When State Policies Meet Local District Contexts: Standards-Based Professional Development as a Means to Individual Agency and Collective Ownership

Abstract

This article focuses on how a statewide reform initiative, when envisioned as a professional development opportunity, impacted teachers’ capacities to become change agents in their classrooms and districts and how individual district contexts shaped the development of those capacities. The interview and artifact data used for this study were gathered from teachers and administrators in four demonstration districts that were involved in a standards-based professional development initiative within the federally funded Michigan English Language Arts Framework (MELAF) project. These data reveal that teachers experienced changes in their personal literacy practices and views of themselves as learners and felt an increased ability to evince change in a variety of educational contexts, including their classrooms, buildings, and districts. Across these changes in teachers’ practices, district patterns emerged that spoke to the individual districts’ capacities to support teacher growth and foster reform. These differences suggest that the changes that took place were a function of many factors, including the size and structure of the district, the district's readiness for change, and the source of language arts leadership within the district. One implication of these results is that the particular histories and competing forces that operate for both individuals and districts shape the implementation of new policy.

Teachers' response to standards-based reform: Probing reform assumptions in Washington State.

“…Assumption Five: Teachers will have access to appropriate professional learning opportunities (Dutro, Fisk, Koch, Roop, & Wixson, 2002;Thompson & Zeuli, 1999). What is more, those teachers who are not fully prepared to teach to the ambitious learning standards, if not others, will take advantage of these learning opportunities, thereby developing the requisite knowledge, skills, and commitment, and their teaching practice will improve accordingly.…”

“…Two lines of inquiry are especially helpful in investigating the first three assumptions underlying the reform theory of action (regarding teachers' attention to the reform; the seriousness with which they and others take the reform; and their adjustment of instruction to align with standards and associated assessments). The first line of inquiry concentrates on teachers' responses to aligned curricular reforms (e. g., Dutro, Fisk, Koch, Roop, & Wixson, 2002;Porter & Smithson, 2001;Wilson & Floden, 2001) and a second, more recent line, focuses on teachers' response to assessment and accountability (e. g., Grant, 2001;Kannapel et al, 2000;Mabry, Poole, Redmond, & Schultz, 2003;Stecher et al, 2000;Whitford & Jones, 2000). In certain cases, scholarship in these lines has informed the critiques of the unresolved equity agenda of standards-based reform.…”

The Relationship Between State and District Content Standards:Issues of Alignment, Influence and Utility

“…The challenge for all states, however, is to assure the translation or transfer of state standards to local school districts and, eventually, to teachers where implementation takes hold (Dutro, Fisk, Koch, Roop &Wixson, 2002;Stecher, Barron, Chun, & Ross, 2000;). While it might be assumed that local participation in state standards development would facilitate some degree of transfer, research clearly indicates that school districts play a crucial role in reform, filtering and shaping information states hope will influence classroom practice (Cohen & Hill, 2000;Hertert, 1996;Marsh, 2000;Spillane & Jennings, 1997;Standerford, 1997).…”

Principals’ perceptions of public schools’ professional development changes during NCLB

“…The most effective professional growth activities are teacher-directed, where teachers lead the process to create, present, and collaborate in professional development activities to improve learning outcomes (Akiba & Liang, 2016;Stillman, 2011;Wilson & Berne, 1999). Models of professional development that are content focused and involve a critical mass of teachers in the building were more successful in changing culture, practices, and lead to deeper conversations and reflections on their own as well as their colleagues' teaching (Dutro, Fisk, Koch, Roop, & Wixson, 2002;Gallucci, 2003). In a study of 25 public, private, and religiously affiliated school principals on the U.S. east coast, Drago-Severson (2007) found that principals who demonstrated exemplary behaviors to encourage teacher growth were highly collaborative, and shared authority over professional development with their teachers.…”