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CULTURALLY AND HISTORICALLY SITUATING DATA
Raymond Kang, M.A.
1240 W. Harrison St.
Chicago, IL, U.S.A., 60607
ISCAR 2014.10.01
A CASE STUDY OF LEADERSHIP
THE LIFESPAN OF ACTIVITYChange is conceptualized as having its source in contradiction. Change can include not only learning and development but also dissolution and decay. An activity system may transform in a productive way or it can die; people can forget what they have learned. (Cole, et al., 2014)
CHAT + INSTITUTIONAL THEORYInstitutionalizing Activity:• Coercion:
Formal rules
• Mimicry: Isomorphic tendencies
• Norms: Professional codes
Ogawa et al., (2008)
DISCURSIVE MANIFESTATIONS OF CONTRADICTIONSHow do we observe dialectical relationships and their inherent contradictions?
Preliminary framework from Engeström & Sannino (2011):
• Dilemmas: expression of incompatible evaluations
• “yes, but…”• “on the one hand … on the other …”
• Conflicts: resistance, disagreement, argument, criticism
• “I disagree…”• “… I can accept that”
• Critical Conflicts: paralyzing inner contradictions
• “I believe … but also believe …”• “I now realize that …”• vivid metaphors
• Double Binds: expressions of helplessness
• “We can’t …”• “I have to …”
DOUGLAS M. WILSONHIGH SCHOOL, CHICAGO, U.S.A.Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) comprises:
• Administrators: Principal and one Assistant Principal• Teachers: Department Chairs• Representatives of Supporting Departments• District Representatives: Instructional Support Leader
Data Sources:
• 16 ILT meetings over the 2012-2013 school year and 3 Subcommittee meetings
• 1 to 4 semi-structured interviews with fifteen informants• Documents produced by the ILT in their practice• Field notes and memos created by the author
Instructional Rounds (IR) are an iterative cycle of four steps (City, et al., 2011):
1. identifying a problem of instructional practice; 2.observing practice in small groups; 3.debriefing together after the observation; and 4. focusing on the next level of work needed to improve instruction
relative to the problem of practice
RESEARCH QUESTIONS1. How does the practice, the activity, of
IR change in its enactment by the ILT?
2. If an activity may live (transform) or die, what sustains or kills the activity of IR?
GESTATION
2012 SEP 24 – 2013 FEB 11
CONCRETE CONTEXT• Since 2008, Chicago
Public Schools have had five different CEOs.
• Chicago Teachers Union voted to go on strike on 10 Sept 2012 with teacher evaluation as a major point of contention.
• A new teacher evaluation system was part of a new contractual agreement ratified on 18 Sept 2012.
NETWORK COERCION: CONFLICT OF AUTHENTICITYMr. Osborn: I don’t think it’s so much administering it. I think it’s a matter of making it use – making the data useful. Otherwise, it’s just – “Hey, we have to go take this assigned test.”
Ms. Marston: What do we do with it?
Ms. Tolbert: “The network wants us to do it.” I mean, that's how we took it, the last time that we took it. And I’m only speaking for the course team I was on. It was just – we did it because [the previous principal] told us to do it.
ILT Meeting, 5 November 2012
RESISTING MIMESIS: DILEMMA OF EVALUATIONMs. Day: So, if we want to have the same protocol, where the data team— without me being present at that time, at the data team at all — receives all the documents, and processes, and reports only data that cannot be traced to any particular teacher, any particular classroom. So, we want to keep this part, I think it's an easy to agree part. I believe that we've worked out the issues last year, and that might be easiest to agree on … So, do we want to go around, and ask people for their idea of what the problem of practice might be, from their viewpoint?
Ms. Hentges: I was just going to say – [Problems of practice] is how we're also going to be evaluated—actually evaluated. It might be disconcerting. It just popped in my head—it might actually be disconcerting if this becomes the focus of the [instructional rounds], where it's their peers.
ILT Meeting, 26 November 2012
VALUING LOCAL NORMS: CRITICAL CONFLICT OF PURPOSEMs. Hillman: I'm not sure if knowing if it's happening or not matters, because you're going to see formal and informal writing in the building … so I just really want to get back to what is the purpose of looking for it.Ms. Walters: [Ms. Marston] and I both agree that, at the beginning of all of this, when we started talking about writing … this is our school-wide initiative and, is it really happening school-wide was the question … and I think just getting a baseline of how much writing is actually going on … might be helpful.Ms. Hillman: Okay, so then, for me, that clarifies it because then your purpose is to see if your school-wide initiative is implemented. So, that's actually a good purpose for the [rounds]. “Did we implement the school-wide strategy of writing and how are we seeing it?” So, that, to me, becomes, now, I have a sense of your purpose for collecting this information.
ILT Meeting, January 7, 2013
LIFE & DEATH
2013 FEB 11 – 2013 APR 22
PRODUCTION OF DATA AS MEDIATING ARTIFACT
REPRESENTATION OF DATA
Informal Formal Combination of Both
I did not see any writing
0
10
20
30
40
50
60 57
11
30
8
92%
8%Student writing was observed
Daily 2-3 times a week
Weekly Less than weekly
Not at all Missing0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
66
20 17
3
83
13 61 3
Student Teacher
Q5: Type of Writing Observed
Q6 & Q11: How often is writing assigned in this class?
INTERPRETATION OF DATAMs. Tolbert: The first one, it’s great. 92% of the classrooms that we went into, at that point in time, we observed writing … Both the students and the teachers say they are writing. So, I think we can say we writing across the board in all our disciplines here at Foreman … What's interesting about the “all observed cases” data is that the students and the teachers are pretty much in sync about … about what's going on in the classroom with writing.
Mr. Osborn: So then, I guess what we need to think about would be some next steps. So, we see that there’s—and this is just anecdotally, from having gone into their classrooms now for almost two years—that there seems to be some real growth in the assigning writing in classrooms. There’s some consistency in student and teacher perspective on – that writing is occurring, and that feedback is occurring. So, then when you think about [that], what are our next steps for [an instructional round]?
ILT Meeting, 22 April 2013
DEATHMs. Walters: I think that there was an awful lot of time spent on [instructional rounds]. And, I don't think that would be a bad thing, in general. I think, definitely, the ground rules needed to be laid out, there needed to be a focus, there needed to be pushback and ideas thrown around, but since the [instructional rounds], how and for what was any of that data used? So, I think that all that time was spent on something that was, kind of, pushed aside. I think it could have been valuable? But, then we just dropped the ball … In analyzing it, deciding how it could be used, what our next steps really are based on the data. I don't think any of that really happened.
Interview, 17 June 2013
TRANSACTION NOT TRANSFORMATIONMs. Hentges: [W]e weren’t really vested in [instructional rounds]. Because it was our first component, it kind of killed our enthusiasm for being self-determining, which is the ILT, any group, needs that, it needs to know that is meeting for some purpose and that purpose is decided by then. Otherwise, it becomes, again, just a perfunctory group … We did talk about making them authentic, because when teachers go to other classrooms, there’s a real learning process going on … But that was absolutely squashed in the [instructional rounds]. That was not what [instructional rounds] were supposed to be about according to the Network. It was simply to gather random, abstract data. Basically, go in there and spy on your peers and write down what you see.
Interview, 12 June 2013
EULOGY
NOW
HOW DOES THE ACTIVITY OF IR CHANGE IN ITS ENACTMENT?
Resistance to institutionalization leads to increasing locality of IR:
• Network Mandate Local Utility• Problem of Practice Local Purpose• Anti-Evaluation Restricted Access to Data
Compromised agency leads to IR becoming transactional instead of transformational
• “Dog-and-Pony Show” Zombie Activity• “Random, Abstract Data” Not Concrete or
Purposeful
IF AN ACTIVITY MAY LIVE OR DIE, WHAT SUSTAINS OR KILLS IR?
Succumbed to Institutionalization:• Ultimate purpose of IR was compliance• Coercive, normative, and mimetic
pressures yield a loss of agency
Sustenance must be Local:• Activity must have an authentic, locally-
defined, and concrete object• Collective activity must affirm the
coherence of the subject
