Story Work in the Humanizing of Educational Improvement

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Sunday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Practicing Improvement: Challenges and Opportunities to Facilitating Improvement

Abstract

Capacity-building and equity are of central concern to a recent wave of approaches seeking to improve education. Though these approaches converge here, they diverge in consequential ways that have been under-explored. Our study aims to raise questions about divergence by examining how an intermediary focused on building county capacity for continuous improvement in education aims to redesign its capacity-building infrastructure to better center equity. Taking up a practice theoretical lens, we reveal that intermediary leaders resourced their capacity-building efforts through stories in ways that sought to replace old discourses about educational improvement with new discourses that intend to be more humanizing to students. We situate findings within broader educational improvement literature to highlight and raise questions about divergence in approach.

Authors

• Carlos Sandoval, Clemson University

• Parker Morse Andreoli, Clemson University