Attempting to Realize the Coordination and Continuous Improvement of Instruction.

Abstract

While the coordination and continuous improvement of instruction is the central goal of many US reforms, we know little about how to leverage the inevitable dynamics amongst formal guidance (e.g. standards, frameworks, curricular materials, whole-school reforms), existing social systems of work, and evolving environments that confound reform efforts and often fail to result in coordination. The Common Core State Standards and Multi-Tiered System of Supports/Response to Intervention are examples of the latest and most ambitious reforms championing instructional coordination. These reforms press hard on schools and teachers to work in ways they never have before. The purpose of this dissertation was to study how to help shift existing social systems of work towards coordinated and continuously improving instruction. Using a combination of qualitative and social network analyses within a longitudinal, multiple case study, I examined the work of two schools and their district during the first two years of implementing a systemic reform, Multi-Tiered System of Supports. The findings demonstrate the need to take practitioners’ learning curriculum even further into practice in order to make the connections between policy and practice. Specifically, practitioners need social learning opportunities that are on-site, ongoing, and embedded within daily practice. Ideally, knowledgeable others would participate in these social learning opportunities, as the sensemaking and sensegiving produced with their participation would be more fruitful than sensemaking and sensegiving without their participation. The findings offer policy makers, researchers, interveners, and practitioners finer understandings of using large-scale instructional coordination as a mechanism to improve instruction and students’ learning opportunities.