Engaging Tensions in Constructing an Aim Statement in a Teacher Preparation Networked Improvement Community

• In Event: The Complexity of School Reform Implementation: Evidence From Broad-Scale Innovations

Abstract

We seek to understand how the process of constructing an aim statement is enacted in a teacher preparation networked improvement community. Using practice theory (Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011), we generate insight into engagement with a central tension—between centering multilingualism and language acquisition in teacher preparation—and reveal how this NIC came to a settlement. In analyzing network meetings, we found that teacher educators' actively shaped the improvement process to foreground multilingualism and peripheralize language acquisition. This settlement came to be made durable through space and time using a driver diagram. Our study highlights the need for those leading improvement work to attend to the micropolitics of improvement as a way to gain insight into whose perspectives are prioritized.

Authors

• Carlos Sandoval, WestEd

• Elizabeth A. van Es, University of California - Irvine