Examining Principals’ Framing the Problem of Improving Opportunities for Student Learning in School-wide Improvement Efforts

• In Event: 56.059 - Examining How Principals Engage With Discipline-Specific Instructional Reforms

Abstract

Objective
Principals have been identified as a key player in school improvement efforts (Elmore, 2000). Further, standards for administrators include behaviors that have been identified as critical to instructional leadership, including developing and facilitating a school vision of learning (CCSSO, 2008; Neumerski, 2012). However, we know little about principals’ instructional leadership practices when supporting discipline-specific instructional reform efforts. In this paper, we examine principals whose science or mathematics teachers are involved in intensive, ongoing job-embedded professional development in order to understand how principals’ frame the problem of improving learning opportunities for students and how this framing may influence their involvement in discipline-specific improvement efforts.

Theoretical Framework
Frame analysis goes back to Goffman's (1974) work on understanding how humans interact and how interactions are socially organized. The verb framing conceptualizes actors assigning meaning to and interpreting relevant events and conditions in ways that are intended to mobilize potential adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists (Snow & Benford, 1988). Thus, we aim to understand: How do principals frame discipline-specific instruction reform work with respect to their larger goals for improvement to student learning? How does principals’ framing impact their participation in the instructional improvement efforts?

Methods
To understand principals’ framing around the discipline-specific reform efforts, we interviewed five secondary principals whose science teachers were involved in intensive professional learning opportunities and two elementary principals whose elementary teachers were involved in similar intensive professional learning opportunities in mathematics. We asked them to describe the main challenges in improving mathematics or science instruction, the professional development efforts to improve instruction, and their role in the improvement efforts. We also interviewed the coaches and professional development facilitators in order to understand each principal’s involvement in the reform efforts. These interviews were transcribed and double-coded by the authors guided by existing constructs in the framing and school-improvement literature.

Results
Principals’ framing fell into three different categories. The first includes principals who felt they had a primary role in the instructional improvement efforts; they described the importance of their involvement in order to learn more about high-quality science or mathematics instruction to hold teachers’ accountable for developing or refining instructional practices. The second group includes principals who felt that they needed to promote the work, so they were involved by dropping into the professional development sessions. The third group includes principals who indicated that they were appreciative that the science or mathematics teachers were involved in professional learning efforts, but they had to spend their energies working with teachers in other content areas.

Significance
Through understanding principals’ framing and participation, we can better understand how to design supports specific to principals’ role as instructional leaders in the reform efforts.

Authors

• Lynsey K. Gibbons, Boston University

• Christine Chew, University of Washington