1. Policy, School Administration, & The Technical Core: The Local Infrastructure & Practice Challenge
My talk today is not a research talk in that I do not report on a single study nor do I focus on a single research question. I had intended to do that but John thought something broader, not so micro would be better suited. If you want to hear the other talk – you can catch it at John’s Hopkins tomorrow or Penn on Monday 
My talk examines relations between instruction (the core technology of schooling), school administration, and the broader educational sector – policy, profession, etc - in which schools are nested.
More specially I focus in on the role of school administration in this menage a trois.
Timing seems relevant considering what has happened over the past quarter-century in the education ...
James P. Spillane
Northwestern University
The Distributed Leadership Studies
Funded by: National Science Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Institute for Education Sciences, Carnegie Foundation

2. Changing Educational Sector
Local, state, and federal policymakers focus on instruction.
Policy discourses and texts press for –
standardization
test-based accountability
monitoring and measuring individual & organizational performance using student achievement tests
(Fuhrman, Goertz, & Weinbaum, 2007; Mehta, under review; Rowan, 2006)

3. Changing Policy, Changing Local Practice
Changing Policy, Changing Local Practice?: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly
Re-classify students to shape the student testing pool (Abedi, 2004; Cullen & Reback, 2006; Robinson, 2011)
Increase students’ caloric intake on testing days (Figlio, 2002)
Run test prep drills (Diamond & Spillane, 2004)
Redirect resources to math and reading (Ladd & Selli, 2002)
‘Bubble kids’ (Booher-Jennings, 2005)
While there is a sizable literature showing that external regulations get inside schools and even beyond the classroom door,
BUT WITH RAMIFICATIONS UNFORSEEN?
we know much less about how these regulations become part of the day to day work in schools
how changes in the modal patterns of governance in educational systems may achieve coupling (Cibulka, 1997; Fusarelli, 2002; Rowan & Miskel, 1999).
"All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.” (Yeats).

4. A View from the Past
Classroom instruction loosely coupled or decoupled from:
the school’s formal structure
policy
School administration buffering classroom instruction from external scrutiny
(Bidwell, 1965; Meyer & Rowan, 1978; Weick, 1976)
Mehta,
pluralistic institutional environment … many stakeholders … one might argue they were in an ‘open relationship’

5. An Historical View from the Field
“Everybody did absolutely their own thing as far as literacy. Some people used the Basal series … we had different Basal series going in the building. A lot of people were going to a literature-based instruction. Nobody ever talked to each other. It was just - everybody went into their own room, closed the door and did their own thing.” (Baxter teacher)
“There may be four classes at a grade level and they did not even talk. They did not have a clue at what was going on in each other's classrooms …” (Adams Principal)
“When I first started in 1991 [the principal] was very, very laid back, and we had a lot of creative teachers in this school, and you pretty much were able to do what you needed to do and use your creativity and kind of go with your own flow more or less.” (Kosten teacher)
Set up as puzzle … what teachers say … then ask how could things have changed so radically
My argument is that admin practice plays key role … and that org routines are one mechanism used in recoupling …
WHAT PURCHASE WE GET FROM LOOKING AT THIS CASE AND AT THIS ERA? WHAT BIGGER PROBLEM DOES IT ADDRESS--I THINK IF YOU CAN BE MORE SPECIFIC AT THIS POINT WITH A CLAIM ABOUT THE RELATIONS BETWEEN INSTRUCTION, SCHOOL ADMIN AND THE BROADER SECTOR AND LINK IT TO HOW WE MIGHT THINK ABOUT CURRENT POLICY ENVIRONMENT TODAY.  WITH THAT CLAIM UP FRONT, THEN PEOPLE WILL FOLLOW AND TRY TO SEE THE CONNECTION WHICH YOU CAN LOOP BACK TO AT THE END

6. Overview of Talk
How do school leaders respond to, and work at realigning school administration and instruction with policy and a shifting institutional environment?
Reframing a research agenda on school administration.
Refocusing and broadening development work on school administration
1) How does recoupling happen on the ground … role of school administration – formal structure and administrative practice. I want to offer vivid looks at how policy looks inside schools …
2) Based on this analysis, I argue that we need to broaden how we think about
A) research work on school administration in SEVERAL WAYS…
a. beyond the school principal by considering administrative practice and who co-performs that practice …
b. beyond notions of practice as individual action to thinking about interactions and how the expertise may be in between … stretched over two or more people
c. broaden beyond interactions to consider the role of the formal structure in administrative practice …
B) Development work on school administration …
I will use examples from my own research to illuminate these points …

7. Coupling/Decoupling/Recoupling
Organizations are made up of interdependent components that are more or less responsive to, and more or less distinctive from, each other (Bidwell, 1965; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Weick, 1976; Orton & Weick, 1990)
Coupling as a process rather than a static feature of [school] organizations (Orton & Weick, 1990; Hallett & Ventresca, 2006)
originally to challenge functional notions about how organizations operate and attention to their institutional environment.
Elements = org members, subunits; levels of org hierarchy, org and its environment, org formal structure and its core technical work.
Tight coupling = “responsiveness without distinctiveness” among. Loose coupling = “both responsiveness and distinctiveness.” Decoupling = situations of “distinctiveness without responsiveness”
“something that organizations do, rather than merely as something they have” (Orton & Weick, 1990, p. 218).
Rowan and Miskel (1999) argued that, as the institutional environment of schools ‘‘becomes more unitary and as rules about work in the technical core become more specific’’ and ‘‘get attached to outcomes or other inspection systems,’’ they would have a stron- ger effect on work activity in schools (p. 373).

8. Framing: A Sense-Making Perspective
Sense-making perspective noticing, bracketing, interpreting
Sense-making in practice:
‘Interactions’ – it is not simply what people “do” that matters, but how they do so “together” (Becker, 1986)
Bateson (1972) offers a picture frame as metaphor … tells a viewer to focus on … what to select and what to neglect …
Goffman … “principles of organization which govern the subjective meanings we assign to social events” … frames are about focus and formula, providing logics for categorization and proposing logical relationships among categories. “Frame formulas” address the relationships between frames—how they layer upon and interact with one another.
“person-role” formula, which not only suggests which roles are available and legitimate in a given situation, but also which persons are eligible for those roles (Diehl & McFarland, 2010; Goffman, 1974, p. 270; 573).
conceptualize tactics as elements of social skill: Facility in producing “shared meaning” and “attaining cooperation” represents a foundational form of “social skill,” whereby some actors attain cooperation more easily and effectively through “making sense of a particular situation” (i.e., sense-making) and producing “shared meaning for others…” (i.e., sense-giving) (Fligstein, 2001, p. 113).
School leaders, for example, are found to be influential in sense-making, but more or less effective when it comes to framing problems or aligning, amplifying, bridging, aggregating, and/or constructing resonance across frames (Coburn, 2005, 2006). They are also described as being more or less successful in generating and communicating coherent interpretations and explanations of “what’s going on here” and “what to do about it” in situations of policy and/or practice-related ambiguity (Anagnostopoulos & Rutledge, 2007). SO WHAT DO THEY DO …
These include: telling people what to do; agenda-setting; capitalizing on ambiguities and uncertainties; convincing others that what was possible was preferable; brokering; giving the impression of neutrality; joining groups to reorder preferences; getting others to believe that they are in control (even if they are not); and creating alliances and outliers.

9. A Distributed Perspective
The Leader-Plus Aspect (who)
Focuses on who is involved in leadership and management work
Formally designated leaders and informal leaders
The Practice Aspect (how)
Practice is central focus
Practice is generated in the interactions among school staff; attention to interactions, not just actions, is necessary
Material and abstract aspects of the situation contribute to defining practice by structuring interactions among participants
Spillane, J. P. (2006). Distributed leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
the medium for interactions

10. Organizational Routines
Organizational Routines: “repetitive, recognizable patterns of interdependent actions carried out by multiple actors” (Feldman & Pentland, 2003)
Ostensive Aspect: ideal form – general idea or script of the routine
Performative Aspect: routine in practice in particular places, at particular times
Concerns about the organizational routine construct – rigid, mundane, mindless, explicitly stored (Cohen, 2007)
Organizational routines, staples in all organizations, serve various functions including enabling efficient coordinated action, reducing conflict about how to do organizational work, and storing organizational experiences (Levitt & March, 1988; March, 1991; Argote, 1999). While some scholars stress the role of routines in preserving the status quo (Cyert & March, 1963; Nelson & Winter, 1982), others show how routines can be mechanisms for change (Feldman & Pentland, 2003; Sherer & Spillane, 2010).
Some concerns about term – Michael Cohen – rigidity (identical or invariant on the multiple occasions of its execution) mundane (actions we refer to as routine are likely not to be of major importance), Mindless (routine actions are not tightly integrated with deliberation, reflection, or feelings), explicitly stored (recipe for routines stored somewhere). “In contrast, when action is taken as central and grounded in habit, the organism, or organization, is much more an historical being.”
routines are staples in all organizations and can also structure intra-organizational work
both pragmatic and conceptual reasons for using organizational routines to frame research on data in practice
frame and focus our attention on the interactions among school staff getting us beyond behavior or even the actions of any one individual.
focus our attention on “patterned” activity rather than unique occurrences (Kanter, Stein, and Jick 1992; Simon 1976; Stene 1940).
We can also extend the ostensive aspect conceptually by thinking about it not only as scripts, more or less codified, that individuals use to guide their co-performance of organizational routines but as a potential ‘meditational means’ (Wertsch 1991, p. 12).
People do not act directly on the world, nor do they interact directly with one another. Their interactions are enabled and constrained by various organizational, institutional and cultural artifacts; many of which, such as language, we don’t even notice.
We can think about the ostensive aspect of organizational routines then as meditational means, organizing interactions among school leaders and teachers – school work practice. In drawing attention to how the Five Week Assessment not only served as a meditational means in Adams but embodied particular representations of instruction and achievement, I am underscoring that locally designed meditational means have to be analyzed as part of a wider system that extends beyond the school to the educational sector made up of other schools, district offices, state and federal education agencies as well as an array of extra system agencies including publishers, testing agencies, and universities

11. Research Approach: Study Sites
School
Student Enrollment
Low Income
Black
White
Hispanic
Asian
Limited English
Adams
1,021
97%
100% 0%
Baxter
1,127
66% 7%
47%
22%
24%
38%
Kosten
1,569
73% 8%
40%
19%
34%
48%
Kelly
261
90%

12. Research: Data Collection
School
Interviews
Observations of Organizational Routines
Adams 93 39
Baxter 48 25
Kosten 62 56
Kelly 16 11
00-01
01-02
02-03

13. Research Approach: Data Analysis
Phase 1: in-depth school cases
Phase 2: closed coding of interviews using HyperRESEARCH (e.g., organizational routines, roles and responsibilities, policy)
Phase 3: closed coding of field-notes & meeting transcripts using NVivo (e.g., technical core, policy)
Phase 4: open and closed coding of 22 meeting transcripts from Adams School (e.g., policy, professionalism, social tactics). (Kappa ranged from to 0.95)

14. Coding Manual Example: Phase 4
Code
Description
Example
Asserting In-Group Membership
Include any examples of people finding ways to join with actors or groups in order to reorder preferences and develop new collective identities from ‘inside.’
“…You know something? When I was in the classroom, and I’m not far removed because I can go back to the classroom any day and I don’t have a problem with it because I love it… but when I was late and wasn’t here early enough to plan my whole day was just messed up…”

15. Assertions
School leaders worked at aligning their school’s formal organizational structure with government policy and with instruction by (re)designing organizational routines.
School leaders designed these organizational routines, in both form and function, to promote standardization, accountability, & monitoring of instruction.
School leaders’ accounts suggested that rather than buffering teachers and instruction from government regulation they worked to ensure that teachers attended to these environmental pressures. While school leaders did not use the term coupling, their accounts captured efforts to make their school’s formal structure and their administrative practice more responsive to, and less distinctive from, aspects of their environment and dimensions of instruction.
Changes to the formal structure included creating new leadership positions and/or changing the responsibilities of existing positions and rewriting school improvement plans. The design of organizational routines, however, figured most prominently and consistently across the four schools.
these formal routines are not created in a vacuum--they are layered onto routines devised under prior regimes and logics that leave residue and that interacts with your ostensive/performative aspects of routines too

16. The Five Week Assessment
“We were just kind of casually saying that for the majority of teachers they all work very hard, but some of them get very low results when it comes to these achievement tests … So this [Five Week Assessment] was a way to find out ‘Are they learning?’” (Literacy Coordinator, 10/23/00)
“The [standardized] tests … didn’t give us much information about what we could do to improve our scores because we received the results well after we could do anything about it. We thought that a more frequent assessment … would tell us where the children were” (Literacy Coordinator, 5/15/00)
The Five Week Assessment enabled teachers to see “assessment as a tool for letting them know what they need to work on in the classroom. That was the goal.” (Principal Williams)
A closer look at one routine at Adams, School leaders used the results of the Five Week Assessment to target intervention strategies/ monitor progress on the school’s goals for instructional improvement, and focus professional development. In addition, the routine made some dimensions of teaching practice more transparent as student performance was regularly measured for every teacher in Grades 1 to 8. Based on an analysis the ITBS, school leaders and a group of teachers created benchmarks for student achievement and developed tests to assess student performance on them.
As part of this routine, students in Grades 1 to 8 were tested every five weeks on mathematics, reading, and writing.

17. Five Week Assessment: Ostensive Aspect
Step 1. Literacy Committee Identifies Needs & New Directions
Step 2. Literacy Coordinator Plans Five Week Assessment Schedule
Step 8. Literacy Coordinator Shares Scores with Administrators and Teachers & Plan Future Assessments
Step 3. Literacy Coordinator Develops Assessments
Building infrastructures to support practice …
Step 7. Literacy Coordinator and Assistant Compile and Analyze Scores
Step 4. Literacy Coordinator and Assistant Copy and Distribute Assessments to Teachers
Step 6. Literacy Coordinator and Assistant Score Assessments
Step 5. Teachers Administer & Return Assessments to Literacy Coordinator

18. The Five Week Assessment
“We’re still doing the Five Week Assessment, once that assessment is completed and graded and has been graphed and given back to the teachers, then we come back together with the teachers, with the grade levels and talk about the progress that was made. This last, well the 15th week results were not as well as we expected. … So we had a meeting with every grade level and we just talked about the results of the test” (Principal Robinson, 2002)
Indeed, 4 years on we see the Five Week assessment is still going strong despite the departure of the principal and assistant principal.
These

19. Organizational Routines at Adams School
Functions
Tools
People
Five Week Assessment
Formative evaluation
Teacher Accountability
Monitor Instruction
Teacher Development
Standardized Tests
Standards
Student Assessments
Language Arts Coordinator
Assistant Principal
Principal
Teachers
Breakfast Club
Build Professional Community
Research Articles
School Improvement Planning (SIP)
Identify Instructional Priorities & Resources
Previous Year SIP
District Guidelines
Test Score Data
Administration
Teachers (approved LSC)
Classroom Observations
Accountability
School Protocol,
District Protocol
Real Men Read
Student Motivation and Support
Books
Language Arts Co-ord.
Community Members
This is what I mean by the formal structure … what we might think about as an infrastructure for instruction and classroom improvement …

20. Designing Organizational Routines
Adams School: Breakfast Club, Grade level meetings, Teacher Talk, Teacher Leaders, Five-Week Assessment, Literacy Committee, and Mathematics Committee
Baxter School: Cycle Meetings, Leadership Team Meetings, Literacy Committee, Math/Science Committee
Kosten School: Report Card Review, Grade Book Review, Lesson Plan Review, Faculty Meetings, Grade Level Meetings
Kelly School: Skill Chart Review, Professional Development
Across all four schools, including the three schools that were under no imminent threat from district accountability policy, school leaders ls designed organizational routines to standardize their instructional program both vertically and horizontally, working to align classroom practice with the content covered in state and district standards and student assessments.
Of note here is how the naming and form of these routines look somewhat between schools … on closer examination, however, routines with different names were designed to serve relatively similar functions … standardization, accountability, monitoring, and transparency … the routines embody particular representations of what constituted good teaching and how to go about the work of instructional improvement …

21. Designed vs. Lived Organization
formal positions, organizational
routines as represented in formal documents and accounts
Designed vs. Lived Organization
LIVED
organization as experienced in
day-to-day life of organizational members

22. Assertion
School leaders created organizational routines with which and within which they worked at recoupling policy and instruction.
Policy featured both indirectly and directly in the performance of organizational routines as:
School staff performed locally designed routines that more or less mirrored external policy in form and function
Staff negotiated with policy in making key decisions for instruction in performance of organizational routines
Moving on to our second claim/assertion, I now want to consider the actual performance of these routines. We can think of org routines as having both an ostensive aspect (the ideal or script for the routine) and a performative aspect (what actually happened in a particular place at a particular time in the performance of a routine such as the Five week assessment. My second claim states that …
Policy featured indirectly
Policy featured directly as staff used it to standardize their instructional program, adjudicate decisions about what to teach or what materials to use, monitor & measure performance, and set direction for instructional improvement

23. Organizational Routine by Topic, by Grade
Adams
Baxter
Kosten
Kelly
Policy
72%
67%
80%
73%
Instruction
100 88 93 82
Instruction & Policy 72 67 73
Language Arts 62 24 46
Math 36 10 17
Science 7 9
Some aspect of instruction was addressed in over 80% of the organizational routines ( ranging from 100% at Adams to 82% at Kelly).
Government regulation also featured prominently in the performance of routines (ranging from 67% at Baxter to 80% at Kosten).
Government regulation and instruction figured together in 67% or more of the routines we observed depending on the school …

24. Organizational Routines at Local Proxies for Policy: The Five Week Assessment
First I would like to say congratulations to grade levels—all grade levels made some improvements from the Five Week Assessments to the Ten Week Assessment which is a reflection of your time and commitment to getting students to learn … Third through fifth [grade students need to work on their] abilities to write descriptive words … Probably lacking in vocabulary, ability to pick out details from the story. [Grade Level Meeting]
They [students] did a good job identifying the problem and solution of the story … Which leads me to middle school. Problem and solution didn’t always match … this is truly a concern … Little trouble determining the important information in the story. Questions most missed were vocabulary questions … I have a packet with lessons on teaching vocabulary. I’ll pass it around and if you want me to make you a copy, put your name on the green sticky note [Literacy Committee Meeting, Field Notes, 11/06/00]
NOTE here how government standards and tests are invoked INDIRECTLY through local proxies for external policy …
By virtue of participation in the performance of these local organizational routines, school staff members began to standardize content coverage vertically and horizontally,
For example, by participating in the Five Week Assessment the school’s staff monitored their own compliance with government regulations and came to accept instructional transparency, standardization, and monitoring as the way things ought to be. As a result, exter- nal enforcement in the form of government incentives and sanctions is not the only thing at play; staff participation in the performance of organizational routines that embody key regulatory ideals also appears to be important. In this way, changes in school norms are forged, at least in part, through trans- forming organizational routines, an aspect of the formal structure, that in turn influences administrative practice. Administrative practice, as jointly enacted by school staff in the performance of organizational routines and structured by the ostensive aspect of the routine, enacts school norms.

25. Five Week Assessment: Performative Aspect
It [the Five Week Assessment] is first of all so Miss Richards, Miss Andrews and Miss Wilmington can see how the school is doing in general. That’s one of the purposes. And we get an idea of how we’re gonna do on our [state] standardized test. But the main point of the assessments are for teachers; that’s what they’re really for. They’re for you, so you can see what is happening in your classroom and you can see where the students seem to be struggling and you can think about what you need to do and discuss what you need to do to help them. [Grade Level Meeting, 11/01/02]
School leaders sold these organizational routines as for teachers/ belonging to teachers. In a grade level meeting in NOV note how the Literacy coordinator pitches the Five Week Assessment Routine -- Ms. Kelly positioned the assessments as being primarily in the service of teachers (“for teachers… for you”),
Later in the same meeting, an external consultant working with the school notes …

26. Teachers and the Five Week Assessment
But what happens with that Five Week Assessment, it helps me to find out exactly what skills in what area I need to work a little harder; focus on a little more. … it gives me a lot of feedback on exactly where the students are the weakest it may be that specific skill [was a challenge] for the school as a whole. And then we target in on that. And then there’s improvement. So those assessments are wonderful … and essential to the students’ progress. [Adams Teacher, 2002]
Here note how teachers report using the five week assessment as an integral component of their classroom work including their interactions with parents.

27. Organizational Routines: Performative Aspect
Ms. Sally then switched the topic of discussion to a uniformed spelling program for the grade. She raised the point that it was important for the grade "to be following a sequence for instruction for phonics." Ms. Jill also wants to bring in one of her own favorite books into the curriculum which she claims has a "consistent format which is the most important because the students are missing a range of words. … Ms. Dalia then raised the point that she would be concerned that the grade would not be following the standards of the Illinois State in reference to the [Jill’s] book. [Grade Level Meeting at Baxter, 10/28/99]
Ms. Jones [mathematics teacher leader] remarks, “I don’t too much worry about this one [kind of] question. But now if it’s four or five questions [about the same content on the state test] I target in on that and I make sure my kids know that…” [Annual Kick-off Faculty Meeting at Adams, 8/31/01]
DIRECT REFERENCE … State and district standards and student assessments were invoked in efforts to both set and maintain direction and to standardize content coverage, material usage, and sometimes even teaching strategies. Ms. Sally underscores the importance of following the standardized school spelling program and she also worries about the inclusion of material that is not aligned with the state standards.
Ms. Dalia uses state standards to adjudicate appropriate classroom materials and other participants do not question the appropriateness of using state standards in this way.
We see recoupling as Ms. Sally & Ms. Dalia press for decisions about content coverage and material use to be responsive to and not distinctive from state standards.
IN the second example – note teacher leader. Analytical point - Institutions “gain influence by working through internal organizational processes” (Heimer, 1999, p. 18).
This is NOT people telling us what they do … this is people doing together with colleagues.
Sometimes these direct references were NOT to texts/regulations but to people … policy personification … where a cherished district leader was invoked as a school leader use reported speech …

28. Assertion
Transforming the formal structure by implementing new organizational routines met with resistance from staff and the ongoing maintenance of these routines required school leaders to appeal to formal authority and to use various persuasion tactics to get teacher cooperation.
Further, in all schools we found school leaders working to convince teachers of their particular policy meanings not only by appealing to formal authority but also by deploying various social tactics to persuade …
Persuasion one of three core mechanisms of control in political systems and organizations, along with authority and markets. As Stone puts it, “of all the means of coordinating and controlling human behavior, none is more pervasive, more complicated, or less well understood than persuasion”( 1997p. 305).

29. Pushback in Practice: The Kosten Case
Mrs. Koh began “Kosten is a good school. The former administration did a good job, but we can’t take it for granted. Society is changing.” She continued, “We are putting those preventative resources in place. Why should we wait for a disaster?” Then she told the teachers, “You’ve got to have higher expectations, … a teacher quickly interjected, “But our scores are going up.” Mrs. Koh responded, “But our students are changing, and we want to insure that everyone is going up.” But then another teacher responded with a different interpretation: “We’re getting more and more kids now with problems at home. There’s no discipline in the household, and I can model things here, but if they don’t get it at home...” (Fieldnotes).
Koh tells them the school needs to do something to improve reading, because their scores are down “1.3” on the IOWA tests. In contrast, the reading scores at the other neighborhood school are at 70, “I have to go over there.” Teacher—“I’ll go with you,” and “They must be teaching to the test” because the two schools are “servicing the same population” (Field notes).
Transition from last slide to Set up for ASSERTION 4 - by noting that changing the formal structure was not effortless … it involved struggles that we encountered first hand in one of the schools and heard second hand reports of in the three schools where these changes had been implemented.
She explained, “there’s got to be some consistencies among the grades …” (Interview). She went on to note that curricular alignment and standardization were critical; “we have to align the curriculum in the language arts. We need to have a standard” (Interview).

30. Authority and Persuasion
Tactic
% routines code found in
Total # of code uses
Average code use per routine
% of overall coding
Aligning
86% (19)
280
12.7
57%
Other Oriented
64% (14)
199
9.1
40.4%
Authority
82% (18)
195
8.9
39.6%
Brokering
73% (16)
154
7.0
31.3%
Agenda Setting
145
6.6
29.5%
Asserting In-group
68% (15) 92
4.2
18.7%

31. Tentative Summary
School leaders transformed their formal organizational structure by (re)designing organizational routines that embedded ‘logics’ - standardization, accountability, monitoring
In practice, these routine were not purely symbolic, as involved decision-making about substantive technical matters, selectively coupling the technical core with administrative practice and policy
Policy can indeed penetrate the schoolhouse and get beyond the classroom door … but it does not invoke itself. Central to understanding policy is school administrative practice …
More broadly, what can we take from these four cases about school administration and its role in relations among policy and practice?
WE ASCRIBE TOO MUCH OF OUR OBSERVATIONS INSIDE OF SCHOOLS TO HEROIC CHANGE AGENTS OR ENTREPRENURS--OR IN THE CASE OF SCHOOLS THE PRINCIPALS AND THEIR ACTIONS--WITHOUT REALLY UNDERSTANDING HOW THE FORMAL STRUCTURE AND ROUTINES OF SCHOOLING OCCASIONS SOME ACTIONS AND EFFECTS OVER OTHERS.
Charismatic leaders – one of the principals at Adams yes; the principal at Kosten definitely not, the others fell somewhere in between …
Democratic or autocratic … depends on principal and the particular period one look at …  
School leaders worked at getting teacher cooperation by appealing to formal/positional authority and by using various social tactics to persuade teachers

32. Reframing Research on School Administration
Extrapolate a number of things/directions for R&D on school leadership and management from this work that have focused our work over the past several years and that I want to focus in on now.
that gets beyond an exclusive focus on the school principal to consider others who take responsibility ….
get beyond notions of practice as individual action to thinking about interactions and how the expertise may be in between …
broaden beyond interactions to develop a better understanding of how formal structure is not only a product of administrative practice BUT fundamentally shapes/defines that practice.

33. Instrument Development and Study Operations
Instrument Development & Validation
School Staff Social Network Questionnaire
Logs of Practice
Experience Sampling Method (ESM) Log
End of Day (EOD) Log
Leadership Daily Practice (LDP) Log
Constructs, Study Operations, & Measures
Much of the work on school leadership and management relies on surveys that focus on norms and behaviors …
we have turned to network analysis - help us understand relations between formal and informal (who seeks advice and information from whom) … Lot of our work focused on instrument development …
We have also turned to developing logs of practice … while annual surveys are good at picking up on attitudes and preferences not so good at getting at behaviors …

34. Two Studies of School Staff Social Netowrks
“Cloverville” Study
One urban, midsized district in the southeastern United States
30 participating K-6 schools
Survey responses collected in Spring ‘05 and ’07
Principal Questionnaire (PQ) and School Staff Questionnaire (SSQ
NebraskaMATH Study
Four districts in Nebraska
2007 & 2008: Ten middle schools in one district
2010, 2011 & 2013: 82 K-6 schools in four districts
School Staff Questionnaire (SSQ)
NebraskaMATH study: of 14 schools, two schools with low response rate in 2010 were excluded in data analysis.

35. Two Studies of School Staff Social Netowrks
“Cloverville” Study
2005: 89% response rate (1,210) elementary school staff, ranging from 66% to 100%.
2007: 83% response (1,194) elementary school staff, ranging from 63% to 100%.
NebraskaMATH study
2010: 89% response rate, elementary school staff, ranging from 82% to 100%.
2011: 95% response rate, elementary school staff ranging from 93% to 100%.

36. Social Network Instrument
Screen Screen Shot from SSSNQ Version 2 – Math Advice Questions Page 1

37. School Staff Social Network Questionnaire: Validity Work
SSSNQ picks up subject specific interactions
Under-report unsolicited advice & formal interactions
Observations of others (as distinct from verbal exchanges) may be under-reported.
Pitts, V., & Spillane, J. P. (2009). Using social network methods to study school leadership. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 32(2),
A key part of our work has focused on research instrument development — adapting social network methods to the study of school leadership and developing logs of practice.  I am going to focus my remarks on the social network methods.  Our instrument development and validity work has focused on examining whether we can pick up on leadership and management arrangements using social network methods … we have also examine question/order effects in instrument development …

38. School Staff Social Network Questionniare
Randomization
M/R
R/M
math name generator
RWLA name generator
Experimental situation where we randomly assigned the ordering of the name generator questions for mathematics advice and language arts advice … half of our sample got the mathematics question first and then the language arts question, other half got the language arts question first and then the mathematics question … Two samples – all the middle schools in Lincoln Nebraska and K-8 elementary schools in Chicago.
math name interpreter
RWLA name interpreter
RWLA name generator
math name generator
RLWA name interpreter
math name interpreter

39. Average Number of Alters Listed by Subject and Treatment Group
Subject area
R/M (n = 126)
M/R (n = 138)
Difference
RWLA
3.2
1.9
1.3*
Math
1.5
1.7
-0.2
Total
4.7
3.6
1.1*
Total number of alters listed differs by treatment group
Differences persist when controlling for respondent role, school
Pustejovsky, J., & Spillane, J. P. (2009). Question-order effects in social network name generators. Social Networks, 31(4),

40. Central Actors B C A Color corresponds to staff role Reading/Writing/
Language Arts
Math
Science
Social Studies
Special Education
6th Grade
Special Subjects
Administration

41. Central Actors M2 M2 Math M2 Coordinator Color corresponds
to staff role
Reading/Writing/
Language Arts
Math
Science
Social Studies
Special Education
6th Grade
Special Subjects
Administration

42. Study Operations M2 Math teachers M2 Math teachers
M2 Math teacher/coordinator
Self-contained teacher
Two middle schools in Lincoln Nebraska …
Math teacher

43. Formal Structure: School Leaders
On average, schools had
12.6 formal leaders (range 6 to 19)
3.3 full-time formal leaders (range 1 to 8).
Variation in instructional ties directed toward full or part-time leaders:
17% to 86% of all ties for mathematics
19.7% to 100% of all ties for language arts (LA)
Formal leaders (full-time or part-time):
significantly higher betweenness than teachers in LA (.020, .011; p<.001) and in mathematics (021, .009; p<.001).
Part-time leaders had significantly higher betweenness scores in mathematics than full-time leaders (.024, .011; p<.001).
12 belonged to their school’s language arts networks, 9 belonged to their school’s mathematics networks WHEN they were involved MORE dense networks.
half (49%) of the full-time formally designated leaders were isolates in the language arts networks compared with only one quarter (26%) of part-time formally designated leaders.
for mathematics with over half (57%) of the full-time formally designated leaders being isolates compared with just over one quarter (27%) of the part-time formally designated
With the exception of the mathematics networks where full-time leaders were not as central as classroom teachers (.019, .025; p=.051), formal leaders, regardless of full-time or part-time status, occupied more prominent positions in instructional advice and information networks.

44. Network Selection Modeling: Multilevel p2
The level 1 model is:
log (p[adviceij=1] / {1-p[adviceij]=1})
=αj + βi
+ δ1 (Prior relationship)ij
+ δ2 (Same race)ij
+ δ3 (Same gender)ij
+ δ4 (Common grade taught)ij
+ δ5 (Difference in professional development)ij
+ δ6 (Reciprocity: adviceji )
Ordinary logistic regression is not appropriate. The p2 model can be thought of as a logistic regression model for the presence or absence of ties among any two actors in a network.
The p2 model expresses the pattern of observed ties as a function of characteristics of the dyad and of each member of the dyad. As such, dyads are nested within nominators and nominees creating a cross-nested multilevel model. At level one are dyads and at level two these pairs are cross-nested within providers and receivers
Generally, a positive effect an individual or dyadic characteristic indicates that the characteristic increases the probability of a tie (Baerveldt et al., 2004; Van Duijn et al., 2004; Veenstra et al., 2007).
Specifically, the larger the value of δ1, the more we would infer that the current ties in advice and information sharing are affected by previous ties.
The larger the value of δ2 and δ3, the more we would infer that the patterns of advice or information sharing are influenced by the personal characteristics as defined by the same race or the same gender.
The term δ4 and δ5 quantifies how the formal organization as represented by grade level or difference in professional development between two teachers shapes advice or information ties.
The term δ6 indicates the extent to which teachers have mutual exchange in advice and information sharing between two teachers.

45. Network Selection Modeling: Multilevel p2
The level 2 model is:
Level 2a (j: provider effect)
αj = γ0(α) + γ1(α) New teachersj
+ γ2(α) Multiple-grade teachersj
+ γ3(α) Formally designated leadersj + u0j .
Level 2b (i: seeker effect)
βi = γ0(β) + γ1(β) life/career stagei
+ γ2(β) Professional developmenti +v0i .
“Cloverville” Study
We modelled the tendencies of teachers to be chosen as providing and seeking advice or information at a separate level.
Here, the random effects u0j and v0i are assumed to be normally distributed and account for dependencies associated with tendencies to provide or seek advice or information that affect all relations in which a given individual engages.
To estimate what attributes of the provider and seeker of advice or information account for the patterns observed in teachers’ advice or information ties, new teachers, multiple-grade teacher, and formally designated leaders were included in provider effects in level 2a and life/career stage and professional development were included in seeker effects in level 2b.

46. Formal Organizational Structure & Advice & Information Seeking Behavior
Prior tie strongly associated with having a current tie.
Formal leaders more likely to provide advice or information (positive provider effect of formal leader position, 1.28)
Teachers in the same grade were more likely to receive or provide advice or information (positive dyadic effect of same grade 3.02)
Teachers more likely to receive advice about a subject from teachers who reported more PD in that subject (negative dyadic effect of difference in PD of -0.35).
Teachers who reported more PD in a subject were more likely to receive advice and information in that subject (positive receiver effect of PD, 0.88)
Spillane, J. P., Kim, C. M., & Frank, K. A. (under review). Instructional advice and information seeking behavior in elementary schools: Exploring tie formation as a building block in social capital development. American Educational Research Journal.
We did find evidence of homophily based on personal characteristics. Similarity of race and gender were associated with the emergence of a new advice or information tie among staff. Teachers of the same race were more likely to receive or provide advice or information from one another than those of different races as suggested by a positive dyadic effect of same race (0.45)
Teachers and school leaders were more likely to receive or provide advice or information from a colleague of the same gender as suggested by a positive dyadic effect of same gender (0.41).
Our analysis also suggests that career stage matters with more experienced teachers less likely to receive advice or information about mathematics than their less experienced colleagues as indicated by a negative receiver effect of career stage (-0.25). All three results – race, gender, and career stage – are statistically significant.
BUT, and more interesting, is that formal structure matters to advice and information seeking behavior …
Our analysis suggests that while school leaders’ and teachers’ personal characteristics are associated with teachers’ instructional advice or information flows, the formal organization in the form of grade level assignment, having a formally designated leadership position, and teaching a single grade trumps individual characteristics. Controlling for prior ties, our analysis shows that grade level assignment is strongly associated with the formation of a new tie. We might expect this finding for several reasons.
Our analysis also suggests that there is a relationship between the formal organizational structure and informal advice seeking patterns.  VERY NICE LOGIC IN OUR PROGRESSION HERE First, in a study of 30 elementary schools in one district, we found that after controlling for a tie from the previous school year, teachers in the same grade were more likely to receive or provide advice or information as reflected in a positive dyadic effect of same grade taught (3.02).  Second, school staff members with formally designated leadershiproles were more likely to provide advice or information as reflected in a positive provider effect of formally designated leaders (1.28).  WE ASCRIBE TOO MUCH OF OUR OBSERVATIONS INSIDE OF SCHOOLS TO HEROIC CHANGE AGENTS OR ENTREPRENURS--OR IN THE CASE OF SCHOOLS THE PRINCIPALS AND THEIR ACTIONS--WITHOUT REALLY UNDERSTANDING HOW THE FORMAL STRUCTURE AND ROUTINES OF SCHOOLING OCCASIONS SOME ACTIONS AND EFFECTS OVER OTHERS. 

47. Formal Math Teacher Leader
Identify the formal leaders.
Where is the principal?
Look at the math coach, who was given the role in 2011 and was a 3rd grade teacher in 2010.
Does anyone else emerge as a leader?
2010: No Math Leader
2011: Full-Time Math Coach

48. Formal Position Influences Advice Seeking
“[Emily] really wasn’t our facilitator [last year] though, she was, she was my co-worker, just a third grade teacher. I mean I knew she had a wealth of knowledge, I just wasn’t in [her classroom] at the time when she was teaching math. But um, now that she’s moved into this math facilitator position, that’s different…She’s been trained in it. And, she’s gone to school for it and she’s a great coach, she knows a lot about math and I just trust her that she has a lot of, a wealth of knowledge on it … She’s the go-to person.” [Angie, Special Education teacher]

49. Informal Math Teacher Leader (Marked by Specialized Training)
Formal leaders?
Informal leaders?
Primarily math participant:
This person went off to training to get certification between Time 1 and Time 2.
Increase in in-degree; interacts with teachers at more grade levels.
The qualitative data also show that this experience is important.
From Megan:
the Primarily Math participant is a 2nd grade teacher, denoted with a lined dot (near the center) rather than a solid dot in both diagrams. Also, the two key things to point out would be:
(1) In 2011, after the teacher enrolled in the PD program, the number of teachers coming to him increased, although less than for the math coach in the previous diagram. 
(2) Also, the teacher spans more grade levels in 2011 than In 2010, only 1-3 grade teachers and a special education teacher come to him for advice about math. This makes sense because he is a 2nd grade teacher, so this indicates some vertical alignment. In 2011, however, you can see that teachers across grades come to him for advice about math: K, 1, 2, 4, 6, and special education. And, he interacts with the principal about math in 2011, but not in This indicates that his participation in the PD program marks him as an expert in math at the school generally. (The quote on the next slide reiterates that.)
2010: No Math Leader
2011: Primarily Math Participant

50. Training Serves as a Marker of Experience
Paula: Why would you say you talk to John? Karen (1st grade): Because he’s a second grade teacher….He’s kind of become kind of a math person to see because he’s taken this extra training that nobody else in the building has done, and I know that he’s interested in math so, he’s just one that I’ve gone to that I know focuses very heavily on, I like his beliefs and the way that he has his room set up and the way that he carries himself.

51. School Leadership & Management Development
My account to this point suggests a number of directions for research on school leadership and management …that I want to focus in on now. First, these are the need for research that gets beyond an exclusive focus on the school principal to consider others who take responsibility for leadership and management inside schools. Second, broaden beyond interactions to develop a better understanding of how formal structure is not only a product of administrative practice BUT fundamentally shapes/defines that practice. Third (MAYBE), get beyond notions of practice as individual action to thinking about interactions and how the expertise may be in between

52. Development System and organizational [infra]structure
designing infrastructures to support instruction and its improvement
preparing school leaders to diagnosis and design
School administrative practice and the resources that enable it
Getting at the the micro processes of administration – school administrative practice –while not losing sight of macro structures
Beyond the school principal to other formal leaders (full- and part-time)
Very quickly here … more recent work where we examine the advice and information seeking behavior of school staff across 30 schools using social networks.
Formal leaders had significantly higher betweenness scores compared with teachers in mathematics (.021, .009; p<.001).
Schools had 13 formal school leaders, ranging from 6 to 19; roughly quarter were full-time, rest part-time. Part-time leaders had significantly higher betweenness scores in mathematics than full-time leaders (.024, .011; p<.001). Part-time leaders had higher closeness scores in both language arts and mathematics compared with full-time leaders’ closeness scores (.028; p=.06; .026; p<.001).

53. Role of Research in Development
Providing regular and structured feedback to research sites on our research findings
Engage study participants in diagnostic and design work, using their own data
Challenges – human subject protection, research design
Modules for Developing School Administrative Practice
A Distributed Perspective – leadership teams, a focus on practice
Research findings inform module design
Diagnostic and Design Activities developed around cases
Translating theoretical and conceptual frames for practitioner use
Very quickly here … more recent work where we examine the advice and information seeking behavior of school staff across 30 schools using social networks.
Formal leaders had significantly higher betweenness scores compared with teachers in mathematics (.021, .009; p<.001).
Schools had 13 formal school leaders, ranging from 6 to 19; roughly quarter were full-time, rest part-time. Part-time leaders had significantly higher betweenness scores in mathematics than full-time leaders (.024, .011; p<.001). Part-time leaders had higher closeness scores in both language arts and mathematics compared with full-time leaders’ closeness scores (.028; p=.06; .026; p<.001).

54. Developing Leadership Through Organizational Routine Design and Redesign
Developing leadership & management practice by redesigning organizational routine.
developing practice in situ
developing teams of leaders rather than individuals
anchored in teaching and learning
Developing leadership and management by designing new organizational routines
‘Kernel’ Organizational Routines
Resnick, L. B., & Spillane, J. P. (2006). From individual learning to organizational designs for learning. In L. Verschaffel, F. Dochy, M. Boekaerts & S. Vosniadou (Eds.), Instructional psychology: Past, present and future trends: Sixteen essays in honour of Erik de Corte (pp ). Amsterdam: Elsevier Ltd.

55. Ongoing Work
Learning Leadership Study: Randomized trial involving the Learning Walk® Organizational Routine to study whether and how administrative practice is changed through implementation of an organizational routine.
Principal Policy and Practice Study: Longitudinal study of two cohorts of new principals over their first two years on the job.
Engaging schools and school districts in diagnosing administrative practice and in designing and redesigning their organizational routines.

56. Publications and Presentations available online: www
Publications and Presentations available online:
Spillane, J. P., Parise, L. M., & Sherer, J. Z. (2011). Organizational routines as coupling mechanisms: policy, school administration, and the technical core. American Educational Research Journal, 48(3),
Spillane, J. P., & Anderson, L. M. (under review). Policy, practice, and professionalism: Negotiating policy meanings in practice in a shifting institutional environment. Sociology of Education.
Sherer, J. Z., & Spillane, J. P. (2010). Constancy and change in school work practice: Exploring the role of organizational routines. Teachers College Record, 113(3).
Spillane, J. P., Lowenhaupt, R., Hallet, T. (in progress). Institutions in school administrative practice: The role of rhetorical sequences in negotiating between ‘competing’ logics.
Spillane, J. P., Kim, C. M., & Frank, K. A. (under review). Instructional advice and information seeking behavior in elementary schools: Exploring tie formation as a building block in social capital development. American Educational Research Journal.
Spillane, J. P., & Healey, K. (2010). Conceptualizing school leadership and management from a distributed perspective. The Elementary School Journal, 111(2).
Spillane, J. P., Healey, K., & Kim, C. M. (2010). Leading and managing instruction: Using social network analysis to explore formal and informal aspects of the elementary school organization. In A. J. Daly (Ed.), Social network theory and educational change (pp ). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
Spillane, J. P., & Hunt, B. (2010). Days of their lives: A mixed-methods, descriptive analysis of the men and women at work in the principal's office. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 42(3),