Improving Teaching at Scale: The Power of a Curriculum-Centered Infrastructure

• In Event: Creating Systemic Change for Improvement and Transformation: Affordances and Limitations of Five Efforts to Improve Instruction at Scale

Abstract

Although abundant evidence indicates that standards-based regimes have prompted significant shifts in the academic content and focus of instruction, considerable disparities remain in the extent to which progressive pedagogical ideas at the heart of standards initiatives have been realized, especially in high poverty schools (e.g., Cohen et al., 2018).

In this study, we investigated how the design of the Shelby County iZone-- a special enclave dedicated to school turnaround within the larger district—sought to cultivate the capacity and commitment of teachers and school leaders to use ambitious pedagogies in the teaching of mathematics in struggling schools. Our analysis focuses on the role of a common curriculum in facilitating the development of a coherent, multi-dimensional educational infrastructure that, in turn, shaped educator’s beliefs and instructional practices.

Theoretical Perspectives

Our analysis is informed by contemporary institutional scholarship on the coupling of policy and practice in school organizations (Firestone, 2015; Marsh, et al., 2020). We depict the iZone as situated within an eclectic and contested environment in which competing ideas and incentives vie for influence on educators’ thinking and practice, and in doing so, complicate efforts to establish a coherent infrastructure (e.g. author and colleague, 2013; Cohen et al., 2018). Using this frame, we highlight the processes and strategies with which system leaders attempted to mitigate the effect of the environment by cultivating a shared approach to enacting the curriculum and its associated pedagogical practices.

Data/Analytic Methods

Between Spring, 2017 and Winter, 2019, we conducted more than 150 semi-structured with more than 70 district and school leaders and teachers in five case-study schools, supplemented by focus groups and observations. School leader and math teacher surveys, administered at two points in time across the entire iZone, investigated instructional coherence, beliefs about math instruction, and indicators of instructional practice particularly in regard to mathematical concepts and students’ “opportunity to struggle” (Correnti & Stein, 2018).

Results

This curriculum-centric infrastructure provided a springboard for coordinated professional learning, collaboration, and collective problem solving among iZone practitioners at all levels. Survey evidence points to a strong and measurable perception of instructional coherence, a notable influence on educators’ beliefs about teaching and learning, and a greater commitment to teaching mathematical concepts. At the same time, results show that conventional beliefs did not magically disappear, and that new practices were emerging alongside old ones. Many teachers clung to traditional pedagogies even while enhancing the degree of conceptual rigor in their approach to mathematics. We conclude that despite this amalgam of old and new, practice was gradually moving in directions that have too often eluded standards reforms, especially in settings serving primarily high poverty, low performing students.

Significance

This study shows that a curriculum-centric infrastructure grounded in a vision of standards pedagogy can serve as a potent coupling mechanism that ties together traditionally disparate district functions, and in doing so, influence district and school staffs’ ability to wrestle with the challenges and complexities of ambitious instruction in complex environments.

Authors

• Diane Massell, Consortium for Policy Research in Education

• Joshua L. Glazer, The George Washington University