Deliberation, Decision Making, and District Leaders: Analyzing How Images of Teachers Become Embedded in Policy

• In Event: Perspectives on Curriculum Policy Implementation: History, People, and Places

Abstract

Images of teachers and teaching have been at the center of debates about educational reform and policy for decades. We know from institutional theory and political science that the ideas discussed and debated in the public sphere are consequential.In this paper, we investigate the process by which ideas about teachers that are salient in the environment get pulled into deliberation about instructional policy in one urban district. We study the processes of mobilization and persuasion that are set in motion as district staff make curricular decisions. We investigate the degree to which pre-existing ideas (e.g., ideas in the world) and policy goals shape these processes and have consequences for the resulting policy.

Authors

• Debbie Kim, NORC at the University of Chicago

• Cynthia E. Coburn, Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy Human Development and Social Policy

• Alice Huguet, The RAND Corporation