Principals’ Sensemaking of Coaching for Ambitious Reading Instruction in a High-Stakes Accountability Policy Environment

Abstract

In the present exploratory qualitative study we examine the contextual factors that influenced the implementation of a multi-year comprehensive literacy-coaching program (Content-Focused Coaching, CFC). We argue that principals' sensemaking of the dialogic instructional strategies promoted by the program in light of high-stakes accountability policies influenced coaches' work with teachers. Principals' views of the efficacy of the teaching strategies promoted by CFC for meeting accountability targets influenced how principals socially positioned coaches in schools (i.e., the degree to which they promoted coaches as sources of expertise to teachers), and the extent to which the coaching received by teachers focused on implementing dialogic teaching epaa aape Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 22 No. 51 2 practices. Our results also suggest that principals' sensemaking of the program was for the most part consistent across years, even in the face of shifting accountability status and changes in district leadership. Implications of our findings for improving the implementation of coaching programs are discussed.

Coaching Principals for the Complexity of School Reform

“…Second, I reviewed each of the coded passages and applied more theoretically detailed codes. I derived these codes from literature describing how coaches support school reform (e.g., Coburn & Woulfin, 2012;Matsumura & Wang, 2014;Woulfin, 2014) and from literatures described in my theoretical framework (Greeno et al, 1996;Halverson et al, 2004;Spillane et al, 2002;Weick, 1996). At this stage, the codes reflected a higher level of inference and sought to characterize the participants' statements relevant to the conceptual understanding of leadership coaching within school reform contexts.…”

Coaching for Coherence: How Instructional Coaches Lead Change in the Evaluation Era

“…These systems need to attend to structural entailments of instruction, such as goals for students’ learning, instructional materials, assessments, teacher professional learning, and instructional oversight, as well as to the ways in which they are implemented and integrated with one another (Cobb & Jackson, 2011; Hopkins & Spillane, 2015). In addition, research indicates that principals must take other leadership actions to ensure coaches’ success, including motivating teachers to implement the strategies they work on with their coaches (Matsumura, Sartoris, Bickel, & Garnier, 2009; Matsumura & Wang, 2014) and attending to school power dynamics when structuring coaches’ work (Huguet, Marsh, & Farrell, 2014). Although these challenges are not trivial, they are neither insurmountable nor distinct from other challenges that districts and schools face relating to systems building toward instructional improvement.…”

Administrators’ unintentional sensegiving and system reform outcomes

“…While sensegiving is not yet a concept used in PreK-12 education research, a small but growing body of literature discusses how messages from education leaders can shape teachers' sensemaking (Brezicha, Bergmark, & Mitra, 2015;Carlson & Patterson, 2015;Coburn, 2005;Matsumura & Wang, 2014;Park, Daly, & Guerra, 2013;Spillane et al, 2002). For instance, Spillane et al (2002) find that leaders' understandings of and reactions to accountability policies can shape how their teachers respond to said policies.…”