Building Social Capital by Balancing Voices in School Governance: Results from an RCT

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 21. Schools and Classrooms 1

Abstract

Social capital has been found to have positive effects on teachers’ capacities to implement reforms and on student outcomes. But we know little about how to cultivate social capital relative to external forces that act on schools, such as emphasis on teacher value added and demand for immediate improvement from innovation. We propose that schools can build social capital in the context of these forces through an explicit school governance framework concerning decisions about implementing and evaluating innovations, and dismissing teachers and administrators. Through this framework teachers, administrators, and community come together to consider and discuss school change and education reform. We call this framework for school governance “Balancing Voices”. In an RCT of role play simulations, we find that those who used the Balancing Voices framework reported higher levels of procedural fairness and legitimacy of authority than those who used business as usual. Accordingly, schools that more explicitly balance the interests of different stakeholders in their decision making may experience greater investment of the faculty and administrators in educational innovation and in one another.

Authors

• Kenneth A. Frank, Michigan State University

• Kaitlin Torphy, Michigan State University

• John Lane, Michigan State University

• Dirk Zuschlag, Michigan State University