Doing More Than You Can Say, Saying More Than You Can Do During School Reform

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

Abstract

This paper addresses the question ‘why is it difficult to enact new reform practices that teachers have reflectively decided upon?’ It argues that distinctions found in the sociology of culture related to different forms of culture and how they are acquired and used can help us better understand this puzzle. This perspective suggests that the vocabularies, models, and practices of school reform efforts are acquired and used in two distinct forms - declarative representational content and non-declarative procedural skills. This emerging understanding of dissociable forms of culture calls into question a common assumption in school reform efforts that the acquisition of cultural knowledge in one setting (e.g., professional development, teacher learning communities) directly leads to a change in cultural practice in another (e.g., the classroom). To demonstrate the utility of a cognitively grounded framework for studying cultural acquisition and use during school change, the article draws on ethnographic research of a restructuring effort at a large high school to show that 1) how teachers acquire reform culture depends on the relationship between the enculturation of declarative knowledge and procedural skills and 2) how teachers use reform culture in either form is also shaped by situational pragmatics, specifically familiarity with cultural affordances in the situation and whether the goal of the situation is to carry out core organizational work or to deliberate about, reflect on, or alter how it is carried out.

Author

• David Kalim Diehl, Vanderbilt University