Instructional Guidance Infrastructures and Changing Conceptions of Teachers' Occupational Role

• In Event: 79.015 - Recrafting Coherence in the Era of Common Core

Abstract

In response to increasing expectations, intermediary organizations (IOs) have built comprehensive instructional guidance infrastructures (IGIs) to foster coherence for teachers and schools, aligning components such as curriculum, assessments, coaching, and professional development (Mehta & Fine, 2015; Spillane, Hopkins, & Sweet, 2017; Duff et al., 2018). However, occupational control exercised by educational infrastructure may constrain teacher autonomy (Glazer & Peurach, 2015). This paper documents rationale for IGI expansion in a large urban district, developing profiles of IGIs and exploring implications for teachers’ occupational role.

Despite professionalization efforts, the occupational status of teachers remains uncertain and contested (Labaree, 2004; Mehta & Teles, 2014). Some proposed reforms, such as lengthening preservice preparation (Ballou & Podgursky, 2000), seek to make teaching, understood as discretionary work requiring abstract knowledge, a classic profession (Darling-Hammond & Youngs, 2002; Hill, Rowan, & Ball, 2005). Competing reforms, such as deregulating teacher labor markets (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2001), understand teaching as a new profession (Ball, 2003; Whitehead & Dent, 2002), in which bureaucracies routinize the knowledge base of discretionary work (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009). In teaching, the new professionalism is characterized by prescriptive curricula tied to accountability structures.

Critics call such curricula deprofessionalizing because teachers lose jurisdiction over the knowledge undergirding practice (Bernstein, 2000; Gray & Whitty, 2010). Proponents argue such curricula are needed infrastructure that can catalyze instructional change, reduce excess workload, and free teachers to master pedagogical techniques (Dresser, 2012). This research, part of a multiphase, mixed methods dissertation, advances this debate by describing variation in IGI development along dimensions relevant to teachers’ occupational role.

Data come from six purposefully selected IOs across three sectors: two CMOs, two SSOs, and two district intermediary organizations (DIOs). Data include 55 semi-structured interviews, organizational documents, 44 observations of professional development, and curriculum samples. Iterative coding started with deductive a priori coding, moving into emergent themes (Bowen, 2009; Saldaña, 2009). Construction of IGI profiles used the dimensions of alignment, authority, prescriptiveness (Hopkins & Spillane, 2015), and educativeness (Davis et al., 2017).

IOs held similar motivations for developing enhanced IGIs. Across sectors, informants shared concerns about teachers’ capacity to plan standards-driven instruction. Many thought the collective expertise of in-house curriculum developers exceeded teachers’ and lamented ‘reinvention of the wheel.’ In addition, staff theorized that prevalent burnout stemmed from planning daily lessons and providing more robust IGI would attenuate turnover. In many networks, teachers explicitly asked hub personnel for more curricular guidance, and staff reported teachers were responding positively to more structured curriculum.

IGI profiles ranged from prescriptive to discretionary. CMOs implemented more prescriptive IGIs with minimal support for adaptation and tightly aligned accountability mechanisms. Conversely, SSO IGIs were semi-scripted and voluntary with fewer accountability structures. While all IGIs increased coherence across schools, they reflected differing notions of teacher’s roles: prescriptive IGIs were consistent with the new professionalism while more discretionary IGIs aligned more with classic professionalism.

This study is among the first to compare IGIs across school sectors and to explore how the increasing use of scripted curriculum (Au, 2011; Beatty, 2011) to craft coherence reflects changing understandings of teachers’ work.

Author

• Clare Buckley Flack, Teachers College, Columbia University