The Special-ness of Institutional Logics

• In Event: Exploring the Opportunities, Challenges, and Dilemmas of Institutional Logics as a Tool of Educational Research

Abstract

In two articles, we applied the institutional logics perspective to attend to the complexities of special education policy implementation. As the logics perspective directs explicit attention toward “how cultural rules and macro systems of meaning affect practice and organizational dynamics at the meso and micro level of analysis” (Micelotta et al., 2017, p. 1894), we applied it to interrogate the structures, conditions, and activities enabling change in special education implementation.

First, our conceptual paper characterized three logics of special education: compliance, intervention, and equity. We argue these logics are simultaneously drawn upon by leaders and other actors as they implement special education. Second, our analysis drew on concepts of framing theory as well as institutional logics to reveal how 25 urban districts’ COVID reopening plans embodied three logics of special education. We assessed the nature and foci of 520 special education policy frames, including how frames aligned to specific logics. We found that the districts in our sample prioritized the compliance and intervention logics of special education, yet devoted less attention to the equity logic.

A strength of the logics perspective is that it embraces the social, professional and political complexities of organizational change. While applying the logics perspective, we considered how multiple, competing logics structure the special education field, influencing aspects of districts and schools as organizations (e.g., organizational structures, allocation of resources, and norms), and, in turn, actors’ work (Durand & Thornton, 2018). A second strength is how this perspective attends to the way that shifting logics contribute to organizational change (Russell, 2011; Scott et al., 2000). We considered how particular logics of special education were elevated and amplified in particular contexts. In sum, the logics perspective provides lenses for understanding the dynamics of institutional and organizational change.

Despite these strengths, our analysis identifies formidable challenges and limitations in applying the logics perspective. First, it remains nebulous how to bound and name a logic, and how to determine when a theme in the data represents a distinct logic. Second, as researchers, it is not always feasible to collect and analyze data stretching across the macro, meso, and micro analytic levels to track institutional logics and their flow from structures in a field to individual beliefs, schemas, and practices. This, in turn, can strain the researcher’s ability to draw valid connections between organizational practices and field-level logics. Third, there remain gaps in our understanding of how logics are racialized. As such, for scholars concerned with the intersection of education policy and racism, it is necessary to pay close attention to how racial structures influence logics and how actors draw on and use logics to advance various agendas, including reducing inequalities.

Authors

• Sarah L. Woulfin, University of Texas at Austin

• Britney L. Jones, Fairfield University