Designing and Creating Educational Systems: A Review of Research

• In Event: Redesigning Educational Systems: Influences and Practices Around Structural Changes in U.S. Education

Abstract

Purpose

For a quarter century, the redesign and creation of educational systems has enjoyed policy support as a strategy for improving education for many students, especially those from minority groups and disadvantaged communities. The twin press of standards-and-accountability and markets-and-choice call on established systems (e.g., urban, suburban, and rural) and emerging systems (e.g., state turnaround districts and CMO-operated networks) to reorganize instruction and instructional improvement in novel ways.

The purpose of this paper is to compare efforts to redesign and create educational systems, focusing specifically on efforts to coordinate among educational infrastructure, instruction, and educational environments. The goal is to identify emerging models of organizing, managing, and improving instruction in response to the twin press of standards-and-accountability and markets-and-choice.

Theoretical Framework

Our analytic framework has roots in the new institutional theory in education (Meyer & Rowan, 1978; Meyer, Scott, & Deal, 1983). The well-established argument is that educational organizations facing strong “institutional environments” will organize to conform to normative/cultural expectations, while those facing strong “technical environments” will organize to coordinate and control technical work.
With that, our conjecture is that strengthening of technical environments in US public education (as marked by standards-and-accountability and markets-and-choice) will have educational systems developing complex “educational infrastructure”: coordinated technologies, structures, and norms supporting the organization, management, and improvement of instruction (Cohen, Peurach, Glazer, Gates, & Goldin, 2013; Hopkins, Spillane, Jakopovic, & Heaton, 2013; Peurach & Neumerski, 2015).

Methods, Techniques, or Modes of Inquiry

Our method of inquiry is a literature review addressing three questions:
● What models for educational infrastructure are emerging among public school systems?
● What design/visions for instruction are emerging among public school systems, and what are the mechanisms for coupling infrastructure and instruction?
● What strategies are emerging to coordinate among infrastructure and instruction (on the one hand) and educational environments (on the other)?

Data Sources, Evidence, Objects, or Materials

A systematic search yielded over 1,000 references from scholarly journals focused on systems, infrastructure, and instruction. We triaged this list via reviews of abstracts (first) and scans of complete texts (second). We then analyzed the remaining sources.

Results and/or Substantiated Conclusions

Our primary finding is that policies promoting system redesign and creation are far ahead of research, especially considering the diversity of systems operating in the US. Our triage process left us with fewer than 100 sources that focused in detail on the type of system redesign and creation described above, more than 50% of which focused on urban districts. With that, the existing research literature functions as a weak resource for identifying emerging models and approaches. At best, it is useful for raising preliminary conjectures about essential infrastructure components, coupling strategies, and environmental management approaches.

Scientific or Scholarly Significance

Our analysis reveals a formidable gap in the research literature around a leading policy paradigm. While our analysis frames a research agenda to fill that gap, it also raises questions about funding and publication priorities that need to be addressed to move this agenda forward.

Authors

• Donald J. Peurach, University of Michigan

• James P. Spillane, Northwestern University

• David K. Cohen, University of Michigan

• Maxwell Yurkofsky, Harvard University Graduate School of Educcation