Mission and Meaning: A Cross-Case Analysis of Purpose, Problem, and Logics at New Graduate Schools of Education

• In Event: Teacher Preparation at New Graduate Schools of Education: Findings From a National Study

Abstract

Purpose
Teacher preparation at nGSEs emerged from the convergence of a new educational policy paradigm (Mehta, 2013), multiple teacher shortages, and scathing critiques of university preparation (Author, 2018; Hollar, 2017). These trends created a climate amenable to the expansion of teacher preparation at non-university sites. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mission and meaning of the “innovation” of nGSE teacher preparation by comparing four nGSEs and connecting these to teacher education politics and policies in 2020 and beyond.

Theoretical Frameworks
This paper uses “mission” as an umbrella term encompassing the purposes and aspirations animating schools of education (Labaree, 2004), including why nGSE leaders perceived the need for a new organization. Mission also includes “institutional logics” (Friedland & Alford, 1991; Heinze & Weber, 2016) that link individuals and institutions with “socially constructed institutional practices and rule structures” (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008).

Data Sources
This analysis uses nGSE case data (see “modes of inquiry,” above). The analysis draws especially on interviews with program founders, leaders, and faculty as well as archival and program material related to mission, including founding documents, grant proposals, accreditation statements, and internal evaluations.

Methods
This cross-case analysis (Stake, 2006) uses standard qualitative data analysis procedures, especially Erickson’s (1986) framework for building propositions using multiple data sources and triangulation. Supported by the Dedoose data management tool, the analysis concentrates on three “parent codes”: history, values/ideals/beliefs, and purposes/goals.

Findings
Although there were striking differences among the four nGSEs we studied, they were also shaped by commonalities in organizational missions, structures, and efforts toward legitimacy. Findings highlights include: (1) nGSE founders constructed university teacher preparation as a problem, concluding that new organizational and structural arrangements external to the bureaucracy, knowledge traditions, and priorities of universities were the solution. (2) All the nGSEs we studied had exceptionally clear institutional purposes. In three of the four, the goal was preparing teachers for urban schools serving minoritized populations; within this general goal, however, there was significant program variation based on differing beliefs about the value of the cultural and experiential resources of urban communities and different assumptions about the power of teachers (and schools) to redress inequality and poverty (Kantor & Lowe, 2016). (3) All the nGSEs operated within the tension created at the intersection of the aspiration to disrupt the broader teacher preparation enterprise through innovation, on one hand, and the need to establish legitimacy within the existing organizational field through traditional markers, including accreditation, affiliation, and/or professionally-accepted standards, on the other. (4) All the nGSEs were born of the 1990s market logic supporting deregulation of teacher education and the proliferation of non-university providers; however, two nGSEs also reflected a broadly democratic and public institutional logic, while two reflected market logics related to affordability, efficiency, or profitability.

Significance
This paper examines the interactions between programs’ missions and purposes and their institutional structures and logics. The paper examines these in relation to the changing institutional field of teacher preparation and raises new questions about nGSEs for 2020 and beyond.

Authors

• Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College

• Jeremy Alexander, Lexington Christian Academy