A Seat at the Table: Facilitating Teacher Agency in Educational Policy Making

• In Event: 65.074 - Policy to Practice and Back Again: How Policy Influences Teachers and Teachers Influence Policy

Abstract

Although teachers may be central to the implementation of education policy, they are marginal to the design of policy agendas and text, especially around issues of teaching and learning. This creates disconnect between the goals and design of education policy and the actual lived challenges of implementation. This study addresses the critical void of teacher involvement in education policy design through the following research questions: How do institutional norms and routines affect teachers’ propensity to be involved in policy advocacy? Under what conditions do teachers push back against these norms and routines to become effective policy agents? What is the role of universities in facilitating these conditions?
In addressing the first of these questions we employ a qualitative case study of teachers involved in professional development at West Virginia University. Data sources include transcripts and field notes from professional development workshops on policy advocacy with both practicing and intern teachers, personal interviews with both practicing and intern teachers, focus groups with practicing teachers, and document collection. In addressing the second and third research questions we draw upon qualitative data from policy advocacy courses with pre-service teachers in West Virginia, as well as early data from the first phase of a qualitative study of a program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison designed to build the capacity of practicing teachers to engage with educational policy and policymaking. These data will include personal interviews with teacher and university participants.
Our analysis draws upon institutional theory (Heck, 2004; Ogawa, 1992; Meyer & Rowan, 2006; Scott, 2001) to first address particular norms and routines (e.g. the nature of teachers’ work, hierarchy of authority and professional status) that act as barriers to teacher involvement in policy creation. We then use the framework of structuration (Giddens, 1984) to examine when, how and why teachers “pushback” against these same norms, and detail the conditions under which teachers can interact in authentic ways with traditional policy structures in schools to influence the multiple contexts of policymaking (Ball, 2003/2006).
Findings suggest that teacher norms and routines such as the nature of teachers’ work within a highly structured hierarchy and assumptions about teachers’ professional status can be barriers to involvement in policymaking. It is, however, possible to introduce pre-service and practicing teachers to policy texts that directly influence their work and policy advocacy processes that take advantage of the structure of their work. Findings inform the critical efforts of teacher leaders to substantively participate in educational policy creation and the research base on teacher agency in educational policy. It also offers models for how universities can better structure capacity building around policy advocacy for both pre-service and practicing teachers. Lastly, this study makes theoretical contributions by explicitly examining the influence of external contexts or structures - and related norms and values - on the propensity of teachers to engage in policy advocacy, as well as the influence of teachers on these very norms and values, structures and contexts.

Authors

• Annalee G. Good, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Adriane A. Williams, West Virginia University

• Sadie Fox Barocas, Partners Healthcare

• Laura Carolina Chavez-Moreno, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Rachel Feldman, University of Wisconsin - Madison