Adventures in institutional logics: disentangling the extraordinary complexity of urban school improvement

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

Abstract

In an article on urban school reform, the authors employed institutional logics to conceptualize the improvement practices of three elementary principals in a unique turnaround district known as the Achievement Zone (pseudonym). The Achievement Zone is a district-led effort to improve 23 of the lowest performing schools in the state. All Achievement Zone schools are located in the inner city and serve communities beset by intergenerational poverty. More than 95% of students are eligible for free lunch, and a majority identify as African American. To support an effective improvement process, iZone leaders instituted a common curriculum, measurement tools, theory of instruction, leadership practices and a system of coaching.

In employing institutional logics, the researchers sought to tie variation in the principals’ improvement practices to larger social structures, policies, and ideas (i.e., logics) within the institutional field of public education. Empirical analysis surfaced three key logics: (1) The logic of math education represented practices that adhered to the ideas and beliefs associated with the field of math education (e.g., a focus on conceptual underpinnings); (2) the logic of accountability reflected practices that focused on improving tested outcomes (e.g., extensive test prep); and (3) the logic of community captured practices motivated by an ethic of caring for students (e.g., never letting students fall behind out of fear they won’t catch up).

Yet the seemingly tight framing of these logics masks myriad dilemmas encountered by the research team. First, no principal worked in a way that totally adhered to a theoretically coherent logic. In reality, principals practices involved a conglomeration of different ideas and beliefs that belied crisp notions of market, state, or professional logics. For example, a principal we classified as drawing on the logic of math education did not entirely eschew test-prep strategies, while the the principal portrayed as representing the logic of accountability did not totally abandon the curriculum’s focus on conceptual understanding. Second, while the literature calls on researchers to draw connections between individual practice and field-level logics, the nature of those connections was difficult to firmly establish. For example, while the research team coined the “logic of community” to represent a principal whose practice was driven by a concern for student wellbeing, it was difficult to fully ascertain whether the logic of community represented an actual field-level logic.

In sum, our analysis points to two dilemmas that institutional logics poses to education researchers. The first regards the challenge of classifying teaching and leadership practice in theoretically coherent ways while avoiding simplistic representations of practice that belie their complex and variable nature. The second dilemma involves the difficulty of establishing empirically valid links between individual-level practice and field-level logics. To manage these dilemmas, researchers need to engage in robust empirical analysis to tease out the dominant ideas and beliefs embedded in complex practices, while also leveraging extant literature to contextualize individual practice within the larger norms and beliefs that constitute the field.

Author

• Joshua L. Glazer, The George Washington University