Catalyzing Reform: How Coaches Frame Reading Policy

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

Abstract

Aiming to transform classroom practice, school leaders interpret and advance policy messages—with important consequences for implementation (Coburn, 2006; Coburn & Woulfin, 2012; Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002; Spillane, 2004). Instructional coaches are commonly deployed in systems to facilitate reform efforts. However, there are gaps in our understanding of how instructional coaches bridge the macro-policy level with the micro-instructional level. During reform, how do coaches, as change agents, motivate teachers to reform classroom practice? This paper uses framing theory to explicate how coaches influenced the implementation of a district’s reading reform, Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.

Framing theory focuses on actors’ efforts to funnel institutional logics into narrower parcels of meaning, or frames (Benford & Snow, 2000). When actors conduct framing, they strategically define problems and propose solutions that, in turn, guide action within an organization (Benford & Snow, 2000). My application of frame analysis reveals how coaches manipulated and delivered messages about the district reform.

To investigate coaches’ work, I employed the case study approach. I used the methods of observation, interview, and document analysis to study coaching within one urban school district during the 2010-2011 school year. Data sources included observations of three coaches’ work in three elementary schools (approximately 300 hours) and interviews with 29 informants, including coaches, teachers, principals, and district administrators. I analyzed over 80 policy documents from the state, district, and school levels.

Coaches’ framing served as a mechanism in translating the district’s reading policy into classroom practice. I argue that, to influence teachers, coaches engaged in framing reflecting two distinct logics and wielded an assortment of tactics in different settings. First, to motivate changes in classroom practice, coaches constructed frames containing messages about the content and pedagogy of reading instruction that could resonate in their schools. For example, one coach engaged in a great deal of framing about standards-based instruction, while another coach elected to conduct framing on how teachers should follow the district’s new instructional materials. Second, the specific school-level contexts in which these coaches were embedded enabled and constrained coaches’ framing. Each school’s routines for teacher collaboration and professional development impacted when and where coaches carried out framing. Third, coaches delegated authority and invoked experts in the field of literacy instruction in order to act as strategic framers. For these reasons, coaches played a critical role in this district’s reform effort that aimed to deliver high quality, cognitively complex reading instruction to its diverse students.

Focusing on the relationship between formal reading policy and the quotidian practices of coaches, this study uncovers how coaches’ framing influenced the trajectory of implementation. My application of framing theory brings issues of power and agency more firmly into our understanding of instructional improvement efforts. This research uncovers coaches’ tactics for motivating change in classroom practice. Implications for research underscore the importance of grappling with the role of instructional leaders in redesign efforts. This research also has implications for the development and support of coaches as instructional leaders who mediate policy.

Author

• Sarah L. Woulfin, University of Connecticut