“The Business of Teaching and Learning”: Institutionalizing Equity in Educational Organizations Through Continuous Improvement

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

Abstract

In this article, I utilize IL (Thornton & Ocasio, 1999) alongside the Modes of Reproduction for institutionalization (Anderson & Colyvas, 2021) to understand how intermediaries and districts hybridize logics through specific strategies and structural changes, in ways that support institutionalization. I examine this process and the supporting mechanisms through the case of equity-oriented continuous improvement (CI). Analyzing data from two nested cases of intermediaries and school districts using CI, I uncover how these cases evidence the guiding principles, material practices, and symbolic structures embedded in two institutional logics underlying streams of education policy—the performance-based policy logic and the racial equity policy logic—through specific Modes of Reproduction during early institutionalization.

CI approaches have rapidly spread across education policy circles in recent years and have been hailed as a promising means to achieve educational equity and social justice. Yet CI’s highly routinized, scientific process for improving efficiency and productivity is a somewhat unexpected means to pursue equity. To understand this puzzle, I explore how organizational structures integrate the logics of racial equity and performance, and how local actors improvised novel approaches within these structures. I answer the following research questions: 1) To what extent do actors invoke the institutional logics of performance versus racial equity in their discussion of CI efforts?; 2) What mechanisms allow districts and intermediary organizations to combine the institutional logics of performance and racial equity in using CI?; and 3) In response to these hybridized logics, how do educational organizations make structural modifications to their CI approach to promote equity and racial justice?

I find that these case organizations sought to close the opportunity gap and promote racial justice through typical CI approaches with varying levels of formality and discipline. I find that cases used three primary self-activating Modes of Reproduction— performance metrics, routines and tools, and professional norms—to combine the performance-based policy logic and the racial equity logic in implementing CI. Although individual respondents varied in the extent to which they endorsed the guiding institutional logics of performance versus equity, almost all respondents invoked aspects of both in their description of CI work. On the whole, these findings indicate that CI was neither the silver bullet to achieve equity, nor an unsuitable technology for promoting racial justice. CI shows potential to allow local actors to mobilize accepted practices of quantification and accountability to challenge entrenched power dynamics and modify systems to provide more equitable educational opportunity.

This analysis illuminates the complexity of utilizing IL instrumentally in education policy research in terms of: 1) the interplay between institutional and organizational dynamics and the challenge of differentiating these aspects; 2) the relationship between institutional logics and the process of institutionalization and where to focus attention; and 3) the challenge of measuring institutional logics. I present a visual model demonstrating the theorized relationships between institutional logics, modes of reproduction, institutionalization, and organizational elements. I also discuss the importance of designing the study to gather evidence of material practice and symbolic structure, alongside guiding principles, to fully understand institutional logics.

Author

• Susan Bush-Mecenas, RAND Corporation