"Moving Knowledge Around" Within and Between Schools: The Role of National Contexts and Institutional Environments

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium focuses on the ways in which educational leaders across multiple contexts mobilize knowledge to inform system-level learning and improvement. Knowledge management remains a central aspect of systemic improvement, because all system-level actors must learn continually both from each other and the external evidence base (Kools and Stoll, 2016). In practice, though, efforts to ‘move knowledge around’ (Ainscow, 2015) conflict with entrenched norms and structural barriers, so the symposium will seek to analyse the theories of action and assumptions that underpin such efforts, and the organisational and leadership challenges that emerge. The symposium will leverage international research to consider how different governance arrangements and institutional environments mediate knowledge exchange within and between schools.

Sub Unit

• Division L - Educational Policies and Politics / Division L - Section 9: Policy Implementation and Going to Scale

Chair

• Toby Michael Greany, University of Nottingham

Papers

• How Do Leaders in Multi-Academy Trusts in England Work to Share Knowledge and Align Practices? - Toby Michael Greany, University of Nottingham

• Building Knowledge of Practice and Improvement Within Schools and Systems: The Shelby County iZone - Joshua L. Glazer, The George Washington University; Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Wayne State University; Adrian Mohamed Larbi-Cherif, Manhattan Strategy Group

• How Two School Systems Manage Knowledge to Improve School for Underserved Students - David K. Cohen, University of Michigan; Christine M. Neumerski, University of Maryland - College Park

• Improving Instructional Designs: Development in Networks for School Improvement - Diane Massell, Consortium for Policy Research in Education; Megan Duff, University of Pittsburgh; Angela Lyle, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Discussant

• Donald J. Peurach, University of Michigan