Recontextualization and Adaptation: Processes of Making Sense of an Educational Reform

• In Event: Park Central Roundtable Session 18

Abstract

Context and goals
‘Performance standard policies’ are seen as a characteristic materialization of the idea of ‘evidence-based governance’ in schooling. Such a policy has been implemented in the Austrian school system since 2008. The goal of the presented study is to understand the ways of coping as a form of adaptation with reform proposals on school level and their impact on school and classroom practices.

Theoretical framework and research questions
According to the ‘governance perspective’ (Schimank, 2007) educational reforms are understood as interventions into an existing ‘governance system’. In order to become socially relevant the ‘structural offers’ of a reform have to be taken up and ‘recontextualized’ (Fend, 2006; Weick, 1995; Coburn & Turner, 2011) by different actors on various levels of the school system. ‘Recontextualization’ involves processes of making sense of a reform proposal and of translating it into practices and work structures. These processes include both adaptation of reform proposals to the specific school context and adaptation of school practices and structures to the reform. The study focuses on the micro-processes of recontextualization in a longitudinal perspective. We will discuss two research questions (RQ):
1. How do schools adapt the ‘performance standard policy’ to their school context?
2. How do schools adapt their school and classroom practices to the performance standard policy?

Methods and data sources
Three Austrian primary and three secondary schools were selected based on expert advice (criterion: different amount of previous school development). Data from teachers, school leaders, students and parents were collected in a longitudinal design (with three waves of data collection within three years) through guideline-based qualitative interviews. Data was analyzed through qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2014) and produced six individual case studies which were subjected to a cross-case analysis.

Results
RQ 1: Only in a few schools adapting to the challenges of the reform is seen as a collective task. In these schools, the school leader and/or the ‘learning designer’ (a special support teacher) take on a stimulating role for coordinating the school’s reaction by shared work of the subject faculties. In the other schools it is seen as a task of individual teachers (which results in individualistic patterns of recontextualizing ‘performance standards’).
RQ 2: Data feedback of performance results does not trigger much improvement activity in most case schools while there seems to be more classroom development before the testing which takes on two major forms of development: Some teachers try to introduce or increase elements of competence-based teaching, while others train students to cope with the new performance test formats. The first type of adaptation is often connected with a more elaborate interest in subject matter methodology and with shared approaches to coping with performance standards.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
By using longitudinal qualitative case study data, the study goes beyond previous research and allows a close look at the temporal development of the processes of adaptation of reform proposals to the specific school context and adaptation of school practices and structures to the reform.

Authors

• Herbert Altrichter, University of Linz

• Manuela Gamsjäger

• Christine Plaimauer

• Eva Prammer-Semmler

• Regina Steiner