Examining the Relationship Between Teachers' Organizational Sense-Making and Their Implementation of Next Generation Science Standards–Aligned Instruction

• In Event: Designing for Teacher Learning and Enduring Reform Within Science Education

Abstract

Although prior research on reform implementation points to professional development (PD; Penuel et al, 2007) and curricular materials (Davis & Krajcik, 2005) as being necessary supports for teachers’ integration of reform ideas and practices, these efforts can often be limited in effecting lasting change. This is, in part, due to systemic incoherence (Allen & Penuel, 2014). Educational systems have multiple, interlocking components that are only partially coordinated (Lemke & Sabelli, 2008), and if implementation is to be successful, states and districts need to ensure that there is strong coherence among key elements of the education system. Coherence includes vertical coherence in which teachers and building leaders have a shared belief about the purpose or value of adopted reform; horizontal coherence between policy and curriculum used, teachers’ instructional practices and PD; and developmental coherence in which policy coheres with our current understandings of how children develop over time (NRC, 2012).
Further, systemic (in)coherence – and particularly teachers’ perceptions of coherence – weigh heavily on teachers’ decision-making regarding what aspects of reform to implement. For example, reform texts may lack coherence with other school or district curriculum materials, such as pacing guides or district-adopted texts (see Allen & Penuel, 2014); and, messages in PD may suggest ideas about teaching and learning that come into conflict with other standards and instructional expectations within teachers’ schools. Even within the same district, schools can have such varied leadership and institutional demands (i.e. meeting NCLB accountability measures) that reform implementation can manifest in dramatically different ways across schools. Therefore, even when teachers are committed to the ideas in reform, their efforts may be constrained by existing organizational practices (Carlone et al, 2010).
In this poster, I present how I have utilized a framework from organizational studies, called sensemaking (Weick, 1995), that offers a deeper look at when and why reforms efforts are stymied and when they take hold. Specifically, I examined the relationship between teachers’ sensemaking of the Framework/NGSS and their implementation of instructional practices aligned with these documents. Sensemaking affords analytic leverage for understanding teachers’ interpretations of reform, their patterns of implementation, and the ways these are shaped and sustained (or not) by schooling practices. Through this framework, the introduction of new ideas in reform initiatives are experienced as “shocks” to those within the system; and the processes educators undergo to reduce and diminish the kinds of ambiguity and uncertainty that emerge from those “shocks” as sensemaking.
Viewing teachers’ engagement with the NGSS through this lens, I conducted a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to examine the relationship between teachers’ patterns of implementation and their organizational sensemaking. This paper includes teacher interview, classroom video, and teacher-developed assignment data collected over a 2-year period from 9 middle school teachers at 5 different schools within the same large urban district. Findings from this analysis point to the need for PD activities that organize around teachers’ sources of ambiguity and uncertainty and the importance of building vertical coherence around science education goals within schools and districts.

Author

• Carrie D. Allen, University of Colorado - Boulder