Technical Ceremonies: Rationalization, Opacity, and the Restructuring of Educational Organizations

Abstract

After decades of accountability and market-based reforms in education, school systems are now organizing more around improving teaching and learning. Yet these efforts frequently yield unintended, superficial, or even counterproductive changes at the school level. In this article, Maxwell Yurkofsky develops the concept of technical ceremonies as a way of theorizing this emerging pattern of school organizations. Technical ceremonies involve educators changing their practice to align with new reforms in a way that privileges what is visible and measurable as a way of appeasing external stakeholders over more substantive improvements to practice. He argues that technical ceremonies arise as principals navigate a multitude of surface-level demands from the environment and the uncertainties that pervade efforts to transform teaching and learning.

From Mass Schooling to Education Systems: Changing Patterns in the Organization and Management of Instruction

“…Finally, none of this has done anything to subtract from legacy concerns with “real schools” and “schooling rules” that draw attention to the organizational façade of schools over their educational substance. Instead, the incoherence and turbulence have created counterincentives for districts and schools to engage in a sort of “ritualized rationality” in which they use technical ceremonies to signal a positive response to the press of standards, assessments, research, and evidence, though with little connection to day-to-day classroom instruction (Peurach et al, 2018; Yurkofsky, 2017). It has also created new organizational categories that can be used to signal a positive responsive to excellence and equity though, again, without making deep changes in classroom instruction: for example, pursuing “21st-century skills” and “deeper learning” using “culturally responsive pedagogies” and “restorative practices” supported by “research-based,” “research-validated,” and “standards-aligned” curriculum materials, all under the guidance of “highly qualified teachers” engaged in “data-driven decision making” and “PDSA cycles” in “professional learning communities.”…”

Research on Continuous Improvement: Exploring the Complexities of Managing Educational Change

“…This pattern of assimilation would be consistent with previous countercultural efforts at instructional reform (Cohen, 1990), and it is the most likely outcome. We fear that what would happen under this scenario is that data and inquiry cycles would become the myth and ceremony of the modern age, widely institutionalized but leading to little change either in practice or in the fundamental routines, structures, processes, and culture that govern the sector (Yurkofsky, 2017).…”

“…We worry that without explicitly attending to this environment, CI methods risk contributing to the very incoherence they are trying to ameliorate. This risk is particularly great as CI receives increased attention from funders and policymakers, which increases the temptation to use these methods in ritualized or ceremonial ways that may please external stakeholders while exacerbating demands on educators (Yurkofsky, 2017; Peurach et al, 2018). Avoiding this outcome will likely require more explicit attention to how CI methods operate given fragmentation.…”

From Compliance to Improvement: How School Leaders Make Sense of Institutional and Technical Demands When Implementing a Continuous Improvement Process

“…But over the past thirty years, there have been increasing efforts from across the field of education to employ a variety of rational approaches in the service of improving the work of schools—teaching and learning (Yurkofsky, 2020). These rationalization efforts include: the development of standardized assessments and observation protocols to measure teaching and learning; requirements that educators use data and evidence to drive decision making; the spread of organizational routines that facilitate educators’ use of data and evidence; and the passage of school choice reforms that increase pressure on districts to compete for student enrollment (Peurach et al, 2018; 2019).…”

“…These policy changes have led school districts to focus more intensively on improving teaching and learning (Hopkins & Spillane, 2015;Peurach et al, 2019;Spillane et al, 2019), but have had a decidedly more mixed impact on the organization and leadership of schools. Although there is evidence that school leaders are working to align instructional practice with state and district expectations as intended by these reforms (Coburn & Woulfin, 2012;Spillane et al, 2002a;2011), they are also altering teachers' work in ways that prioritize formal compliance (i.e., focusing on what is visible, monitored, or measured) and run counter to the goals of improving teaching and learning (e.g., Buttram and Farley-Ripple, 2016;Diamond and Cooper, 2007;Farrell and Marsh, 2016;Yurkofsky, 2020). These kinds of compliance-based responses are particularly common in historically marginalized communities and are well documented frustrations in the educational literature.…”