The hullabaloo of schooling: the influence of school factors on the (dis)continuation of lesson study

Abstract

This study examines which school factors schools report influence their (dis)continuation of lesson study, a professional development initiative, and how after a four-year, cross-school lesson study project ends. To examine this, the framework on three types of school factors (features of employment, malleable school processes and fixed school characteristics) and the concept of organisational routines are used. Semistructured interviews were held with 21 teachers and 15 school leaders from the 14 schools who participated in the project. Findings show schools reported nine school factors that influenced their (dis)continuation of lesson study after the project: five features of employment (part-time appointment, turnover, (un) planned leave of absence, work location and beginning teachers), three malleable processes (policies on improvement, scheduling and school finances), and one fixed school characteristic (school size). School factors were reported to constrain schools from making lesson study a repeated practice in the school, performing its core features, and ensuring collective attendance. Two narrative portraits revealed that the simultaneous occurrence of school factors made continuing with lesson study especially complex and limited schools' ability to move beyond shortened and simplified initiatives to more rich and meaningful professional development.

The Concept of Organizational Routines and Its Potential for Investigating Educational Initiatives in Practice: A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…When studies used only one way to collect data, it can be questioned whether the routine was comprehensively understood. This was especially the case for the five studies that relied solely on interview data to examine how routines were intended and performed (Liljenberg & Nordholm, 2018;Spillane et al, 2016;Tate et al, 2018;Wolthuis et al, 2020;Wolthuis et al, 2021) or on the conversations within routines (Wachen et al, 2018). Interviews alone might not have been able to provide sufficient insight into the routines, as people are notoriously bad at predicting and reporting what they do (Jerolmack & Khan, 2014).…”

“…One study (Wolthuis et al, 2021) further specified the concept to the specific routine, determining what each aspect of the concept, (1) repeated, (2) recognizable patterns of interdependent actions, (3) carried out by multiple actors, involved for the educational initiative under investigation. For example, repeated was operationalized as "Schools decide to repeat lesson study in their own setting after the LSPLN ends [and] Schools have plans to repeat lesson study the next year with the pilot groups and potentially to form more groups" (Wolthuis et al, 2021, p. 3).…”

“…Commonalities between all entity-oriented studies. Most studies, apart from Wolthuis et al (2021), were interested in how routines influence or shape interaction, but they investigated this at different levels of observation. Some studies examined how routines, at organizational level, bring people together in specific configurations and with specific knowledge and skills (e.g., Hatch et al, 2016;Hopkins et al, 2013).…”

“…Studies in this group showed that while organizational routines set up structures of interaction that can change norms, beliefs, and cultures, it is the specific conversational routines and moves that are pivotal for the actual change in norms and values. Only Wolthuis et al (2021) used the routines as entities approach to examine how an initiative unfolded in practice, to investigate whether and how schools continued with an initiative after a university project ended and how the specific school factors in each of the 14 schools influenced this process.…”

“…This focus on patterns of action in organizations makes routines a suitable lens for researchers interested in understanding what happens in practice. Accordingly, some education literature has adopted the concept of organizational routines to examine initiatives such as professional learning communities (Huguet et al, 2017), data use (Hubers et al, 2017;Spillane, 2012), lesson study (Wolthuis et al, 2020;Wolthuis et al, 2021), and instructional rounds (Hatch et al, 2016) in practice. Spillane (2012) offers both pragmatic and conceptual reasons to use the concept of organizational routines to examine educational initiatives, in his case data use, in practice.…”