How Ideas Spread: District-Level Instructional Coach Teams and Transactive Memory Systems

• In Event: Conditions for Advancing Coaching as a Reform Lever for Systemic Instructional Change

Abstract

Recognizing that educational improvement is complex work, scholars have invoked the notion of “systemic reform” to shift focus onto the broader district system that shapes how schools and educators respond to policy change (Daly & Finnigan, 2016; Elmore, 2000; Newman, Smith, Allensworth & Bryk, 2001). Concurrently, instructional coaching has emerged as an important district strategy for supporting systemic change and promoting inter-organizational communication, particularly between districts and schools (Swinnerton, 2007). At the district level, groups of instructional coaches – which can be thought of as coaching teams – create and maintain sophisticated district-wide organizational systems of instructional resources for teacher learning and curricular development.

Research shows high-implementing inter-organizational units, or subgroups, significantly improve knowledge building in educational organizations (Frank & Penuel, 2015, Tsai, 2001). To date, however, few studies have taken an in-depth look at coaches as a collective group unit, or considered how coaching teams influence district policy. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the link between coaching teams and district policy implementation. Conceptually, I draw on the theories of transactive memory (Wegner, 1987) and public goods (Samuelson, 1954) to understand how coaching teams augment knowledge and facilitate the flow of new ideas for district reform.

To explore this phenomenon, I draw from a comparative case study of two districts in Indiana – one district, Batali was smaller with a more affluent population than Waters. Both school districts had established formal district teams of building-level instructional coaches that explicitly facilitated systemic district reform. My primary sources of qualitative data included social network surveys, interviews with instructional coaches and district administrators, and observations of coach team meetings. I draw on visual social network analysis (Borgatti, Everett, & Freeman, 2002), as well as qualitative coding techniques, such as pattern coding (Miles & Huberman, 1994) and constant comparative techniques (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), to analyze how the instructional coach teams facilitated knowledge building.

The development and distribution of knowledge for implementing new policies or program reforms was a primary responsibility for both district teams. My findings indicate that instructional coaching teams leverage sophisticated social and technical systems, or “transactive memory systems,” to augment and diffuse knowledge for policy implementation. For example, coaching teams in both districts made extensive use of intranet systems comprise of a combination of data-sharing platforms (e.g., Google Docs) and online communication tools (e.g., Twitter, Zoom). At the same time, the coaching teams had distinct orientations towards reform that shaped their knowledge building behaviors. One district, Batali, was focused on continuous improvement to existing programs, while the other district focused on change and innovation.

This study has significant theoretical and practical implications. The paper’s findings indicates that the stratification of leadership opportunities at the district level, particularly the formation of instructional coaching teams, contributes to a significant, yet easily overlooked, institutional shift. I find coaching teams can be effective mechanisms for organizational change and systemic reform. My findings also have important implications for emerging theories of improvement, such as improvement science and networked improvement communities (NICs) (Bryk et al., 2015).












 

Author

• Sarah Hilary Galey, Michigan State University