Infrastructure Redesign and Instructional Reform in Mathematics: Formal Structure and Teacher Leadership

• In Event: Innovative System and School Redesign: Improving Leadership Practice to Support Instructional Reform

Abstract

In response to current policies, school systems often work to improve student performance by stimulating changes in teachers’ instructional practice. Districts employ various mechanisms to improve practice, including new curricula, evaluation systems, and instructional coaching. Much of the literature dwells on whether and why such mechanisms improve instruction or achievement; yet, these mechanisms are rarely deployed on their own and are often inserted into or are part of broader efforts to redesign district and school infrastructures.

In this paper, we focused on one district’s efforts to redesign its infrastructure for mathematics instruction by promoting teacher leadership. Although research increasingly recognizes the need to attend to sources of leadership outside of the principal (Camburn, Rowan, & Taylor, 2003; Spillane, 2006), and teacher leadership has been advanced as critical to reform efforts (Smylie, Conley, & Marks, 2002), the literature tends to focus on the development and experiences of teacher leaders at the individual level (York-Barr & Duke, 2004). In many ways, however, teacher leadership practice must be understood in relation to the infrastructure put in place to support it.

Based on prior empirical work, our study was premised on the assumption that the subject matters when it comes to leadership writ large and teacher leadership in particular. Given that the majority of studies on teacher leadership focus on literacy (Coburn & Russell, 2008, is a notable exception), we sought to investigate relations between infrastructure and teacher leadership practice in mathematics. To examine practice, we focused on advice- and information- seeking interactions among school staff because advice and information are fundamental building blocks for developing knowledge and thereby for improving instruction (Darling-Hammond et al., 2009; Elmore, 1996; Hill, 2004).

Using longitudinal social network survey data and interviews collected from one mid-sized suburban school district, we first examined how the district worked to redesign its infrastructure to influence teacher leadership practice generally and in mathematics specifically. Then, we explored relations between infrastructure and school practice in twelve of the district’s elementary schools, as captured in the mathematics instructional advice- and information-seeking interactions among school staff. We paid particular attention to changes in interactions between 2009-2010 and 2011-2012, before and after the district took on a mathematics professional development effort with selected teachers in ten schools as well as a mathematics coaching initiative in two schools.

Findings revealed that the district’s infrastructure redesign efforts were internally coherent with and built upon existing infrastructure components. These infrastructure changes enabled teacher leaders to emerge as central actors and influential brokers of advice and information about mathematics both within and between schools. Further, changes in school advice and information networks were associated with shifts in teachers’ beliefs about and practices in mathematics, toward inquiry-oriented approaches that were consistent with the district curriculum. As such, we argue that the district’s redesign efforts to supported teacher leadership coupled district curriculum with school and classroom practice in mathematics. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of implementing strategic redesign efforts for shaping practice in schools.

Authors

• Megan Hopkins, The Pennsylvania State University

• James P. Spillane, Northwestern University