Research Use as Learning: The Case of Fundamental Change in School District Central Offices

• In Event: From Data and Evidence to Decisions for School and District Improvement: Synthesizing Findings and Extending Theory

Abstract

Many school districts have launched efforts to improve how their central offices support teaching and learning improvement, intentionally using various forms of research to guide the process. While many district reforms focus on schools as the main target, these reforms aim to shift central office policies and practices. Such efforts are promising, since a growing body of research is beginning to suggest how central offices might operate differently to support school improvement districtwide (Author, 2010; Hightower et al., 2003).

However, the research typically calls for fundamental shifts in central office administrators’ work, and such changes are notoriously difficult to implement (Argyris & Schon, 1996). Broader organizational research reveals extensive barriers to use of new knowledge but little about the processes and conditions that support knowledge use for fundamental change (Kennedy, 1982; Levitt & March, 1988; March, 1994; Weick, 1995). What happens when central office administrators engage with research that calls for fundamental shifts in central office practices? Under what conditions, if any, do central office administrators buck predominant trends and actually use research to engage in fundamental shifts in their practice?

We explored these questions with an in-depth qualitative analysis of six school districts intending to use various forms of research to strengthen their central offices’ capacity to support districtwide improvements. Socio-cultural and organizational learning theories provided the basis for our conceptual framework (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Grossman, Smagorinsky, & Valencia, 1999; Lave, 1998; March, 1994; Rogoff, Baker-Sennett, Lacasa, & Goldsmith, 1995; Tharp & Gallimore, 1991; Wenger, 1998). These theories focused data collection and analysis on processes by which practitioners might engage with new knowledge and ways to distinguish among the outcomes of such processes, what Grossman et al. refer to as “degrees of appropriation.” These theories prompted us to choose sites that worked with intermediary organizations that aimed to support fundamental central office change by taking a teaching-and-learning stance in that work, and to explore such processes. We used these theories to ground 116 interviews, 499.25 hours of meeting observations, and reviews of approximately 300 documents.

We found that central office administrators in all six districts used particular research-based ideas but to varying degrees, with most instances reflecting low to moderate levels of appropriation. Our data supported our conceptual framework’s premises that: (1) the processes by which central office administrators used research to deepen their practice are learning processes, and (2) particular teaching practices by intermediary organizations can help practitioners engage in such learning processes. Intermediaries’ effectiveness in this work was mediated by practitioners’ starting places (sometimes called prior knowledge) and the extent to which practitioners’ had professional orientations and past experiences that helped them see the new practices rather than traditional central office administration as the paths by which they would be rewarded. Practitioners tended not to take up research-based ideas absent central office leaders who themselves engaged in high-leverage teaching moves to help their colleagues integrate research into their practice. These findings support the hypothesis that leadership is essential to fundamental central office change.

Authors

• Meredith I. Honig, University of Washington

• Nitya Venkateswaran, University of Washington - Seattle

• Patricia Wentworth McNeil, University of Washington

• Jenee Myers Twitchell, University of Washington