AND THE NEED FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

how organizational dimensions play a role in this important process.

To the conversation of research use in schools, we offer a view of decision making that is social and additive, an organizational lens, and most tangibly a framework through which to further explore this pressing topic. Our team is currently using this conceptual framework in a multi-city, multi-year study of research use in districts and schools. Though we anticipate new and improved iterations will follow in future ­investigations – ours as well as others’ – our hope is to set the stage for deeper explorations of research use at the school level, remaining cognizant to factors that influence the processes of decision making upon which research plays a role. This organizational framework is a critical addition to the existing conversation, and a useful one for pressing forward in our understanding of school-level decision making and the role of research therein. To separate the decision-making process from school and district organizational influences misses elemental components of the story. In presenting this framework, we make the argument that consideration of organizational factors should not be incidental to any study of decision making, but should instead play a central, framing role from the inception of the investigation. Further studies are necessary as current policies continue to press educational practitioners toward evidence-based decision making. We argue that the school level is becoming increasingly important in this conversation, as recent policy changes – such as the Every Student Succeeds Act in the US – signal a move to more on-the-ground autonomy in instructional choices. If this policy is taken as an indicator, we are entering an era in which school-level decision making will be increasingly taking center stage. We end with a call to our research colleagues to usher it in with the goal of understanding

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This work has been supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education, through Grant RC305C140008. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the US Department of Education.

Note 1  The relationship between schools and districts has bidirectional influence (Honig & Venkateswaran, 2012), but as our focus is the school level, we do not specify in this chapter ways that schools may influence districts.

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37 Practitioner Research in Schools as Organizations A n d r e w To w n s e n d

INTRODUCTION This chapter both examines the relationships between the different forms of practitioner research and attempts to enhance understandings of schools as organizations. In doing so it relates the generation and use of knowledge through research and practice with questions about educational organization. This approach draws on two theoretical frameworks. The first concerns the politics of knowledge, which is a common point of discussion in action research literature (Carr & Kemmis, 1986, 2005; Grundy, 1987). This perspective makes use of Habermas’s theory of knowledge-constitutive interests (KCI) which explains how what counts as knowledge, and as research, is linked to human interests (Habermas, 1972). The second theoretical framework is linked to concepts of organizing and the social processes which produce and/or reproduce organization. This framework draws from the ideas of reproduction and emergence, common concepts in

sociology, and applies them to ideas of organization (Archer, 1984, 1988; Sawyer, 2001). Although the literature on practitioner research and related fields is extensive, as will be outlined later in this chapter, examples of writing that link practitioner research and organization are scarce. With some exceptions (see, for example, Coghlan, 2003), practitioner research literature has only really implied a contribution to understanding the organization, for example in the belief that some forms of practitioner research can contribute to organizational, in the form of school, improvement. The chapter achieves this connection by linking Habermas’s theory of knowledge-constitutive interests to the linked concepts of organizational ‘emergence’ and ‘reproduction’. There are three main parts to this strategy. The first illustrates how differing applications of practitioner research have implicit political features. The second shows how this politics of knowledge influence the potential for practitioner research to contribute to

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school organization, in particular through the reproduction of existing organizational forms associated with technical or practical models of practitioner research. The third argues that a critical conception of practitioner research presents an alternative to reproductive models of research, and suggests that this has the potential to allow new organizational forms to emerge from research in ways that reproductive models cannot achieve.

QUESTIONING THE CONTRIBUTION OF PRACTITIONER RESEARCH TO THE ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS The intention of this chapter is to present an argument that the idea of ‘organization’ can be a way to connect critical aspirations for research, which can be very abstract in nature, and practice. Emergence and reproduction are used as concepts to describe how actions create new, or reinforce existing, organizational structures and processes. This argument is rooted in traditions of practitioner research which are inspired by Habermas’s theory of knowledge-­constitutive interests (Habermas, 1972). It would be fair to say that the use of this theory in practitioner research has not been universally popular, and its critics and adherents are introduced in the following section.

Critical Theory and the Politics of Knowledge The first part of this argument about the contribution that practitioner research can make to understanding schools as organizations is related to an understanding of the political basis of knowledge. This line of thinking builds on action research, an area of practitioner research literature that has long drawn on the contributions of critical theorists, and especially the work of Jürgen Habermas (Carr & Kemmis, 1986, 2005; Grundy,

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1987). It informs the thinking of advocates of critical action research, who claim that, as well as being a means of changing practice, action research is able to, and should aim to, identify and challenge political inequalities (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Grundy, 1987; Noffke, 2005; Noffke, Stevenson, & CochranSmith, 1995). This perspective also forms the basis of arguments in support of participatory models of action research (Reason & Bradbury, 2001). These models are seen to be a means by which people can participate in their own liberation from oppressive political systems (Fals-Borda, 2001; Freire, 1970). These arguments draw specifically on Habermas’s theory of knowledge-constitutive interests (1972). In this theory, Habermas has argued that people have a fundamental disposition towards rationality, but that rationality is not a single consistent concept and so what any group is prepared to count as rational determines what is accepted as knowledge. The political intentions of knowledge-claims can therefore be exposed by questioning the interests which underpin such claims. This approach challenges the assertion, often made in support of evidence-based practices, that evidence and knowledge are neutral, objective and somehow sit apart from people, their motivations and interests (Ashley, 1981; Davies, 1999; Grundy, 1987). Instead, what is believed to be evidence, and what is presented or validated as being knowledge, are dependent on the interests of the people, the actors, who are making those judgements. To that end, Habermas distinguished between three basic constitutive interests, which he termed ‘technical’, ‘practical’ and ‘emancipatory’. They are knowledge-constitutive because interests ‘guide and shape the way knowledge is constituted in different human activities’ (Carr & Kemmis, 1986: 134). The meaning of each is as follows: 1 Technical interests are usually associated with empirical analytic approaches to research which reproduce natural science approaches in the social sciences. Because knowledge associated

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with these interests is believed to be objective and generalizable, any associated new knowledge is considered to be reproducible in all settings. As a result, this interest emphasizes forms of technical control. 2 Practical interests are geared towards understanding personal experience. They arise from interpretative, especially hermeneutic, models of social sciences which emphasize individuals and their experiences of the social world. Understanding the views and experiences of others provides the basis for deciding on actions. As people make decisions about actions from this understanding there is a practical implication of such knowledge. 3 Emancipatory interests promote reflection and are explicitly concerned with power. One of Habermas’s aims is to show the limitations of both positivist and interpretative social science and present a critical alternative to both. Neither a positivistic perspective, which assumes objectivity, nor an interpretative approach which is focused on individual experiences and views without understanding the conditions in which these have arisen, are believed to be able to provide a means for problematizing social life. The alternative is an emancipatory method, which although rooted in interests of individual autonomy, is set in a wider social context. The intention is that individuals are able to understand and appreciate why they find the conditions of their life frustrating and provide a means by which they can identify actions to resolve this dissatisfaction.

the world but fails to provide a basis for change (Elliott, 2005; McNiff & Whitehead, 2006). This critique reveals a significant weakness of practitioner research with its aspirations to change and improve practices, and yet this has not stopped Habermas and other critical theorists inspiring a great deal of work in this area and indeed in education more widely (Noffke, 2005; Thomas, 1999), including attempts to link critique to practice (Noffke et al., 1995). One perceived weakness of the theory of knowledge-constitutive interests is that it fails to connect theoretical critique to practical actions and it is intended to be addressed through the practical changes arising from research. The use of the concepts of emergence and reproduction in this chapter are intended to show how this relates to schools as organizations. The argument is that research can be transformatory, but it can also serve to reinforce the status quo. This assertion is not to claim that transformation is always better, but understanding how these processes work provides a basis for questioning the links between research, knowledge and organization.

Habermas’s theory of knowledge-constitutive interests is not without its critics. There are suggestions that these three knowledgeconstitutive interests are not separate or as different from each other as presented. There are also critiques of the lack of an explanation of the epistemological basis of social sciences based upon this notion or critique, or of an account of the practical implications of such a critique (for more on these critiques, see Midgley, 1995). As a consequence, uses of Habermas’s theory of knowledge-constitutive interests have been criticized for a failure to connect critical theory with practice. Or to put it another way, this theory is able to say what is wrong with

The concept of emergence is one which seeks to explain how organization can arise from apparent disorder. It describes the relationships between parts and whole across micro and macro levels of organization. Working in the field of complexity science, Goldstein has defined emergence as: ‘The arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems’ (Goldstein, 1999: 49). This perspective includes attempting to understand how social phenomena arise from the actions of individuals. The concept of emergence is not only about systems emerging from individual sub-units, as these systems then influence

Organizational Reproduction and Emergence

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any subsequent emergence in a process termed supervenience or downward causation (Corning, 2002). As a concept, it therefore links to the long-standing issue for sociology of agency and structure (for an introduction to this, see Hollis, 1994). This issue questions how individuals and their actions simultaneously contribute to the establishment of, and are influenced by, social structures. In essence, emergence describes how collective phenomena arise from the actions of individuals and the relationships between them. Although common in social sciences, most notably as a mainstay of Archer’s realist social theory (1984, 1995), emergence has also arisen in complexity theory, philosophy and psychology (Corning, 2002; Sawyer, 2001). Emergence is useful here as it shows how organization arises through collective activity. A school, understood as an organization, is not solely a physical entity with buildings, classrooms, offices, playing fields, and so on. It is a social organization where the relationships between people are shaped by their related purposes. It is also social in the sense that the activities of people who are part of the school, and the relationships between them and others, are shaped by a wider societal understanding of the meaning of schooling. While schools arise from and represent what people think education is, they also influence perceptions of the nature of education. Drawing from the concept of supervenience or downward causation, schools, as organizations, not only emerge from social and cultural expectations, they also shape them (Archer, 1988). As a result, education systems serve to reproduce themselves in each successive generation. This idea of reproduction is the second concept to be applied here to the idea of schools as organizations. Reproduction, of course, has a particular biological meaning. But it also has a definition, commonly used in sociology, which refers to the mechanisms by which social structures influence people in ways which prevent alternative forms of social structure

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from emerging. As a concept, it is often used explicitly to refer to the ways in which social inequality is reproduced from one generation to the next (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). The result of this reproduction is that organization shapes the consciousness of people such that the forms of organization are normalized. Attempts to change are challenged by pressures for reproduction. As Schön puts it, ‘organisations are dynamically conservative: that is to say, they fight like mad to remain the same’ (Schön, 1970: 2).

MAPPING THE TERRAIN OF PRACTITIONER RESEARCH Practitioner research is not really a field in the sense that it is a single coherent body of work. Rather, practitioner research, as an idea and activity, emerges separately from a wide range of different disciplinary areas with differing aspirations, goals and ideals (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; McWilliam, 2004). The idea of practitioner research has come about more as a result of the convergence of the development of independent groups working with their own goals in mind. Some of these areas of work are really quite diverse, even seemingly contradictory (McWilliam, 2004). For example, practitioner research has been seen as one mechanism of improvement, promoted as a means to improve not just schools but entire educational systems, sometimes through national initiatives (Hopkins, 2001; Hopkins, West, & Ainscow, 1996). In contrast, practitioner research has also been seized on as a means by which professionals, those undertaking practitioner research, can be empowered and emancipated from the oppressive effects of performative government policies, promoted through those same national education systems (Boog, 2003; Brydon-Miller and Maguire, 2009). In some respects, this illustrates a continuum which underpins the argument for thinking of practitioner research for

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organizational emergence or reproduction. At one end of the scale is an emphasis on a ‘macro’ approach as one in which practitioner research is promoted through systems, while at the other is a desire for personal empowerment and liberation through research which puts more of an emphasis on the micro. This point is made to suggest that they demonstrate diverse aspirations for practitioner research with similarly diverse strategies, not that either is preferable or superior. The diverse aspirations and strategies of practitioner research are just two features of the breadth of practitioner research literature, and part of the intention of this section is to provide an introduction to some of the different traditions of practitioner research. But before exploring the different traditions, it is worth spending some time trying to define what the term ‘practitioner research’ means, or is taken to mean, and how it might link to understanding schools as organizations. Although seemingly a simple idea, definitions of practitioner research abound and are every bit as varied as the different traditions with which they are associated. The phrase combines two problematic terms: ‘practitioner’ and ‘research’, that are sometimes seen as contradictory. The emphasis of the first term is that practitioner research involves people who undertake some kind of practice, or as Kemmis (2009) puts it, who are involved in ‘doing’. Informally, this perspective tends to refer to people who actually do the work that others produce policy on, lead or indeed research. In education, the term ‘practitioner’ often means teachers or school leaders. The emphasis is that this involves people undertaking research on their own and/or colleagues’ practices. To qualify as practitioner research the focus must be on the researcher’s own practices and setting. This would certainly seem to fit for academics or researchers in universities, who adopt reflexive approaches to their own studies, but it rarely seems to be used in this respect. In understanding schools as organizations, this

definition can, however, embrace anyone who contributes to the organization of schools as being practitioners. As a result, while the main community might be of teaching staff, there is no reason why this should not include school leaders, administrators, support staff, learners, their family members and the local community. As well as clarifying what is meant by a practitioner, there is also a question about what does, or does not, count as research. Part of the problem here is the proliferation of the terms ‘reflection’ and ‘inquiry’ or ‘enquiry’, which can sometimes be thought of as being research but on other occasions refers to thinking deeply about an issue. For the purposes of this discussion, the definition offered by Cochran-Smyth and Lytle (2009) is useful here. They take a broad view of practitioner research to encompass all forms of inquiry which are systematic, intentional and self-critical. This definition includes action research, self-study teacher inquiry, etc., but does not include ‘reflection or other terms that refer to being thoughtful about one’s educational work in ways that are not necessarily systematic or intentional’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009: 22). A research activity must therefore have a systematic and intentional aspect if such an activity is to be considered to be research. This perspective echoes the view of Lawrence Stenhouse, an early proponent of practitioner research, who once defined research as systematic inquiry made public (Stenhouse, 1975). Reflecting with a focus and purpose and an aim to generate and share knowledge counts as research. Reflection, or inquiry, as an ongoing process of questioning and thinking, is important, but it is insufficient within this definition to be included as a form of practitioner research. To be ‘practitioner research’, the research must be undertaken by people on their own practices. Research undertaken on or for practice but not by the people whose practice is the focus does not qualify. Because such research is undertaken by people on their own practices, and therefore in their

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own places of work, this necessarily means that practitioner research is a form of ‘insider research’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). For the advocates of practitioner research, the benefits are extensive. It is seen as a way to enhance professional learning, enable people in schools to reclaim influence over their own destiny, re-professionalize the teaching profession and improve schools by listening to the people who best understand them (McWilliam, 2004). To some, practitioner research is needed both because professionals can learn from it and because academics have failed to produce knowledge relevant for practitioners (see for example, Hargreaves, 2000). From this standpoint, practitioner research does not merely serve as a means of development for individuals and schools, it also serves as a means of knowledge production. Aspirations for teaching to become a research-based profession raises questions about the roles of organizations, and especially schools, in being research-engaged and knowledge-creating (Godfrey, 2016; Hargreaves, 1999).

Four Aspirations for Practitioner Research For all of its perceived benefits (Labaree, 2003), it is fair to say that practitioner research is a divisive notion. Questions are raised about the research competence of practitioners, whose professional work is not to undertake research and who cannot, therefore, be expected to have the skills and knowledge needed to be effective researchers. There are also methodological concerns with suggestions that practitioner researchers, whether they have the necessary research skills or not, struggle to distance themselves from their context and work sufficiently (Labaree, 2003). There is also a view that to research one’s own practice is inherently unethical, in particular because of the problems of students being un-able to give informed consent free from influence when

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the researcher is their teacher (Hammack, 1997). At an extreme, practitioner research is seen as ‘a bastardization of science, either pure or applied’ (McWilliam, 2004: 113). But even with these, sometimes vociferous, critiques there are many who see benefits arising from practitioner research. A synthesis of these perceived benefits are presented in the following sections as four aspirations for practitioner research.

Aspiration 1: Undertaking research for practically relevant knowledge Kurt Lewin, the person most often cited as the originator of action research, stated in his seminal work that ‘research that produces nothing but books will not suffice’ (Lewin, 1946: 35). Although Lewin was, at the time, referring to the importance of socially relevant social science research, this view encapsulates the essence of this first aspiration, that any educational research should have practical relevance. Making a similar point, although specifically in education, Hargreaves (1999) has argued that schools and teachers need to be more involved in the generation of practically relevant knowledge and that ‘[t]his demand arises in part because university-based researchers have not hitherto been very successful in either the creation or dissemination of such knowledge’ (Hargreaves, 1999: 122). This first aspiration is to establish practitioner research as a way to ensure that research leads to better educational practices. This aspiration is also, in part, behind the idea of evidence-based teaching. It mirrors similar developments in medicine; indeed, Hargreaves, among others, argues that the model of research undertaken by medical professionals should represent a blueprint for developing system-wide evidence-based practices in education (Hargreaves, 1997). Hargreaves argued for the transformation both of educational research, by making teachers researchers, and educational practice, by basing practice on evidence/research (Biesta, 2007; Hargreaves, 1997). This aspiration for

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making educational research relevant for practice has also been made in defence of the adoption of randomized control trials (RCTs) in educational research, including as a part of the practices of teachers (Goldacre, 2013; Gorard, See, & Siddiqui, 2017; Slavin, 2002). In differing ways, Hargreaves and the proponents of RCTs are arguing for research to be undertaken which specifically addresses practical concerns and which results in action which teachers can implement. Establishing close links between research and practice has also been emphasized through the promotion of research impact. The use of the term ‘impact’ refers to the need for funded research to have a direct practical relevance to the wider public (Cain & Allan, 2017). But while this particular notion of impact is now commonplace in the languages of research, and while research programmes have been established using RCTs, such approaches have yet to achieve the transformation of educational practices that has been envisaged. But what does this say about the knowledge-constitutive interests at play and of the potential for practically-focused research to provide a means for challenging the reproduction of existing educational organizations? Trying to establish practical implications for research seems necessary if research is able to lead to any form of beneficial educational change.Trying to establish media by which such research can be shared and then applied across a range of different settings at least provides the potential for others to learn from and perhaps reproduce any potentially beneficial research or to apply practices which have been shown to be effective through such research. Without this communication it is hard to see how the current organization of schools can be challenged, allowing for new forms of organizing to emerge. There are, however, problems with this promotion of evidence-based practice or the equivalent. For example, while practitioners seem able to play a part in identifying what are seen as useful practices, there is not yet a parallel aspiration for them to simultaneously

comment on the forms of research which are useful. RCTs are not the only method proposed, but there are methodological constraints with the idea of trials and evidencebased practice. The first is that RCTs require a relatively well-formulated conception of a new effective practice before the implementation of the trial. The trial aims to the test efficacy. But this limits the extent to which transformational new practices can emerge, as the new seems entirely dependent on the knowledge of the old. This approach seems to limit initiatives of this sort to technical or, if applied in practice, practical forms of knowledge. As a consequence, it is more likely to reproduce existing, than to enable the emergence of new, forms of organization. As Biesta (2007: 7, emphasis in original) puts it: The idea of professional action as effective intervention suggests, first, that evidence-based practice relies upon a causal model of professional action. It is based on the idea that professional do something – they administer a treatment, they intervene in a particular situation – in order to bring about certain effects.

This view represents an instrumental notion of educational practice, one which ‘does not say anything about what an intervention is intended to bring about’ (Biesta, 2007: 7). The result is that this kind of effectiveness discourse reproduces existing conceptions of education, and associated organization. Drawing on Habermas’s theory of knowledge-constitutive interests, such a strategy suggests that this is likely to serve technical, or possibly practical, interests, and so fails to provide the mechanisms for critique required for new forms of organization to emerge.

Aspiration 2: Developing teachers and schools through practitioner research The desire to establish research which is relevant for practice is principally a question of the meaning and relevance of research to education professionals. A related issue, one more focused on education professionals

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themselves, is how research can enhance professional development. The development of teachers through practitioner research is the second aspiration to be discussed here. Those advocating this emphasize the learning which arises from undertaking research on one’s own practices. We are convinced that the disposition to study … the consequences of our own teaching is more likely to change and improve our practices than is reading about what someone else has discovered of [their] teaching. (Corey, 1953: 70)

The knowledge gained from research then provides the basis for professional development (Campbell, McNamara, & Gilroy, 2004). The emphasis is on professional learning and growth through generating knowledge of one’s own work and working contexts. This knowledge generation is situated in individuals’ practices and working context. It allows them to take control of their own learning following their interests and developing areas which are of interest to them. Professional development through practitioner research is not, therefore, something which is ‘done to’ professionals, but is something they do for themselves. The emphasis is more on selfdirected forms of lifelong learning than on training by external agents (Day, 1999). The aims of some school improvement initiatives are to exploit the professional develop­ ment benefits of practitioner research to achieve wider organizational change (Deppeler & Ainscow, 2016). These aims have been at the heart of a range of initiatives such as the ‘Improving the Quality of Education for All’ (IQEA) programme (Hopkins et  al., 1996), the national writing project (Lieberman & Wood, 2003) and networked learning communities (Hadfield, 2005). They have led to suggestions that one of the characteristics of effective or successful school improvement is that it has a commitment to inquiry (Ainscow et al., 2012; Hopkins, 2001). There are therefore some attempts to add an organizational focus to practitioner research. The belief in the individual benefits of practitioner

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research underpins its use as a strategy for organizational change. Practitioner research has been used outside the world of education, for example Coghlan (2003) has described its use in the Harewood Company, which is described as an illustrative example of inquiry for institutional change. This company was seen as being especially resistant to change and the researchers experimented with two approaches to change: one in which a small group selected their colleagues to lead change, and another which encouraged the full participation of all in the change process. What they discovered was: ‘[T]hat productivity increased at a faster rate and further beyond previous levels in groups where total participation was used as a means of introducing the change’ (Coghlan, 2003: 454). This underpins a belief in organisational benefits of participaotry (practitioner) research. The task of achieving organizational change is to see a potential for practitioner research beyond professional development and to make it a part of a broader change initiative. The secret seems to be to establish a ‘systemic’ approach (Burns, 2007) which allows different inquirers to come together to share the benefits of their work, and which establishes links to existing organizational systems. Such an approach embeds practitioner research within organizations. Using Habermas’s theory of knowledgeconstitutive interests, if the practitioners conducting practitioner research are denied the chance to choose their own areas or concern and focus for research, they are treated as technicians, addressing technical issues identified by others. If they are given the chance to examine issues of meaning to them, then the approach appears to be suitable for addressing practical issues. What is questionable is the extent to which professional development models of practitioner research are able to challenge existing forms of organization. Both technical and practical knowledge-constitutive issues are framed by current forms of organization. The use of practitioner research for professional development seems to have

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benefits (McLaughlin et al., 2007). But as a use of practitioner research, it is hard to see how such a strategy on its own can lead to the emergence of new forms of school organization. It is notable, in the example drawn from Coghlan (2003) above, that the judgement of success was framed in predefined conceptions of effectiveness. There is nothing wrong with this approach in itself, but while the effects may be spread through systemic approaches, the interests they serve seem most likely to be technical or practical and the judgement of success seem most likely to be based on existing understanding.

Aspiration 3: Reorganizing the profession, establishing research as a feature of teaching Although the focus of this chapter is on the role that practitioner research can play in understanding schools as organizations, it is appropriate to include a third aspiration, which extends some of the potential benefits of practitioner research beyond schools, and thus potentially have implications for the organization of the entire teaching profession. These wider benefits underpin the aspiration to make practitioner research a core part of the work of teachers. There are very few education systems in the world that can claim to have a research-based teaching profession. But the use of Lesson Study in Japan, and equivalents in China, and perhaps others, might be rare exceptions. As noted earlier, the idea of making teaching a research, or evidence-based, profession has been promoted by many (Hargreaves, 1999, 2000). This endeavour rests, in some respects, on a question of what it means to be a profession. To that end, in making her arguments for ‘activist professionals’, Sachs (2000) draws from Bottery (1996) in explaining that a profession has the following characteristics: expertise (the possession by an occupational group of exclusive knowledge and practice), altruism (an ethical concern by this group for its clients) and autonomy (the professional’s need and right to

exercise control over entry into and subsequent practice within, that particular occupation). (Sachs, 2000: 77)

A part of the argument is that the extent to which teaching has these three characteristics can be eroded by the restrictive political contexts in which teachers work. Research seems to provide a means by which teachers can establish expertise and, by defining the characteristics of their own work, also autonomy. Perhaps because embedding research as a part of professional characteristics is rare, bringing in a research-based dimension has been presented as being a form of ‘extended’ professionalism (for more on this concept, see Stenhouse, 1975; Strickland, 1988). Advocating for a research-based teaching profession is not to suggest that teachers and school leaders do not do research already – far from it. University programmes aimed at teachers and school leaders, like Masters and doctoral programmes, almost always, by definition, include some kind of research. A range of other initiatives, such as the National Teacher Research Panel in the UK, the ReasearchEd conferences, and numerous examples of schools working in partnership with universities, have also helped teachers to be a part of and/or undertake research themselves. All of this makes claims that teachers do not use evidence, are anti-intellectual and do not conduct research questionable at best. But the problem for establishing teaching as a research-based profession is in going beyond local, individual or small-scale initiatives and systematizing the use of research. Lesson Study certainly seems an attempt to achieve this, but another has been suggested by Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009), who propose a form of practitioner research which they term ‘inquiry as stance’. A part of their intention is to challenge the separation of ‘practice’ and ‘research’ implied by the term ‘practitioner research’. ‘Inquiry as stance’ is also meant to be distinct from the idea of research or inquiry as a project

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which only lasts for a limited period and sits alongside ‘normal’ practices (for example, in studying for a Masters degree). Instead, inquiry is a position that practitioners adopt towards their work. They inquire not because it is for accredited reward or geared towards a specific initiative, but because questioning and seeking evidence to help them understand their work and working conditions is the ‘stance’ that they take towards their work. Because this stance is a shared feature of what it means to work in education, it also means that communities of educational practitioners are also communities of inquirers. Because this stance has the potential to change relationships, a consequence is that: the work of inquiry communities is both social and political – that is, it involves making problematic the current arrangements of schooling; the ways knowledge is constructed, evaluated, and used; and teachers’ individual and collective roles in bringing about change. (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009: 289)

To establish research as a core part of the work of teachers has the potential to provide a means by which the organization of education more widely can be changed. But this change would only be possible if all of the characteristics of a profession are also achieved, that is, that the profession as a whole has the autonomy to define expertise, and the means to enact the results. Such advocacy would at least serve the practical interests of teachers and could allow for a new organization of schooling to emerge from these interests. The problem is that if the conditions of work for educators is defined by others, as often seems to be the case, any research would serve the technical interests of others, positioning teaching as an instrumental act. This positioning limits what questions can be asked and what changes can be made and seems to limit the potential for adopting research as a part of the teaching profession. However, practitioner research can also be seen as a means to directly challenge these kinds of limitations. In this, the

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aim is for practitioner research to be emancipatory, as discussed in the final, fourth, aspiration.

Aspiration 4: Reclaiming political discourses through an emancipatory ideal of practitioner research There is an idea of research, and the phrase ‘evidence-based practice’, which implies that the conduct and objects of research are neutral, free from influence and an objective measure of reality. This is a naïve view. This problem relates to the conception of educational practice and its relationships with research. As Biesta (2007) has put it, an instrumentalization of education reduces practices to treatments that have specific, predictable effects. Additional limitations of this evidence-based approach concerns ‘whose questions get put on the research agenda?’ (Sachs, 2000: 91). These concerns underpin this fourth aspiration, for practitioner research to act as an emancipatory process. This issue has especially arisen in action research literature where, drawing on Habermas, arguments have been made for a critical conception of action research (Carr & Kemmis, 1986). The aim is for action research to act not only as way to allow people to understand and change practice, but also as a means to understand the ‘rationality and justice of their own social or educational practices’ (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1982: 5). This standpoint foregrounds social justice as a goal of research. In their conception of ‘Inquiry as Stance’, Cochrane-Smith and Lytle (2009) contrast this aspiration against the standardizing effects of an instrumental approach to practitioner research: With practitioner inquiry, the larger project is not making schools into communities so test scores will go up and classroom practices will be more standardized. The larger project is about generating deeper understanding of how students learn – from the perspective of those who do the work. The larger project is about enhancing educators’ sense of social responsibility and social action in the

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service of a democratic society. (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009: 58)

Models of practitioner research that put an emphasis on technical and practical issues are believed to be limited in that they deny practitioners the chance to frame their own reality (technical) and/or to question the political aspects and resulting organization of education and of their work (both technical and practical). But while this argument, certainly in the action research literature, if not elsewhere, draws on Habermas’s critical theory, it is also believed to be able to respond to the criticism that critical theories have failed to connect to practice. Action research developed out of critical theory, and went beyond. Critical theory asked: ‘How can this situation be understood in order to change it?’ but aimed only for understanding, not for action. Action Research went into action and asked ‘How can it be changed?’ (McNiff & Whitehead, 2006: 41)

These are grand aspirations. To those who promote this critical emancipatory form of practitioner research, whether it be inquiry as stance, or action research, it allows practitioners to both reflect upon and also question the conditions of their working lives. Reflection, it is suggested, allows for practical consideration, but questioning political contexts and the justice of practice is proposed as a way to explicitly respond to emancipatory interests. In this relationship between the aspirations of critical theory, and the practices of action research, the latter is also believed to be the means by which the aspirations for change inspired by emancipatory interests can become reality. This outcome has much to do with position. It is difficult to imagine how critical scholars working in universities might be able to shape education, but while it is certainly not easy, ability to make change seems much clearer for practitioners who are able to both understand and change their own practices and the organization of their schools.

Seeing the curriculum as a medium by which education might be changed is one way that research can be connected to emancipatory interests (Grundy, 1987). Such an outcome requires what might be an unfamiliar conception of curriculum in countries where the term is used to imply nationally produced schemas for student learning. This conception of a curriculum is of a more fluid agenda for learning, which takes into account the requirements of mandated curricula, but then combines them with an understanding of the needs of students, the political contexts of their work and the ambitions teachers and learners have of their work. This perspective does not just change the ways that professionals relate curricula to their practices, but also the ways that they relate to and work with their students, as the aim is for the pedagogical approaches to be determined through dialogue. This approach draws from the ideas of critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970) and, if realized, presents a means for enabling emancipatory interests to contribute to the emergence of new organizations of schooling.

PRACTITIONER RESEARCH, KNOWLEDGE-CONSTITUTIVE INTEREST AND THE ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLING The aim of this chapter has been to show how the traditions of practitioner research can be linked to the idea of schools as organizations. This chapter has taken the position that any question about how research, practitioner or otherwise, contributes to organization must take into account the nature, forms and resulting use of knowledge, and the interests which underlie what is counted as knowledge. The argument is that Habermas’s theory of knowledge-constitutive interests (1972) shows how what is counted as knowledge is influenced by underlying interests and that these shape epistemological and ontological potions. The argument of this

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chapter is that these also subsequently influence the ways in which knowledge contributes to organization, in this instance of schools. This part of the chapter brings the discussions of research and these different fields of human interests together. It is presented in three sections, each of which addresses the three forms of human interest, namely: technical, practical and emancipatory. Each section in turn explores the link between the particular forms of interest and the place of research in schools as organizations.

it is more likely to result in reproducing existing organization than allowing the emergence of new organization. That is not to say, however, that new forms of organization cannot emerge where the focus is on technical issues. But if a new organization does emerge, the role of practitioner research in this ‘new organization’ will be, at most, to be able to make it more effective in meeting the goals and interests of others, such as school leaders and policy makers, whose vision for education underlies any change to organization.

Improving Schools Through Research: The Technical Agenda

Learning from the Interests of Practitioners: The Practical Agenda

In practitioner research arising from technical interests, practitioners are the functionaries of others’ agendas. They are unable to raise issues of their own or represent knowledge about their own practice. This position means that the potential for practitioner research to contribute to the organization of schooling is limited. Any research associated with performative systems, and which serve the interests of those systems, predetermines what counts as knowledge, what shape any research should take and what changes can or should arise as a result of any knowledge gained. Practitioners are instead judged on how well they have met these predetermined criteria. The question for practitioner research, and for the organization of schools, is then ‘How can we improve how effectively we meet these standards?’ Being effective and meeting standards are not necessarily bad things in and of themselves, but such an approach denies the opportunity for research to be a means of defining as well as applying quality criteria (Elliott, 2007). One of the outcomes of this discussion, therefore, is an understanding of how the organization of schools influences what is viewed as knowledge, what that means for practitioner research and for the potential it has to shape organization. If this shaping is based on embedding existing practices, then

Habermas entitled the second of his knowledge-constitutive interests as ‘practical interests’. Methodologically, these are represented by an interpretative, or hermeneutic, form of research (Habermas, 1972). The emphasis of practical interests is on people’s subjective experience of the world and of their work. Putting the generation of knowledge about practice in the hands of practitioners themselves is exactly what many argue practitioner research is intended to achieve (Campbell et  al., 2004; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; McLaughlin et  al., 2007). The approach has a potential to contribute to a form of organization which arises from practitioners’ own interests, rather than the interests of others, which would position practitioners as technicians. The aim of putting practical knowledge generation in the hands of practitioners themselves is laudable, but there are some challenges in linking practically concerned research with schools as organizations. The first is a challenge of scale, of systematizing the different, and potentially disparate, interests of groups of people (Burns, 2014). If the emphasis of practitioner research is on the professional interests of the practitioners themselves, then these researchers need to be free to identify issues of meaning to them. This is likely to be framed by their

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knowledge of what are shared working conditions, and so there is every likelihood that there will be some synergy of interests in any group of practitioners from the same organization. However, the organization of any group of practitioner researchers need not necessarily be related to school systems and processes, which limit the extent to which this could produce new organization. Rather, such an approach seems more likely to result in personal rather than organizational change. But there are solutions to this problem. Systemic approaches to practitioner research can be characterized as such because they establish links between different researchers, that is, there is a common collective process to practitioner research. They are also systemic in that practitioner research is linked to, and is perhaps even part of, existing organizational systems (Burns, 2007). This approach requires the leadership of inquiry, which can itself create a tension between leaders and followers, especially where practitioner research is related to performance management. But these tensions are not insurmountable and individual, practical, interests can coalesce around common interests with shared experiences of research, meaning that rather than individualizing research, people can work productively together. The role of the leader and the tensions arising from it can also be reduced by embracing the role of facilitator. The role of facilitator, and of the ‘critical friend’ (Swaffield, 2004), are commonly adopted in practitioner research, inquiry-based change, action research and networking. The intention is that the facilitator supports and helps inquiry and research to happen and can aid the translation of enhanced understanding into practices and organizational change. In this role, the facilitator should stay true to the interests of participants and not impose their own beliefs on issues (Herr & Anderson, 2005; Stringer, 1999). An additional concern relates to the critique of interpretative sociology which underpins Habermas’s work (1972). A part of the benefit

of practitioner research is that it addresses the real-world interests and problems of practitioners themselves. This characteristic means that such interests are subjectively constructed, which puts the agenda for research back in the hands of people who would use the results of research. But this kind of interpretative position is also believed to have its limitations. One problem is, as Dewey put it, that this position can lead to people being a ‘slave to [their] own blind desires’ (Dewey, 1938: 43), meaning that their interests are not themselves subject to critique. Furthermore, rooting practitioner research in small-scale work based on impression and perception is akin to trying to explain social reality through ‘episodic accounts of meaning’ (Archer, 2000). This approach can fail to explain how people’s understanding is shaped by their working and social contexts. Being small scale and working from subjective experience is part of the aims of practitioner research. However, if practitioner research is to be emancipatory, then it needs to be able to embrace multiple contexts and achieve a broader scope of change than might otherwise be possible if such practitioner research is only concerned with practical issues. The challenge is to find a way to connect the critical emancipatory interests to the particular practical concerns of practitioner researchers. This connection between critique and practical reality is one of the critiques of Habermas and, by connection, of critical action research (Elliott, 2005). The argument presented in this chapter is that the concept of ‘organization’ and the treatment of schools as organization can provide a way to achieve this connection. This argument is discussed further in the following section.

Establishing an Emancipatory Ideal of Practitioner Research The aim of this chapter has been to use Habermas’s tripartite model of knowledgeconstitutive interests to explore the place of practitioner research in understanding

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schools as organizations (Habermas, 1972). Habermas argues, first, that what is counted as being knowledge is governed by the interests of those with the authority to make that decision, and, second, that the constitutive interests can be technical, practical or emancipatory. Knowledge associated with technical interests is concerned with control. Relating this argument to education, this positions educational practitioners as technicians who are not responsible for generating knowledge themselves, but for implementing knowledge established by others. Practical interests, in contrast, are concerned with the interests of people which arise from interaction with each other. Such practical interests place knowledge in local settings, which are defined by, and so can be comprehended by, understanding their social features. This intention is the principal goal of interpretative sociology and entails understanding both the experiences of individuals and how they relate to each other. The problems with researching technical and practical issues are, in the first instance, that practitioners have limited opportunity to identify what matters to them, and, in the second inistance, that being rooted in personal interests fails to address broader problems. Practical interests are rooted in perceptions, but in doing so can fail to challenge preconceptions. The focus on individuals can also limit the potential scope for collaboration. Both technical and practical interests are principally concerned with understanding through research. Any link to schools as organizations arises only through the implications of any knowledge gained. Because the starting point is the school as organization, the extent to which new forms of organization can emerge directly from research is limited. Research can lead to new forms of organization only indirectly. The technification of education also limits the extent to which practitioners are able to address issues of direct meaning to them, and to define practices which arise from any new knowledge gained from research. In research addressing

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technical interests, control lies in the hands of someone other than the practitioners, limiting voluntarism and choice, which are central to the ideals of practitioner research (Day & Townsend, 2009). As well as contradicting some of the principles on which practitioner research is founded, research serving technical and practical interests has limited potential for changing organization. Technical interests are concerned with improving the efficiency of practices within, but often defined outside, the organizations. While practical interests address the perceptions of and relationships between people within organizations. Both are rooted in predetermined notions of how schools are, or should be, organized and, as a consequence, are more likely to reinforce and reproduce existing organization than lead to the emergence of a new organization of schooling. The third of Habermas’s knowledge-constitutive interests is intended to respond to the problems of technical and practical interests. It also presents a different way of thinking about the relationship between practitioner research and organization, one which might allow the emergence of new organization and would also be consistent with the values underpinning practitioner research (Day & Townsend, 2009). The values underlying practice are central to emancipatory interests which seek to question not only the rationality of practice (as would technical and practical interests), but also the justice of those practices and of the working contexts in which they are implemented (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1982). This approach is built on a combination of reflection and critique, where existing organization and practices are explicitly studied and questioned. It has the potential to change the relationship between practitioner research and school organization. Technical interests may result in practitioner researchers being positioned as technicians for someone else’s vision of education and organization. A focus on practical interests may result in the realization of personal goals but without a complementary understanding of the

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contexts of experience. A focus on both interests seems more likely to make practitioner research a means of implementing predetermined practices and to therefore reproduce existing organization forms. Establishing a critical position for research, where existing structures and underlying assumptions are questioned, challenges existing organization. If practitioner research includes this critical component and also realizes the aspiration for new knowledge to lead to change, it provides a mechanism through which new organization can emerge. The concept of emancipation can be contentious. It is used to refer to attempts to free people from oppression. But, among other areas, emancipation is a commonly used notion in critical theory (Thomas, 1999). Referring to practitioner research as being emancipatory might seem a bit of a stretch. In many countries, teachers are respected and at least reasonably well paid. But as a concept, its use in research implies that people are being freed from some kind of oppressing context, however defined. For teachers, this can refer to being oppressed by being denied the ability to question and select their own practices, consistent with their own vision for education. Research addressing technical interests might well reinforce prescribed practices, which could also remain unchallenged by research addressing practical interests. Research addressing emancipatory interests would provide a means by which practitioners can define these interests for themselves. This provides people with the opportunity to define issues for themselves. It is emancipatory in that it allows them freedom of intelligence, as described by Dewey (1938: 61): ‘The only freedom that is of enduring importance is freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worthwhile.’ Providing a freedom of intelligence in practitioner research allows knowledge and practices to be determined by the practitioner researchers viewing inquiry as a good in and

of itself (Coghlan, 2003). The argument is that this approach would enable teachers to achieve some of the features of professionalism, in particular by having the autonomy to define their own expertise (Sachs, 2000). These are grand aspirations, which seem distant from the classrooms and schools where practices are located. Even if the aims of many teachers are synonymous with emancipatory interests (to make a difference, etc.), these are understood and enacted on a local level. This gap between the realities of practice and the abstraction of emancipatory ideals is one of the critiques of Habermas and of the people who have used his concepts of knowledge-constitutive interests in action research (Elliott, 2005). The question is therefore whether the freedom of intelligence associated with emancipatory interests can lead to changes not only in knowledge, but also in organization. Understanding schools as organizations provides a means by which practitioner research can bridge this gap, as research geared towards organization has a direct practical application. This argument raises questions about how schools as organizations can encourage and foster practitioner research. But in trying to achieve change which remains true to emancipatory interests, it also raises questions about how the organization of schools can change in the light of knowledge gained through practitioner research.

CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A CONCEPTION OF PRACTITIONER RESEARCH FOR ORGANIZATIONAL EMERGENCE One of the long-running discussions of practitioner research relates to how it can be both practically relevant and achieve broader aspirations for critical, emancipatory change (Carr & Kemmis, 1986). Many have commentated on this issue, with some suggesting that the conceptual arguments for critique lack

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practical applicability (Elliott, 2005). Others have tried to show that it is indeed possible to have a practical application of critical emancipatory interests (Noffke et al., 1995). What has been missing from these discussions is an explanation of how the knowledge and change concerned with local practice can result in wider changes. The argument of this chapter is that a conception of organization can both help to connect the apparently abstract aspirations of critical theory with the desire for concrete change and can also allow this to build wider impacts from local change. Central to this is the idea of organization as something which emerges from social interaction (Goldstein, 1999). This challenges conceptions of practitioner researchers as reproductive agents of existing systems and requires both critique and action. The goal is for practitioner research to produce knowledge which can result in the emergence of news organizational forms of education. In order to achieve that, research needs to be understood as a socially generative activity that is capable of challenging the status quo and establishing new ways of both understanding and organization.

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action research. Management Learning, 34: 2003. Davies, P. (1999). What is evidence-based education? British Journal of Educational Studies, 47: 108–121. Day, C. (1999). Developing teachers: The challenge of lifelong learning. London: Falmer Press. Day, C., & Townsend, A. (2009). Practitioner action research: Building and sustaining success through networked learning communities. In S. Noffke & B. Somekh (Eds.), The Sage handbook of educational action research. London: Sage. Deppeler, J., & Ainscow, M. (2016). Using inquiry-based approaches for equitable school improvement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 27: 1–6. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan. Elliott, J. (2005). Becoming critical: The failure to connect. Educational Action Research, 13: 359–374. Elliott, J. (2007). Assessing the quality of action research. Research Papers in Education, 22: 229–246. Fals-Borda, O. (2001). Participatory (action) research in social theory: Origins and challenges. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice (pp. 27–37). London: Sage. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin. Godfrey D. (2016) Leadership of schools as research-led organisations in the English educational environment: cultivating a research-engaged school culture. Educational Management Administration & Leadership 44: 301–321. Goldacre, B. (2013). Building evidence into education. London: Department for Education. Goldstein, J. (1999). Emergence as a construct: History and issues. Emergence, 1: 49–72. Gorard, S., See, B. H., & Siddiqui, N. (2017). The trials of evidence-based education: The promises, opportunities and problems of trials in education. London: Taylor & Francis. Grundy, S. (1987). Curriculum: Product or praxis. London: Falmer Press.

Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests. Trans. J. J. Shapiro. London: Heinmann. Hadfield, M. (2005). From networking to school networks to networked learning: The challenge for the networked learning communities programme. In W. Veugelers & M. J. O’Hair (Eds.), Network learning for educational change. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press. Hammack, F. M. (1997). Ethical issues in teacher research. Teachers College Record, 99: 247–265. Hargreaves, D. (1997). In defence of research for evidence-based practice: A rejoiner to Martyn Hammersley. British Educational Research Journal, 23: 405–419. Hargreaves, D. (1999). The knowledge creating school. British Journal of Educational Studies, 17: 122–142. Hargreaves, D. (2000). Teaching as a researchbased profession: Possibilities and prospects. In B. Moon, J. Butcher, & E. Bird (Eds.), Leading professional development in education (pp. 200–210). London: Routledge Falmer. Herr, K., & Anderson, G. (2005). The action research dissertation: A guide for students and faculty. London: Sage. Hollis, M. (1994). The philosophy of social science: An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hopkins, D. (2001). School improvement for real. London: Routledge Falmer. Hopkins, D., West, M., & Ainscow, M. (1996). Improving the quality of education for all. Exeter: David Fulton. Kemmis, S. (2009). Action research as a ­practice-based practice. Educational Action Research, 17: 463–474. Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (1982). The action research planner (2nd ed.). Geelong, Vic.: Deakin University Press. Labaree, D. F. (2003). The peculiar problems of preparing educational researchers. Educational Researcher, 32: 13–22. Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. Journal of Social Issues, 2: 34–46. Lieberman, A., & Wood, D. R. (2003). Inside the National Writing Project: Connecting network learning and classroom teaching. New York: Teachers College Press.

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McLaughlin, C., Black-Hawkins, K., McIntyre, D., et  al. (2007). Networking practitioner research. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. McNiff, J., & Whitehead, J. (2006). All you need to know about action research. London: Sage. McWilliam, E. (2004). W(h)ither practitioner research. The Australian Educational Researcher, 31: 113–126. Midgley, G. (1995). What is this thing called CRITICAL systems thinking? In K. Ellis, A. Gregory, B. R. Mears-Young, et  al. (Eds.), Critical issues in systems theory and practice (pp. 61–71). Boston, MA: Springer US. Noffke, S. (2005). Are we critical yet? Some thoughts on reading, rereading, and becoming critical. Educational Action Research, 13: 321–328. Noffke, S., Stevenson, R. B., & Cochran-Smith, M. (1995). Educational action research: Becoming practically critical. New York: Teachers College Press. Reason, P., & Bradbury, H. (2001). Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice. London: Sage.

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Sachs, J. (2000). The activist professional. Journal of Educational Change, 1: 77–95. Sawyer, R. K. (2001). Emergence in sociology: Contemporary philosophy of mind and some implications for sociological theory. American Journal of Sociology, 107: 551–585. Schön, D. A. (1970). Lecture 2: Dynamic Conservatism. Reith Lectures 1970: Change and Industrial Society. London: BBC. Slavin, R. E. (2002). Evidence-based education policies: Transforming educational practice and research. Educational Researcher, 31: 15–21. Stenhouse, L. (1975). An introduction to curriculum research and development. London: Heinemann. Strickland, D. S. (1988). The teacher as researcher: Toward the extended professional. Language Arts, 65: 754–764. Stringer, E. T. (1999). Action research. London: Sage. Swaffield, S. (2004). Critical friends: Supporting leadership, improving learning. Improving Schools, 7: 267–278. Thomas, P. (1999). Critical theories in education. London: Routledge.

38 Critical Issues for the Study of School Improvement: Contributions from a Research Program in Chile1 Cristián Bellei, Liliana Morawietz, Juan Pablo Va l e n z u e l a a n d X a v i e r Va n n i

This chapter is based on the experience of a research program on educational effectiveness and improvement developed in Chile mainly during the last decade. During this process, we faced important conceptual and methodological challenges, some of which are identified and discussed in this chapter. We believe that many researchers studying similar issues share these difficulties, which have emerged as part of the current general demand for educational change in schools and our efforts to study schools as organizations. The main goal is to understand how teachers and school administrators face the demands to transform the internal processes of schools in the current environment, one which is created by educational policies and the local context. For this purpose, we developed a series of studies using multiple case studies based on a qualitative approach, which was complemented in different ways by quantitative analysis, resulting in a mixed method research program. Specifically, the first study focused on schools located in poor areas that consistently

obtained academic achievements higher than schools in comparable situations (Bellei et  al., 2004). The study sought to identify the internal processes of schools that made them capable of compensating for the disadvantages of their environment. This research on especially effective schools showed the importance of extremely systematic and intense pedagogical work, good communication between teachers and students to create a favorable climate for teaching and learning, and the institutional value of symbolic and social capital expressed in a school culture that provides motivation and meaning while facilitating collective efforts. In order to study the factors that explain the different degrees of sustainability of school effectiveness in the long term, we replicated the case studies in the same schools ten years later, which allowed us to contrast their current situation with that in the original study (Bellei et al., 2015). This follow-up study showed how the decisions of the school’s administration (especially if school administrators gave political, technical

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and financial support to ensure the sustainability of the school’s achievements – something that was difficult for public schools), as well as changes in the local context and educational policies, decisively affected the course taken by schools, depending on the degree to which teachers and administrators were able to process these changes without destabilizing their p­ edagogical-curricular work and school culture. Given the difficulties shown by most schools in improving according to the expectations of educational policies, Chilean policymakers began to intensively promote the use of external institutions and consultants to introduce innovations in schools. Estimates of the impact of this externally driven change showed that it had a small, but temporary positive effect, which qualitative studies showed was largely explained by the difficulty of schools in developing autonomous capacities (Osses, Bellei, & Valenzuela, 2015). Finally, to better understand the internal factors at work in the schools that were able to create processes of sustained school improvement, we studied a group of schools that showed significant improvements in their performance, according to an index that allowed us to compare them during the period 2002– 2012 (Bellei et  al., 2014). In this research we identified and conceptualized different trajectories of improvement that the schools followed, according to aspects such as the degree of complexity of their strategies for change, the scope of their learning goals, the quality of the professional teaching culture, and – above all – the degree of institutionalization of their improvement processes. Certainly, although the basic features of the school as an organization are widely shared from a comparative international perspective, which is one of the most remarkable aspects of education as a social institution, the institutional and policy contexts in which they are inserted vary greatly between countries and significantly affect the internal dynamics mentioned above. During the period studied, roughly since the beginning of the 21st

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century, the Chilean context could be characterized as a strongly decentralized educational system. Public schools are administered by the local government and private schools are independently managed. Market reforms introduced in an institutional restructuring that began in 1980 included a universal voucher system that promotes competition between schools, both public and private – including for-profit schools – and the choice of schools by families. The Chilean system is also characterized by poor academic performance, high inequality in achievement, and high social segregation among schools. In this scenario, with the purpose of improving the quality of education and in particular increasing academic achievements, the Ministry of Education has implemented a series of educational policies, including a curricular reform, a significant increase in school time, important investments in equipment and learning resources for schools, and massive teacher development programs. In addition, there has been an increasingly intensive use of standardized tests as a mechanism of accountability, both through the market in the publication of rankings to guide parent preferences as well as through institutional channels, which include sanctions and incentives for schools and teachers associated with the tests (Bellei & Vanni, 2015). In other words, in this period, Chilean schools have been under enormous pressure to improve their performance, which explains the importance of studying how they have responded. In the rest of this chapter, we reflect on six critical challenges we have identified in the course of our research program, how we have faced them, and their implications for this field of study.

DEFINING SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND TRACING CHANGE OVER TIME At the international level, there are few studies about the medium and long-term trajectories of school effectiveness and the

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improvement of educational institutions. This is mainly due to the absence of comparable data over time on the different achievements and contexts in which schools perform, as well as their internal processes. The Chilean school system is distinct from most other countries in this regard. The Ministry of Education produces large databases at the student and school levels, which are comparable over time since 1999, making it possible to systematize longitudinal data about school results and local contexts. However, these data do not provide information about the progress of students of a certain cohort since the standardized tests for reading, mathematics, and science are only applied in some grades, which means the progress of schools at a certain grade level can be tracked over time, but only by considering different cohorts of students. These databases have provided us with information about every school in the country for at least a decade, which has facilitated the tracking of different indicators of results and the social contexts of students in thousands of Chilean schools from early 2000 to the present. As a result, it is possible to answer critical questions regarding the size and characteristics of schools that show improvement trajectories, as well as determining if these improvements tend to be sustainable, or, as in some other educational systems, whether schools have great difficulty in improving their original performance level (Gray et al., 1995; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993), especially those that are less effective (Gray, Goldstein, & Thomas, 2003). Meanwhile, many schools show high levels of volatility over longer periods, such as a decade (Doolard, 2002; Mangan, Pugha, & Gray, 2005), and their improvements are unstable and of short term, which is also observed in Chile among effective schools working in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas (Razcynski & Muñoz, 2006). Nevertheless, longitudinal data on academic achievement has an important limitation. One of the main criticisms of studies

on effective schools is the concept of school effectiveness (Chapman et al., 2015), which is mainly restricted to academic achievement measured by standardized tests in reading and mathematics, leaving out other social or emotional aspects of education (Townsend, MacBeath, & Bogotch, 2015). Indeed, the dominant view of school effectiveness over the last 50 years has been based on tests in these subject areas (Gorard, 2011), not only in terms of research, but also in educational policy. The testing of academic performance in core disciplines is critical, given that test results show a high correlation with performance in other areas of the curriculum. However, it must be recognized that ‘Education should prepare students for life. This includes stimulating their personal development, citizenship and readiness for the labor market. Assessing the extent to which these goals are accomplished is essential’ (Luyten et al., 2005: 253). In response to criticism of the restricted definition of school effectiveness, we developed a School Performance Index (IDE, in Spanish). As described previously, the studies followed a sequential, mixed methods strategy with a broader quantitative analysis, followed by a qualitative analysis by conducting case studies. In the quantitative component, the development of a longitudinal study of school performance indicators was certainly limited by the existence of comparable information over time, which in Chile is mainly determined by the results of the School Quality Measurement System (SIMCE, in Spanish), composed of standardized tests in reading, mathematics and science. Therefore, we created IDE to synthetize a large set of measures at the school level. IDE is based on 10 annual indicators from institutions with 15 or more students in fourth grade, which help to understand various aspects of school effectiveness. The indicators selected, based on statistical analyses, are: (1) school effectiveness (average SIMCE test results in reading and mathematics), (2) relative school effectiveness (where

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each school’s SIMCE results are compared to the national average while controlling for the socioeconomic, cultural, and institutional attributes of each school), (3) internal efficiency (considering retention and repetition rates of students), (4) relative equity (recognizing that better and more homogeneous educational achievements among all students is desirable), and (5) absolute equity (considering the percentage of students in the school who perform above insufficient level of reading and mathematics) (Valenzuela, Bellei, & Allende, 2016). Despite this effort, many issues related to the skills and abilities children and young people are expected to develop in the school system, as well as to the management of relevant processes for school improvement, were not included in the studies due to the lack of sufficient information. In addition, despite the diversity of indicators used, more than 50% of the total weight of the IDE comes from the evolution of the average SIMCE scores in reading and mathematics, reflecting the high correlation between the different indicators. Although the repetition and dropout rates, which are very important for the equality of educational opportunities, did not have a strong weighting in the IDE on average, they were maintained in the study not only for theoretical reasons, but also because repetition and drop-out had huge relevance to the observed improvement trajectories of lower performing schools. The results observed in Chile show that the expected performance of schools is highly conditioned by the socioeconomic status of their students. In this regard, many of the best performing schools that serve students from low-income families obtain unsatisfactory achievements, which are similar to those obtained by lower performing schools serving children from medium and high-income families. Finally, contrasting results are observed in performance trajectories: while 41.2% of the schools improved their IDE during the decade, another 25.2% saw their effectiveness deteriorate, implying that part of the

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improvement of some institutions is offset by the deterioration of others. Moreover, a comprehensive and sustainable improvement trajectory – defined as improvement in both reading and mathematics where the IDE does not show a random annual variation, and the progress in one period is maintained in the following periods – is rare among Chilean schools, with only 9% of the total showing this kind of trajectory. The fact that this trend occurs more frequently among low socioeconomic status (SES) schools has helped to reduce the extreme inequality in educational opportunities observed in the Chilean educational system. However, the study of highly effective schools working in lowincome areas 10 years later showed that only half of schools maintained or improved their previous level of performance. If it is a huge challenge for a school to achieve high performance, sustaining this condition over time is even more difficult (Bellei et al., 2015).

PROCESSES AND RESULTS IN SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT STUDIES The problem of reductionism in studies of school effectiveness and improvement is even more conceptually complex. In the classic Stufflebeam’s evaluation model of Context, Input, Process, and Product (CIPP), student learning, defined in its broadest and most comprehensive form, has a clear epistemological ‘end’, and all the processes that occur within the school are seen as ‘means’ to this end (Scheerens, 2000). This practical vision of the process–product relationship in the school makes sense given that institutionalized education is seen as a rationally organized process to satisfy the right to education of children and young people, which is a right that is ultimately not satisfied if they do not develop the skills or acquire the abilities and knowledge that society has defined as relevant. In other words, the school is

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mandated to organize the ‘opportunity to learn’ of the younger generation with the purpose of guaranteeing its ‘right to learn’. Considering students’ learning as a criterion in studying the means-to-end relationship in the school is a way of recognizing this fundamental conceptualization of education as a social institution. One methodological consequence of this conceptualization for the study of school effectiveness is relatively obvious: a learning achievement is first observed, and only then the factors that produce the achievement are identified. The paradigm for an approach of this type is the statistical method that applies the model of production functions to predict scores in academic tests based on independent variables. The implications of this frame of reference can be more significant for research on school improvement since improvement is considered to be only those changes that ultimately lead to increasing the observed learning of students. The systematic discussion of epistemological questions, and the methodological difficulties of assuming both perspectives, exceed the scope of this chapter (see Reynolds et al., 2014; Scheerens, 2016; Teddlie, Reynolds, & Sammons, 2000), but it is important to take a position in this debate and to highlight some of the decisions we have made in this regard, in order to show that our research program departs from this simplified vision of the relationship between school processes and learning outcomes. First, given that we are aware that standardized evaluation scores do not allow us to observe large sections of the relevant learnings that students are expected to acquire through their education, we considered qualitative studies as a significant source of information. Our case studies broadly document aspects of a student’s school experience that – to use the CIPP nomenclature – we consider are valuable ‘products’ of their education. For example, we have seen how students who participate in extracurricular activities are motivated with their school work and identify with their school, which impacts on

their overall performance, while developing artistic, sport, or scientific talents that are not always emphasized in the classroom. In addition, we have documented science and math classes in which teachers challenge their students using a problem-solving methodology, encouraging critical thinking and other higher-order intellectual abilities. In these cases, the evidence of achievements is based on our observations and the perceptions of students and teachers. Given that the reliability of this evidence is always uncertain, as is the validity of achievements based on standardized tests, we chose to combine the quantitative and qualitative approaches rather than relying completely on either one with their respective potential biases and limitations. The key here is that we do not need a standardized measurement to consider ‘outcomes’ aspects that can only be observed qualitatively in schools. The qualitative observation of learning, which is defined as broadly as possible, in schools where there is also standardized academic testing poses an important challenge: the issue of consistency. In many of the schools studied, we documented the synergy between learning aspects observed through different methods. But what happens when numbers and words do not match in the mixed-method studies? Strictly speaking, we share the expectation of convergence between different aspects of learning based on considering comprehensive learning outcomes above more narrow learning outcomes. But examples of asynchrony are very common in education and this has also been the case in our studies (which is intellectually interesting). It is important to note that asynchrony also occurs in standardized tests, which is commonly solved by composing indexes, but this is only a practical solution. Our approach to this has been to make asynchrony part of the study, asking questions such as why it is that the focus of some schools on increasing academic performance delays the socioemotional, artistic, or sport development of their students and questioning what the

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consequences of that decision might involve. Given that we studied schools at very different levels of academic performance and not only high-achieving schools, we have also been able to compare this tension at all levels. An interesting aspect which we have been particularly sensitive to observe is whether teachers, students, and families notice this asynchrony and how they interpret it, with an important finding being that in high-performing schools the school community tends to resent the lack of comprehensive learning. In addition, given that in our studies we sampled schools taking into account academic performance (this being a sine qua non of our concept of school achievement), we have tended not to observe empirical cases of schools with very low academic effectiveness but very high effectiveness in other areas of learning, although it would certainly be interesting to do so. Finally, our qualitative studies are also (or mainly, one could say) a valuable source of information about processes that occur in schools, which cannot be studied in all their complexity through standardized measurements. At a fundamental level, these processes, documented with a great deal of detail, constitute an explanatory source to understand the organizational, cultural, interpersonal, and pedagogical conditions that generate better and richer learning opportunities, which, hypothetically, produce better academic performance, as well as the other qualitatively observed learning outcomes. But this evidence supporting an instrumental means-to-an-end relationship is not the only explanation supported by qualitative evidence of school processes from our research. On the one hand, given that we have a theory about ‘good education’ and normative criteria about social interaction, especially how adults should treat children, not every process that is effective in producing academic learning is considered a finding about the quality of education. As a result, we have considered schools in which the pedagogical approach is very authoritarian, rigid, and intolerant, or

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in which the increase of results in external evaluations has been at the cost of narrowing the curriculum by reducing the time assigned to disciplines not evaluated, as examples of this trade-off, which is widespread in some educational systems and may even directly impoverish the education offered to students. We discuss these cases of what we call ‘­spurious improvement’ below. Considering that social sciences and professional knowledge do not allow to lay down fixed and decontextualized causal relationships, we do not expect to explain all school processes as an explanatory factor of learning outcomes. Given that schools are places of coexistence among students and teachers, it is important for us to establish the criteria about what we expect to observe in a ‘good school’, even if it is at a very abstract level. Therefore, for example, care for the general welfare of the students, good working conditions of the staff, a healthy relationship between the actors, respect and feelings of security, self-esteem and sense of purpose (to name a few), are processes that we consider are results of school improvement. This is because we are convinced that these aspects constitute in themselves a positive educational experience that every child and young person should have. As a result, when in some cases we have seen disparity between these types of processes and academic achievements, we have not questioned our theory about what represents a ‘good education’ or adopted unreservedly the aforementioned instrumental model, but we have reflected about the observed asynchrony, even questioning the prevailing educational model for school improvement.

DIFFERENT IMPROVEMENT TRAJECTORIES Research on effective schools in low-income areas has produced important contributions to help us understand the factors associated

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with their improvement and characteristics. However, a great weakness of almost all of these studies is that they do not account for the conditions, factors, and strategies that allowed these schools to improve and become effective over time. As Reynolds and Teddlie (2000) point out, these schools have contexts, characteristics structural conditions, and cultural elements that do not exist or are very different in schools with other levels of development, so trying to replicate their characteristics and strategies in other schools constitutes, in many cases, an unreasonable or unattainable goal. In this regard, Hopkins (2001, 2007) has argued that there are different stages of development in the improvement of schools or in their deterioration, and that different strategies are required to improve schools with varying levels of effectiveness, since the challenges and needs of each school are associated with its improvement trajectory. The ideal methodological design to address this challenge would be to study the improvement of schools in real time in the medium or long term (Hopkins, Reynolds, & Gray, 1999). However, this implies costs that are difficult to manage and periods that exceed the limits of the majority of research funding available. An additional difficulty would be to identify cases in which there is some level of certainty that there will be real improvement or deterioration. Therefore, the methodological strategy that we used in our research on improvement could be described as a retrospective longitudinal study (Gustafsson, 2010). First, we selected schools that showed a significant and systematic improvement of their educational results over a decade based on data related to educational outcomes and context, but whose starting points or levels of effectiveness were very different. Then, in these schools, we carried out in-depth case studies, trying to reconstruct their trajectory of improvement over the last 10 years. To carry out a cross-sectional analysis of the cases, and understand the dynamics of the improvement trajectories followed

by schools, we identified eight key aspects based on the literature available and our own empirical analysis of these cases: • Types of improvement strategies (tactics, strategies, development capacities) • Focus on teaching and learning priorities • Institutional culture: Identity and symbolic capital of the school • Professional culture among teachers: Internal accountability • Level of school performance • Duration of the improvement process • Context: Level of support for school improvement • Degree of institutionalization of school ­improvement

This allowed us to identify four different trajectories of school improvement. We call the first one ‘restricted improvement’ because in this case its unique goal is to implement specific tactics with a focus on standardized academic tests (like repeated practice for the test), so it can also be considered improvement that only exists on test scores. The second trajectory, ‘incipient improvement’, is based on changes designed to restructure the whole set of school processes. The third trajectory identified are those cases in which school improvement is still ‘in the process of institutionalization’: the level of institutionalization is still partial or dependent on school leadership team. It is precisely in the cases where school improvement is ‘institutionalized’ that schools achieve the highest levels of educational effectiveness, which represents the fourth type of trajectory (Bellei et al., 2016). The last three trajectories identified can be interpreted sequentially or hierarchically. In concrete terms, what defines their evolution is, on the one hand, the degree of complexity of the strategies for improvement and scope of learning to which these strategies are directed and, on the other hand, the level of institutionalization of the improvement tools and the importance of teachers’ professionalism. Multidimensional strategies, designed to produce comprehensive educational experiences

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promoted by teams of professional teachers, represent the highest point of the trajectories of school improvement that we observed. In the cases studied, the development of these conditions is associated – among several other aspects – with the duration of the improvement processes. However, it is important to note that several schools began at a zero stage of improvement, which meant processes of institutional restructuring were required to normalize their functioning as a necessary condition for classroom teaching/ learning and progress towards other stages. The criteria used in the analysis point to key dimensions of school improvement that can be seen as a sequential level, although their combination to produce the expected trajectory is not mechanical. These are complex configurations, which in practice show imbalances and asynchronies in their levels of progress. The result is a range of trajectories covering different improvement processes, which also highlights the limitations and challenges that schools face in different stages of their trajectories. The findings of this research are relevant in understanding the dynamics and complexities of improvement processes and in helping to replace the widely held, static view of school effectiveness and linear improvement. They could also help to promote the design of differentiated policies and more contextualized support programs for schools, instead of the generic or standardized strategies that are typical of educational support programs. Of course, the strategy has some limitations, which future research should try to address. First, although the findings of the case studies provide a rich and detailed description of the improvement processes experienced by the schools, caution should be taken in making generalizations based on these findings. For this reason, it would be useful to collect longitudinal quantitative data about school processes in order to complement the existing data on academic results and allow the testing of some of the findings on a larger scale. Additionally, the task of

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studying the improvement of schools remains a huge challenge, which we must continue to work on by monitoring school processes at different times of the school year, not just every decade – which is a too long period for schools – and by using ethnographic techniques to observe certain school dynamics, such as teacher council or management meetings, in a more direct and detailed way.

IMPROVEMENT AS A LONG-TERM PROCESS: TRACING THE HISTORY OF EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS A key decision in our approach in the case studies has been to address not only the current situation of the schools, but also their trajectory of change over a relatively long period of time. In the case of improvement studies, this period was determined by the years for which the data showed a process of sustained improvement, usually since the beginning of the 2000s. In our study on the sustainability of school effectiveness, this period was determined by the lapse between the original study and the time of the second, follow-up, study, just over a decade later. This strategy has allowed us to study the factors that explain the effectiveness trajectories of these schools, an aspect that has long been addressed in school effectiveness research that analyzes the stability of school improvement over time (Dumay, Coe, & Anumendem, 2014; Kyriakides & Creemers, 2008). This objective is one of the reasons why we carried out case studies from a qualitative perspective, and not cross-sectional surveys (Hallinger & Heck, 2011). In the case studies, the history of the organization and its processes were addressed through specific instruments, including group interviews with the longest-serving teachers, and interviews with external actors or former staff members who had a long-term vision for the school without necessarily being directly linked to it at the time of the study. Typically,

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these actors were former teachers, administrators, or supervisors of the school. Given that the reconstruction of the institutional history based on stories presents potential significant biases, the study was complemented by analysis of relevant documents, such as the educational institutional program of the school (an official document describing all areas of school functioning) in its different versions, and other school official documents that may be reformulated over time (such as the disciplinary manual, improvement plans, or the integration project). As a result, the question about the long-term view of organizational change was always present in our dialogues and observations of the schools studied. In general, by taking a historical approach, we explained organizational and institutional factors and processes associated with the improvement, sustainability, or deterioration of the effectiveness of schools, especially those that have to do with the effect of leadership over time, fragmentation within the community of teachers, the school’s link with the local community, and the effects – desired or not – of the implementation of certain policies and programs. Of these, one aspect in which the effect over time is clearly shown has to do with the school principals, especially their continuity and succession. Many of the trajectories of improvement that we have studied began with a change of the school leaders, and many others deteriorate when a principal departs, which is associated with an unsuccessful succession or a leader who fails to find support within the educational community. Indeed, the period surrounding a change in management, including the succession and selection of a new principal, is one of the most critical moments in the life of a school. This approach has allowed us to understand the development of the schools through longterm processes, as well as having a framework in which to interpret apparently isolated events associated with changes in school trajectories, such as the consequences of abrupt

changes in the composition of the teaching staff, or the undesired effects associated with the implementation of certain programs. In particular, this research has highlighted the dynamics of the relationship between the school and the local community, which is affected by the dynamics of the local education market. For example, we have determined that the opening of a new school can have a transformative effect on enrollment, given that the market is highly dynamic and is affected by even small changes perceived by the community regarding the quality of the school, both in terms of academic results and school climate.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LOCAL CONTEXT AND EDUCATIONAL POLICIES Studies of trajectories of school improvement, including the sustainability of school effectiveness serving disadvantaged populations, have focused on the school as the center of the improvement process (Creemers et al., 2007). For this reason, the most important research questions focused on identifying the institutional characteristics and conditions that led to these results, using an in-depth analysis of specific cases (Bellei et al., 2014, 2015). However, research on school effectiveness and improvement has been the target of some criticism (Thrupp, Lupton, & Brown, 2007; Wrigley, 2004). One of the most important criticisms is the lack of consideration of variables related to the school’s local context (such as social and political aspects, and sociocultural differences), and in particular its complex relationship with improvement processes, especially in schools serving lowincome students. In addition, schools may be affected by migration policies, the characteristics of their neighborhoods, the ability to attract and retain students, as well as the student’s own talent and previous performance

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(Gorard, 2011). However, these restrictions should not become excuses for low expectations in the opportunities of students or inequitable education according to stereotypes of race, class or gender (Thrupp et al., 2007). In this framework, the studies of the performance of each school not only considered indicators that controlled for the individual and aggregated socioeconomic attributes of the families, but also for the evolution of the trajectories of improvement according to the socioeconomic level of the schools. In this regard, we concluded that trajectories are more favorable for the schools serving the most socioeconomically disadvantaged student populations of the country, although their improvement presented more temporal instability than among those in medium and high socioeconomic groups (Valenzuela et al., 2016). In order for the case studies to contribute to our understanding of the processes of improvement, in participating schools students were not selected according to academic or social factors, and co-payment mechanisms were nonexistent or reduced, thereby ensuring that the trajectories observed were not mainly explained by social or academic selection. Also, to recognize the importance of the local context for educational improvement, the study gathered information from actors in the school community about factors that could have positively or negatively affected the institution’s trajectory in three main areas. The first refers to the social context, especially associated with the economic, labor, and risk attributes of the families and the territory where the school is located, as well as the dynamics of the educational offer in that area, which is a critical issue in Chile. The case studies of effective schools that sustained this condition for over a decade show that the leadership of the management team, as well as the commitment of the community of teachers, and the effective use of educational policies are critical factors to adapt to these changing scenarios and to maintain a

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high standard of performance. The second area focuses on the owner of the school or the local administration and institutions responsible for the educational service. In this dimension, being part of a network of public or private schools, being not-for-profit, and having a high degree of autonomy granted to the leadership teams for decision making are factors that positively affect the possibility of initiating and sustaining improvement processes. A third factor analyzed in terms of the local context was the relationship between families and schools in their improvement processes. In most cases there existed a sense of community, reduced levels of conflict and fluid communication in the schools that showed improvements, but the family was not a significant factor in the explanation of the positive trajectory, and there was a deterioration in the involvement of the parents in the learning process among effective schools with respect to the previous decade. However, maintaining or improving the school’s status and the confidence of the parents are critical to the processes of school effectiveness, as this directly affects the development of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities of children, given their permanence in the schools for several years, as well as the retention of effective school leaders and teachers who are committed to the school project. Another important factor related to the trajectories of educational improvement is related to the institutional policies that affect the entire school system. At a comparative level, in recent years the focus of research has shifted from effective schools to the effectiveness of educational systems, and to more systemic and dynamic models of improvement, which include context variables and factors at the level of the educational system, the school, and the classroom (Creemers & Kyriakides, 2008; Hopkins, 2017). This has meant a virtual shift in the understanding of processes of educational improvement from changes in individual schools towards reforms that affect networks of schools or

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local areas where these are inserted, and a more systemic approach that considers the importance of the educational support network for schools, as well as national and local policies that affect them (Reynolds et  al., 2014). This implies that the improvement of school systems should not be expected as the sole result of the internal decisions of some motivated schools, since they will always be a small portion of the whole system. In this framework, we identified national policies as being important in the trajectories of schools, but they are not enough to trigger and sustain improvement processes in the medium term, since this only happens when policies are complemented with internal conditions for improvement, in particular, effective school leadership. Schools made strategic and selective use of external improvement policies, adopting only those that were considered most useful for them, avoiding teacher distraction and the disturbance of internal dynamics at school. This function of policy intermediary and filter seems to be one of the most important roles played by school leaders. However, one education policy that none of the studied schools could avoid is the increasing importance placed on standardized testing (SIMCE) as a quality control and accountability mechanism. At several schools, the fact that they originally scored poorly on the SIMCE tests acted as a trigger for their improvement processes. In the majority of cases, the SIMCE results and their publication also acted as an incentive and a more generalized criterion for external evaluation for aligning and monitoring improvement processes. However, in some cases, there were several undesirable consequences of what the literature describes as ‘teaching to the test’ (Koretz, 2008), such as a focused reinforcement on class groups that will take the SIMCE, the substitution of non-evaluated subjects with extra hours of SIMCE-tested subjects on the curriculum, and intensive training and practice to the test. Another educational policy that has

become very important more recently is the Schooling Preferential Voucher (SEP), not so much for triggering but for sustaining school improvement processes. The SEP delivers a large amount of financial resources – complementary financial resources up to 70% in the monthly per capita value for students coming from low SES families, from preschooling through secondary school – that these schools have used mainly in acquiring teaching material, as well as hiring teacher assistants and specialists for remedial education and for students with learning or psychosocial difficulties. In summary, the school improvement processes are strongly influenced by the educational policies that have left imprints on the schools, whether in terms of resources, working methods, or educational ideas. Nevertheless, there is a great degree of diversity in the way in which schools adopt these educational policies, and in how responsibility is shared for the magnitude and direction of the effects on their trajectories, which in turn depends strongly on the leadership and managerial capacities of the principals and other school and intermediate leaders (Vanni et al., 2018).

INTEGRATING DIFFERENT LEVELS OF ANALYSIS: CONTEXT, SCHOOL, AND CLASSROOM A final challenge of our studies on school improvement and effectiveness has been to understand the contribution at each level of the school to its processes and results in the medium and long term, and the way in which what happens at each level is related. The studies established three levels of analysis: context, school, and classroom. The study of each of these, which is approached through different methodologies and emphasizes different actors as key informants, has been especially important in order to measure the complex and unstable aspects of school effectiveness.

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As we saw in the previous section, we have approached the context of the school two ways: their immediate environment, which includes their local communities and the local education market (other schools in the same environment), and the educational policies that create opportunities and challenges for schools, both in terms of their management and at the classroom level. Then, there is the school level. This broad aspect, which approaches schools as organizations, includes findings related to the history, management, and culture of each institution. Regarding management, we studied the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders and school administrators, and the way in which the individual and collective work of teachers is organized. As for school culture, this is seen as the development of implicit ways of doing things, which explain how rules are adopted and decisions are made. This involves building relationships with the community, the development of interpersonal relationships and disciplinary measures, as well as the work culture and generation of professional capital. At the classroom level, which is addressed extensively in quantitative studies of improvement and effectiveness, we studied the effect of teachers on student performance using different strategies. In the context of the case studies, this was partly based on interviews with pedagogical and department heads, teachers, semi-structured observation, and student interviews and questionnaires. We observed two aspects of the policy context that have had an impact at the classroom level. Both are mainly linked to the increase in the provision of resources associated with the implementation of the SEP Law. First, the number of education professionals and assistants has increased, particularly those responsible for supporting students with learning difficulties. Second, we observed a significant increase in the available pedagogical material and resources. Although in general this has not resulted in a significant change in teaching practices or strategies,

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these resources have benefitted a significant number of schools through external services that provide intervention models or aim to resolve deficiencies, such as curricular planning. Even so, the results of these interventions have tended to be unsustainable over time and are poorly evaluated by teachers, who believe they result in the homogenization of teaching practices and have a de-­ professionalizing effect. In terms of the relationship between classroom work and the school as an organization, we identified certain dynamics that link the two. Along with leadership, collaborative work among teachers is a key element in the effectiveness of the schools studied. This operates as an induction space for new teachers, facilitates the communication of classroom strategies that have been effective, generates spaces for mentoring, and allows professional capital to be preserved and transmitted. In short, it facilitates the shift from the individual to collective, transmitting knowledge generated by the community of teachers to individual teachers. On the other hand, we have found that in schools where results appear associated with the skills of a particular teacher, without spaces where their knowledge can be shared or communicated, the school’s effectiveness appears unsustainable. However, observation and feedback mechanisms for classroom work, in which the academic coordinator usually observes teachers at work, have multiplied in recent years, allowing the dissemination of pedagogical knowledge and better practices. For both instances of collaboration and mechanisms of observation and feedback, the role of school leaders is to provide the space, time, and flexibility for these aspects to become institutionalized. It is the school principals who are responsible for promoting innovation in classroom work, for sharing these innovations, and for the early evaluation of their effects. As noted above, the responsibility for testing innovations in a sustainable manner, teaching new skills, and evaluating them early and adequately lies at the school

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level and not in the classroom, which is why we consider the school organization as the key level when it comes to making changes in the educational system. Given that the methodological strategies used in our studies allowed only a limited understanding of classroom dynamics and student perspectives, we developed a more in-depth study focused on mathematics classes in 11 schools with improvement trajectories. The study focused on mathematics because this is an area of special interest in which Chile faces important challenges, as indicated by international evaluations and studies related to teacher capacities, as shown in TEDS-M2. The study was based on three instruments. First, the Upper Elementary version of the CLASS observation tool (grades 4 to 6), which allowed us to capture interactions between the teacher and students in three main areas: emotional support, classroom organization, and pedagogical support (Pianta, Hamre, & Allen, 2012). Second, Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI), which measures the quality of mathematical teaching in the classroom. And third, the analysis of student drawings, which allowed us to understand how students view their math classes. The study in which the findings were compared with the results obtained in Chilean schools with average characteristics, allowed us to conclude that classrooms in schools with trajectories of improvement had better classroom climate management (emotional support) than other Chilean schools (Godoy Ossa et al., 2016; Martínez et al., 2017; Treviño et al., 2016). In general, these are traditionally organized classes where the teacher is focused on teaching the subject matter and not, for example, regulating the behavior of his/her students. This view was obtained from the drawings of the children. However, the instructional support and the quality of the teaching of mathematics appeared to be low, as in most Chilean schools, and offers few contributions to the development of higher-order skills in the

students. As for the rest of Chilean classrooms, the fact that these schools showed good results in classroom organization and emotional support provides a basis from which it should be possible to improve the quality of teaching significantly. Further research into how these findings relate to the performance of schools as organizations, and the context of educational policies in the country, is still pending.

CONCLUSIONS In this chapter we have highlighted some critical aspects of the study on the improvement and effectiveness of schools, showing how complex and challenging it can be to investigate changes in school organizations: complex, due to the set of interrelated internal and external factors that affect each school; challenging, because of the dynamics of the relationships among school actors, and the fragility of the sustainability of school improvement processes. Our findings show that school organizations can make a huge difference in educational opportunities of students, but also highlight that the context and educational policies affecting schools are very important and limit opportunities for improvement, since a school’s performance is strongly conditioned by its socioeconomic composition, especially in a quasi-market, highly segregated system like that of Chile. Something similar can be said about the inequitable distribution of teaching and management capacities throughout the system as a whole. Improvement is possible, but it is evident that inequality makes it much more difficult for some schools, and that the explanation for the stagnation or deterioration of educational performance is sometimes associated with factors that schools cannot cope with or modify on their own, all of which makes it difficult to scale up improvement experiences to the level of the educational system.

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Changing the conditions in which schools and school actors operate is a necessary step, but this does not automatically modify the educational processes or the capacities of school organizations. In short, structural reforms and improvement policies are not mutually exclusive; they complement each other. The results of our studies show that both are necessary. While generating knowledge at the school level helps to design better policies and strategies so that many more schools can initiate and sustain improvement trajectories, this is not enough to ensure all children and young people receive a better quality of education. The structural reforms in the Chilean school system have been extensive. A selective list of initiatives includes the law on preferential school subsidies in 2008, the quality assurance system in 2013, the 2015 reforms that prohibit student selection, co-payment and for-profit institutions, the implementation of a teacher professional development system since 2016, and the recent approval of a new institutional framework to strengthen public education (Bellei & Vanni, 2015; Valenzuela & Montecinos, 2017). All have proven significant and could not have been replaced by greater efforts to improve the management of primary and high schools. In fact, this objective is now more attainable thanks to these institutional reforms. In addition, we believe that the mixedmethod strategies used in our research have been successful in allowing us to understand in greater depth the improvement processes of school organizations, and to compare those schools that manage to sustain their effectiveness for long periods of time with those that deteriorate. We have also discussed some of the limitations of these strategies and possible adjustments, which could guide similar studies to deepen our knowledge about school improvement processes in different contexts. The replicability of these studies, however, depends to a large extent on the availability of longitudinal data about educational results and contexts, which differs greatly between countries. This difficulty also reveals the importance of gathering longitudinal data

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and promoting the development of databases of school results, processes, and contexts by government agencies to understand the complexities of school improvement processes and help to support schools in a more relevant and effective way (Hallinger & Heck, 2011). Finally, the main purpose of our research program has been to contribute to the expansion of the number of schools that develop comprehensive and sustained school improvement trajectories. In this regard, we are convinced that obtaining detailed knowledge about the work done in schools in different contexts can make significant contributions to improve the work of school leaders, teachers, local authorities, and policymakers. This is why we have devoted important efforts to disseminate our findings beyond the academic field. Many education practitioners and public policy experts do not rely primarily on research findings for their improvement practices and design of educational support programs. However, we understand the limited impact of these dissemination activities on schools’ capacities and transformation, which demonstrates the need for more systematic and institutionalized collaboration between academia and school actors.

Notes 1  Funding from PIA-CONICYT Basal Funds for Centers of Excellence Project FB0003 is gratefully acknowledged 2 The Teacher Education Study in Mathematics, from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, IEA, compared teachers’ initial preparation in Mathematics in 16 countries. Chile was placed second to last (Tatto et al., 2012).

REFERENCES Bellei, C., Morawietz, L., Valenzuela J. P., & Vanni, X. (2015). Nadie dijo que era fácil: Escuelas efectivas en sectores de pobreza. Santiago, Chile: LOM Ediciones.

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Bellei, C., Pérez, L. M., Raczynski, D., & Muñoz, G. (2004). ¿Quién dijo que no se puede? Escuelas efectivas en sectores de pobreza. Santiago, Chile: Unicef. Bellei, C., Valenzuela, J., Vanni, X., & Contreras, D. (2014). Lo aprendí en la escuela: ¿Cómo se logran procesos de mejoramiento escolar? Santiago, Chile: LOM Ediciones. Bellei, C., & Vanni, X. (2015). Chile: The evolution of educational policy, 1980–2014. In S. Schwartzman (Ed.), Education in South America: Education around the world (pp. 179–200). London: Bloomsbury. Bellei, C., Vanni, X., Valenzuela, J. P., & Contreras, D. (2016). School improvement trajectories: An empirical typology. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 27(3), 275–292. Chapman, C., Muijs, D., Reynolds, D., Sammons, P., & Teddlie, C. (Eds.). (2015). The Routledge international handbook of educational effectiveness and improvement: Research, policy, and practice. London: Routledge. Creemers, B., & Kyriakides, L. (2008). The dynamics of educational effectiveness: A contribution to policy, practice and theory in contemporary schools. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Creemers, B., Stoll, L., Reezigt, G., & ESI-Team (2007). Effective school improvement – ingredients for success: The results of an international comparative study of best practice case studies. In T. Townsend (Ed.), International handbook of school effectiveness and improvement (pp. 825–838). Dordrecht: Springer. Doolaard, S. (2002). Stability and change in results of schooling. British Educational Research Journal, 28, 773–787. Dumay, X., Coe, R., & Anumendem, D. N. (2014). Stability over time of different methods of estimating school performance. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 25(1), 64–82. Godoy Ossa, F., Varas Scheuch, L., Martínez Videla, M., Treviño, E., & Meyer, A. (2016). Interacciones pedagógicas y percepción de los estudiantes en escuelas chilenas que mejoran: una aproximación exploratoria. Estudios pedagógicos (Valdivia), 42(3), 149–169. DOI:10. 4067/S0718-07052016000400008

Gorard, S. (2011). Doubts about school effectiveness exacerbated – by attempted justification. Research Intelligence, 114(Spring), 26. Gray, J., Goldstein, H., & Thomas, S. (2003). Of trends and trajectories: Searching for patterns in school improvement. British Educational Research Journal, 29(1). Gray, J., Jesson, D., Goldstein, H., Hedger, K., & Rasbash, J. (1995). A multi-level analysis of school improvement: Changes in schools’ performance over time. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 6, 97–114. Gustafsson, J. E. (2010). Longitudinal designs. In: Methodological advances in educational effectiveness research (pp. 91–115). London: Routledge. Hallinger, P., & Heck, R. H. (2011). Exploring the journey of school improvement: Classifying and analyzing patterns of change in school improvement processes and learning outcomes. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 22(1), 1–27. Hopkins, D. (2001). School improvement for real. London: Routledge Falmer. Hopkins, D. (2007). Every school a great school. Maidenhead, UK: McGraw-Hill Education/ Open University Press. Hopkins, D. (2017). Mejora escolar, liderazgo y reforma sistémica: una retrospectiva. In Once Miradas, J. Weinstein, & G. Muñoz (Eds.), Mejoramiento y liderazgo de escuela. Santiago, Chile: Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales. Hopkins, D., Reynolds, D., & Gray, J. (1999). Moving on and moving up: Confronting the complexities of school improvement in the improving schools project. Educational Research and Evaluation, 5(1), 22–40. Koretz, D. M. (2008). Measuring up. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kyriakides, L., & Creemers, B. P. (2008). A longitudinal study on the stability over time of school and teacher effects on student outcomes. Oxford Review of Education, 34(5), 521–545. Luyten, J. W., Scheerens, J., Visscher, A. J., Maslowski, R., Witziers, B., & Steen, R. (2005). School factors related to quality and equity. Results from PISA 2000. Paris: OECD. Mangan, J., Pugha, G., & Gray, J. (2005). Changes in examination performance in English secondary schools over the course of

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a decade: Searching for patterns and trends over time. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 16(1), 29–50. Martínez, M., Godoy, F., Treviño, E., Varas, L., & Fajardo, G. (2017). ¿Qué nos revelan los instrumentos de observación de aula sobre clases de matemática en escuelas con trayectoria de mejoramiento? Educação e Pesquisa, published online 21 August. DOI:10.1590/s1678-4634201702165144 Osses, A., Bellei, C., & Valenzuela, J. P. (2015). External technical support for school improvement: Critical issues from the Chilean experience. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 47(3), 272–293. Pianta, R. C., Hamre, B. K., & Allen, J. P. (2012). Teacher–student relationships and engagement: Conceptualizing, measuring, and improving the capacity of classroom interactions. In Christenson, S. L., Reschly, A. L., & Wylie, C. (Eds.). Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 365–386). Boston, MA Springer. Raczynski, D., & Muñoz, G. (2006). Factores que desafían los buenos resultados educativos de las escuelas en sectores de pobreza. In S. Cueto (Ed.), Educación y brechas de equidad en América Latina (pp. 275–352). Chile: PREAL. Reynolds, D., & Teddlie, C. (2000). The processes of school effectiveness. In C. Teddlie & D. Reynolds (Eds.), The international handbook of school effectiveness research (pp. 134–159). London: Falmer Press. Reynolds, D., Sammons, P., De Fraine, B., Van Damme, J., Townsend, T., Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (2014). Educational effectiveness research (EER): A state-of-the-art review. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 25(2), 197–230. Scheerens, J. (2000). Improving school effectiveness. Paris: UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning. Scheerens, J. (2016). Educational Effectiveness and Ineffectiveness. A Critical Review of the Knowledge Base. Netherlands: Springer. Tatto, M. T., Schwille, J., Senk, S. L., Ingvarson, L., Rowley, G., Peck, R., & Reckase, M. (2012). Policy, practice, and readyness to teach primary and secondary mathematics in 17 countries: Findings from the IEA Teacher

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and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M). Amsterdam: IEA. Teddlie, C., Reynolds, D., & Sammons, P. (2000). The methodology and scientific properties of school effectiveness research. In C. Teddlie & D. Reynolds (Eds.), The international handbook of school effectiveness research (pp. 55–133). London: Falmer Press. Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. C. (1993). Schools make a difference: Lessons learned from a 10-year study of school effects. New York: Teachers College Press. Thrupp, M., Lupton, R., & Brown, C. (2007). Pursuing the contextualisation agenda: Recent progress and future prospects. In T. Townsend (Ed.), International handbook of school effectiveness and improvement. Dordrecht: Springer. Townsend, T., MacBeath, J., & Bogotch, I. (2015). Critical and alternative perspectives on education effectiveness and improvement research. In C. Chapman, D. Muijs, D. Reynolds, P. Sammons, & C. Teddlie (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of educational effectiveness and improvement: Research, policy, and practice. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Treviño, E., Varas, L., Godoy, F., & Martínez, M. (2016). ¿Qué caracteriza a las interacciones pedagógicas en escuelas efectivas chilenas? Una aproximación exploratoria. In J. Manzi & M. R. García (Eds.), Abriendo las puertas del aula: Transformación de las prácticas docentes. Santiago, Chile: Ediciones UC. Valenzuela, J. P., Bellei, C., & Allende, C. (2016). Measuring systematic long-term trajectories of school effectiveness improvement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 27(4), 473–491. DOI:10.1080/ 09243453.2016.1150861 Valenzuela, J. P., & Montecinos, C. (2017). Structural reforms and equity in Chilean schools. Oxford Research Enyclopedia, July. Vanni, X., Bellei, C., Valenzuela, J. P.(2018). Key Factors for Sustained School Improvement: New Evidence from a Multiple Case Study of Improving Primary Schools. Draft. CIAE-Universidad de Chile, Santiago. Wrigley, T. (2004). School effectiveness: The problem of reductionism. British Educational Research Journal, 30(2), 227–244.

39 Design-Based School Improvement and Research for Education Leaders Rick Mintrop, Elizabeth Zumpe and Mahua Baral

One of the most important competencies of leaders everywhere is to make good decisions. Decisions at senior levels in school districts and similar organizations can affect large numbers of people and have far-reaching consequences, but even leaders’ decisions at a medium-sized school can affect many people. While many decisions are minor and made in a flash of recognizing past experiences in present situations, some are bigger. Often times big decisions demand that leaders be innovative problem solvers. Innovation means the application of new inventions or ideas to existing organizational processes so that they may become more efficient, more sensitive to client needs, or more effective. Many educational leaders turn outward when they want to innovate. They scan the environment for programs, consultants, or packages that seemingly address a given problem. Their preference is to find solutions that carry the label ‘research-based’ or ‘best practice’ (Corcoran, Fuhrman, & Belcher, 2001; Datnow, 1999; Datnow, Hubbard, & Mehan,

2002; Honig, 2006). Solving the problem then becomes a matter of implementing a package, a script, or a consultant’s directions. Innovation is all about buying the package and, afterward, creating buy-in for it. There is nothing wrong with this buy and buy-in mode of innovation if the new program addresses a clear problem, has a record of success, is a good fit with existing beliefs and practices, and is given sufficient attention, resources, and time for implementation. But leaders often overestimate the effectiveness of these new programs and underestimate the challenges of implementation in their unique local situations. The pattern is familiar from the implementation literature (Bryk, Easton, Kerbow, Rollow, & Sebring, 1993; Coburn, 2001; Cohen, 1990; Datnow & Stringfield, 2000; Spillane, 2004; Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002). As attention shifts from one problem to the next, multiple packaged solutions, imported from the outside, accumulate. Incoherence and bad fit with internal beliefs, attitudes, and practices

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diminish motivation, efficiency, and results (Newmann, Smith, Allensworth, & Bryk, 2001). What gets adopted is often less a matter of what the organization needs and more of what exists in the external environment as a legitimate response to a broadly recognizable problem (Datnow, 1999; Datnow et al., 2002; Honig, 2006). Thus, the adopted solutions tend to be conventional, rather than innovative or creative. For example, a whole slew of programs, interventions, packages, and consultants are out there to presumably address ‘the achievement gap.’ When proceeding from such a definition of the problem – as a broad and systemic problematic condition occurring across the field of education – schools and system leaders often turn to a menu of solutions that may be poorly matched to the challenges, needs, and capacities of their specific organizations. Since the 1990s, we see two different strands in school improvement. There is, on the one hand, a press towards improvement from the outside in, for example through the comprehensive school reform design movement (Desimone, 2002; Herman et al., 1999; Mirel, 2001; Rowan, Miller, & Camburn, 2009; Slavin, Madden, Dolan, & Wasik, 1996), or through high-stakes accountability (Fuhrman & O’Day, 1996), and on the other hand, there is the demand for schools to organize themselves as internal professional learning communities (Hord, 1997; Knapp, Honig, Plecki, Portin, & Copland, 2014; Louis & Kruse, 1995; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006; Spillane, 2006; Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2006; Stoll & Louis, 2007) that search for solutions from the inside out. Both approaches have encountered implementation challenges. Evaluations of the comprehensive organizational designs of the 1990s showed that the complexity of externally developed designs, simultaneously addressing the levels of instruction, organization, and governance, overburdened schools. Shifting priorities and political preferences of local, state, and federal policy making as well as discrepancies

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between the designed programs and the developmental needs of the schools undermined implementation. Strong implementation required that principals and teachers identified with the programs and were willing to internalize them into their practice (Berends, Bodilly, & Kirby, 2002; Datnow, Borman, Stringfield, Overman, & Castellano, 2003). High-stakes accountability, on the surface, simplified matters. Accountability systems leverage change through a set of goals and measures that are to guide schools to find their own course of action. In reality, schools and districts, rather than using accountability targets as orientations to upgrade the quality of instruction or climate, tended to respond to pressure with expedient shortcuts in order to meet the test-based performance targets. Their efforts were supported by a burgeoning intermediary sector that offered programs and products that presumably met the schools’ performance predicaments (Burch, 2009; Coburn, 2005; Honig, 2004; Marsh et  al., 2005; Rowan, 2002). Local problems in schools under pressure became problems of strict alignment (Achinstein & Ogawa, 2006; Daly, 2009; Trujillo, 2014; Trujillo & Woulfin, 2014) and implementing the latest programs and consultants’ ideas (Datnow et al., 2002; Datnow & Stringfield, 2000). School-internal professional learning communities (PLC) faced a different challenge. While the idea of teacher learning communities with a focus on evidence-based decision making and problem solving seems compelling and some positive effects have been established (Little, 1982, 2003; Talbert & McLaughlin, 1994), PLCs have been found to lack stability (Louis & Kruse, 1995), depth (Little, 1990), authenticity (Hargreaves, 1994), and problem solving capacity (Mintrop & Charles, 2017). Professional learning communities, it seems, require structures for reflection, scaffolds, and protocols for adult learning in order to become evidence-based and results-oriented (Blankstein, 2013; Grossman, Wineberg, & Woolworth, 2001;

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Horn & Little, 2010; Huguet, Marsh, & Farrell, 2014; Levine & Marcus, 2010; Little, 2002; Schmoker, 1999). Given these limitations of outside-in and inside-out approaches to school improvement, there has been growing interest among reformers and scholars for an alternative approach that attenuates the preponderance of outside-in dynamics and gives internal problem solving a structure of thinking and a way of ascertaining results. Such an approach would equip school and system leaders with the mindsets and routines necessary for solving a given problem under unique contextual conditions while at the same time making the results of their efforts accessible to leaders in other settings facing similar problems with perhaps similar or varying contextual conditions. As described in more detail below, design-based approaches to problem solving and school improvement (Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, & LeMahieu, 2015; Mintrop, 2016) may offer an approach that may lessen the attraction of implementing off-the-shelf solutions.

DEVELOPMENTAL STRANDS OF DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH FOR EDUCATION LEADERS Designing as a way of innovating is indicated when local problems do not come with a ready-to-buy solution. In the design mode, interventions are sets of sequenced learning opportunities for members of an organization that are created iteratively and repeated through trial and error until a satisfactory outcome has been accomplished. Iterative trial and error, guided by solid theories of action and conducted with rigorous data collection methods, are the core of design-based research. A locally-based version of designbased innovation is indicated if we assume that educational settings are complex and context-sensitive, that much of organizational change is about adult learning, and that

complex learning processes and their results are emergent and not narrowly predictable (A. L. Brown, 1992). The concept of design is ubiquitous in spheres of human action that are oriented towards creativity, generativity, and purposeful results, such as products or services that are meant to achieve resonance with human needs and desires. In his classic work on artificial intelligence, Simon (1969) positioned design as a ‘science’ and ‘a core discipline’ that should guide the thinking of all who are educated (p. 83). Buchanan (1992) goes so far as to claim that, ‘There is no area of contemporary life where design – the plan, project, or working hypothesis which constitutes the “intention” in intentional operations – is not a significant factor in shaping human experience’ (p. 8). The concept appears in art, architecture, and engineering, but also in the social sciences, education, and human services (e.g., health care). The ubiquity of the term makes a clear definition difficult. A much-cited paper on design in engineering (Dym, Agogino, Ozgur, & Leifer, 2005) defines design as a ‘[s]ystematic, intelligent process in which designers generate, evaluate, and specify concepts for devices, systems, or processes whose form and function achieve clients’ objectives or users’ needs while satisfying a specified set of constraints’ (p. 104). According to Ann Brown (1992), a trailblazer in using the concept of design in education, designers address complex problems in real contexts in collaboration with practitioners, integrate known and hypothetical design-principles with technological affordances to render plausible solutions to these complex problems, and conduct rigorous and reflective inquiry to test results. In school improvement, the concept of designing describes the methodological, cognitive, and reflective processes by which learners confront real-world problems – the kind that are ill-structured, lack a clear solution path, and tend to be prevalent in the pursuit of school improvement (Jonassen, 2000;

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Schön, 1983; Timperley & Robinson, 1998), by which they creatively ideate solutions based on their knowledge of leadership and organizations, and by which they test the solutions’ effectiveness. In the sections below, we discuss the manifold strands of thinking that have influenced conceptions of design-based school improvement. Across these developmental strands, it becomes clear that design-based approaches for education leaders emerge from the work of many types of designers who confront various problems in the contexts of various settings. Designers have been researchers seeking to produce knowledge about learning, managers seeking to produce organizational improvement, entrepreneurs seeking to produce successful technological innovations, and professionals seeking to understand and improve upon their own practices.

DESIGN-BASED APPROACHES IN THE LEARNING SCIENCES One developmental strand stems from the learning sciences, a field in which designbased approaches have had a long tradition (Kelly, Lesh, & Baek, 2008). Design studies or design experiments are suitable vehicles to discover ways to enhance learning for students and adults (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012; Barab & Squire, 2004; Burkhardt & Schoenfeld, 2003; Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003). Cobb et  al. (2003) discuss cross-cutting characteristics of design studies: (1) they capture learning ecologies on multiple levels, for example the level of actual student learning with its materials, scaffolds, and activities, the level of teachers planning for the tasks, and the organizational incentive and support structures for the work; (2) they intervene in the normal flow of organizational or learning routines; (3) they predict learning processes, but also gain insight from unexpected contingencies and necessary adjustments; (4) as a

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result, they achieve theoretical insights and results in iterative ways; (5) and finally they aim at developing theories of learning that are closely tied to the conditions under which they emerged. Thus, they do not generalize to broader precepts or paradigms, but retain their practical provenance. Given that design-based research is positioned at the intersection of theory and practice, Burkhardt and Schoenfeld (2003) postulate design-based research as a type of ‘engineering research’ that builds ‘strong linkages between research-based insights and improved practice’ (p. 3) and they call for ‘closer coordination of effort between research, design, development, policy, and practice’ (p. 3). Design-based research within the learning sciences has been applied to many different purposes, most notably in the fields of technology (Dede, Nelson, Ketelhut, Clarke, & Bowman, 2004; Reeves, 2006; Wang & Hannafin, 2005), science instruction (Edelson, Pea, & Gomez, 1996; Hofstein & Lunetta, 2004; Palincsar, Magnusson, Collins, & Cutter, 2001), and mathematics (Prediger, Gravemeijer, & Confrey, 2015). But studies have also migrated from narrower concerns for classroom learning to concerns for implementation in organizational settings (Confrey, Castro-Filho, & Wilhelm, 2000). Pursuing this latter strand further, scholars developed a more elaborate approach to design-based research that connects research on instruction with research on organizational improvement, referred to as design-based implementation research (Penuel, Fishman, Cheng, & Sabelli, 2011), which we discuss further below.

DESIGN-BASED PROBLEM SOLVING IN TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT A very different developmental strand for design-based problem solving and research comes from management science, notably the

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model of Total Quality Management (TQM). TQM is a model of designing work processes that focuses on producing results and quality product. It aims at effective and efficient organizational processes and practices through continuously improving all functions of an organization (Deming, 1994; Powell, 1995). Quality is considered to be the principal determinant of competitiveness and is assessed by determining whether a product or service answers to customers’ needs, and whether it can be sustained under current market conditions (Deming, 1994; Juran, 1986). To manage quality, TQM tackles changing leadership and personnel management practices, better utilizing information and analysis, understanding the needs of customers, and improving processes in a planned way within the strategic goals of the organization (Hackman & Wageman, 1995; Juran, 1986; Kanji, 1996; Powell, 1995). TQM requires companies to systematically plan, control, and improve (Juran, 1986). Similar to designing in the learning sciences, management science aims to test and refine new innovations, but the focus in TQM is organizational, and the goal of the method is to improve products and processes to increase the competitiveness of the organization. W. Edward Deming (1994), a protagonist for continuous quality improvement, saw improvement as a continual learning process through which employees come to understand how their practices are embedded in a system and how they can be improved through constant trial and error. To do this, he suggested companies adopt a ‘PDSA Cycle’ in which individuals in an organization interact with one another to plan, do, study, and act on ideas for improvement. During the planning phase, individuals may identify an idea for an improvement to a very specific process, and a plan for change and experimentation is developed. Next, the change is carried out on a small scale to study its effects, and results are examined to determine whether change occurred as expected or if something went wrong. Lastly, the team decides whether to

adopt, abandon, or reassess through another cycle of planned change (Deming, 1994). Various techniques can be used to enhance the process, including utilizing flowcharts, dedicating time for brainstorming, and developing diagrams to represent the relationships between causes and effects (Hackman & Wageman, 1995). Targets are measured using a variety of quantitative and qualitative measures to monitor progress, analyze results, and determine next steps. In recent years, this management tradition has become more prominent again in the field of school improvement in the US through the work of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In Bryk et al. (2015), improvement science techniques are adopted from the health care industry and applied to organizational and instructional improvement. Principles of design development are prominent in the improvement science approach.

Design for Product Development Design-based approaches are also used in product development. Studying companies that achieved success in Silicon Valley, David and Tom Kelley (2013) found that breakthrough innovations come about through human-centered approaches to development, ones that empathize with the needs and desires of target audiences. They argue that products are best developed by following a process of thinking that inspires new ideas, synthesizes understandings of technology and environment, experiments with various possibilities, and eventually launches new products (see also T. Brown, 2009; Kelley & Litman, 2001; Martin, 2009).

THE MINDSET AND LOGIC OF DESIGN-BASED INNOVATION The review above illustrates how strands of research and practice from multiple

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disciplines have influenced the development of design-based research and improvement in education. Before delving further into contemporary applications, it seems useful to make explicit the principles and logic of ‘designing.’

Design Thinking While there are variations in the particular strategies and techniques used in the designbased research approaches explored above, one can distill a common set of principles that describe a design mindset, which some have termed design thinking. One key principle in design thinking is a belief in the power of satisfying human needs. As described by Schön (1983), designers take perceived human needs as their point of departure for inquiry. Across the research traditions above, the targets of design include not only technological products, but also learning ecologies and improvements in organizational practices. Hence, designers not only design objects, but also forms of human interaction in order to elicit satisfaction of their users’ needs (T. Brown, 2009; Kelley & Kelley, 2013). Thinking in the mode of design means de-emphasizing pressure and the breaking of resistance as vehicles for producing change in human behavior (T. Brown, 2009; Kelley & Kelley, 2013). Designers understand that people’s resistance to learning is due to fear and defensiveness produced by constraining environments, and that changes in beliefs and behavior come about when contexts and processes enable participants to express their basic motivations (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Thus, designers are user-centered. As described by Schön (1983), designers make decisions about their designs according to a logic of appreciation based on what intuitively feels right in terms of an envisioned end state and analytical knowledge of how their field works. For some authors, design thinking is a ‘third way’ between rationality

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and intuition (T. Brown, 2009). Martin (2009) suggests that rationality and intuition can be reconciled through a balance of ‘analytical mastery and intuitive originality in a dynamic interplay’ (p. 6). Kelley and Kelley (2013) describe design thinking as ‘the natural – and coachable – human ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, and to construct ideas that are emotionally meaningful as well as functional’ (p. 25). Tim Brown (2009) explains design thinking as a ‘system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps’ (p. 16). The spaces include inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Thus, design thinkers are both theory and research based as well as imaginative and creative. A design-based approach is appropriate in a work environment that increasingly demands that leaders provide evidence for their decisions and for the results. These results need to be confirmable by participants and verifiable by a community of reformers. For example, in the arena of product development, innovations must not only be creative and appropriate responses to human needs, they must also ‘work’ and generate a profit. Thus, design thinking aims for effectiveness. Designers often design in relation to the practices of others. In education, for example, school leaders might design an intervention in order to change the practices of teachers. In this case, leaders may be tempted to presume themselves to be ‘more expert.’ In their core, designs, for example of new ways to teach or interact with students, are user-centered, that is, they must be based on intimate knowledge of teachers’ and students’ needs, desires, and frustrations. Hence, design thinking involves consideration and inclusion of others’ perspectives. Leaders who engage in design thinking must themselves be open to learning, experiment, and critique, and seek to collaborate with the users of the design. Giving voice to the users of designs is both a matter of fairness and justice (Argyris & Schön, 1996) and of design validity. From a school-external perspective, designs that do not sufficiently involve

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practitioners in design development are likely to be flawed and met with skepticism. A valid design calls for interventions to be based on testable assumptions and evidence, which requires the incorporation of knowledge and perspectives of those whose behaviors or beliefs are targets for change. Hence, in education, designs for improvement are best when done with people, rather than done to people, in projects that proceed through co-design. Thus, designs are co-created. In sum, design thinking rests upon principles that presume the development of interventions to be imaginative, theory- and research-based, user-centered, context-­ specific, created cooperatively, emergent, iterative, and dependent on results.

The Inquiry Logic in the Design Process Designing refers to a process of inquiry that follows a particular logic. Key to this logic is the development of a theory of action that guides the prototyping and iterative refinement of an intervention. Theories of action connect the values and intentions of designers with their understanding of problems at hand and their knowledge of effective processes of change in given organizational contexts (Argyris & Schön, 1996). Thus, theories of action encapsulate the designers’ thinking about their chosen problem and challenge them to perform a number of cognitive operations: • Identifying, defining and framing a problem of practice, • Conducting exploratory needs assessments, • Setting goals and specifying current problematic and desired end states, • Moving from practical intuitions to analytical theorizing by making intuitions explicit and accessing the professional knowledge base (research, practical wisdom), • Understanding the problem through diagnosis of symptoms and causes and more thorough assessment of user needs,

• Understanding the change process by recognizing key change drivers, considering contextual assets and constraints, • Developing ideas for prototypes.

The following sections describe the logic of design-based innovation in more depth by exploring scholarship from the fields of cognitive psychology and organizational change that help explain how educators might go about designing remedies to their own problems of practice.

Solving Problems The core of designing is problem solving. Problem solvers make a mental representation of a problem by holding four things in their minds: the initial state of beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors; the desired or goal state; a set of allowable operators, that is, the concepts, constructs, principles, rules of behavior, and so on that apply to a given domain of practice, here schools or central offices, and a set of constraints, that is, the givens of a situation that a chosen solution strategy needs to reckon with (Argyris & Schön, 1996, pp. 3–30). Actors’ capacity in representing their problem is necessarily limited; their rationality is thus bounded (Simon, 1997). The literature on problem solving, broadly speaking, distinguishes between well-structured or well-defined problems and ill-structured or ill-defined problems (Jonassen, 2000). A well-defined problem is clearly circumscribed. The constructs, rules, and constraints are clear, and the search for solution strategies converges on a clearly defined solution of the problem, as in solving a mathematical equation, solving a puzzle, or completing comprehension or application assignments in a textbook (Newell & Simon, 1972; Pretz, Naples, & Sternberg, 2003). An ill-defined problem lacks a convergent solution strategy. There is no simple right or wrong per se. In ill-defined problems, all

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aspects of problem construction are challenging. Problem solvers need to clarify how to name the problem, how broad or narrow the problem is, who the stakeholders are, what its current symptoms are, how it is categorized, what the desired or goal states might look like, and what operations or actions are possible. The constraints of the situation are often fuzzy as well (Timperley & Robinson, 1998). Most problems encountered by educators in their domain of practice are ill defined (Brenninkmeyer & Spillane, 2008; Copland, 2000; Jonassen, 2000; Timperley & Robinson, 1998). Designers need to define them before they can solve them. At some point designers arrive at a well-defined problem of practice that encapsulates a low-inference description of the actual practices in the organization that they believe need changing. As long as the problem remains diffuse and generic, for example when it is named as ‘the achievement gap’ or ‘poor school climate,’ it is not defined at the level of people’s actual practices in the organization.

Thinking Fast–Thinking Slow The idea of limited information processing capacity that underlies the concept of bounded rationality resurfaces in dual-­ process models (Chaiken & Trope, 1999; Kahneman, 2011). In these models, fast, relatively spontaneous, and effortless processing of information is contrasted with slow, rulebound, and effortful deliberations, the former relying on intuition, the latter on rationality. Intuition produces understanding that can only be backed up with fuzzy empirical verification and associative justifications. Rationality applies sequential logic, measurement, and analysis. Intuitive reasoning gives ‘first answers’ to choices or problems, while rational reasoning may follow up with verifications. Education leaders, for the most part, are in workplaces that require fastpaced decision making (Kmetz & Willower,

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1982; Lunenburg, 2010; W. J. Martin & Willower, 1981). Short time spans do not allow actors to think long term through possible alternatives to actions and their consequences. Intuition is called for. Intuitive judgment relies on heuristics. Heuristics are rules of thumb, quick-anddirty approximations (Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002, p. 3). They operate with categories, rules or whole patterns. A heuristic might arise from practices that have repeatedly worked in the past. Patterns from previous experiences are matched with analogous present situations. While designing draws from the imaginative and creative power of intuitions (T. Brown, 2009; Davis & Davis, 2003; Martin, 2009; Schön, 1983), it also has to contend with inherent biases of heuristics. In applying heuristics, decision makers tend to judge the likelihood of an outcome not according to careful analysis of the situation, but according to the facility with which relevant constructions can be conjured up (Gilovich et  al., 2002). Thus, education leaders who habitually have to think fast are likely to rely on experiences that are more easily brought to mind, biasing them to emphasize analogies and neglect the possibility of outcomes less frequently encountered in the past (Davis & Davis, 2003). Designing requires thinking slow. Thinking slow enables designers to construct a more robust connection between the understanding of their problem and the understanding of the change process; and it opens up to the conjectural nature and uncertainty of iterative designing. Through needs assessments, designers confront their intuitions with empirical data about the population targeted for desired changes. By consulting the knowledge base related to their problem, they may become aware of, and challenge, their intuitive assumptions with the help of theoretical models and evidence from research and reports from practice (Kelly, 2006; Nieveen, McKenney, & van den Akker, 2006; Richey & Klein, 2007).

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Problem Diagnosis A problem is diagnosed when designers connect low-inference observations with highinference interpretations that rest on theory (Spillane & Coldren, 2011; Spillane & Miele, 2007). Using a medical analogy, a doctor examines a set of low-inference data, a patient’s symptoms and medical history. She orders more tests based on this information, and from this evidence, she taps into her existing domain knowledge, diagnostic manuals, case-based knowledge, heuristics, and so on, to infer a diagnosis (Kassirer, Wong, & Kopelman, 1991; Patel, Arocha, & Zhang, 2005). In the domain of organizational development, a leader engages in a similar process of diagnosis by gathering low-inference information about an ailment in the organization and inferring the causes of, and conditions that contribute to, the problem of practice (Lundberg, 2008). In the tradition of Total Quality Management, managers or consultants wanting to initiate improvements in the organization typically conduct a root-cause analysis (Hackman & Wageman, 1995; Wilson, Dell, & Anderson, 1993). In this analysis, they look at a problematic behavior and try to figure out what in the organization might cause this behavior in terms of time management, personnel, skills, equipment, material, procedures, decision making, and so forth. The word ‘root’ is a relative term. In root-cause analysis, root tends to connote the factors that the organization controls and that managers can manipulate. This is not the connotation of root cause that is often entertained in educational analysis. Education is a line of work whose success is fundamentally linked with factors outside the control of managers of educational organizations, for example, economic macrostructures that produce a rampant poverty problem for many children in the United States. Designers concentrate on factors under their control, but at the same time educational leaders would underestimate the problems they are facing if they

were to ignore broader societal and institutional root causes. Just as doctors infer a diagnosis by tapping into domain knowledge about the human body and disease and their experience that has generated heuristics, statistical analysis skills, and knowledge of prior cases, so must education leaders tap into domain knowledge to infer a diagnosis – and design an intervention – for a problem of practice. Domain knowledge for education leaders may be knowledge on student learning, resource management, instructional leadership, adult learning theory, social psychology, and organizational development (Deal & Peterson, 2009; Hallinger & Heck, 1998; Honig, 2012; Knapp et al., 2014; Leithwood & Louis, 2012; Leithwood & Riehl, 2003; Robinson, Lloyd, & Rowe, 2008).

Change Drivers and Interventions Changing the behavior of those who provide services in educational organizations involves organizational structures and resources that distribute learning opportunities. Changing behavior involves knowledge and skill, attention, motivation, setting priorities and goals (Burke & Litwin, 1992; Fullan, 2007; Pettigrew, Ferlie, & McKee, 1992). It involves shared meanings, interpretations, expectations, norms, values, rituals, and routines that are largely tacit and subconscious (Deal & Peterson, 2009; Hargreaves, 1994; Sarason, 1982). Shared meanings hold together schooling as an institution, an enterprise that is at its core full of ambiguity and contradiction (March, 1978; McNeil, 1988; Sarason, 1982). Educational organizations have developed specific cultures as a way of coping with this ambiguity. Organizational cultures – summarized by Edgar Schein as ‘the ways we do things around here’ – have a seemingly proven track record of getting things done and maintaining people’s sense of self-worth, or doing an acceptable job (Schein, 2010, p. 15).

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Beginning with Kurt Lewin’s work on planned organizational change, researchers have aimed to identify organizational levers or drivers that can foment particular change dynamics and produce intended outcome (Burnes, 2004). Market pressures, new technologies, or accountability demands are external drivers that may push an organization to change. Internal drivers are those that the organization itself manipulates to achieve its goals (Whelan-Berry & Somerville, 2010). Drivers are not change activities. They are the forces that can change beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors. They may be rules or commands, redesigned organizational structures, resources, teaching of new beliefs, modeling new behavior, inspiring new commitments, and so on (Burke & Litwin, 1992; Huy, 2001). Depending on the intended change, some drivers may be more important than others. Determining which drivers will have the most leverage in addressing a particular intent is key in developing a sound understanding of the change process given a specific problem. Specific activities, planned in sequential order, activate the drivers and make up the intervention.

Design-based Research Methodology Design-based school improvement is most promising when pursued as a form of designbased research. Design-based research is a suitable approach to knowledge production for those confronting contextually-embedded problems of practice for which there are few definite or confirmed solutions or ‘validated principles’ (Plomp, 2010; Reeves, 2006; van den Akker, 1999) available. Plomp (2010) defines educational design research as ‘the systematic study of designing, developing and evaluating educational interventions (such as programs, teachinglearning strategies and materials, products and systems) as solutions for complex problems in educational practice’ (p. 13). Design

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research methodology gives researchers the structure to undertake systematic inquiry in the midst of uncertainty. The inquiry is simultaneously tight and loose. Designers use a structured process for planning, implementing, and evaluating interventions to predetermine and specify intervention elements, but they also leave room for false starts, an adjust-as-you-go approach, and repeated trials (Barab & Squire, 2004; Cobb et al., 2003; Collins, Joseph, & Bielaczyc, 2004; Plomp & Nieveen, 2010; The Design-Based Research Collective, 2003; van den Akker, 1999). Design studies are collaborative; they involve practitioners and researchers and are best ­carried out in teams. Two types of data are collected, formative and summative data, or impact and process data. Formative data are collected while the implementation of the intervention is underway. Formative data help researchers understand events, critical incidents, or discrete activities through which learning and change unfolds (Plomp, 2010; The DesignBased Research Collective, 2003; van den Akker, 1999). Summative data ascertain effects of the intervention (Plomp & Nieveen, 2010; van den Akker, 1999). In design studies, formative and summative data are not always strictly separated. Plomp (2010) uses the term ‘semi-summative’ for the assessment of outcomes to indicate that formative and summative data can be interwoven. An example of this overlap would occur when participants in a professional development intervention are asked to perform a similar task, or are asked similar questions, at the beginning of the intervention and at the end (summative). To enhance this information, designers may ask participants to also reflect on their growth, or lack thereof, in various dimensions of the intervention (formative) (Plomp, 2010, p. 22). Summative and formative elements merge. The purpose of a design study is to ascertain that the design has had the intended effect and what activities, tools, formal organizational structures, resources, and so on, contributed to the intended effect.

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BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES FOR EDUCATION LEADERS Design-based research can be greatly beneficial for education leaders engaging in school and district improvement. As the logic of designing illuminates, thinking about problems of practice in a design-based way encourages thorough reasoning about problem solving. A precise specification of the problematic beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors exhibited by members of the organization and an understanding of their root causes promises a better fit with chosen solutions. Connecting a summative metric to the specific changes allows leaders to ascertain whether their improvement efforts actually worked. And cumulative knowledge gained by making connections between problem understanding, iteratively applied solutions, and achieved effects contributes to increasingly robust continuous improvement efforts in the organization, especially around big, urgent, and hard-to-solve problems of practice. But there are also some challenges associated with the approach for education leaders. Design-based research is especially suited for changing specific organizational practices. But change in specific practices needs to be systemic (Senge, 1990), that is, embedded in a larger strategic orientation for the organization as a whole, in order to be effective and not fade away as an isolated effort. The currently existing environment for educational reform and improvement does not facilitate such a systemic approach. Rather, it induces haphazard improvement efforts that shift with the winds of local, state, and federal policy preferences and contestations (Cohen & Spillane, 1992; Hatch, 2001; Hess, 1999). Improvement churn, coupled with the fast pace of decision making that is demanded of many education leaders, favor thinking fast over thinking slow. Design-based problem solving and research requires that education leaders have a command of multiple facets of domain knowledge,

most notably understanding organizational improvement as a learning-centered effort for adults (Honig, 2012; Honig, Venkateswaran, & McNeil, 2017; Knapp et al., 2014), something that many education leaders find quite challenging (Hallinger, 2005; Honig, 2003; Hubbard, Mehan, & Stein, 2006; Spillane, 2002). Moreover, design-based research requires data that need to be collected in the flow of day-to-day practice (Bryk et al., 2015; Datnow, Park, & Wohlsetter, 2007; Park, Hironaka, Carver, & Nordstrum, 2013; Yeager, Bryk, Muhich, Hausman, & Morales, 2015). Even though increasingly more data are being generated (Nayfack, Park, Hough, & Willis, 2017), schools and districts are rather data-poor when it comes to measures that pick up on daily routine processes. So often times practical metrics need to be developed for specific problems of practice. Design-based school improvement is therefore most productive when it is carried out in partnership with organizations, such as universities or other knowledge-creating organizations, that contribute theoretical knowledge and research capabilities to the endeavor. Research–practice partnerships (Coburn, Penuel, & Geil, 2013) bring district and school leaders on multiple levels of the system together with researchers in teams that pursue mutualistic goals (Tseng, 2012; Tseng, Easton, & Supplee, 2017).

PARTNERSHIPS FOR DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH AND IMPROVEMENT Research–practice partnerships between education leaders and researchers have taken a variety of shapes. As described below, partnerships between researchers and practitioners have been developed as part of higher education leadership programs, Networked Improvement Communities, curriculum development research, design-based implementation research, research about scaling

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up of effective practices, and social design experiments.

Higher Education Leadership Programs One way to bring education leaders and researchers together is through leadership programs in higher education, especially Ed.D. programs. The authors of this chapter have experimented with this venue over a number of years (Mintrop, 2016). Ed.D. programs can be a natural bridge between the world of university and district if designed accordingly. In the Leadership for Educational Equity Program (LEEP) at the University of California, Berkeley, which the first author has directed for the last 12 years, doctoral students, who all have leadership responsibility, mainly as principals, select a problem of practice for the dissertation study. While a variety of methodologies can be chosen, the majority of the students selected designbased research, usually revolving around an adult learning challenge. The students are encouraged to select an urgent authentic problem for which their district or similar organizational unit wants answers, and they are encouraged to work with co-design teams in their districts, though for the most part the doctoral student assumes the role of ‘intellectual leader’ who is cognizant of the research and professional knowledge base and has training in study design and methods of data collection and analysis. Fellow leaders, program support staff, course instructors, and faculty advisors are the research partners who help leaders in schools and districts to design the study. The strength of such as partnership is that it helps leaders to develop a school improvement mindset that is attentive to the key principles of continuous quality improvement. The drawbacks are that the design task is carried out in the form of a dissertation, which can create a sense of artificiality, that the education leader is the implementer of

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interventions and the researcher at the same time, which may create overload and bias, and that the program’s research support is removed from the realities of given practitioner work settings.

Networked Improvement Communities The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement in Teaching established an ambitious approach to design-based school improvement in research–practice partnerships that they call Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) (Carnegie Foundation, 2017). The Carnegie NIC approach aims to utilize principles of design research and improvement science (Bryk et al., 2015) and merge it with understandings from practice to establish innovative new approaches to addressing prevalent problems of practice of a national scope. Experts lead the designing, ensuring that both empirical and practical knowledge are incorporated into the development of new practices, and practitioners support efforts by testing solutions and providing information to make improvements. One example is a Networked Improvement Community, launched in 2010, that aimed to help students succeed in college mathematics through the use of gateway remedial courses in community colleges (Carnegie Foundation, 2017; Hoang, Huang, Sulcer, & Yesilyurt, 2017). The problem has been severe and urgent. Sixty percent of incoming community college students are required to take at least one remedial mathematics course each year; and of these students, 80% fail to complete a college-level course within three years (Hoang et al., 2017). Disproportionate numbers of low-income, black, and Hispanic students are affected by the lack of remedial courses that meet their needs (Carnegie Foundation, 2017). Without completing these gateway courses, students are unable to fulfill requirements to continue their study and often drop out.

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To address this problem, the Math Pathways NIC initiative was formed as a team of interdisciplinary researchers, designers, and practitioners. The team reasoned that the problem needed to be tackled in multiple dimensions, including curricular changes, strengthening of student persistence, and reinforcing linguistic and literacy competencies. Following a design or improvement science logic, programmatic changes were accompanied with practical metrics that indicated whether improvements had been accomplished. Constructing such practical metrics, for example in the area of persistence, was a drawn-out process of reducing large item banks to a few highly valid items that could be administered in a very short time period. The initiative has shown tremendous growth, adding more students each year for a total enrollment of 6,220 students across 36 institutions during the 2015–2016 year. Over its first five years, the program saw completion rates of 55%, with 49% of community college students successfully completing the program. At four-year state universities, the results were more dramatic, with 73% of students in the program completing successfully. In comparison with the baseline group in which only 6% successfully earned college credit for mathematics in one year, students in the program demonstrated large success. They were also more likely to transfer from a two-year to a four-year college within five years, 43%, compared to those who were not in the program, 32% within six years (Hoang et al., 2017). The NIC originated as a community of mathematics scholars and experts to develop new instructional content and practices, but it extended into areas of psychology and literacy. Recently, the focus shifted to understanding how to create and apply a set of interventions at scale (Hoang, et  al., 2017). By slowly broadening engagement and recruiting experts from a variety of fields, including assessment and curriculum experts and an advisory group of instructors, the NIC established a strong sense of ownership

among designers in the community. With each iteration, new improvement teams were formed and tasked to address emerging problems in ongoing efforts to continually improve the program. Data were collected from multiple sources and charted each year to identify leverage points and determine characteristics of students and programs that are contributing to successes or failures (Hoang, et  al., 2017). The strength of the approach is its scientific rigor and concentrated problem-solving capacity for wicked widespread problems. While the approach is powerful, one drawback is that it requires education leaders to have well-developed internal problem-solving capacity and an understanding of research. Researchers and external designers, not internal leaders, may easily become the pre-dominant actors in the partnerships.

Design-based Implementation Research An emerging model for design-based research–practice partnerships is advanced by Penuel et  al. (2011) as design-based implementation research (DBIR). DBIR involves collaboration between researchers and practitioners in the production of knowledge in accordance with some guiding principles: focus on persistent problems of practice from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives; commitment to iterative, collaborative design; concern with developing theory and knowledge related to both classroom learning and implementation through systematic inquiry; and concern with developing capacity for sustaining change in systems (Penuel et  al., 2011). Within these broad principles, existing models vary in the scope and nature of objects of design and the goals of the research, with some DBIR partnerships pursuing wide-ranging district-level improvement (Cobb, Jackson, Smith, Sorum, & Henrick, 2013; Donovan, Snow, & Daro, 2013; Scherrer, Israel, & Resnick, 2013), and

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others that focus more specifically on building leadership capacity (Honig, 2013; Rainey & Honig, 2015), improving instruction (Borko & Klingner, 2013), or developing and implementing new curriculum or new instructional technology (Penuel, Roschelle, & Shechtman, 2007). While DBIR principles commit to research about mutually recognized problems of practice and collaborative designs, the negotiations involved in such joint work can be complicated by role ambiguities, struggles to establish trust, and differences in status, culture, and goals (Coburn, Bae, & Turner, 2008; Penuel, Coburn, & Gallagher, 2013; Penuel et al., 2007). The standard by which mutuality or degree of collaboration might be analyzed is not often discussed, and publications generated about and through designbased partnerships do not often provide detail about how such tensions were navigated or analyses of the degree to which mutuality was attained. A look across published cases suggests that design-based partnerships strive for mutuality using varying methods. The SciJourn project, for example, started with a broad problem defined by the field – the limitations that ‘usual school practices’ have for fostering engagement in scientific literacy – and proceeded through collaboration with teachers at multiple schools to iteratively develop new instructional practices (Kirshner & Polman, 2013). In the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP), meanwhile, a focal problem is initially identified by district leaders, after which researcher and practitioner partners work together to bound and frame the problem and iteratively design and implement interventions, which can span new instructional programs to new tools for classroom observation (Donovan et al., 2013). In the Middle School Mathematics and the Institutional Setting of Teaching (MIST) project, the partnership focuses on the aspiration of ambitious mathematics instruction, with district leaders developing and enacting a plan for instructional improvement while researchers collect

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data about implementation and develop an interpretive framework in order to generate feedback about the plan and develop a theory of action (Cobb et  al., 2013). The Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS) partnership, which focuses on improving science instruction, started with a flexible approach so as to develop in accordance with the expressed needs of administrators and teachers, which guided the work towards collaborative development and implementation of inquiry-oriented science curriculum and professional development (D’Amico, 2010; Penuel & Fishman, 2012). The District Leadership Design Lab at the University of Washington brings teams of district leaders together to analyze current practices, re-conceptualize their roles to focus on learning, articulate a theory of action, use existing research to design organizational improvements, and collaborate in the development of central office transformation tools (Rainey & Honig, 2015). For Honig (2013), design-based partnerships should ensure that commitments to be responsive to practitioners’ needs and build local capacity do not outweigh the concern for contributing to theory, arguing for partnerships in which practitioners and researchers work ‘at the limits of knowledge, not just in the present setting, but in the field’ (p. 263). As more researchers aim for mutualism as they embark upon collaboration with practitioners using design-based methods, new gaps in the knowledge base pertaining to methodology and researchers’ competencies become visible. What are the methods by which mutuality can be established, and by what standard can we judge the quality of the collaboration? What new research design and dissemination practices are needed in order for design-based partnership research to be sufficiently responsive to practitioners’ goals and needs while also pushing the boundaries of knowledge in the field? What new competencies may researchers need to develop in order to establish and nourish trusting partnerships with practitioners?

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In other words, realizing the potential of partnerships using design-based research may be dependent upon a parallel stream of designbased research, one that aims ‘to design our own assistance’ (Honig, 2013, p. 270).

THE NATIONAL CENTER ON SCALING UP EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS The National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools (NCSU) brings together researchers from multiple universities, intervention development specialists, and practitioners in two large urban school districts to learn how to create effective high schools for traditionally low-performing student groups (Cannata, Haynes, & Smith, 2013). NCSU has developed a model of continuous improvement that relies on three core principles: prototypes that build on locally effective practices; rapid-cycle testing; and authentic researcher– practitioner partnership (Cohen-Vogel, Cannata, Rutledge, & Socol, 2016). Redding, Cannata, and Haynes (2017) describe this model as improving at scale by ‘scaling in,’ meaning that the development and implementation phases of innovation are situated within and are responsive to the needs of a particular context. In the NCSU, partners collaborate across four phases of the partnership work: research, innovation design and development, innovation, and scale up (Redding et  al., 2017). The research phase begins by investigating local practices associated with more effective schools in a partnering district (CohenVogel et  al., 2016). For example, in the NCSU’s current partnership, initial research about local practices in effective schools in partnering districts suggested that the core design challenges would involve development of innovations that would increase students’ ownership and responsibility for their own academic success and provide personalized supports for students’ academic and social emotional needs (Cannata et al., 2013;

Rutledge, Cohen-Vogel, Osborne-Lampkin, & Roberts, 2015). The next phases proceed with an assessment of the needs of the partnering districts in order to develop a prototype. Through rapid-cycle testing and mutual adjustment in collaboration with school design teams, the prototype is developed into a final design that is ‘scaled up’ across the district and studied for impact on student outcomes (Cohen-Vogel et  al., 2016; Redding et  al., 2017). For example, in the current partnership, the prototype in one district included the development of educator teams for each ninth-grade student that conduct check-ins with students and hold problemsolving meetings, as well as the development of a curriculum toolbox with lessons on goal setting and anger management (CohenVogel et al., 2016). Through rapid-cycle testing and mutual adjustment, the design team discovered a need to add more steps into the innovation so that teachers’ requests for problem-solving meetings could be communicated to the educator teams (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2016). Through this process, the partnership generates knowledge about continuous improvement processes and develops products that can travel to other contexts. The NCSU model demonstrates how design-based partnerships call upon a heavy investment of resources and time to engage in ongoing collaborative research to coordinate and develop effective innovations. Thus far, the reported results within partnering districts suggest the investment has been worthwhile as ‘teachers appear to be more likely to enact innovations built upon practices that have been shown to work in their districts and that they are actively involved in developing, testing, and refining’ (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2016, p. 21). As with other design-based partnerships, however, the real value of the investment may depend on the extent to which the work of these particular partnerships can benefit the development of effective schools elsewhere – for example, whether the research knowledge gained can be used by others or whether the innovations that are developed

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can successfully travel to other contexts. This remains to be seen, as the NCSU partnership research, like other emerging design-based partnerships, is ongoing.

Social Design Experiments In the tradition of critical scholarship, Gutiérrez and colleagues have developed an alternative approach to design-based research in partnerships in the form of the social design experiment. Gutiérrez and Vossoughi (2009) describe the social design experiment as a form of critical pedagogy that ‘seeks to create and study change’ (p. 101) as researchers and co-designing participants collaborate for the purpose of ‘imagining and designing robust learning ecologies’ (p. 111) that enable learners from nondominant communities to imagine a more just world. This approach to co-design eschews ‘top down models’ (Gutiérrez, Hunter, & Arzubiaga, 2009, p. 19) of design experiments and instead builds on traditions of collaborative action research and participatory action research, involving collaboration between researchers and participants in every aspect of the project with the aim of allowing nondominant communities to reclaim educational spaces (Bang, Medin, Washinawatok, & Chapman, 2010). Learning opportunities are deliberately co-designed with learners to create consciousness about, and deliberate use of, contradictions to develop sociocritical literacies (Gutiérrez, 2008; Gutiérrez et  al., 2009) and push the boundaries of existing practices within institutions (Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, & Tejeda, 1999; Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2009). In education, contradictions between theory and practice are focal nodes of learning and activity. Social design experiments aim at creating learning opportunities mediated through culturally based materials, artifacts, or conversations that enable learners to look at the present through the perspective of the future (Bang et  al., 2010; Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2009).

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Partnerships pursuing this approach to design-based research require long-term commitments from researchers with close connections to partnering communities and strong enough convictions to weather challenges in funding (Bang et  al., 2010). The social design experiment calls for university partners, practitioners, and community members to attend to contradictions that arise in their own collaborative work, each opening themselves to learn from each other in the striving towards hybrid practices that build equity into ‘everyday social relations’ (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2009, p. 111).

CONCLUSION Design-based research conducted in partnership between local education leaders and researchers is an approach that is in its beginning stages. It has potential to help solve difficult problems of practice for which there are no conventional solutions available, and to generate practical design knowledge that informs leaders not only on ‘what’ to do, but also on the ‘how’ of getting from Point A to Point B with respect to specific problems of practice. The knowledge design-based research generates is problem-specific and contextsensitive. This distinguishes design-based research from school improvement literature that aims at general principles. Design knowledge is represented in an if–then proposition: ‘If you want to design intervention X as a solution to a problem of practice Y, starting from baseline E under contextual conditions F, then you are best advised to give that intervention the substantive characteristics A, B, and C and to do that via procedures K, L and M because of arguments P, Q, and R derived from the theory of action that informed the design (Mintrop, 2016; van de Akker, 1999). This if–then proposition limits the generalizability of design knowledge. At best, design research might yield knowledge that

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is transferable from one context to another if baselines and context conditions are well specified so that those inheriting the designs for their own application and reinvention can transparently compare conditions for implementation and iteration. Fulfilling the potential of design-based research requires structural preconditions. Education leaders need to have the skill and competence to engage with this form of knowledge creation. Even though the logic of the approach seems intuitively simple, it requires of leaders analytical thinking-slow capacities and dispositions that need to still be developed. Leaders need to become intellectual leaders. Researchers working in partnership with education leaders need to identify with, and own, the problems of practice schools and districts face. An infrastructure needs to be created that facilitates communication, for example Networked Improvement Communities or research–practice partnerships, and that sets some commonly agreed parameters for the joint work, for example common goals and metrics, or similar data collection methods. This will allow the testing of varying theories of action with varying intervention activities.

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40 Reflections on the State of School Organization Studies: Continuities and Challenges M i c h a e l C o n n o l l y , D a v i d H . E d d y - S p i c e r, Chris James and Sharon D. Kruse

INTRODUCTION In this final chapter of the Handbook, we reflect on the chapters and consider various matters arising across the volume as a whole. Those matters that arise from our deliberations are as varied and wide-ranging as the chapters. We start with a reflection on the context and aims of the volume, and the extent to which we believe these aims have been achieved, before turning our attention to significant issues that have emerged.

The Context and Aims of the Handbook As we stress in the Introduction to this volume, organizations are contextual and vary as much as they are similar. Furthermore, as has been acknowledged relatively recently, organizations are multi-rational, with sensemaking as a post-hoc activity, and decisionmaking failing to occur as formal theory

suggests (Weick, 1995). Alongside (or in response to) the theoretical changes in the broader field of organizational theory were those of methodology (Azevedo, 2002; Morgan & Smircich, 1980; Pfeffer, 1997; Van Maanen, 1995). Indeed, one of the primary challenges of organization theory was to include the voices and viewpoints of those who worked within the organization, and research that featured the ‘lived experience’ of organizational members came to the fore. In response, the field re-centered itself around inquiry that sought to feature the role of the individual within and as part of the organization. This re-centering included, but was not limited to, research into how an organizational community is developed and sustained (Brown & Duguid, 1991; Scott, 1987), the role of gender and ethnicity (Alvesson & Due Billing, 1996; Calás & Smircich, 1996; Martin, 1992), history and politics (Kieser, 1998; Zald, 1995), and policysetting and practice (McKinley, Mone, & Moon, 1999). These various research

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approaches brought the complexity of organizational life and study to the surface. The overall aims were to present ‘school as organization’ as a unique perspective and, in particular, to differentiate an organizational perspective from a leadership perspective, in an effort to complexify, if not resolve, a number of Sphinxian riddles. The increased challenging and questioning of organization studies has taken place alongside the equally challenging questioning of schools and their organization. The past three decades of varied and sustained attempts around the globe to change schools and to ‘improve’ the quality of education has revealed more than ever the need for organizational perspectives to serve as a prelude to focusing attention on leadership and management and not simply as an afterthought. Thus, as stated in the introductory chapter, we designed this Handbook with two aims in mind. The first aim was to create a forum for scholars in the field of school organization to engage in a critical conversation about organizational theory and the historical development, current state, and future orientations of the field. The second aim was to provide an opportunity, as appropriate, for scholars to articulate ideas that would illuminate, explain, and potentially improve practice. Both from our awareness of the field and from the wide range of chapters in the Handbook, we recognize that, in its present state, school organization is a fractured field, defined more by its boundaries – schools, their place in society, their members, and their challenges – than the coherence of its academic core. Our intention was that the volume would help to circumscribe those boundaries to advance organizational perspectives on schools and potentially on educational institutions generally, although as Eddy-Spicer and James have pointed out in their chapter, the notion of boundaries, even academically created ones, needs careful exploration. We envisaged chapter authors employing new perspectives as powerful analytical lenses through which to view a wide range of issues central to the

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definition of school organization as a field of study. Scanning across the chapters, it is apparent that the nature of the school as an organization is a complex phenomenon. Further, the boundary around ‘the school as an organization’ as a phenomenon of study is problematic in nature and entails a gamut of complementary, contrasting and, at times, conflicting concepts, which are nonetheless all relevant to the broader study of schools as organizations. Understanding systemic complexities involves greater awareness of organizational context, structure, processes and dynamics, accompanied by critical clarity about conceptual underpinnings. As set out in the introductory chapter, guiding questions for us were: ‘In what ways, to what extent, and how do contributions elaborate organizational perspectives on education?’ And perhaps more succinctly and directly, ‘What is the nature of school organization as a theoretical and practical discipline?’ The range and diversity of topics in this Handbook suggests that school organization is inherently a subject that draws on a range of disciplines, including philosophy (especially, but not solely, the philosophy of knowledge), sociology, politics, public and social policy, psychology, organization and management theory, and architecture. This multiplicity is typical of the wider study of organizations and brings various issues to the fore. As Azevedo (2002, p. 715) states, ‘The study of organizations is characterized by a diversity of theory and method. This diversity is both its strength and weakness.’ While she laments the weaknesses arising from this diversity, she argues that it is the ‘thematic nature of the subject’ (p. 715) that provides a measure of coherence. She argues that ‘organization researchers … are investigating a multi-layered and changing reality’ (p. 729), a challenge surely also faced by those researching schools as organizations. It is clear, therefore, that studies of school organization are inherently multidisciplinary.

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Educational programs devoted to the study of the subject could pay attention to that range of perspectives but what is perhaps missing in the school organization research field is more interdisciplinary research activities. The real world, especially that of school organization, does not come neatly packaged in ‘disciplinary boxes.’ However, interdisciplinary studies are highly complex and often yield fewer benefits than are anticipated compared with the costs. In addition to the problematic nature of interdisciplinary studies of organizations, a further impediment, and an indicator of the fractured state of affairs in relation to organizational perspectives in education, is the academic departments that serve as ‘home turf’ for our contributing authors. Many, but not all, come from departments of educational leadership, but contributors to the subject also come from departments that carry alternative labels, sometimes policy, social policy, public management and, less frequently, organizational studies. Nonetheless, it is in this way that school organizational studies have most readily found a somewhat precarious perch in schools of education. Reality on the ground, however, is not waiting for the academy to catch up. Perhaps the central connecting theme is epistemology, itself underpinned by a debate about the nature of reality. We observed the importance of this theme in a number of chapters. Margaret Archer’s work, for example, was much in evidence. We also noted, however, that ideas drawn from Winch, Kuhn, and Popper, among others, seemed to have dropped by the wayside. Reflecting on the focus of the various chapters, it is obvious that we have privileged some disciplines over others, largely on the basis of our discernment of topics and issues that we felt were most relevant. Readers will readily identify the absence of a chapter drawing extensively from economics. However, we would argue that a number of chapters did draw on economic or, more precisely, on political economic ideas, for

example, Farrell and Wilkins. The reference and inclusion of economic ideas in those chapters reflects the current place of economics in debates around school organization. We also considered the inclusion of a chapter focusing on the law or legal perspectives on schools as organizations, but in the end rejected the idea because we wondered whether such a chapter would have a sufficiently broad appeal, given the specificity of (national and other) legal systems. We do, however, readily acknowledge the significance of the legal regulatory dimension of the institutionalization of schools as organizations (Scott, 2014). Given our guiding questions, we deliberately sought a range of standpoints on schools as organizations. We invited authors to consider and reflect on established perspectives and to take those perspectives forward. Those reading the chapters will see that the authors have taken our charge seriously and, to different extents and in various ways, reanimated old concepts, such as that of bureaucracy, demonstrating the continued relevance of those ideas to current understanding. We also invited authors to explore and inform the school organization research community about new insights, for example, queer theory perspectives on school organization, the impact of digital technologies on the organization of schools, and the effect of the physical environment – school buildings – on schools as organizations, to open up new territories for exploration, which they have done to great effect. Chapters in this volume also move us beyond consideration of the school as the unit of analysis to the organizational implications of schooling as a system and the complex, interorganizational, and multi-level dynamics such a perspective entails (Hawkins & James 2017). In sum, we believe that, although, almost inevitability, all our ambitions were not achieved, nonetheless, thanks to our authors, the Handbook contributes substantively to the discourse on schools and their organization.

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Matters Arising It is obvious from the chapters included in the volume that the Handbook encompasses a range of different and contrasting perspectives. Not surprisingly, this diversity has thrown up a number of issues to which we would wish to draw attention. These include the impact of external factors, the nature of change, the nature of leadership, the nature of the discipline, and the relationship between academia and practitioners. We will consider each in turn.

External factors For a number of obvious reasons, we intended this volume to represent a wide range of voices beyond the Anglo-American axis of English-language scholarship. After all, our central question around ‘What is the nature of school organization as a theoretical and practical discipline?’ is informed by the notion that a school as an organization cannot be analyzed without paying attention to the larger political, social, and historical contexts within which it is set. A comparative perspective greatly helps to illuminate these factors. A considerable number of chapters – for example, those by Bellei et  al., Blackmore, Dallavis and Berands, Lynch, Mansfield, Sifuna, and Wilkins – point out the challenges schools experience in a wide range of contexts. It is quite clear that challenges associated with class, race, gender, and poverty remain in many countries and regions, and inequalities of all sorts have not been overcome. Further, these challenges vary across different countries and regions, and need careful examination and understanding. In addition, the challenges will not be solved solely by schools, although schools can and should play a part as a number of contributors have pointed out, including Lynch and Bellei et al., for example. Just as there are cultures in all schools, as Connolly and Kruse point out, there are ‘schools’ in all cultures, which may not be the consequence of isomorphic globalism, but may be

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underpinned by deeper, more long-standing social archetypal structures. All societies need a place where the young members of the community can gather, move out of the family setting and into the wider group/community to learn how to be in that wider setting, to contribute to it, and to enhance it, thereby taking the social grouping forward into new territories. The fact that the organization of schooling is so remarkably and persistently uniform across contexts means that perspectives that consider social, cultural, and historical contexts are crucial to deconstructing global dynamics. An issue that could perhaps be more widely discussed is the challenge offered to society, and hence to schools, by the growth of technology, especially information technology, as Cho, Rangel, and Noble highlight in this volume. Schools in a whole manner of ways, including education methodologies and administration, will have to address and respond to the accelerating challenge of technology. In addition, the impact on the wider society will throw up challenges to the education world. Thus, the impact of new technologies on employment prompts important questions about the nature and purpose of education. Will we see more adults returning to education to learn about and engage with new technologies? Will that generate more open/community schools? How do schools educate students to deal with changing/developing technologies? Importantly, the development of these new technologies is happening, and at a faster rate, at the same time as when schools in large parts of the world remain impoverished, as Sifuna has argued. The lost opportunity this represents carries compound interest, exacerbating existing divisions that will inevitably and increasingly impede the equitable adoption and use of new technologies, unless such disparities become a matter of wider public concern. Related to these challenges is the impact of neoliberalism on schools and their organization. A number of authorities, for example, Wilkins in this volume, and also Brown

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(2015) and Piketty (2014), have argued that various countries face a range of challenges from austerity, growing inequality, increased privatization, and the economization of public policy. We should also recognize an alternative ideological perspective, that of populism (J.-W. Muller 2017), which, while holding some aspects of neoliberalism, may well seek alternative views of the curriculum and its organization. Nonetheless, the economization of public goods remains dominant and has led to voices demanding that the central role of schools is to prepare children for the world of work, and that notions of a broadening and deepening of a child’s life should play second place. Caplan (2018), for example, has recently presented arguments questioning the relevance of much of the school curriculum. Most educationalists would challenge a narrow view of education, but the siren calls grow ever louder. The role of the private sector in providing education, combined with challenging limits on school budgets, is likely to continue, raising questions about the governance of education. The inclusion of chapters on governing, governance, and institutionalization brings to the fore the importance of understanding the governance structures and institutionalization forces that bear on schools as organizations (see Farrell’s chapter). These forces affect the practices of those responsible on a daily basis for the proper/legitimate function of institutions (Bevir, 2010; Kjaer, 2004), including schools. In turn, notions of governance are closely linked to neoliberalism and a marketoriented approach to the provision of public services, including education (Brown, 2015). Further, with that connection has come both the rise of managerialism and the constant search for performance metrics (see the chapter by Muijs in this volume). However, J. Z. Muller (2018) provides a skeptical view of this perspective. The significance of governance/institutionalization strongly suggests that comparative studies of school leadership and management and schools as organizations

will only be credible if the governance/ institutionalization context is fully understood and integrated into the analysis. The literature on governance has identified the importance of networks as central. This central importance in turn raises questions about the range of stakeholders and their modes of influence on schools (Connolly, Farrell, & James, 2017). This matter has become a crucial debating issue as much public policy on education in many Western countries has focused on performance. That debate has a certain crudeness about it in that the ‘measurable’ wins out over the ‘valuable,’ and hence the focus is on such features as the number of passes that students achieve in certain exams. In addition, as a number of our authors have pointed out, the glorification of the private sector has led to a mimicking of its models of organization and its leadership and management in the public sector, including in education. Thus, there is a growing trend – and concern – that the loosely-coupled, professional structures and processes traditionally associated with schools are giving way to a more tightly-coupled, bureaucratic mode of organization. While many educationalists seek to widen the debate to a broader vision of education and schools, and the place of schools in society, much of public policy, while nodding in this latter direction, remains focused on students’ results and league tables of student performance. The context in which schools operate is unlikely to become easier in the coming years and that, in turn, poses questions about the management of change in schools, to which we now turn.

The nature of change We decided not to include a separate chapter that attempts to cover the broad range of change as a theoretical construct. Instead, we direct the reader to locate where change is manifest in consideration of a number of school organization themes. One consistent theme across chapters that explore the interorganizational dynamics of school systems

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(for example, see chapters by Chapman; Peurach, Penuel, and Russell; Schechter and Shaked; and Wohlstetter and Lyle) is that of change as a constant, a continual process, not as discrete project. Similarly, chapters that address leadership and management (Bush, Jacobson) and institutional perspectives (Bridwell-Mitchell), as well as specific issues such as technology and culture, all situate change as an ongoing and regular condition of the school organization. It is worth noting here, that in each case, the authors move beyond an accounting of change as a cyclic or staged event within the school organization. Instead, the chapters focus on the ways in which change is both process and content, and how change can be fostered in both proactive and re-active ways in response to internal and external stimuli. In this way, these chapters position change as embedded and realized in the day-to-day interactions of the school organization and the system of which it is part (Hawkins & James, 2017; James & Connolly, 2000). It is evident to us that the authors of these chapters suggest that the practice of leadership, then, concerns the ability to turn the circumstances that confront us into comprehensible knowledge that serves as a springboard for action. An altogether different perspective on change arises from consideration of those chapters that explore issues of equity (Lynch), feminist perspectives (Blackmore), and queer theory (Mansfield). These chapters highlight the ways that schools mirror the larger changing cultures in which schools reside, challenging long-standing assumptions concerning for whom schools exist and whom they should serve. A number of chapters emphasize the obvious but sometimes forgotten centrality of people – and their responses to change – within school organizations. Thus, as Wohlstetter and Chapman, among others, have argued, despite the trends towards bureaucracy mentioned in the previous section on context, schools and professionals will reach out to other schools and professionals to learn

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from each other. Given the affective intensity of schools (James, 1999), there is surely more scope for bringing affect and its significance to personal and interpersonal life into understandings of schools as organizations (Connolly & James, 2018; Crawford, James, & Oplatka, 2017; James & Crawford, 2015). This assertion draws attention to the ways in which social relationships, in all their complexity, are the very essence of schools (Hawkins & James, 2017). In turn, the significance of this issue has persuaded colleagues to look to a range of perspectives – complexity theories, social network theories, and boundaries – for insights. Hence, our understanding of change – its ubiquity, its management (or mismanagement), and its sources – has been greatly enriched, less through a direct focus on change management and more through its unfolding in a range of areas, for example, technology and culture. Reflecting on the issues explored in several chapters that touch directly on organizational change, there appears to be consensus that planned approaches to change are to be heavily criticized. Process models are the preferred framework for understanding – and even managing – organizational change. Undoubtedly, these broad approaches bring valuable insights and highlight the complexity and dynamic nature of change in schools. Indeed, they raise the question of whether and to what extent managers – and leaders – can implement change strategies. There is a risk here that inherently valid ideas, in this case planned approaches to change, may be lost when other ideas are so strongly favored. Are there not circumstances when the technology of planned change in the major physical remodeling of the school, such as the transfer to a new school building, or a substantial change to the structure of the school day, is vital and desired by a wide range of key stakeholders including staff and parents?

The nature of leadership Reflecting on the notion of organizational change in turn raises the perennial issue of

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leadership and its darker and less prominent twin, management (see chapters by Bush and Jacobson). Leadership and leaders in schools and beyond have become a dominant concern in both policy and public narratives. Yet many unanswered questions remain. Are we clear, for example, as to whether it is leaders who create schools or schools that create leaders? Can leaders create cultures that lead to improved performance (assuming that can be defined)? And of course, the perennial issue of whether leaders can be made. Equally, as Bush discusses, there is a debate about the relationship between leadership and management. Undoubtedly, leadership is generally rated as more important than management, yet poor management may lead to disaster as well as poor leadership (Connolly, James, & Fertig, 2017). Much of the educational leadership literature views leadership as influence, which requires motivation to undertake and necessitates motivating others – those being influenced, both within and without the school. This idea is not entirely new. For example, Stogdill (1950, p. 3) defined leadership as follows: ‘Leadership may be considered as the process (act) of influencing the activities of an organized group in its efforts toward goal setting and achievement.’ Management, on the other hand, involves taking responsibility for the performance of the relevant unit – school, department, and so on (Connolly, James, & Fertig, 2017). Both leadership and management are clearly important in practice. Both notions, together with the related and crucial concept of responsibility, need to be understood at a fundamental level of analysis to advance our understanding and improvement of schools (Connolly, James, & Fertig, 2017).

The nature of the discipline As we have stated above, and as is evident from the range of topics and perspectives in the Handbook, the subject of school organization is inherently one that draws on a wide range of disciplines. Despite this variation of discipline, we have sought to draw lessons

across the various perspectives. One issue that emerged was that many of the thinkers in this field did not ‘come innocent to their enquiries’ (Lyas, 1999, p. 9). Hence many of our authors demonstrated their awareness of the historical debates and the key writers in their fields to illuminate their contribution. For all of us, knowing ‘where you come from’ is a great help in supporting any endeavors to find out ‘what is’ and ‘where matters may be heading,’ even if you end up rejecting or radically amending those past theories and insights. The history of many of the range of disciplines that are central to the study of school organization remain interesting and important, unlike the history of many of the physical sciences to current practitioners. Nevertheless, we urge those drawing on particular disciplines in our area of concern to continue to critique their disciplines so that the founding principles of each perspective and their focus are themselves opened up for scrutiny and critique. Such an approach would ensure the continual development of any founding ideas. Any theoretical perspective is inevitably ‘of its time’ and, in any event, working with those ideas perhaps in a contemporary context has the potential to extend, develop, and enhance those theories. A critique of the utility of school organization as a practical field is one that relates to scale. That is, by approaching the study of school organization from different angles and units of analysis, the field has struggled to both define and delimit its scope and reach. In part, the critique holds true because the field has focused perhaps too narrowly on the microanalysis of, for example, school leadership traits and behaviors, with inadequate attention given to the context in which school leaders work. Conversely, the field might also be critiqued for focusing too broadly, inappropriately concerning itself with wideranging policy changes that are unlikely to feel of practical value to any individual school leader or teacher. The micro/macro critique of school organization mirrors that of the larger field

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of organizational theory. In its early years, organizational theory sought to uncover an organizational calculus of sorts and focused on key structural variables that were designed to reveal generalizable and universal principles of organizing (Barnard, 1968; Burrell & Morgan, 1979), as well as their institutionalization (Strang & Sine 2002).

The relationship between academia and practitioners In considering the nature of the subject, it is its relationship with ‘practice’ that emerges as important. We acknowledge that the study of school organization has been an academically situated activity and that, at times, it has been of little direct utility to the very practitioners that theorists/academics seek to study and serve. That, of course, does not make such academic endeavors irrelevant to educational practice. Far from it. Much work goes into challenging the hidden assumptions that guide practice. Further, many scholars have taken it on themselves to voice skepticism, if not direct opposition, to the nature and intentions of policy, leadership, and managerial initiatives that seek to impact on school organizations in many settings. ‘Speaking truth to power’ remains a necessary role and task for academics, and in that way, some of the less acceptable and more ineffective models of school organization can be challenged to the advantage of schools, teachers, students, and their wider communities. The study of schools as organizations has an important role to play here. Nonetheless, we accept that perhaps the major missing element in the Handbook is the detail on ‘management challenges’ – the everyday but crucial activities that those responsible for the proper functioning of the school as an organization face, for example, setting up the timetable, managing poor teacher performance, and handling teacher absence. Those topics did appear in a number of chapters where contributors endeavored to consider the practical implications and outcomes. Further, we deliberately sought

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to include various research issues, including practitioner-based research, with all its rewards and challenges (see the chapter by Townsend). We were conscious that more of these issues would have been welcome, but we deliberately pitched our aims around theoretical and general issues, believing that there is nothing as practical as a good theory. One of the features of a rich study of school organization must be the interplay between academic reflection and the everyday world of those who organize schools. That is not to diminish academic work or dismiss the concerns of those ‘at the chalk-face,’ but to argue for increased dialog between theorists and practitioners. Given the nature of the rapidly changing and challenging world in which schools currently exist, clearing our minds about some of the noise associated with these developments would be of assistance.

CONCLUSION Finally, we make a plea for a continued and continual focus of academic endeavor and practical reflection on the school as an organization. A number of issues can readily be identified that need such continued examination. In recent times, for example, we have seen an emphasis on leadership, which has both confused its relationship with, and undermined the importance of, management (Connolly James, & Fertig, 2017). This confusion and the undermining, bordering on dismissal, of management as the importance of leadership has ascended has distorted conceptualizations of two important dimensions of organizing in schools. Further, the very significant school improvement movement, with its focus on and the normative advocacy of ‘what works’ and only relatively recently and infrequently addressing the issue of ‘why what works, works’ (see, for example, James et  al., 2006; and Chapman, and Peurach, Penuel, and Russell, in this volume) has diverted the attention of academics from

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organizational and theoretical matters. In addition, the continued separation of education organization theory from organization theory generally, even in the relatively straightforward and basic understandings of central concepts, is surely unhelpful in the pursuit of understanding of schools as organizations. Yes, schools are organizations of a particular kind with a special purpose, but they are nonetheless organizations. A closer connection between educational organization theory and organization theory would surely support and enhance the development of both fields. As many of our authors have established, understanding and coming to terms with the many complex challenges schools as organizations face will continually require sound theorization and critique, high-quality empirical study and thought-through interpretations of organizational phenomena, and the involvement of practitioners in all those endeavors. We hope that The Sage Handbook of School Organization will contribute to the analysis of some of the challenges schools face and the ways in which they can be overcome them.

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Muller, J.-W. (2017). What is populism? London: Penguin. Muller, J. Z. (2018). The tyranny of metrics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pfeffer, J. (1997). New directions for organization theory: Problems and prospects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Scott, W. R. (1987). Organizations: Rational, natural, and open systems (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Scott, W. 2014. Institutions and Organisations: Ideas, Interests and Identities. London: Sage. Strang, D., & Sine, W. D. (2002). Interorganizational institutions. In J. A. C. Baum (Ed.), Companion to organizations (Chapter 21). Oxford: Blackwell. Stogdill, R. M. (1950). Leadership, Membership and Organization, Psychological Bulletin, 47(1): 1–14. Van Maanen, J. (1995). Representation in ethnography. London: Sage. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Zald, M. N. (1995). Progress and cumulation in the human sciences after the fall. Sociological Forum, 10(3), 455–479.

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Index Page numbers in bold indicate tables and in italic indicate figures. Abbott, M. G., 33 ableism, 302 abusive supervision, 215, 221 academic aptitude tests, 302 Academic Optimism, 370 academy schools, England, 106–7, 109, 178, 188, 513, 514–15 Accelerated Schools Program, 197 accountability, 52, 53–4, 72, 107–8, 113–14, 515, 516 see also external accountability systems achieved status, 164 Achievement First network, 199, 202, 203–4, 205–6 Acker, Joan, 216, 342–3 action research, 621, 633, 641, 642, 644 action theories, 295, 672 active organizational agents, school buildings as, 582 Adam Smith Institute (ASI), 512 adaptive problem solving, 471 adaptive systems see complex adaptive systems Adelman, M., 348 Adler, P. S., 34 affective containment, 213, 221 affective perspectives, 210–22 future research, 221–2 school as brain, 214–15, 221 school as culture, 215–16, 221 school as instrument of domination, 219–20, 221 school as machine, 211–13, 221 school as organism, 213, 221 school as political system, 217–19, 221 school as psychic prison, 216–17, 221 school as system of flux and change, 213–14, 221 Africa see Education for All (EFA) in Africa agency theory, 104 agential power, 156 Ainscow, M., 188, 543, 544 air quality, impacts on learning, 578 Akkerman, S. F., 231, 237, 238 algorithmic governance, 515 Allaire, Y., 180 allocative distribution, 54, 60 Althusser, L., 309 Alvesson, M., 180, 181 American Educational Research Association, 480 American Federation of Teachers, 380 American Federation of Teachers, US, 40 America’s Choice, 197, 474 Analyse School Performance (ASP) tool, 515

analytic separability, 233, 234 analytical dualism, 156, 157, 170 Anderson, B., 518 Anderson, D. J., 349 Anderson, Gary, 84–97 Anderson, J. A., 391 Annenberg Challenge, 196 Annenberg, Walter, 196 anti-binary stance, 340, 350–2 anxieties, 217, 221 Archer, M. S., 156, 168, 170, 233–4, 242, 243, 245, 635, 644 Argyris, C., 126, 133, 291, 295, 433, 471 Arnold, R. D., 253 Arnot, M., 328 ascribed status, 164 Ashforth, B. E., 215 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), 416 Aspin, D., 196 assemblage thinking, 510, 517–20 Assessment and Teaching of 21st-Century Skills project, 448 Astiz, M. F., 418 attainment measures, 404–6 sub-group, 405–6 value-added, 404–5 attendance, school building quality and, 580–1 Au, W., 392 Australia bureaucratic organization, 31 instructional leadership, 74 physical learning environments, 578, 587 socio-economic inequality, 301–2 workplace perspective, 42 authentic leadership, 59 authority, 159, 160–3, 164–5, 167–8 defining, 160 distribution of, 162–3 multiple authorities, 160–1, 162 rational-legal, 121 social authority, 160–1 status and, 164–5 types of, 161–2, 161 autonomous causal influence, 234, 236, 238, 241, 242 Avis, J., 109 Bacchi, C., 332 Bacharach, S. B., 29

702

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

Baird, K. M., 178, 179 Bairstow, S., 341, 343 Bakker, A., 231, 237, 238 balanced scorecard approach, 411 Ball, Stephen J., 93–4, 95, 378, 516, 519, 543 Balrain, M., 113 Barad, K., 329 Baral, Mahua, 666–82 Barber, M., 420 Barley, S. R., 533 Barnard, C., 16, 125 Barnett, C., 510 Baron, R. M., 581 Barrett, M., 238 Bate, P., 186 Bates, A., 216–17 Bateson, G., 231 Bauer, Scott C., 119–36 Bauman, Z., 172 Baxter, J., 106, 107, 112–13, 391 Bearak, J. M., 393 Begley, P., 59 Bell, S., 184 Bellei, Cristian, 650–63 Bellevue Elementary School District, 604–12, 605, 611 belongingness, 169 Bendl, R., 341, 346 benevolence, trust and, 365 Bennett, N., 60 Berends, Mark, 489–502 Berkovich, Izhak, 210–22 Berle, A., 106 Berner, M. M., 590 Bernstein, Basil, 540 Bersin, Alan, 34 Bertalanffy, L., 251, 252 betweenness centrality, 610, 611 Bevir, M., 104, 518 Bhagat, R. S., 180 bi-sexual people, 346–7 Bidwell, C. E., 2, 12, 31–2, 35, 37 Biehl, B., 344, 345 Biesta, G., 638, 641 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 324, 325 binary opposition, 340, 350–2 Bishop, J., 296 Blackmore, Jill, 214, 219, 318–35 Blanchard, K. H., 87 Blase, Jo, 215, 219 Blase, Joseph, 215, 219 Blencowe, C., 161 Bloom, B. S., 310 Bloomberg, Michael, 200, 201 Blount, J., 327, 345, 346 Blumer, H., 242 board model of governance, 104–6 Bolman, L. G., 29, 35, 44, 54–5, 363

bonding social capital, 600, 601 Borman, G. D., 297 Borman, K. M., 32, 35–6, 40 Borys, B., 34 Bottery, M., 51, 58, 60, 640 Boulding, K. E., 169 boundaries see boundary perspectives; organizational openness boundary perspectives, 228–45, 255 boundary crossing, 236–8 boundary definitions, 230–1 boundary objects, 237–8 boundary processes, 231–2 boundary zones, 237 cultural-historical perspectives, 234, 236–8 emergentist perspective, 232–4, 242–3 epistemological implications, 232–4 future research, 245 Hernes’ analytic framework, 234, 238–42, 240 mental boundaries, 239, 240, 240, 241 methodological framework, 232–4 organizational boundary analytical framework, 243–5, 244 physical boundaries, 229, 230, 239, 240, 240, 241, 243 social boundaries, 229, 239, 240, 240, 241 system psychodynamics, 234, 235–6 boundary-spanning, 158, 255 bounded rationality, 431–2, 434, 672, 673 Bourdieu, P., 89, 254–5, 269, 307–8, 309 Bovens, M., 391 Bowers, A. J., 581 Boyd, W. L., 44, 70 Brackett, M. A., 212 Bradley-Levine, J., 164 Brady, K., 419 Braga Rodriques, S., 180, 185 Bragdon, C. R., 210 Braidotti, R., 329 brain metaphor, 214–15, 221 Bray, M., 415 Brazer, S. David, 119–36 Brenner, N., 520 bridging social capital, 601 Bridwell-Mitchell, Ebony N., 139–51 Briggs, A., 582 Broad, Eli, 94 brokerage, in social networks, 604, 610–12, 611 Brooks, C., 529 Brown, A. D., 180 Brown, Ann, 668 Brown, Tim, 671 Brown, Wendy, 693–4 Brown, William A., 106 Brundrett, M., 57 Bryk, A. S., 546, 670 Buchanan, R., 668

INDEX

Buckley, J., 586–7 Bucuvalas, M. J., 620 buildings, school see physical learning environments bullying culture, 189 Bunderson, T. S., 159, 167 Burawoy, M., 309 bureaucracy, 56, 120, 211, 511 characteristics of, 121–4 closed systems nature of, 124, 126, 129 criticisms of, 124–8 bureaucratic organizations, schools as, 30–6, 44, 123–4 Burkhardt, H., 669 burnout, 217, 365 Burns, A., 261 Burns, J. M., 87 Burt, Ronald, 600–1 Busch, T., 436 Bush, Tony, 51–63, 119, 120, 126, 695–6 business organizations, schools as, 44 Butler, Judith, 341, 344, 351 Cadbury Report (1992), 106 Callahan, R., 70, 123 Calvert-Barclay school project, 296 Cameroon, 571 Campbell, Donald T., 393, 394–6 Campbell’s law, 393, 394–6 Canada, 31, 438–43 capitalism, emotional, 216–17, 221 Caplan, B., 694 Capper, C. A., 340, 346 Caracheo, F., 33 Cardellino, P., 582 caring and emotional work, 217, 221 Carlson, C. B., 531 Carlson, R., 21 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 471, 479, 480, 670, 677–8 Carr, Adrian N., 217, 342 Carr, C. F., 37 Carr, W., 633 Cash, C. S., 583 Castelluci, F., 163, 164 Castree, N., 520 Castro, M., 491 categorical thought, rejection of, 340–1, 352–3 Cellini, S. R., 589 Census Bureau, US, 588 Central African Republic, 569 central conflation, 233, 241 centrality, in social networks, 608, 609, 610, 611 centralization/decentralization, 418 of authority, 34, 35, 70, 72, 120, 122 of inter-organizational networks, 197, 201, 202, 203, 204, 206 of social networks, 605, 606–7 trust and, 363–5

703

Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, 417 Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), 512 CFNs see Children First Networks (CFNs) Chance, P. L., 256 Chang, Ethan, 84–97 change nature of, 694–5 see also organizational change change drivers, 674–5 Chapman, Christopher, 422, 540–58 Chapman, J., 196 charismatic authority, 121, 161, 162 charismatic policy, 547 Charlesworth, R., 409 charter management organizations (CMOs), US, 196, 198–200, 201, 202, 203–4, 205–6 charter schools, US, 44, 178, 384 Charters, W. W., 33 Checkland, P., 253 Cheng, Eric C. K., 447–60 Chicago Teachers’ Union, 382 Children First Networks (CFNs), 200–1, 203, 205, 206 children’s literature, 350 Children’s Neighbourhoods Scotland, 557 Chilean school improvement study, 650–63 classroom level of analysis, 661–2 defining school effectiveness and tracing change, 651–3 historical approach, 657–8 improvement trajectories, 655–7 integrating levels of analysis, 660–2 local context and policies, 658–60, 661 processes and results, 653–5 school level of analysis, 661 China, 640 Chitpin, Stephanie, 430–44 Cho, Vincent, 524–35, 693 Christensen, T., 181 Chubb, J. E., 33 Civil Rights Act (1964), US, 349, 353 Clancy, P., 302 Clapham, A., 396–7 Clarke, J., 52, 509, 518, 520 Clarke, L., 185 class sizes, Africa, 569 class, social, 301–7, 321, 493–4, 496, 540–1 classical liberalism, 511, 512 classroom behavior management technologies, 526 classroom climate, 583, 584 classroom level process measures, 408–10 classroom observation, 408–9 classrooms as active organizational agents, 582 Clayton, B., 171 Cleary, C., 211 climate see school climate closed loop thinking, 253 CMOs see charter management organizations (CMOs), US

704

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

co-operative academies, England, 519 co-production, 157, 158 Cobb, P., 669 Coburn, Cynthia E., 38, 530, 603, 618–28 Cochran-Smith, M., 636, 637, 640–2 Cocker, Mark, 189 coercive isomorphism, 352 Coghlan, D., 639, 640 cognitive complexity, 255 cognitive legitimacy, 146, 147 Cohen, J., 182 Cohen-Vogel, L., 680 cohesion, of social networks, 604, 605–7, 605 Cohn, M. M., 41 Coleman, James S., 269, 600, 604 Coleman Report, 490 collaboration, 158, 159 collaborative enquiry, 543–4, 549–50 see also School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP) collaborative institutional agency, 150 collaborative lesson planning, 449, 451, 453–4, 454 collective bargaining, 323, 382–3, 384, 385, 386 collective teacher efficacy, 369–70 collectivism–individualism, 187 Collins, M., 212 Collins, P., 328 commensuration, 394, 396 Common Core of Data (CCD), US, 588 Common Core State Standards, US, 129, 144, 205, 233, 404 communities of practice, 368 communities, schools as, 68–9 community engagement Africa, 571–3 feminist perspectives, 326 leadership and, 87–8 school building quality and, 589–90 community revitalization, school buildings and, 588–90 competence, trust and, 367–8 complex adaptive systems, 260–2, 273–6, 277–8 complexity theory, 157, 273–6, 277–8, 277, 295 Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) projects, 297 comprehensive school reform designs (CSRs), 196, 197–8, 201, 203, 204, 205, 667 computerized data systems, 526 computing devices, 525–6 conceptual abstraction, levels of, 18–25, 19, 20 conceptual models, 254 conflationary tendencies in social theorizing, 233–4, 236, 238, 241 connectedness, 169–70, 171, 171 Connell, R., 385 Connolly, Michael, 1–4, 54, 57, 58, 110, 177–90, 690–8 constructivism, 87 Context, Input, Process, and Product (CIPP) model, 653–4 contingency theory, 87, 130, 292 contingent leadership, 61–3, 87

continuous improvement, 186, 465, 670 see also instructionally-focused continuous improvement continuum thinking, 253 Cooper, B., 70 Corbett, H. D., 39 Cornforth, C., 104, 105, 106, 112 corporate governance models, 104–5 corporate power, 516 corporate voluntarism, 30 Corson, D., 87 Corwin, Ronald G., 32, 35–6, 40 Cotton, K., 286 Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), US, 71, 77 Council of International Schools (CIS), 419 Court, M., 327 Cousins, J. B., 622 Cowen, R., 425 Crampton, F., 588 Crawford, M., 59, 213 creativity abusive supervision and, 215 emotions and, 214–15, 221 Creemers, B., 399 Cremin, L. A., 30–1 critical action research, 633, 641, 642, 644 critical friends groups, 368 critical pedagogy, 642 critical race theory, 88–9 critical rationalism, 436 critical reflexivity, 171, 172 critical theories, 71, 88–9, 513–14, 633–4, 642 Crow, G., 187 CSRs see comprehensive school reform designs (CSRs) Cuba, 296 Cuban, L., 9, 44 Cubberley, Ellwood P., 123, 124, 129 Culbertson, J., 70 Cullen, F., 350 cultural capital, 304, 490, 495, 500–1 cultural-cognitive pillar of institutions, 144, 144, 146–7, 239 cultural dimensions, 187, 459 cultural fluidity, 158 cultural-historical perspectives, 234, 236–8 cultural justice, 334 cultural perspective, 38–9, 44 cultural recognition, 327–9 culturally responsive practices (CRP), 72, 73, 75–6 culture metaphor, 215–16, 221 cultures see organizational/school cultures curriculum, 418 defining, 415–16 internationalization of, 419 Lesson Study and, 450, 451–3, 455–7 practitioner research and, 642

INDEX

cyberbullying, 333, 526 cybernetic principle, 291–4 Cyprus, 76 Czander, W. M., 232 Dakar Framework for Action, 562 Dale, D., 213, 235–6 Dallavis, Julie W., 489–502 Dallmayr, F., 169 Daly, Alan J., 267–78, 599–614 Danielson, C., 415 data aggregation, 23–4 data literacy, 411 Davidz, H. L., 253 Davies, W., 512 Davis, G. F., 122, 123–4, 127, 527, 528 Day, C., 75, 542, 545–6 DBIR see design-based implementation research (DBIR) de Blasio, Bill, 201 De Grauwe, A., 391 de Lauretis, Teresa, 344 De Rivera, J., 215 De Wolf, I. F., 393, 395–6 Deal, T. E., 29, 35, 44, 54–5, 178, 179, 180, 363 decentralization see centralization/decentralization decision-making, 430–44 bounded rationality problem, 431–2, 434 distributed leadership and, 434–6, 443–4 in education, 432 general approaches, 431–2 Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF), 434–5, 436–44, 437 rational choice models, 431–2 school structures and, 433–4 see also design-based approaches; research use in schools decisional capital, 542 deep learning, 416 degree centrality, 608, 609 delegation, 54 deliberative forum model of governance, 111 Deming, W. Edward, 449, 670 democratic authority, 161, 162 democratic innovation, 157 democratic localism, 30 democratic organizations, schools as, 331 Dempster, N., 57 Denison, D. R., 182, 189 Denmark, 74 density, of social networks, 605–6, 605 deprofessionalization, 40, 323 Descartes, R., 250–1 design-based approaches, 666–82 benefits and challenges, 676 change drivers, 674–5 design-based implementation research (DBIR), 471, 473, 678–80

705

design-based research methodology, 675 design thinking, 671–2 higher education leadership programs, 677 inquiry logic, 672 in the learning sciences, 669 National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools (NCSU), 680–1 Networked Improvement Communities (NICs), 677–8 problem diagnosis, 674 problem solving, 672–3 in product development, 670 research–practice partnerships, 676–80 social design experiments, 681 thinking fast–thinking slow, 673 in Total Quality Management, 669–70, 674 design-based implementation research (DBIR), 471, 473, 678–80 design thinking, 671–2 Dewey, John, 9, 36, 70, 644, 646 Diamond, M., 230 Dickson, M. W., 187 Dickson, W. J., 38 Diegmann, D., 395 digital age see technology DiMaggio, Paul, 144, 147 Dimmock, Clive, 414–26 disability, 302, 310 discipline, nature of the, 696–7 discursive destabilization of public schooling, 93–5 discursive institutionalism, 84–5, 90–7, 92 disintermediation, 516 distributed innovation, 157 distributed leadership, 54, 57, 59–61, 63, 88, 158, 159, 165–6, 331, 416, 434–6, 443–4, 545 district-based reform networks, 196, 200–1, 201, 203, 205, 206 District Leadership Design Lab, 679 district–school arrangements, 620, 624–5, 626 diversity discourse, 332 diversity of participation, 157–8 diversity, student, 72, 73, 75–6, 363 divorced parents, 497–8 Donaldson, L., 130 Donnellon, A., 127 Donnelly, C., 184 double-loop learning, 292–3, 399, 433, 471 Downs, A., 33 downward causation, 635 downwards conflation, 233, 238 dual-income families, 497 dual-process models, 673 dualistic sex-model, 341 Duke, Daniel L., 29–45 Duke, K., 297 Duménil, G., 511 Durán-Narucki, V., 580–1, 583

706

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

Dyehouse, M., 256 Dym, C., 668 dynamic model of educational effectiveness, 399 dynamic thinking, 253, 254 Earthman, G. I., 587 East Perthshire, Scotland, 399 Eastern Ontario Board, Canada, 438 Eaton, L. E., 344 Ebaeguin, M., 459 ecologically responsive schools, 578, 588, 589 economic inequality, 301–7 economization of public goods, 694 Eddy-Spicer, David H., 1–4, 228–45, 690–8 Edelman, L., 344 Eden, D., 219 EdInvest, 417 edu-businesses, 324, 325 Education for All (EFA) in Africa, 562–74 educational administrative structure, 565–7 facilities and learning environment, 567–8 financing, 565, 567, 568, 571–3 parental and community participation, 571–3 policy context, 563–4 policy implementation, 564–5 teaching and learning resources, 568–71 Education Reform Act (1988), UK, 51, 56, 108 Educational Administration Quarterly, 89, 89 Educational Institute of Scotland, 380 Educational International, 380 educational leadership, 56–7, 63, 72, 73–4, 76, 288–90, 290 Educational Leadership, 37 Educational Longitudinal Study (2002), US, 581 Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 187 EFA see Education for All (EFA) in Africa effective schools model, 288–90, 290, 297, 298 Ehren, Melanie, 390–9 Elder-Vass, D., 241 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965), US, 144 Elliott, J., 451 Elmore, R. F., 394, 482 Elwell, F., 353 emancipatory education, 308–12 emancipatory ideal of practitioner research, 641–2, 644–6 emancipatory interests, 634, 642, 644, 645, 646 emergence, 252, 255, 261, 275, 632, 634–5 emergent distribution, 54, 60 emergentist perspective on boundaries, 232–4, 242–3 emotion-based routines, 215–16, 221 emotional adjustment, 212, 221 emotional capitalism, 216–17, 221 emotional climate, 215, 221 emotional containment, 213, 221

emotional display rules, 219, 221 emotional geographies, 218, 221 emotional instincts, 213, 221 emotional intelligence, 212, 221, 311, 330 emotional knowledge, 212, 221 emotional labor, 219, 221 emotional manipulations, 219–20, 221 emotional understanding, 218, 221 emotional work, 217, 221 emotions, 210–11 creativity and, 214–15, 221 gendered work and, 216, 221 organizational politics and, 218, 221 risk taking and, 215, 221 sensemaking and, 214, 221 see also affective perspectives empathy, 218, 219, 221 employment relationship, 376–86 collective bargaining, 323, 382–3, 384, 385, 386 conflict theories, 379 contemporary developments in industrial relations, 382–5 industrial unionism, 380–1 new unitarism, 384–5 pluralist approaches, 379, 382–4 political unionism, 381–2 professional unionism, 381 social justice unionism, 382 teacher unions, 40, 179, 321, 380–5 understanding, 377–9 unitarist approaches, 378, 379 empowerment paradigm, 297 England academy schools, 106–7, 109, 178, 188, 513, 514–15 boundary perspective examples, 235–6, 239–40, 240 co-operative academies, 519 external accountability systems, 395, 396–7 free schools, 106–7, 109, 178, 188, 324, 513, 514–15 governance and governing bodies, 103–14, 188 New Right, 515–16 Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), 58, 112, 113, 395, 396–7, 513, 515 organizational learning, 75 post-welfarist education policy, 514–15 workplace perspective, 42 English, F., 444 English National College for School Leadership, 51 environmental education, 419 environmental psychology, 579 Epstein, J. L., 491 Equality of Educational Opportunity, 490 equality of opportunity, 305–6 equilibrium, punctuated, 274 equitable educational advocate, 86 Eren, A., 212

INDEX

Espeland, W. N., 394–5, 397–8 espoused theory, 295 ethical leadership, 58–9 Eton School, England, 181 European Commission, 308 European Union, 304, 308, 311, 416 evaluation, student, 17–18 Evers, Colin W., 213, 430–44 Every Student Succeeds Act (2015), US, 144, 628 evidence-based decision making see research use in schools evidence-based practice, 422, 423–4, 637–8, 641 evolutionary learning, 472, 473 evolutionary logic, 469, 471–3, 472, 477, 481 executive board model of governance, 111 experiential authority, 161, 162 exploitation learning, 471, 472, 473 exploration learning, 471–3, 472 expressive ties, 603 external accountability systems, 322, 323, 390–9, 467, 515, 667 alternative models, 398–9 boundary perspectives, 233, 240, 241 Campbell’s law, 393, 394–6 commensuration, 394, 396 distortion of school organization, 392–8 norm-conforming behaviour, 395–6 self-fulfilling prophecies, 394–5, 396 self-inspecting mechanisms, 395, 396 external factors, 693–4 Eyal, Ori, 210–22 family background and resources, 304–5, 490–1 family instability, 497–8 Farina, Carmen, 201 Farrell, Catherine, 103–14 fast and slow thinking, 673 fears, 217, 221 feedback in complex adaptive systems, 274–5 in decision-making, 433 double-loop learning, 292–3, 399, 433, 471 single-loop learning, 291–2, 293, 471 in systems thinking, 251–2, 255, 258, 260 feelings see affective perspectives Feldman, M. S., 624 femininity, 320, 341, 342–3 femininity–masculinity cultural dimension, 187 feminist perspectives, 88, 211, 318–35, 340, 342 affective dimension of schools, 330 contested values and cultures, 326–7 cultural recognition and gendered subjectivities, 327–9 future possibilities/constraints, 333–4 gender equity policy, 331–2 gendering organizational theory, 342–4 marketization of schooling, 322–4

707

masculine/feminine binaries, 320 organizational change, 331–2 parental involvement, 325–6 pedagogy and power, 329–30 school-community relations, 326 school effectiveness and improvement, 325 schools as democratic organizations, 331 schools as un/safe places, 330 schools in context, 324–5 schools, systems and the state, 320–4 Fend, Helmut, 286–7, 287, 295 Ferguson, K., 88 FFT (Fischer Family Trust) Governor Dashboard, 515 Fiedler, F. E., 87 field building, 476, 479, 480 Fielden, S. L., 346–7, 352 financial crisis (2007/2008), 304 Fink, D., 435 Finland, 422, 424, 448 Firestone, W. A., 39 Firsirotu, M. E., 180 fitness landscapes, 274, 275–6 Fitzgerald, T., 60–1 Flanders, 396 Fleming, P., 218 Follett, M., 127 Follett, Mary Parker, 342 formal authority, 161, 161, 162, 167–8, 622–3 formal organizations, 23, 24 formalization, 34, 122, 296 formative data, 675 Forrester, J. W., 258 Foster, W., 71 Foucault, M., 511, 520 France, 31, 43 Francis, R., 106 Fraser, Nancy, 328, 334, 351 free primary education policy, Africa, 565, 569, 570, 571–3 free schools, England, 106–7, 109, 178, 188, 324, 513, 514–15 Freire, Paulo, 169, 308 Frey, B. S., 392, 393–4, 398 Frick, T., 256 Friedman, Tom, 439 Frost, D., 61, 158 Frost, P. J., 180 Fullan, M., 256, 378, 435 Fuller, B., 587 functionalism, 87–8, 89, 267 fundamentalist religious schools, 323 Fusarelli, B. C., 344 Gabriel, Y., 235 Galisson, K., 419 Gane, N., 512 Gates Foundation, 324, 325

708

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA), 348 Geijsel, F. P., 214 Gemeinschaf, 68 gender, 340, 341, 345 emotions and gendered work, 216, 221 gendering of emancipatory education, 309–12 gendering organizational theory, 342–3 leadership and, 88 parental involvement and, 497 physical education classes and, 349, 351–2 school traditions and, 181 status and, 164–5 see also feminist perspectives gender-based harassment, 330 gender equity policy, 331–2 gender segregation in schools, 323 generic thinking, 253 Geometer’s Sketchpad (GSP), 453 Germany, 302, 390, 395 Gesellschaft, 68 Getzels, Jacob, 37, 38 Gewirtz, S., 515, 516 Ghana, 568, 570 Gharajedaghi, J., 253 Ghoshal, S., 268 Giddens, A., 238, 239, 531 Gidley, M. G., 171, 172, 173 Gieryn, T., 583 Gilligan, C., 311 Gislason, N., 583–4 Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 557 Glatter, R., 43, 54 global education, 419 Global Partnership for Education (GPE), 418 global testing regimes, 517 Glover, D., 55, 55, 63 Goastellac, G., 302 Goddard, J. T., 72 Godfrey, D., 393 Goh, J., 60 Goldstein, J., 634 Goleman, D., 212 Gómez, E., 452 ‘good mother’ ideology, 497, 498 Goodman, N., 231, 234 governance and governing bodies, 103–14, 188, 694 accountability, 107–8, 113–14 Africa, 565–7, 571–3 algorithmic, 515 board model, 104–6 deliberative forum model, 111 Education for All (EFA) and, 565–7, 571–3 evolution of school governance in US, 69–70 executive board model, 111 good governance, 107–8, 110–14 governing board model, 111 market-focused, 106–7, 108–9

neoliberalism and, 513 in practice, 112–14 principal-agent model, 104, 114 school improvement and, 110–12 skills-based model, 108, 109–10 sounding board model, 111 stakeholder model, 105, 108–9, 110, 113 stewardship model, 104–5, 113–14 see also leadership and management governmentality, 511, 520 graded schools, 30–1 Gramsci, A., 309 Granovetter, Mark, 600–1 Greece, 302 Green, S. D., 220 green schools, 578, 588, 589 Greenberg, M. T., 212 Gregory, A. J., 397–8 Griesemer, J. R., 237 Griffin, P., 448 Grissom, J. A., 42 Gronn, Peter, 59, 60, 61, 213, 545 Gross Stein, J., 188 Groves, S., 459 Grummell, B., 327 Gunter, H., 60–1, 516–17, 545 Gupta, V., 393 Gustafsson, J.-E., 395 Gutiérrez, K. D., 681 Habermas, Jürgen, 632, 633–4, 638, 639, 641, 642, 643, 644–5 Haikio, L., 110 Hairon, S., 60 Hall, G. E., 457 Hall, S., 510 Hallinger, P., 52, 55, 57, 59, 74 Hamilton, L. S., 392, 393 Handbook of Organizations, 31–2, 37 Handbook of Research on Educational Administration, 32–3, 35–6, 39, 42, 44 Hanlon, G., 217 Hanna, D., 230, 243 Hannaway, J., 35 Hansot, E., 40 Hanushek, E. A., 395 Haraway, D., 329 Harewood Company, 639 Hargreaves, A., 69, 218, 378, 435, 542 Hargreaves, David H., 179, 546, 637, 638 Harlem Children’s Zone, US, 557 Harris, Alma, 59, 60, 61, 545 Harris, Angel L., 502 Harris, William Torrey, 30–1 Harrison, Christopher W., 618–28 Harrison, G. L., 178, 179 Hartley, D., 60

INDEX

Harvey, D., 511, 518 Hatch, M. J., 182, 186 Hatch, T., 397 Hattie, J. A. C., 542 Hawkins, M., 261, 262 Hawthorne studies, 38 Hayek, Friedrich Von, 512 Heap, S. H., 431 Heck, R., 52, 57, 59, 74 Heckscher, C., 124, 127 Heifitz, R., 471 Held, V., 311 Helterbran, V. R., 61 Hendry, J., 186 Heraud, R., 158–9 Hernes, T., 231, 234, 238–42, 243, 245 Hersey, P., 87 heteronormativity, 341, 346, 347 heterosexuality, 341, 347 heuristics, 673 Hiebert, J., 459 hierarchy, 122, 126 hierarchy of human needs, 125 Higgens, V., 518 Higgins, J., 218 Higgins, S., 590 high-reliability organizations, schools as, 295–7, 297, 298, 515 high-stakes accountability see external accountability systems Higham, R., 109 higher education leadership programs, 677 Hill Collins, P, 312 Hindmoor, A., 184 Hinings, C., 122 historical institutionalism, 90, 92 historical perspectives, 29–45 bureaucratic perspective, 30–6, 44, 123–4 business perspective, 44 cultural perspective, 38–9, 44 institutional perspectives, 42–4 political perspective, 44 social systems perspective, 36–8, 44 workplace perspective, 39–42, 44 Hitchins, D. K., 253 Hochschild, A., 219 Hoffman, A. J., 3 Hofstede, G., 187, 459 Holbombe, R. W., 393 homeless and highly mobile families, 499–500 homosexuality, 330 honesty, trust and, 365–6 Hong Kong, 113, 424, 447, 448 Honig, M. I., 679, 680 Honneth, Axel, 351 Hook, C. M., 409 hooks, bell, 308

709

Hope, M. A., 169 Hopkins, D., 60, 541, 656 Hopper, M., 254 Hord, S. M., 457 Horne Martin, S., 582 Horne, S. C., 582 Horng, E. L., 587–8 Hourigan, M., 452 House, E.R., 543 housing prices, 589 Hout, M., 302 Howell, J. B., 458 Hoy, W. K., 34, 432, 433 Hoyle, E., 53, 56, 57, 58 Hughes, J. E., 528 Hughes, M., 436 Huguet, Alice, 618–28 human capital, 414, 416, 490, 542 human relations theories, 125 human rights education, 419 human service organizations (HSOs), 21–2 humanism, 414 Ibarra, H., 603 Iceland, 582, 587 ill-defined problems, 672–3 images of organization, 211 immigrant populations, 72, 363, 500–1 impact infrastructure, 477–9, 478 Implementation Science, 471 improvement infrastructure, 478, 479–81 Improvement Science, 471, 480 Improving the Quality of Education for All (IQEA) programme, 639 in-degree centrality, 608, 609 incarceration, parental, 498–9 incipient improvement, 656 independence of power and properties, 234, 236, 238, 241, 242 indirect effect models, 290 individual learning, 291, 293 individualism–collectivism, 187 industrial relations see teacher unions industrial unionism, 380–1 inequality, 301–12, 694 emancipatory education, 308–12 gendering of education, 309–12 justifications for, 305–6 meritocratic policies and, 305–6 private family investment, 304–5 race and ethnicity, 302, 303 social class and, 301–7, 321, 540–1 what schools can change, 307–12 what schools cannot change, 303–7 informal authority, 622–3 informal social networks, district–school, 625, 627 information dissemination, trust and, 363

710

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

information technology see technology Ingersoll, R. M., 41–2 Ingley, C. B., 114 inherited wealth, 303 innovation infrastructure, 475–81, 478 inquiry as stance, 640–2 inquiry logic, 672 inspection reports, 407–8 inspection systems, 390–8 Inspectorates of Education, 391, 392, 395, 396–7 see also Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), England Institute for Education Sciences, US, 477 Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), 512 institutional arrangements, 476, 477, 478 institutional climate of schools, 295–6 institutional entrepreneurs, 158 institutional isomorphism, 43, 90, 144, 147, 230, 352, 353–4 institutional logic, 476 institutional reach, 158 institutional theories, 42–4, 92, 139–51 cultural-cognitive pillar, 144, 144, 146–7, 239 discursive institutionalism, 84–5, 90–7, 92 implications for schools, 147–50 institutional change, 148–50 instrumental rationality, 140–2, 147–8 legitimacy, 140, 142–4, 145, 146, 147, 184 normative pillar, 144, 144, 145–6, 239 regulative pillar, 144–5, 144, 239 three pillars of institutions, 144–7, 144, 239 instructional leadership, 56–7, 63, 72, 73–4, 76, 288–90, 290 instructionally-focused continuous improvement, 465–82 educational environments, 466, 475–81, 478 evolutionary logic, 469, 471–3, 472, 477, 481 field building, 476, 479, 480 impact infrastructure, 477–9, 478 improvement infrastructure, 478, 479–81 innovation infrastructure, 475–81, 478 logic of confidence, 466–7 research-development-diffusion-utilization logic, 475, 476–9, 481 school improvement networks, 469–74, 472, 475 schools, 466–9 instrument of domination metaphor, 219–20, 221 instrumental rationality, 140–2, 147–8 instrumental ties, 603 integrative thinking, 171, 172 inter-organizational networks, 195–207 benefits, 204–5 boundary reconfiguration, 205 capacity building, 203 centralization/decentralization, 206 challenges, 205–6 charter management organizations (CMOs), 196, 198–200, 201, 202, 203–4, 205–6

collaboration, 202–3 collective responsibility and commitment, 202 composition, 197, 201, 202 comprehensive school reform designs (CSRs), 196, 197–8, 201, 203, 204, 205 conceptualizing, 196–7 coordination, 203–4 district-based reform networks, 196, 200–1, 201, 203, 205, 206 economies of scale, 204 genesis, 197, 201, 202 inclusivity/exclusivity, 206 independence, 197, 201, 202 insularity, 206 knowledge sharing, 204 purpose, 197, 201, 202 resource sharing, 204 sensitivity to external environment, 205–6 specialization, 204, 206 structure, 197, 201, 202 interactional nature of schools, 267–78, 277 complexity theory, 273–6, 277–8, 277 social capital theory, 268–70, 269, 276, 277, 278 social network theory, 270–3, 276–7, 277, 278 International Baccalaureate (IB), 419 International Convention on the Rights of the Child, 562 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 322, 328, 416, 563 international schools, 419 International Schools Association, 419 International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), 72, 73–6 international testing programmes, 517 see also PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) internet, 526 interpretive flexibility, 530–1, 532 intersectionality, 341, 347 Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Standards, 71 intuition, 671, 673 intuitive judgment, 673 intuitive reasoning, 673 Investing in Innovation (i3) program, 474 IQ tests, 302 Ireland, 302 Irwin, C. C., 289 Iyengar, S. S., 443 Jackson, D., 60 Jacob, B. A., 396 Jacobson, Stephen L., 67–79 James, Chris, 1–4, 105–6, 107, 110, 112, 113, 213, 228–45, 261, 262, 690–8 Jansen, J. D., 218 Janssens, F. J. G., 393, 395–6 Japan, 447, 448, 640 Jennings, J. L., 393

INDEX

Jepson, H., 346–7, 352 Jermier, J. M., 181, 188, 189 Jessop, B., 514, 518 Jeynes, W., 491, 492 Johns Hopkins University, 197–8 Johnson, Bob L., Jr., 9–25 Johnson, L., 75–6 Johnson. L., 187 Johnson, Susan Moore, 41 Jones, K., 393, 442 Juhler, M. V., 452 Junemann, C., 543 jurisdiction, district–school, 624–5, 627 Kamens, D. H., 422–3 Karabel, J., 306 Katz, Michael B., 30, 44 KCI see knowledge-constitutive interests (KCI) Keavney, G., 217 Kelley, David, 670, 671 Kelley, Tom, 670, 671 Kemmis, S., 633, 636, 641 Kennedy, A., 179 Kenny, D. A., 581 Kensler, L. A. W., 578 Kenya, 569–70, 571–3 Kerchner, C., 381 Keynesian economics, 512 King, K. S., 256 Kirwan, S., 161 Kisfalvi, V., 158 Klages, Mary, 344 Klein, Joel, 200, 201 Klijn, E. J., 391 knowledge-based economy, 416 knowledge-constitutive interests (KCI), 632, 633–4, 638, 639, 643, 644–5 knowledge creation, in Lesson Study, 451–3, 455–7 knowledge creators, teachers as, 621 Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), 199 Knox, J. S., 261 Ko, P. Y., 457 Konkola, R., 237 Koppejan, J. F. M., 391 Koretz, D. M., 393, 396 Kotter, J. P., 457 KPMG, 324 Kreiner, G. E., 215 Kruger, M., 290, 290 Kruse, Sharon D., 1–4, 177–90, 690–8 Kyriakides, L., 399 Lacey, K., 213 Lakomski, G., 88, 213 Lambert, L., 57, 61 Lambert, P., 238 Lancaster, R., 398

711

Larimer, C. W., 34 Larner, W., 518 Larson, C., 69 Larsson, H., 349 Latour, B., 238, 239, 529 Law, D. Y. K., 237–8 Law, J., 113 Layder, D., 233, 241 Leach, E., 230 Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ), 86–7 leader-member-exchange theory, 87 Leaders for America’s School (1987), 71 leadership and management, 51–63, 67–79, 84–97, 416, 430 accountability, 52, 53–4, 72 authentic leadership, 59 communitarian approaches, 77–8 competence in, 367–8 conceptions of, 55–62, 55 constructivist theories, 87 contingent leadership, 61–3, 87 critical theories, 88–9 culturally responsive practices (CRP), 72, 73, 75–6 defining, 52–5, 52, 696 discursive institutionalism, 84–5, 90–7, 92 distributed leadership, 54, 57, 59–61, 63, 88, 158, 159, 165–6, 331, 416, 434–6, 443–4, 545 equitable educational advocate, 86 evolution of school management in US, 70–2 four-quadrant models, 86–7 functionalist theories, 87–8, 89 global educational policy convergence, 72 historical theorizing of, 86–9 indirect effect models, 290 instructional leadership, 56–7, 63, 72, 73–4, 76, 288–90, 290 International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), 72, 73–6 leadership preparation, 77–8 leadership standards, 71–2, 76, 77–8 main focus of, 52–3, 52 managerial leadership, 55–6, 63 meta-control, 289 middle leadership, 416, 552–3 moral leadership, 58–9 nature of, 695–6 new entrepreneurial leader, 85 organizational learning and, 72, 73, 74–5, 76 power, 52, 53 processes, 52, 53 professional leadership, 545–6 queer theory, 347 relationships, 52, 54–5 school culture and, 179–80, 182–5, 289–90 school effectiveness and, 288–90, 290 school improvement and, 63, 77–8, 544–6

712

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

spiritual leadership, 58–9 structure, 52, 53 system leadership, 553 teacher leadership, 61, 164–5, 297, 544–5, 551, 553 transactional leadership, 54, 58 transformational leadership, 54, 57–8, 63, 87, 179–80, 367, 434 work allocation, 52, 54 see also decision-making; design-based approaches; governance and governing bodies leadership distribution see distributed leadership Leadership for Educational Equity Program (LEEP), 677 leadership for learning, 56, 57, 63 league tables, 404 LearnDBIR, 480 learning environments see physical learning environments learning experiences, 416 learning organizations, 267–8, 291–4, 297, 298, 327, 433 learning studios, 238 Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS) partnership, 679 Leavitt, H., 13 Leavy, A. M., 452 Lee, J., 392 Lee, John Chi-kin, 447–60 Lee, M., 182 Leeuw, F. L., 393 Lefebvre, H., 238, 239 legitimacy, 110, 140, 142–4, 145, 184 cognitive, 146, 147 moral, 146 pragmatic, 145 legitimate power, 162, 163 Leithwood, K., 54, 55, 55, 56, 57, 61, 73–4, 214, 289–90, 622 Lemasters, L., 587 Lepper, M. R., 443 lesbians, 341, 343, 346–7 Lesson Study, 447–60, 640 collaborative lesson planning, 449, 451, 453–4, 454 curriculum implementation, 450, 451–3, 455–7 institutionalizing, 457–9 knowledge creation, 451–3, 455–7 lesson implementation, 449–50, 451, 453–5, 454 PDCA Cycle, 449–53, 460 reflective evaluation, 450, 451, 453, 454–5, 454 teacher collaborative learning, 450–1, 453–5, 454 levels of conceptual abstraction, 18–25, 19, 20 Levi-Faur, D., 513 Levin, B., 623, 624 Levine, D. K., 286 Levitt, S. D., 396 Lévy, D., 511 Lewin, Kurt, 182, 637, 675 Lewis, D., 189

Lezotte, L. W., 286 LGBTQ students, 330, 348–50 Li, T. M., 518 liberalism, 320, 321 classical, 511, 512 see also neoliberalism liberatory education, 308–12 Lin, N., 269 Lingard, B., 517 Lipman, P., 302 Lipsky, M., 35 Lisbon Agreement, 308, 311 Lizotte, C., 519 Local Management of Schools (1988), 51, 53 Lochner, K., 269 logic of confidence, 466–7 logical positivism, 71 London Challenge programme, UK, 404 loose coupling, 12, 35–6, 43, 239, 288, 289, 466–7, 474 Lortie, Dan, 41 Los Angeles, 196, 587 Louis, K. S., 39, 41, 182 love as an integrative power, 160, 167–72, 171, 173 Lubienski, C., 516 Lucenario, J., 452 Luet, K. M., 495 Lugg, C. A., 345, 348 Luhmann, N., 238, 239, 241 Lukes, S., 181 Lumby, J., 60, 444 Lyas, C., 696 Lyle, Angela Gargaro, 195–207 Lynch, Kathleen, 301–12 Lytle, S. L., 636, 637, 640–2 McAdam, D., 623 MacBeath, J., 57 McDermott, I., 253 McDonald, J., 341, 344, 346, 347–8 Macedo, D., 309 McGregor, D., 125 Machine Age, 249 machine metaphor, 211–13, 221 McKevitt, J., 184 McKinsey, 324, 325, 420, 543 McMeekin, R. W., 295–6 McNamara, K., 512 McNeely, C. L., 422–3 McNiff, J., 641 McNulty, T., 106, 112 McTaggart, R., 641 McWilliam, E., 637 Madden, Nancy, 198 Maguire, S., 158 Maitlis, S., 214 Malawi, 569, 570 Malaysia, 54

INDEX

management see leadership and management managerial leadership, 55–6, 63 managerialism, 56, 61, 69, 178, 179, 182, 184, 188, 328, 332, 694 see also New Public Management (NPM) Mansfield, Katherine Cumings, 340–54 March, J., 126, 129 market-and-choice policies, 467, 468 market authority, 161, 162 market functions, 476, 477, 478 marketization of schooling, 106–7, 108–9, 322–4, 326, 332, 384 Marques, J. S., 583 Marshall, C., 69 Martin, J., 180, 182, 183, 189 Martin, R., 671 Marx, K., 16–17 Marxism, 88, 379 masculine work model, 216 masculinity, 320, 330, 341, 342–3 masculinity–femininity cultural dimension, 187 Maslow, A., 125 Maslowski, R., 294 Masschelein, J., 311 Mawdsley, H., 189 maximally maintained inequality (MMI) thesis, 302 maximin criterion of rationality, 431 Maxwell, L. E., 581 Mayer, J. D., 212 Means, G., 106 Mehta, J., 477 Meier, K. J., 34 Meng, C. C., 453 mental boundaries, 239, 240, 240, 241 meritocratic policies, 305–6 Merton, R. K., 14, 126–7 meta-control, 289 metaphors, 211, 220–1, 231 boundary as, 230–1 school as brain, 214–15, 221 school as culture, 215–16, 221 school as instrument of domination, 219–20, 221 school as machine, 211–13, 221 school as organism, 213, 221 school as political system, 217–19, 221 school as psychic prison, 216–17, 221 school as system of flux and change, 213–14, 221 methodological collectivism, 232–3 methodological individualism, 232–3 metrics see organizational performance metrics Meyer, John W., 2, 42, 43, 90, 94, 144, 184 Meyer, M. W., 393 Meyerson, D., 182 micro-institutional change, 149–50 micro-politics, 217 middle leadership, 416, 552–3 Middle-school Mathematics and the Institutional Setting of Teaching (MIST) project, 679

713

Mignolo, W. D., 309 Mijs, J. J. B., 306 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 564, 565 Miller, J., 54 Miller, M., 169, 172 Miller, T., 54 mimetic isomorphism, 147 Mintrop, Rick, 666–82 Mintzberg, H., 14, 287 Mises, Ludwig Von, 512 Miskel, C. G., 36, 42–4, 433 Mitchell, K., 519 MMI (maximally maintained inequality) thesis, 302 Moe, T., 33 Moeller, G. H., 33 Montgomery, D. J., 289–90 mood managers, 219 moods, 210 see also affective perspectives Moolenaar, N. M., 271–2 Moolenaar, Nienke, 267–78 Moos, R. H., 583, 584 moral dimension of school organization, 43 moral justifications for inequality, 305–6 moral leadership, 58–9 moral legitimacy, 146 Morawietz, Liliana, 650–63 Morgan, Gareth, 211, 220, 231, 292–3, 294, 527 Moss, J., 452 Mourshed, M., 420, 424 Muhr, S. L., 345, 347 Muijs, Daniel, 61, 403–12, 545 Muller, J. Z., 694 multicultural education, 419 multiple authorities, 160–1, 162 multiplex ties, 604 Mundell, B., 29 Murray, C., 212 Murtadha, K., 69 My Classroom Appraisal Protocol (MCAP), 587 Nahapiet, J., 268 Nairn, K., 218 Nami, F., 453 Nation at Risk, A (1983), 71, 149 national assessment, 404 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 588 National Center for Research in Policy and Practice, 480 National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools, 480 National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools (NCSU), 680–1 National Coalition of Education Activists, 382 National College for School Leadership (NCSL), 63, 547 National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE), US, 71 National Commission on Excellence in Educational Administration (NCEEA), US, 71

714

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

national cultures, 187 National Education Association, US, 40, 380 National Education Longitudinal Study, US, 301 National Implementation Research Network, 471 National Network of Education Research–Practice Partnerships, 480 National Research Council, US, 89 National School Improvement Agency, Scotland, 546 National Society for the Study of Education, US, 41 National Teacher Research Panel, UK, 640 National Union of Teachers, UK, 382, 385 national writing project, 639 NCSU see National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools (NCSU) negative trait affect, 212 Neilson, C. A., 588–9 neo-institutional theory, 131, 143, 295–6, 352, 353 neoliberalism, 89, 104, 178, 216, 304, 311, 321–4, 328, 332, 334, 509–20, 693–4 assemblage thinking, 510, 517–20 conceptualizing, 511–13 mediating structures and discourses, 514–17 positivist and critical approaches, 513–14 transnational influences and, 418 Netherlands, 396 network centrality, 197 network closure, 600 network governance, 516 Networked Improvement Communities (NICs), 473, 677–8 Networked Learning Communities (NLC), 547, 639 networks district-based reform, 196, 200–1, 201, 203, 205, 206 school improvement, 469–74, 472, 475 see also inter-organizational networks; social network approach to research; social network theory New American Schools Development Corporation, 198 new entrepreneurial leader, 85 New Orleans, 384 New Public Management (NPM), 89, 93–5, 96, 97, 189, 392, 515, 516 New Right, 383–4, 515–16 New York City, 200–1, 580–1 New York State, 77 New York Times, 439 New Zealand, 42 Newell, C., 261 Newman, J., 52, 510 Ng, S. W., 113 NICs see Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) No Child Left Behind Act (2001), US, 12, 15, 36, 41, 43, 129, 144, 256 Noble, Anna, 524–35, 693 Noddings, N., 310, 312, 330 noise, impacts on learning, 578

normative isomorphism, 352, 353–4 normative pillar of institutions, 144, 144, 145–6, 239 North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 416 Northern Ireland, 184 Norway, 76 NPM see New Public Management (NPM) Nussbaum, M. C., 310 Nyachae, T., 329 Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF), 434–5, 436–44, 437 Oborn, E., 238 observation, classroom, 408–9 obsessions, 217, 221 O’Connor, J., 253 O’Connor, K. E., 217 O’Day, Jennifer, 274 OECD see Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), England, 58, 112, 113, 395, 396–7, 513, 515 Office of Innovation and Improvement, US, 477–9 Ogawa, R. T., 32–3 Öhrn, E., 331 OKGF see Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF) Ollis, D., 330 Omari, M., 189 Ong, A., 518 Open Futures programme, UK, 584 open knowledge production, 158 open system perspectives, 535 open systems perspectives, 255, 292, 529–32 openness trust and, 366 see also organizational openness operational thinking, 253 Opfer, V. D., 526 Oplatka, I., 217 O’Reilly, D., 89 organism metaphor, 213, 221 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 328, 390, 416, 417, 420, 424, 517, 552, 553 organization theory, 9–25, 87, 696–7 defining questions, 13–18 gendering, 342–3 levels of conceptual abstraction, 18–25, 19, 20 queering, 344–6 superficial use of concepts, 11–12 see also structural models organizational boundaries see boundary perspectives; organizational openness organizational change change drivers, 674–5 cultural change, 184–5, 186 feminist perspectives, 331–2

INDEX

institutional theories, 148–50 nature of, 694–5 physical learning environments and, 586–90 organizational citizenship behaviors, 367 organizational core task, 10, 11, 13, 14, 20–1, 23 organizational goals, 13, 14, 15 organizational grain of schools, 11 organizational learning, 72, 73, 74–5, 76, 159, 186, 291–4, 297, 298, 327, 433 organizational openness, 156–73 authority and, 159, 160–3, 161, 164–5, 167–8 collaboration, 158, 159 connectedness, 169–70, 171, 171 critical reflexivity, 171, 172 diversity of participation, 157–8 institutional reach, 158 integrative thinking, 171, 172 love as an integrative power, 160, 167–72, 171, 173 status and, 159–60, 163–7, 166, 168, 172–3 organizational participants, 13, 14 organizational performance metrics, 403–12, 467, 694 attainment measures, 404–6 balanced scorecard approach, 411 classroom level process measures, 408–10 classroom observation, 408–9 data literacy, 411 documentary evidence, 407–8 parent views, 407 process measures, 406–10 pupil views, 406 school level process measures, 406–8 staff views, 407 student ratings of teachers, 410 sub-group attainment measures, 405–6 teacher interviews, 410 teacher questionnaires, 408, 409–10 value-added attainment measures, 404–5 organizational politics, emotions and, 218, 221 organizational routines, 215–16, 275, 624, 627 organizational/school cultures, 74–5, 177–90 affective perspectives, 215–16, 221 basic assumptions, 294 bullying culture, 189 change drivers, 674–5 climate and, 181–2 conceptual roots, 178 creating, 184–5 cultural change, 184–5, 186 cultural fluidity, 158 culture as self-organization model, 294–5, 297, 298 defining, 180–1, 182–3, 294, 674 ethical issues, 189 external context, 186–8 feminist perspectives, 326–7 historical perspectives, 38–9, 44 instructional leadership and, 289–90

715

leadership and, 179–80, 182–5, 289–90 levels of, 294–5 policy environment, 188 research approaches, 182–4 rise of culture in education, 178–9 school effectiveness and, 294–5, 297, 298 subcultures, 188–9 trust and, 369–70, 371 organizational structure, 13, 14 decision-making and, 433–4 trust and, 363–5 see also structural models organizations defining, 13–14 effects on individuals and society, 16–18 essential components of, 13–14, 23 formal, 23, 24 human service, 21–2 levels of conceptual abstraction, 18–25, 19, 20 performance, 14–16 professional, 22–3 public, 21 Orlikowski, W. J., 531, 533 O’Shaughnessy, K., 393 Ossimitz, G., 254 Ouchi, W. G., 38 out-degree centrality, 608, 609 Ozga, J., 519 Packard, T., 211 Pang, M. F., 454 parent governors, 113 parent–school relationships, 256, 555 parent-teachers’ associations (PTAs), Africa, 566, 568, 571 parent views, 407 parental capital, 490–1, 495, 500–1 parental education, 494 parental incarceration, 498–9 parental involvement, 55, 489–502 academic outcomes and, 491–2 Africa, 571–3 challenges for schools, 497–501 changes in family structure, 497–8 definitions and conceptions of, 491 divorced and single parents, 497–8 dual-income families, 497 family background and resources, 304–5, 490–1 feminist perspectives, 325–6 future research, 501–2 gender and, 497 home-based involvement, 492 homeless and highly mobile families, 499–500 immigrant families, 500–1 minority parents, 494–5, 496 parent factors, 493–5 parental capital and, 490–1, 495, 500–1

716

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

parental incarceration and, 498–9 race/ethnicity and, 494–5, 496 same-sex parents, 498 school-based involvement, 492 school factors, 495–7 social class and, 493–4, 496 student factors, 493 teacher attitudes and, 496–7 variation in and barriers to, 493–7 Parker, M., 178, 180, 346 Parnell, Peter, 350 Parsons, T., 163 participation, diversity of, 157–8 participative leadership, 59, 63 participatory models of action research, 633 partnerships, 158, 195 Passeron, J. C., 307–8, 309 paternalistic voluntarism, 30 patriarchy, 311, 341, 353 Patterson, J. A., 531 Paull, M., 189 Payne, C. M., 541, 546, 557 PCK see pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) PDCA (Plan–Do–Check–Action) Cycle, 449–53, 460, 670 peace education, 419 Pearson, 324, 325 Peck, J., 512, 516 Pedagogical Content Knowledge-Guided Lesson Study (PCKLS), 452 pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), 212, 450–1, 452 pedagogies, 421 peer pressure, 17 Penninckx, M., 396 Pennington, D. D., 238 Pentland, B. T., 624 Penuel, William R., 465–82, 678 Perez, A. I., 452 performance measurement systems, 390–9 alternative models, 398–9 boundary perspectives, 233, 240, 241 Campbell’s law, 393, 394–6 commensuration, 394, 396 distortion of school organization, 392–8 norm-conforming behaviour, 395–6 self-fulfilling prophecies, 394–5, 396 self-inspecting mechanisms, 395, 396 performance metrics see organizational performance metrics performance paradox, 393 performativity, 344–5 Perrow, C., 122, 123, 125, 126, 127 Perryman, J., 395 perverse learning, 393 Peters, M. A., 158–9 Peters, T. J., 178 Peterson, K. D., 178, 179, 180

Pettigrew, A., 106, 112, 186, 189 Peurach, Donald J., 465–82 Pfeffer, J., 88 phenomenology, 71 philanthropic organizations, 94, 324, 325 Phillips, R., 528 photo-elicitation, 406 physical boundaries, 229, 230, 239, 240, 240, 241, 243 physical education classes, 349, 351–2 physical learning environments, 576–91 as active organizational agents, 582–3 Africa, 567–8 air quality, 578 communities and, 588–90 complexity of person/environment relationships, 579–82 frameworks for understanding, 583–6, 584, 585 Gislason’s framework for evaluating, 583–4, 585 impacts on learning, 577–82 Moos’ model of classroom climate, 583, 584 noise, 578 organizational change and, 586–90 school climate and, 579–82 School Leadership-Building Design Model, 584–6, 585 student attendance and, 580–1 student outcomes and, 577–8, 581, 588–9 teacher recruitment/retention and, 586–8 temperature, 578 Piazza, A., 163, 164 Piketty, T., 303, 694 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), 322, 416, 417, 423, 424, 517 place-based scrutiny, 399 playfulness, 369, 371 PLCs see professional learning communities (PLCs) Plehwe, D., 520 Plomp, T., 675 policy brokers, 517 political entities, schools as, 44 political system metaphor, 217–19, 221 political theory, 130–1 political unionism, 381–2 politics of knowledge, 633–4 Ponticell, J. A., 215 Poole, M. S., 186 Popper, K., 436 popularity/prestige, in social networks, 608, 609 populism, 694 positioning through status, 159–60, 163–7, 166 positive learning, 393 positive trait affect, 212 positivism, 89, 324, 513–14 post-welfarist education policy, 322–4, 515–16 Powell, Walter, 144, 147 power circulation, 254–5 power distance, 187

INDEX

power relationships, unequal, 18 practical interests, 634, 641, 643, 645–6 practitioner research, 632–47 critical theory and politics of knowledge, 633–4 definitions and features, 635–7 emancipatory ideal of, 641–2, 644–6 organizational emergence and reproduction, 632, 634–5 practical knowledge generation, 637–8, 643–4 professional development, 638–40 questioning contribution of, 633–5 research-based teaching profession, 640–1 technical issues, 643 pragmatic legitimacy, 145 pragmatism, 70–1 precarious work, 303 precedence, 234, 236, 238, 241, 242 prescribed ties, 603 prestige/popularity, in social networks, 608, 609 primary education enrolments, 565 principal-agent model of governance, 104, 114 privatization, 93–4, 178, 322, 324, 418, 512, 516, 694 problem diagnosis, 674 problem solving, 471, 672–3 process measures, 406–10 classroom level, 408–10 school level, 406–8 professional autonomy, 287 professional bureaucracies, 23, 287–8, 297, 298 professional capital, 542, 543, 557 professional development see teacher learning and professional development professional employees, teachers as, 40 professional expertise, 161, 162 professional leadership, 545–6 professional learning communities (PLCs), 11, 74, 77, 267–8, 368, 545, 552, 667 professional organizations, 22–3 Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL), 71–2, 76, 77 professional unionism, 381 professionalism, 40, 122–3 gendered, 216 Program on Educational Building, 417 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 322, 416, 417, 423, 424, 517 prominence, in social networks, 604, 607–10, 609 proprietary activity, 476, 477, 478 PSEL see Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL) psychic prison metaphor, 216–17, 221 public organizations, 21 public-private partnerships, 417, 516 public schooling, discursive destabilization of, 93–5 Pugh, D., 119 punctuated equilibrium, 274 pupil questionnaires, 406

717

pupil/teacher ratios, Africa, 569 Purkey, S. C., 286 Putnam, R., 269, 600 queer theory, 319, 330, 340–54 anti-binary stance, 340, 350–2 biological sex, 345, 346 in education studies, 348–50 feminist theory and, 330, 343–4 gender, 340, 341, 342–3, 345 gendering organizational theory, 342–3 heteronormative matrix, 341 historical and theoretical foundations, 342–6 implications for schools, 350–3 in organizational studies, 346–8 performativity, 344–5 queering organizational theory, 344–6 rejection of categorical thought, 340–1, 352–3 sexual orientation, 341, 345–6 questionnaires pupil, 406 teacher, 408, 409–10 race and ethnicity feminism and, 328 inequality, 302, 303 leadership and, 88 parental involvement and, 494–5, 496 racial and ethnic diversity, 72, 73 radical functionalism, 88 Raftery, A. E., 302 Ranciere, J., 308 Rand, A., 17 randomized control trials (RCTs), 638 rankings, 395, 398 Ranson, S., 109, 111, 188, 516 rates of return to education (RORE), 563 rational choice institutionalism, 90, 92 rational choice models of decision-making, 431–2 rational-legal authority, 121 rational system perspective, 528–9, 535 rationalism, 414 critical, 436 rationality, 671, 673 bounded, 431–2, 434, 672, 673 instrumental, 140–2, 147–8 maximin criterion of, 431 ritualized, 465, 466, 468–9, 475 utility maximization, 431 rationalized myths, 90 Rawls, J., 431 Raymond, M. E., 395 RDDU logic, 475, 476–9, 481 Reaganism, 512 Reagans, R. E., 159, 167 real school concept, 467 Reardon, S., 304

718

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

ReasearchEd conferences, 640 Reay, D., 173 reciprocal ties, 604 reciprocity, 482 of social networks, 605, 607 recognition, 351 redistributive justice, 334 reductionism, 249, 250–1, 262–3 Reed, M., 89 reflective evaluation, in Lesson Study, 450, 451, 453, 454–5, 454 reflective practitioner model, 438 reflexivity, 319 refugees, 363 regulative pillar of institutions, 144–5, 144, 239 relational dimension of social capital, 270 reliability, trust and, 366–7 religious schools, 323 representational justice, 334 reproduction, 632, 635 research defining, 620 design-based see design-based approaches practitioner see practitioner research social network approach see social network approach to research use see research use in schools see also Chilean school improvement study research-based teaching profession, 640–1 research-development-diffusion-utilization logic, 475, 476–9, 481 research lessons see Lesson Study Research + Practice Collaboratory, 480 research–practice gap, 621 research–practice partnerships, 676–80 research use in schools, 618–28 conceptual framework for studying, 625–8, 626 definitions, 619–20 district–school arrangements influencing, 620, 624–5, 627 existing studies, 620–2 formal and informal authority and, 622–3, 627 future research, 628 organizational factors influencing, 622–4, 627 organizational routines and, 624, 627 by school leaders, 621–2 status and, 623–4, 627 by teachers, 621 resource endowments, 476, 477, 478 Reyes, M. R., 215 Reynolds, C., 327 Reynolds, D., 286, 286, 656 Rhodes, C., 57 Richards, L., 304 Richardson, Justin, 350 Richmond, B., 252, 253 right to education, 562

right-wing think tanks, 512 Riley, P., 188 risk taking, emotions and, 215, 221 ritualized rationality, 465, 466, 468–9, 475 Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change, 546, 548 Roberts, A., 165–6 Robinson, K., 502 Robinson, V., 74 Rodway, Joelle, 599–614 Roethlisberger, F. J., 38 Romzek, B. S., 390–1 root-cause analysis, 674 Rosen, C. C., 218 Rosenholtz, S. J., 40–1 Rosenshine, B. V., 409 routines district–school, 625, 627 emotion-based, 215–16, 221 organizational, 215–16, 275, 624, 627 Rowan, Brian, 2, 36, 42–4, 90, 94, 144, 184 Ruitenberg, C. W, 344, 348 Rumens, N., 340, 348 Russell, Bertrand, 172 Russell, Jennifer Lin, 465–82, 603 Sachs, J., 219, 640, 641 Safe Schools Movement, 348 Saha, L. J., 623 Saleem, T., 215 Salokangas, M., 422 Sam, L. C., 453 same-sex desire, 341, 346 same-sex parents, 498 Sammons, P, 286, 289, 545 Sandill, A., 188 Sandy, L., 350 Sangster, J., 343 Sarason, S. B., 38–9 Sauder, M., 394–5, 397–8 Save the Children, 557 Sawyer, R. K., 233, 242 Saye, J. W., 458 Sayegh, L., 213 Schechter, Chen, 249–63 Scheerens, Jaap, 285–98, 394, 397 Schein, Edgar H., 179, 294, 674 schemas and scripts, 147 Schmidt, V. A., 90–1 Schoenfeld, A. H., 669 Schön, D. A., 133, 295, 433, 438, 471, 635, 671 Schön, La Tefy, 182 school as brain metaphor, 214–15, 221 school as culture metaphor, 215–16, 221 school as instrument of domination metaphor, 219–20, 221 school as machine metaphor, 211–13, 221 school as organism metaphor, 213, 221

INDEX school as political system metaphor, 217–19, 221 school as psychic prison metaphor, 216–17, 221 school as system of flux and change metaphor, 213–14, 221 school autonomy, 322–4 school buildings see physical learning environments school climate institutional, 295–6 model of classroom climate, 583, 584 school building quality and, 579–82 school culture and, 181–2 school effectiveness and, 294 trust and, 369–70, 371 school–community boundary, 230 school-community relations Africa, 571–3 feminist perspectives, 326 leadership and, 87–8 school building quality and, 589–90 school crowdedness, 17 school cultures see organizational/school cultures school effectiveness, 285–98, 403 dynamic model of, 399 effective schools model, 288–90, 290, 297, 298 effectiveness-enhancing school characteristics, 286, 286, 288 empirical research results, 286, 286, 288 feminist perspectives, 325 Fend’s theory of the school, 286–7, 287 instructional leadership and, 288–90, 290 professional bureaucracy model, 287–8, 297, 298 school culture as self-organization model, 294–5, 297, 298 schools as high-reliability organizations, 295–7, 297, 298, 515 schools as learning organizations, 291–4, 297, 298 see also Chilean school improvement study; instructionally-focused continuous improvement school environment see physical learning environments school facilities Africa, 567–8 see also physical learning environments School Families, 196 school governing bodies see governance and governing bodies school improvement, 540–6 change as a social collaborative process, 541–3 collaborative enquiry, 543–4, 549–50 feminist perspectives, 325 governance and, 110–12 leadership and, 63, 77–8, 544–6 phases of, 541 school-to-school collaboration, 543, 544 see also Chilean school improvement study; designbased approaches; instructionally-focused continuous improvement; inter-organizational

719

networks; School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP) school improvement networks, 469–74, 472, 475 School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP), 540, 546–58 collaborative enquiry, 549–50 commentary, 556–8 core principles, 546–7 current progress, 553–4 design, 547 enablers and barriers, 554, 555 impacts of, 548–9, 549 implementation, 547–8 leadership capacity building, 550–3 next steps, 554–5 school inspections, 390–8 School Leadership-Building Design Model, 584–6, 585 school-level decision making see decision-making; research use in schools school performance measures see performance measurement systems School Quality Measurement System (SIMCE), Chile, 652–3, 660 school structures decision-making and, 433–4 see also structural models school-to-school collaboration, 543, 544 see also School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP) school traditions, 181 Schooling Preferential Voucher (SEP), Chile, 660, 661 schools as active organizational agents, 582–3 schools as bureaucratic organizations, 30–6, 44, 123–4 schools as business organizations, 44 schools as communities, 68–9 schools as cultures, 38–9, 44 schools as democratic organizations, 331 schools as high-reliability organizations, 295–7, 297, 298, 515 schools as learning organizations, 267–8, 291–4, 297, 298, 433 schools as organizations, defining, 2–3 schools as political entities, 44 schools as social spaces see social network approach to research schools as social systems, 36–8, 44 schools as workplaces, 39–42, 44 Schools Co-operative Society, 519 scientific management, 40, 69–70, 120, 121, 123, 125, 211, 249 scientific thinking, 253 SciJourn project, 679 Scotland, 380 see also School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP) Scott, Peter, 43

720

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

Scott, W. Richard, 3, 29, 30, 37–8, 42, 43, 120, 121, 122, 123–4, 127–8, 129, 144, 144, 239, 527, 528, 623 Scribner, S. M. P., 164 scripts and schemas, 147 search engines, 334 Sedgwick, Eve, 344 Seidman, S., 351 self-actualization, 125 self-fulfilling prophecies, 394–5, 396 self-inspecting mechanisms, 395, 396 Selznick, Philip, 42, 140, 151 Senegal, 570 Senge, P., 252, 253, 258, 327 sensemaking, 131–2, 133–4, 134, 530–1, 532, 533 emotions and, 214, 221 Sergiovanni, T. J., 59, 68, 249 SERP see Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) sex, biological, 345, 346 sex chromosomes, 345 sexual harassment, 330 sexual orientation, 341, 345–6 sexuality, 341, 343 Shackleton, N., 396 Shafritz, J. M., 125 Shaked, Haim, 249–63 Shakeshaft, C., 88 shared meanings, 674 Sharp, C., 623 Sharples, J., 623 Sheard, M. K., 109, 623 Sheppard, P., 105–6 Shirley, D., 542 Sianjina, R. R., 528 Sifuna, Daniel N., 562–74 Simkins, T., 56 Simon, Herbert, 126, 129, 134, 431–2, 475, 512, 668 Simons, M., 311 simulation models, 254 simultaneity model, 233, 242 Singapore, 422, 424, 447, 448 single-loop learning, 291–2, 293, 471 single parents, 497–8 single-sex schools, 323 SIPP see School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP) situational theory, 87 skills-based model of governance, 108, 109–10 Slater, L., 218 Slater, R. O., 44 Slavin, Robert, 198 Sleegers, Peter, 267–78 Smircich, L., 180, 182 Smith, K., 547 Smith, K. B., 34 Smith, M. S., 286

Smith, P., 393 Snapp, S. D., 349 Snodgrass Rangel, Virginia, 524–35, 693 social authority, 160–1 social boundaries, 229, 239, 240, 240, 241 social capital, 542, 548, 549, 588, 600–2, 605, 613 bonding, 600, 601 bridging, 601 parental, 490, 495 relational dimension of, 270 social class and, 304 structural dimension of, 269–70 social capital theory, 268–70, 269, 276, 277, 278 social class, 301–7, 321, 493–4, 496, 540–1 social collaborative process, change as, 541–3 social constructivism, 87 social design experiments, 681 social desirability response scales, 409 social interaction see interactional nature of schools social justice, 69, 71, 319, 334, 641 social justice unionism, 382 social knowledge, 148 social media, 408, 526, 533 social movements, 328 social network approach to research, 599–614 brokerage, 604, 610–12, 611 centrality, 608, 609, 610, 611 centralization, 605, 606–7 cohesion, 604, 605–7, 605 density, 605–6, 605 prestige/popularity, 608, 609 prominence, 604, 607–10, 609 reciprocity, 605, 607 social capital, 600–2, 605, 613 social network analysis (SNA), 533–4, 601, 602–12, 613–14 value of, 612–14 social network theory, 270–3, 276–7, 277, 278, 542, 543 social networking, 548 social rewards and penalties, 145, 146 Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 438 social spaces see social network approach to research social systems, 23 schools as, 36–8, 44 social ties, 273, 274–6, 277, 542, 603–4 expressive, 603 instrumental, 603 multiplex, 604 prescribed, 603 reciprocal, 604 strong, 600, 601 weak, 600–1 Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE), 479, 480 socio-economic status (SES), 301–7, 321, 493–4, 496, 540–1

INDEX

sociocultural theories, 234, 236–8 sociological institutionalism, 90, 92 Sociology of Teaching, The (Waller), 36–7, 38, 39, 40 Somers, M. A., 296 sounding board model of governance, 111 South Africa, 57 South Korea, 422, 424 Spencer Foundation, 480 Spicer, A., 218 Spillane, James P., 434, 435, 545, 618–28 spiritual leadership, 58–9 Spotton, B., 513 Springer, S., 520 Springhill Elementary School, 604–12, 605, 609 Squires, A., 254 stakeholder model of governance, 105, 108–9, 110, 113 stakeholder theory, 105 standardized assessment, 322, 382, 404, 422–3, 652–3, 660 standards-based reform policies, 467 Stapley, L. F., 230 Star, S. L., 237, 238 statistical aggregation, 23–4 status, 159–60, 163–7, 168, 172–3 achieved, 164 ascribed, 164 authority and, 164–5 complexities of attribution, 164–6 defining, 163–4 gender and, 164–5 research use in schools and, 623–4, 627 status variables, 166–7, 166 Stave, K., 254 Stecher, B. M., 393, 396 Steers, R. M., 180 Stein, M. K., 38 Stenhouse, Lawrence, 556, 636 Stephens, M., 459 Sterman, J. D., 253–4 Stevens, M. L., 397–8 Stevenson, Howard, 61, 376–86, 545 stewardship model of governance, 104–5, 113–14 Stigler, George, 512 Stigler, J. W., 459 Stogdill, R. M., 696 strategic alliances, 195 Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP), 480, 679 Streeck, W., 303 Stringfield, S. C., 296 strong ties, 600, 601 structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), 322, 563, 564 structural dimension of social capital, 269–70 structural models, 119–36 characteristics of, 121–4 closed systems nature of, 124, 126, 129

721

contingency theory, 130 criticisms of, 124–8 neo-institutional theory, 131 political theory, 130–1 sensemaking, 131–2, 133–4, 134 sources of school structure, 132–6, 134 structural puzzles, 128–32 structural thinking, 253 structuration theory, 233, 531 structure, organizational see organizational structure student attendance, school building quality and, 580–1 student-centered approaches, 416, 421 student diversity, 72, 73, 75–6, 363 student evaluation, 17–18 student loans, 304 student outcomes, 15 bureaucracy and, 33, 34 family background and resources and, 490–1 governance and, 111 leadership and, 63, 78, 545 parental involvement and, 491–2 rationality and, 141–2 school building quality and, 577–8, 581, 588–9 student ratings of teachers, 410 sub-Saharan Africa see Education for All (EFA) in Africa subcultures, 188–9 subjectivities, gendered, 327–9 Success for All program, 197–8, 203, 204, 205, 474 Suchman, M. C., 142, 146 Sullivan, K. R., 345, 347 Sum, N.-L., 514, 518 summative data, 675 supervenience, 635 surface learning, 416 Sveningsson, S., 180 Sweden, 42, 75, 583 Sweeney, L. B., 253–4 Sweetland, S. R., 34 system boundary, 255 system dynamics, 258–60, 260 system leadership, 553 system of flux and change metaphor, 213–14, 221 system psychodynamics, 234, 235–6 Systems Assessment and Benchmarking Education for Results – Teachers (SABER-Teachers), 420 systems thinking, 249–63, 430 applications in schools, 258–62, 260 characteristics in school organization, 256–8, 257, 259 cognitive complexity, 255 cognitive perspective, 262 complex adaptive systems, 260–2 critical perspective, 262 decision-making and, 433 defining, 252–3 developmental perspective, 263

722

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

educational change and policy implementation perspective, 262–3 emergence, 252, 255, 261 evaluating significance, 257, 257, 258, 259 feedback, 251–2, 255, 258, 260 general characteristics, 253–4 influencing indirectly, 257, 257, 258, 259 multidimensional view adoption, 257, 257, 258, 259 power circulation, 254–5 reductionism and, 250–1 seeing wholes, 257, 257, 258, 259 system boundary, 255 system dynamics, 258–60, 260 Taiwan, 424 Talbert, J. E., 622, 624 TALIS see Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) Tan C. Y., 422 Tan, Cheng Yong, 414–26 Tanzania, 569 targeted improvement, 656 Tarter, J., 432 Tawney, R. H., 306 Taylor, A., 513 Taylor, Frederick W., 69–70, 120, 121, 123, 125, 211, 249 Taylor Report (1977), 110 teacher absenteeism, Africa, 570 Teacher Advisory Committees (TACs), Africa, 566 teacher aggression, 365 teacher autonomy, 12, 130, 287 teacher casualization, 323 teacher-centered approaches, 416 teacher collaborative learning, 450–1, 453–5, 454 teacher interviews, 410 teacher leadership, 61, 164–5, 297, 544–5, 551, 553 teacher learning and professional development practitioner research and, 638–40 transnational influences, 420–1 workplace, 267–8 see also School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP) teacher motivation, Africa, 569–70 teacher quality, 420 teacher questionnaires, 408, 409–10 teacher recruitment/retention, 586–8 teacher shortages, Africa, 569 teacher unions, 40, 179, 321, 380–5 collective bargaining, 323, 382–3, 384, 385, 386 contemporary developments in industrial relations, 382–5 industrial unionism, 380–1 new unitarism, 384–5 political unionism, 381–2 professional unionism, 381 social justice unionism, 382

Teacherspayteachers, 526 teaching aid provision, Africa, 571 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), 420 teaching and learning resources, Africa, 568–71 teaching styles and methods, 416 technical interests, 633–4, 641, 643, 645–6 technical problem solving, 471 technical standards for schooling, 43 technological-pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), 453 technology, 524–35, 693 classroom behavior management technologies, 526 computerized data systems, 526, 528, 529 computing devices, 525–6 considerations for practice, 534–5 cyberbullying, 333, 526 feminist perspectives, 333, 334 future research, 533–4 internet, 526 interpretive flexibility, 530–1, 532 open system perspectives, 529–32, 535 rational system perspective, 528–9, 535 search engines, 334 sensemaking, 530–1, 532, 533 social media, 526, 533 social network analysis (SNA), 533–4 Teddlie, C., 182, 656 temperature, impacts on learning, 578 temporal boundaries, 243 test-based accountability see external accountability systems textbook provision, Africa, 570–1 Thapa, A., 182 Thatcherism, 512 Thelen, H. A., 37 theories of action, 295, 672 theory-in-use, 295 theory movement, 71 thinking fast–thinking slow, 673 Thody, A., 109 Thomas, R. M., 415 Thompson, J. D., 2–3, 14, 15, 124, 129, 255 Thornton, P. H., 476 Tickell, A., 512, 516 Tierney, W., 20 timetable, 416 Timperley, H., 61, 158 Tiplady, L., 584 Todd, S., 332 Tonnies, F., 68 Tosi, H., 122 Total Quality Management (TQM), 669–70, 674 Townsend, Andrew, 632–47 TPACK see technological-pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) traditional authority, 121, 161, 162, 164–5

INDEX

traditions, school, 181 trait affect, 212, 221 transactional leadership, 54, 58 transactional theories, 87 transformational leadership, 54, 57–8, 63, 87, 179–80, 367, 434 transgendered people, 345, 347, 351 transnational and national influences, 414–26 evidence-based policy and practice, 422, 423–4 future research, 425–6 internationalization of curriculum, 419 management of educational challenges, 422–3 neoliberalism and decentralization, 418 re-conceptualization of education and, 421–5 on teachers and teaching, 420–1 transnational institutions, 416–19 transnational standards and excellence, 423–5 Trentman, F., 104 trust in schools, 270, 361–72 defining, 362 external context, 362–3 future research, 370–2 human resource frame, 365–8, 371 internal context, 363–70 political frame, 368, 371 structural frame, 363–5, 371 symbolic frame, 368–70, 371 Tschannen-Moran, Megan, 361–72 Tsui, A. B. M., 237–8 Turkle, S., 527 Twain, Mark, 9 21st-century skills, 447–8 two-way causality, 233, 234 Tyack, D., 9 Tyack, D. B., 31, 40 Tyler, W., 2 Udy, S., 127–8 Uganda, 570 Uline, Cynthia, 576–91 uncertainty avoidance, 187 Uncommon Schools, 199 unequal power relationships, 18 UNESCO, 416, 417, 564, 565 UNFPA, 564 UNICEF, 417, 564 unionism see teacher unions United Kingdom bureaucratic organization, 31 institutional perspective, 43 physical learning environments, 582 queer workers, 346–7 teacher unions, 380, 382, 385 see also England; School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP); Wales United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education, 417 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 564

723

United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 416, 417, 564, 565 United Nations General Assembly, 562 United States Annenberg Challenge, 196 bureaucratic organization, 30–6, 123–4 business perspective, 44 Census changes, 350–1 charter management organizations (CMOs), 196, 198–200, 201, 202, 203–4, 205–6 charter schools, 44, 178, 384 community engagement, 590 comprehensive school reform designs (CSRs), 196, 197–8, 201, 203, 204, 205 culturally responsive practices (CRP), 76 district-based reform networks, 196, 200–1, 201, 203, 205, 206 evolution of school governance, 69–70 evolution of school management, 70–2 external accountability systems, 392 Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA), 348 institutional change, 149 institutional perspective, 43 instructional leadership, 74 law school rankings, 395, 398 leadership preparation, 77–8 No Child Left Behind Act (2001), 12, 15, 36, 41, 43, 129, 144, 256 organizational learning, 75 physical education and gender, 349, 351–2 physical learning environments, 580–1, 586–9, 590 regulative pillar, 144–5 school registration, 350, 351 socio-economic inequality, 301 teacher unions, 380, 381, 382 workplace perspective, 39–42 see also instructionally-focused continuous improvement Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 562 Universal Primary Education (UPE), 321, 563, 564 University of California, Berkeley, 677 University of Chicago, 36 University of Glasgow, 546, 557 University of Washington, 679 Unterhalter, E., 329 upwards conflation, 233, 236 Urban, W., 30 Urick, A., 581 Uruguay, 582 utilitarianism, 511 utility maximization, 431 Valenzuela, Juan Pablo, 650–63 values-based leadership, 58–9 Valverde, G. A., 422 van Braak, J., 622 Van de Ven, A. H., 480

724

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL ORGANIZATION

Van Dijk, T. A., 93–4 Van Houtte, M., 178, 182, 189 Van Thiel, S., 393 Vanderhaar, J. E., 61 Vanderlinde, R., 622 Vanni, Xavier, 650–63 Veloso, L., 583 Ventresca, M. J., 3 venture philanthropy, 94, 516 Vince, R., 215 Vossoughi, S., 681 Wade, J. P., 253 Wagoner, J., 30 Wahlstrom, K., 135, 136 Wales, 107, 108, 110, 111, 443 Wallace, M., 53, 56, 57, 58 Waller, Willard, 17, 22, 31–2, 36–7, 38, 39, 40, 178 Walls Speak research, 579–80 Walt, T. Van der, 114 Ward, M., 69 Waterman, R. H., 178 Wayman, J. C., 529, 535 weak ties, 600–1 Weber, Max, 31, 36, 56, 120, 121, 122, 123–4, 125, 127, 140, 161, 163, 173, 211 Weese, W. J., 180, 189 Weick, K. E., 2, 35, 131–2, 133, 135, 239, 288 Weinstein, C., 579 Weiss, C. H., 620 Welch, D. A., 436 welfarism, 511, 515 well-defined problem, 672 Wenger, E., 238 West-Burnham, J., 58–9 What Works Clearinghouse, 479 White, R. E., 436, 442 Whitehead, J., 641

Whitfield, D., 93 Wilkins, Andrew, 111–12, 509–20, 693–4 William T. Grant Foundation, 480 Willmott, H., 180, 181, 189 Willms, J. D., 296 Willower, D. J., 37, 38 Wohlstetter, Priscilla, 195–207 Wong, Lok-Sze, 618–28 Woodin, T., 519 Woodruff-Burton, H., 341, 343 Woods, G. J., 59, 169, 171 Woods, Philip A., 59, 156–73 Woolner, Pamela, 576–91 work allocation, 52, 54 workplace bullying, 189 workplace learning, 267–8 workplaces, schools as, 39–42, 44 World Bank, 322, 416, 417–18, 420, 563, 564, 569 World Conference on Education for All, 564 World Education Forum, 564 Wu, C. H., 458 Wuensch, K. L., 580 Ylimaki, R., 72, 73, 74, 78 Yore, L. D., 425 York-Barr, J., 297 Young, Ella Flagg, 40 Yukl, G. A., 61 Zembylas, M., 212, 218 zero hours contracts, 303 Zey, M., 431 Zhang, P., 114 Zhang, Y., 457–8 Zimmerman, S. D., 588–9 Zucker, Lynn, 144, 148 Zumpe, Elizabeth, 666–82