Reconstructing Conceptions of Local Capacity: The Local Education Agency's Capacity for Ambitious Instructional Reform

Spillane, James P.; Thompson, Clarissa A.

doi:10.2307/1164209

Cited by 137 publications

(227 citation statements)

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“…Other studies also indicate that stress and frustration amongst teachers lead to a lack of trust in the reform (Spillane and Thompson 1997). This culture of distrust, according to Megan Tschannen-Moran and Wayne Hoy (2000), generates feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and insecurity in teachers.…”

Section: Teachers' Conflicts With Educational Reformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science education reform in Confucian learning cultures: teachers’ perspectives on policy and practice in Taiwan

Huang

Asghar

2016

Cult Stud of Sci Educ

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This empirical study investigates secondary science teachers' perspectives on science education reform in Taiwan and reflects how these teachers have been negotiating constructivist and learner-centered pedagogical approaches in contemporary science education. It also explores the challenges that teachers encounter while shifting their pedagogical focus from traditional approaches to teaching science to an active engagement in students' learning. Multiple sources of qualitative data were obtained, including individual interviews with science teachers and teachers' reflective journals about Confucianism in relation to their educational philosophies. Thematic analysis and constant comparative method were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that Confucian traditions play a significant role in shaping educational practices in Taiwan and profoundly influence teachers' epistemological beliefs and their actual classroom practice. Indeed, science teachers' perspectives on Confucian learning traditions played a key role in supporting or obstructing their pedagogical commitments to inquiry-based and learner-centered approaches. This study draws on the literature concerning teachers' professional struggles and identity construction during educational reform. Specifically, we explore the ways in which teachers respond to educational changes and negotiate their professional identities. We employed various theories of identity construction to understand teachers' struggles and challenges while wrestling with competing traditional and reform-based pedagogical approaches. Attending to these struggles and the ways in which they inform the development of a teacher's professional identity is vital for sustaining current and future educational reform in Taiwan as well as in other Eastern cultures. These findings have important implications for teachers' professional development programs in East Asian cultures.

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Section: Teachers' Conflicts With Educational Reformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science education reform in Confucian learning cultures: teachers’ perspectives on policy and practice in Taiwan

Huang

Asghar

2016

Cult Stud of Sci Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Recent research corroborates these findings, suggesting that school districts influence the implementation of state and national reforms because they mobilize instructional guidance instruments (e.g., curriculum guides, materials) to press particular substantive ideas about instruction (Goertz, Floden, & O'Day, 1995;Jennings & Spillane, 1996;Price & Ball, 1997). These ideas vary among districts and are not always in agreement with state policymakers' proposals (Spillane, 1996;Spillane & Thompson, 1997). Thus, in studying the local implementation of policy designed to create more coherent instructional guidance for teachers, it seems wise to consider schoollevel instructional guidance with the guidance offered by the district office.…”

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confidence: 99%

State Policy and the Non-Monolithic Nature of the Local School District: Organizational and Professional Considerations

Spillane¹

1998

American Educational Research Journal

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208

178

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This article examines how the local school district’s non-monolithic character undermines state level efforts to create more coherent guidance for instruction of teachers. Exploring two school districts’ responses to a state reading policy, the author suggests that what the school district does by way of enacting state policy is not always internally homogenous: The image of the school district that emerges is one of a non-monolithic agency of instructional guidance. Attempting to unravel and explain the internal variation in the school district’s response to state policy, the author considers the school district’s organizational arrangements as well as the professional specializations and associations of district staff.

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“…Yet existing research shows these local agents do more than passively transmit messages. District personnel understand state policies in terms of their own interests and experiences with subject matter (Spillane, 1998), and district-provided professional development intended to further state policy often strays from the main point, so to speak, of the reforms themselves (Spillane, 1996;Spillane & Thompson 1997;Hill, 2000). Comparisons of district frameworks with state policy have shown the former can adopt one of several stances toward their filial obligations: districts can ignore or subvert their parent government; can make token efforts to accommodate state policy within existing approaches to subject matter curricula; and can comply yet augment state policy directives with locally devised ideas or initiatives (Canton, Rushcamp, & Freeman, 1990;Spillane, 1996).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy Is Not Enough: Language and the Interpretation of State Standards

Hill

2001

American Educational Research Journal

157

141

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Words have no inherent meaning. Instead, they signify ideas or actions ascribed to them by communities, and meanings for specific words often vary across those communities. Words that carry specialized meanings in one community can be interpreted differently by another, particularly where individuals in the second community have little access to dialogues in the first, or when forces in the second community compete to assign meaning to key words. Observations of one district's mathematics curriculum writing committee suggested a disconnect of this sort occurred along the policymaker/teacher divide in one state. Where state standards used words like "construct" and "concept" to imply certain mathematics teaching methods, teachers reading these documents imputed more local, and sometimes conventional, definitions to these words. As a result, state standards lost their force. This article describes and analyzes the work of state-local policy reconciliation as it occurred in this committee, and appraises that work's implications for reform efforts that rely on language as a medium for communication.HEATHER C. HILL is a Research Associate at the Study of Instructional Improvement, University of Michigan, 610 E. University 3112, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Her specializations are education policy and implementation.

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Reconstructing Conceptions of Local Capacity: The Local Education Agency's Capacity for Ambitious Instructional Reform

Cited by 137 publications

References 0 publications

Science education reform in Confucian learning cultures: teachers’ perspectives on policy and practice in Taiwan

Science education reform in Confucian learning cultures: teachers’ perspectives on policy and practice in Taiwan

State Policy and the Non-Monolithic Nature of the Local School District: Organizational and Professional Considerations

Policy Is Not Enough: Language and the Interpretation of State Standards

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