Disrupting the status quo: How teachers grapple with reforms that compete with long-standing educational views

Abstract

Teacher education programs and school reform efforts are two mechanisms by which research-based reform messages reach thousands of teachers. Prior research has noted, however, that these messages are often in conflict with longstanding beliefs and norms at school sites. This paper examines teacher agency in the context of school of structure and culture to investigate how both new and experienced teachers grapple with these conflicting messages. Qualitative data reveal that, although the structural and cultural aspects of new teachers’ experiences differed in some ways from those of their more experienced counterparts, the approaches they took in addressing change varied within rather than between the two populations. Some teachers felt they were unable to sustain engagement with instructional reform or were only able to do so within their own classrooms or with a limited group of like-minded teachers. Others challenged the institutionalized practices of their sites, but doing so required navigating the structural and cultural elements of their schools that supported institutionalized practices. Many teachers feared that pushing for wider instructional change among their colleagues would jeopardize cordial relationships, but teachers of all experience levels who did push for change found ways to do so while preserving social cohesion. Findings suggest that it may be useful for both teacher education programs and in-school reform efforts to support their participants in engaging in collegial conversations with their peers in ways that deprivatize practice and push against the status quo while still maintaining social cohesion among the members of the group.

Appendix: Code description, examples, and frequencies

A priori codes

Structure

Instances in which the structure of teachers’ schools and/or collaboration informed institutionalized practices or reform practices. Structure might include things like requirements from administrators surrounding instruction or collaboration, state and district requirements and testing, available curricular materials, physical location of teachers’ classrooms, time scheduled and/or available for collaboration.

Structure maintaining institutionalized practices

Instances when structure supported long-standing instructional practices that were not supported by equity reforms.

Example: I know we’re trying to get away from the algorithm, but then you’re stuck because… you just need the kids to get something right or else they are gonna test horribly.

Coded segments: 18 from new teachers; 29 from experienced teachers.

Structure supporting reform practices

Instances when structure supported instructional practices that were designed to provide equitable access to high quality curriculum for all students.

Example: Since [the current person] has become the math department chair, I’d say the last two years, it’s completely transformed. He has us organized, he has us having a task, a focus, we’re productive. I’ll be honest, before APCL was in the position, and Wednesdays when it was PLC time, we would write emails to each other saying, “do you want to talk about anything?” “No, do you want to talk about anything?” “No, we’re good,” and we basically would not even meet. We would all use that time to grade, catch up on work. So, I had more time, but my math practice probably wasn’t as strong, or organized. So, I appreciate what he’s doing fully. I think the organization and the structure really is creating a stronger team. So yeah, so we get together, we do lesson studies, we talk about student tasks, we just talk about the discourse moves, and it’s been really good…. but we’ve also, to be honest, have asked him to remove some of the rigid structure because we’re feeling like we’re not having enough time for the planning, for getting together and saying, how should we teach this next lesson, because we’re too busy talking about discourse moves, so now we’re trying to transition into, ok, I think we know discourse moves, can we now start to plan, like really plan lessons, or talk about strategies, or what we’re really interested in doing at this point is vertical alignment, how can we get sixth, seventh and eighth to align?

Coded segments: 4 from new teachers; 17 from experienced teachers.

Culture

Instances in which the culture of teachers’ schools and/or collaboration informed institutionalized practices or reform practices. Culture might include things like sharing details or maintaining the privacy of their personal classroom experiences, planning instruction together or in isolation, reflecting on instructional practices, an assumption that all teachers should socialize into existing instructional methods or an expectation that teachers will innovate.

Culture maintaining institutionalized practices

Instances when culture supported long-standing instructional practices that were not supported by equity reforms.

Example: When we get together as a math department, I don’t think everyone’s buying in yet to the new curriculum, to some of the things admin would like us to try in the classroom.

Coded segments: 14 from new teachers; 19 from experienced teachers.

Culture supporting reform practices

Instances when culture supported instructional practices that were designed to provide equitable access to high quality curriculum for all students.

Example: So last year working with [this team], because [one teacher is] really good at it so she has a lot of ideas, and bringing in the new text, it’s kind of centered around let them think about it, let the students tell you what they know and based on that can they come up with what the lesson is about before you even give it. So, I was like, alright you know what? I’ll give it a shot. I’ll do it. And it was really nice. It was surprising how much they could teach themselves and then how much more it stuck with them without me giving it to them. So, this year I went all in on it, did the desks, started from day-1. Even with the assessments we decided like alright let’s just not give them stuff, have them see what they know, tell us, yeah. So, I think that I found with this that they’re able to tell me more about what they know. I mean it also seems to stick because they’re using their own words instead of mine that I’ve given them. It’s like me like retelling their words that they give me.

Coded segments: 7 from new teachers; 19 from experienced teachers.

Agency

Instances in which the agentive role of teachers informed institutionalized practices or reform practices. Agency might include things like making a decision to try an instructional or collaborative practice, choosing to maintain existing instructional practices, or requesting or advocating for a particular practice.

Resisting reform practices

Instances when teachers described a decision to not attempt reform practices or described instances in which they spoke out against reform practices.

Example: [My students] had a lot of extrinsic rewards. If you did really well, you’d go to like a high-5 party, which is like you got candy, and ice cream, and stuff. I think it was more like, “You’re going to work hard, and get rewarded for it.” I think it was a very good model in the sense that the whole school was behind it, and the kids understood exactly what needed to happen. But I don’t feel like the kids were excited to learn math as far as, “Man, math is interesting.” I think they were more like, “Man, if I do good at math, I’m going to get really cool things.” I think coming from 5, 6 years of that, coming into my classroom where I was trying to make really engaging, interesting math activity, I think the kids were just like, “What is he doing? Just tell us what to do.” That’s what I felt like. So, I had to make my teaching more straightforward.

Coded segments: 20 from new teachers; 17 from experienced teachers.

Resisting institutionalized instructional practices

Instances when teachers described a decision to attempt reform practices or described instances in which they spoke out in favor of reform practices.

Example: one of the teachers showed how he changed a problem from the textbook to make it more open-ended and more challenging…. and I started wondering after that if I could kind of remove that stuff, if kids would be more successful because they’d be forced to think about things instead of just following these steps. And so, after he presented that then I started messing around with some of my problems like that.

Coded segments: 12 from new teachers; 27 from experienced teachers.

Emergent codes

Teachers supporting structure and culture of institutionalized practices

Instances in which teachers described efforts or a desire to maintain the structures and cultures of their collaboration, even though those structures and cultures did not support instructional change.

Example: What I found a lot is that sometimes we’ll look at a problem and cognitively it’s a great problem but it’s not the right problem for my kids…. You know I come off as a grouchy guy sometimes, an old grouchy guy saying “no I’m not going to do it; that’s not going to work. Where I mean I know it’s not going work, but it sounds like this guy is not going to play ball with us.

Coded segments: 10 from new teachers; 9 from experienced teachers.

Teachers resisting structure and culture of institutionalized practices

Instances in which teachers described attempts or a desire to alter structures and cultures of collaboration in order to facilitate instructional change.

Example: I guess the challenge for me is to try to challenge him to try new things that are out of his comfort zone, and I never know what he does after I leave the room…he could totally like, “sure, see you later, bye,” and not do anything. I think the only challenge is trying to put new ideas forward and try new things and seeing how to make them work.

Coded segments: 16 from new teachers; 8 from experienced teachers.

Conflict between reform messages and long-standing beliefs

Instances in which teachers described a conflict between the reform messages and their traditionally-held beliefs about teaching, students, schools, and/or academic subjects.

Example: I like them to learn through discussion, but are they learning through discussion? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think that they’re probably…I think a lot of these kids, especially in these schools, they lack a lot of the basic fundamentals.

Coded segments: 1 from new teachers; 30 from experienced teachers.

Power

Instances in which teachers described issues of power when discussing instructional decisions and/or collaboration.

Example: We were supposed to sit down with just the 7^thgrade teachers and we were going look at [our assessment] and not only tweak what the next 6 weeks looked like, like, “don’t teach them this, better do more, do less for here,” and then look at the different classes and go, “let’s pull these 4 out.” I mean that was our big plan. Three meetings in a row, which we’re talking-, that was at least a 6 or 7 weeks span I’m talking. “Nope. We got another agenda for you. Nope. You gotta do this. Nope you gotta do that.”

Coded segments: 4 from new teachers; 7 from experienced teachers.

Status

Instances in which teachers described issues of status when discussing instructional decisions and/or collaboration.

Example: [My teammates] were kind of like, “All right, here’s our first unit. Here’s what we did.” As a first-year teacher, I just took that hands-off approach and said, “Okay, if this is what they did, this is what I’m going to do.”

Coded segments: 14 from new teachers; 6 from experienced teachers.

Isolated reform

Instances when teachers described implementing reforms individually without including colleagues in their efforts.

Example: I already had people kind of going against me at that point. It’s like, what’s the worst I can do? I shut my doors and just did what I wanted, which worked, but could have totally failed, too. I think that that’s something as an educator that you, even though it’s your first year, it’s like, really trust yourself and believe in what you’ve learned. I’ve learned a lot, you know.

Coded segments: 13 from new teachers; 7 from experienced teachers.