The Strength of the Relational State: How Technical Assistance Mandates Are Enacted to Effect Institutional Change

• In Event: 51.067 - Institutional Perspectives on Education Policy: New Directions in Theory and Research

Abstract

Reform policies for U.S. public education often focus on evaluations, incentives and sanctions, which are limited in their ability to address the meaning actors make of change mandates. Meaning making, especially perceptions of legitimacy, is critical to change in highly institutionalized contexts, where beliefs, practices and structures are long-held, widely accepted, deeply-ingrained and value-laden, even when running counter to desired organizational outcomes (Meyer, 1977; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002). The current research aims to better the institutional work required to bring about change in such contexts (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006).

Existing research indicates institutions are more likely to persist than change because of the cognitive, normative and regulative forces that lend them legitimacy (Scott, 2008; Zucker 1977). In light of such challenges, states have begun playing a more active role in local school contexts, such as turning around the lowest performing schools (Rhim & Redding, 2014). Balancing accountability measures, some state also provide technical assistance to help schools and districts build improvement capacity. While there is some evidence technical assistance is associated with student outcomes (i.e. Strunk, McEachin, & Westover, 2014), there is little research about which aspects of technical assistance generate such effects and how.

To address this gap, I leverage the literature on institutional work and extend, to the turnaround school context, the concept of relational regulation. This is namely the process by which boundary spanning agents of the state negotiate the gap between policy goals and actual practice through interpersonal relationships with local constituents (Huising & Silbey, 2011). Using these two literatures, I answer this research question: “By what means and under what conditions does state technical assistance to turnaround schools involve activities associated with institutional change that helps actors reimagine their existing understandings of work?”

I employ a multi-method case study of one SEA as an exceptional case (i.e. Starbuck, 1993). The data from the18-month study include a survey of all SEA technical assistance staff, two rounds of interviews with them and one round of interviews with a snowball sample of district and school personnel. Data also include job-shadowing observations used to construct experience samples of SEA staff’s routine work (Hektner, Schmidt, & Csikszentmihalyi, 2007). Archival documents are collected about focal schools’ turnaround progress over the study period.

Preliminary findings suggest two ways relational regulation may erode the existing institutions. First, technical assistance staff’s relationships grant them access to organizational sites and staff by reframing the purposes of state intervention. Second, relationships provide the trust needed to deliver needed expertise but also to challenge the ‘readymade account’ (i.e. Berger & Luckmann, 1966) district and school personnel may have about the reasons for underperformance.

The “grammar of schooling” reflects deeply ingrained macro-foundations of institutions, which are remarkably resistant to change (Meyer, 1977; Tyack & Tobin, 1994). These findings offer insight into the elusive process of institutional change in American education. Specifically, this study illuminates the potential role of SEAs in challenging existing institutions and facilitating school improvement.

Author

• Ebony N. Bridwell-Mitchell, Harvard University