The Bumpy Road to Educational Improvement: Evidence from Disadvantaged Schools in Urban Contexts

• In Event: Recontextualizing post-bureaucratic reforms in different educational systems: private actors, public administration, and schools

Proposal

Enhancing improvement dynamics within schools is one of the main goals of global education reforms. Intense debates in most educational systems consider the combination of school autonomy with accountability (SAWA) as a well-suited policy solution to enhance educational quality and foster schools' engagement in continuous improvement cycles. SAWA policies suggest that combining school autonomy with external accountability mechanisms can make schools more responsive to performance expectations. With greater autonomy, schools can/are expected to cater to the specific needs of their students, particularly the most disadvantaged. As part of the autonomy policy, school principals are granted powers to manage their teaching staff and configure cohesive teaching teams to implement the school educational project. Simultaneously, schools are also expected to use performance data to define progress goals, pinpoint areas for enhancement and apply necessary corrective measures. Ultimately, the SAWA approach seeks to induce institutional change within schools by placing new organizational arrangements to stimulate changes in school actors’ behaviors. Nevertheless, existing research suggests that improvement dynamics are uneven across schools and may even intensify undesired behaviors and instrumental responses—e.g., teaching to the test or narrowing the curriculum (Mittleman & Jennings, 2018)—, particularly in disadvantaged school contexts. Still, little is known about the conditions and mechanisms that mediate different school responses to the improvement imperative under SAWA policies. To better understand this issue, we combine a policy enactment approach (Braun et al, 2011) with institutional and organizational theory tools (Diehl and Golann, 2023).

By integrating these perspectives, we explore the varying responses of disadvantaged schools in Catalonia (Spain), where the innovation and improvement mandate has gained centrality in the education policy agenda (Quilabert et al, 2023). We analyze how organizational alignment or decoupling mechanisms serve as contingent reactions to diverse forms of policy interpretation and sense-making (Coburn, 2005) regarding improvement mandates and policy messages.

The methodological strategy of this research is based on a mixed methods approach that combines statistical analyses of survey data, with in-depth semi-structured interviews. The survey encompasses a representative sample of 78 primary and secondary schools out of which 24 are characterized as socioeconomically vulnerable (see Levatino, 2021). On the other hand, the qualitative analysis is based on interviews with teachers (n=27) and principals (n=9), in a sample of 9 primary disadvantaged schools.

Preliminary results suggest four emerging school responses that we characterize as ideal types: hyperactive, missionary, resigned, and effective schools. These responses are influenced by the organizational and social conditions of schools as organizations, with educational practices grounded on their own value structures, rules, and routines, but also mediated by the agency of school actors.

Authors

• Marcel Pagès, University of Girona

• Mauro C Moschetti, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Antoni Verger, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Edgar Quilabert, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, ESQ0818002H

• Gerard Ferrer-Esteban, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya