No abstract

Institutional analyses of education systems typically assume that they secure legitimation through a process of almost unproblematic adoption of standard templates. A qualitative analysis of two forms of private education businesses reveals, however, that they routinely shed some of the most sacred schooling scripts. Despite this, these businesses are flourishing. This analysis finds that education organizations can actively craft a "legitimation project" by engaging in strategic isomorphism and by responding to new pressures in the technical environment, such as consumer demands for individualized education programs. In this view, garnering legitimacy includes multiple avenues for myth-making, coupling, and logic-of-confidence strategies.

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A variety of policies fall under the banner of "school choice," each aiming to facilitate educational options beyond a standard public school. This paper pursues three empirical questions. First, at what rates do Canadian parents choose various school options and engage in different forms of choosing? Second, what demographics predict these choices? Third, what educational attitudes and behaviours predict choosing? Data come from a 2005 national survey of Canadian parents that contains comprehensive measures of school options and forms of choosing. Three sets of findings are reported. First, the prevalence of choosing is substantial, with one-third of families opting for a school other than a "standard" public school, and two-thirds exercising some form of school choosing. Second, many of these choices are shaped by parental income and education, though interesting exceptions emerge. Third, school choosing appears to be an extension of parents' participation in their children's education. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.

The concept of coupling—the relationship between the environment, administrative goals, and instructional practices of education organizations—is a staple in New Institutional research. Yet processes of coupling have remained elusive. Drawing on ethnographic research of the ‘‘Ontario Learning Center’’ (OLC) franchise, along with interviews of franchise owners and representatives, this article examines an ideal-type, tightly coupled organization. Despite the fact that the educational materials, the progress monitoring, and even the ‘‘emotional labor’’ of instruction are highly formalized and monitored, the author discovered evidence of loose coupling everywhere. Most strikingly, loose coupling is being accomplished in the context of rule following (rather than rule breaking) based on how managers and instructors interpret and prioritize available technical and institutional frameworks. By examining these processes, this article makes two contributions: First, it examines the symbolic dimensions of tightly coupled organizations by articulating how organizations and their actors reinterpret environmental demands in mutually beneficial ways. Second, this article situates the growing ‘‘inhabited institutions’’ literature within the new realities of education organizations, examining how meaning is actively constructed and how such processes generate understandings about appropriate lines of action.