System-Building to Manage and Organize Instruction: Designs That Coerce, Designs That Enable

• In Event: Understanding How Organizational Systems Shape Student Equity and Teacher Agency

Abstract

System-building to manage and organize high-quality instruction is an increasingly common approach to district-level school improvement and reform. This paper aims to advance understandings of how these efforts influence teacher practice. Drawing on interviews with 25 teachers in three school districts, this comparative case study explores how district system-building efforts manifest in teachers’ descriptions of their practice and examines variation and patterns across those descriptions. Findings from this project suggest that system designs that are experienced as enabling teacher agency might see closer adherence to district instructional plans than system designs that are perceived by teachers as coercive. This study extends research on district system-building work by investigating how teachers understand, interpret, and enact district system designs for instruction.

Author

• A Foster, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor