This article focuses on the leadership practices that four public school principals in two Northern California large urban school districts used during the process of implementing the state-mandated reading curriculum. These four school principals’ leadership approaches are described and analyzed through the lens of neoinstitutional theory to understand how they influenced instructional practices in their schools. The findings of this research suggest that the extent of school principals’ instructional, cultural, and political knowledge influenced their actions as agents of bridging and/or buffering.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AnagnostopoulosD., & RutledgeS. A. (2007). Making sense of school sanctioning policies in urban high schools.Teachers College Record,109, 1261–1302.
2.
BurchP. (2007). Educational policy and practice from the perspective of institutional theory: Crafting a wider lens.Educational Researcher,36(2), 84–95.
3.
CoburnC. E. (2004). Beyond decoupling: Rethinking the relationship between the institutional environment and the classroom.Sociology of Education,77, 211–244.
4.
CoburnC. E. (2005). The role of nonsystem actors in the relationship between policy and practice: The case of reading instruction in CaliforniaEducational Evaluation and Policy Analysis,27(1), 23–52.
5.
CoburnC. E. (2006). Framing the problem of reading instruction: Using frame analysis to uncover the microprocesses of policy implementation.American Educational Research Journal,43(3), 343–379.
6.
CoburnC. E., & RussellJ. L. (2008). District policy and teachers’ social networks.Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis,30(3), 203–235.
7.
DiamondJ., & SpillaneJ. (2004). High stakes accountability in urban elementary schools: Challenging or reproducing inequality?Teachers College Record,106(6), 1145–1176.
8.
DiMaggioP. J., & PowellW. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields.American Sociological Review,48, 147–160.
9.
DiMaggioP. J., & PowellW. W. (1991). Introduction to the new institutionalism. In PowellW. W., & DiMaggioP. (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 1–38). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
10.
EisenhartM. A., & HoweK. R. (1992). Validity in educational research. In LeCompteM. D., MillroyW. L., & PreissleJ. (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research in education (pp. 643–680). Waltham, MA: Academic Press.
11.
ElmoreR. (1996). Getting to scale with good educational practice.Harvard Educational Review,66(1), 1–26.
12.
FennellM. L., & AlexanderJ. A. (1987). Organizational boundary spanning in institutionalized environments.Academy of Management Journal,30(3), 456–476.
13.
FirestoneW. (1989). Educational policy as an ecology of games.Educational Researcher,18(1), 18–24.
14.
GoldringE., & RallisS. (2000). Principals of dynamic schools: Taking charge of change (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Corwin/Sage.
15.
HalllngerP., & HeckR. H. (1996). Reassessing the principal's role in school effectiveness: A review of empirical research, 1980–1995.Educational Administration Quarterly,32(1), 5–44.
16.
HonigM. I., & HatchT. C. (2004). Crafting coherence: How schools strategically manage multiple, external demands.Educational Researcher,33(8), 16–30.
17.
IngersollR. M. (1993). Loosely coupled organizations revisited.Research in the Sociology of Organizations,11, 81–112.
18.
IngersollR. M. (2003). Who controls teachers’ work? Power and accountability in America's schools.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
19.
LeithwoodK., HarrisA., & HopkinsD. (2008). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership.School Leadership and Management,28(1), 27–42.
20.
MarchJ. G. (1994). A primer of decision-making.New York: Free Press.
21.
MarchJ. G., & OlsenJ. P. (1976). Ambiguity and choice in organizations.Bergen, Norway: Universitetsforlaget.
22.
MarzanoR. J., WatersT., & McNultyB. A. (2005). School leadership that works: From research to results.Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
23.
McLaughlinM. W., & TalbertJ. E. (1993). Contexts that matter for teaching and learning.Stanford, CA: Center for Research on the Context of Secondary School Teaching.
24.
MeyerH., & RowanB. (2006). The new institutionalism, in education.Albany: State University of New York Press.
25.
MeyerJ. W., & RowanB. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony.American Journal of Sociology,83(2), 340–363.
26.
MeyerJ. W., ScottW. R., & DealT.E. (1981). Institutional and technical sources of organizational structure: Explaining the structure of educational organizations. In SteinS. (Ed.), Organization and human services: Cross-disciplinary reflections (pp. 151–179). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
27.
MeyerJ. W., & ScottW. R. (1983). The structure of educational organizations. In MeyerJ. W., & ScottW. R. (Eds.), Organizational environments: Ritual and rationality (pp. 71–97). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
28.
MeyerJ. W., ScottW. R., StrangD., & CreightonA. (1988). Bureaucratization without centralization: Changes in the organizational system of American public education, 1940–1980. In ZuckerL. G. (Ed.), Institutional patterns and organizations (pp. 139–67). Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
29.
MilesM. B., & HubermanA. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
30.
NelsonB. S., & SassiA. (2005). The effective principal: Instructional leadership for high-quality learning.New York: Teachers College Press.
31.
NewmannF., SmithB., AllensworthE., & BrykA. (2001). Instructional program coherence: What it is and why it should guide school improvement policy.Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis,23(4), 297–321.
32.
OgawaR. T. (1992). Institutional theory and examining leadership in schools.International Journal of Educational Management,6, 14–21.
33.
OverholtR. (2008). An exploratory design study of the effects of leadership content knowledge in literacy on the perceptions of administrators.New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
34.
RemillardJ. T. (2005). Examining key concepts in research on teachers’ use of mathematics curricula.Review of Educational Research,75(2), 211–246.
35.
RowanB. (1995). Institutional analysis of educational organizations: Lines of theory and directions for research. In OgawaR. T. (Ed.), Advances in research and theories of school management and educational policy (Vol. 3, pp. 1–20). Greenwich, CT: JAI.
36.
RowanB. (2006). The new institutionalism and the study of educational organizations: Changing ideas for changing times. In MeyerH. D., & RowanB. (Eds.), The new institutionalism in education: Advancing research and policy (pp. 15–32). Albany: State University of New York Press.
37.
RowanB., & MiskelC. G. (1999). Institutional theory and the study of educational organizations. In MurphyJ., & LouisK. S. (Eds.), Handbook of research in educational administration (pp. 359–382). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
38.
ScottW. R. (2001). Institutions and organizations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
39.
SpillaneJ. P. (2000). Constructing ambitious pedagogy in the fifth grade: The mathematics and literacy divide.Elementary School Journal,100(4), 307–330.
40.
SpillaneJ. P. (2004). Standard deviation: How schools misunderstand education policy.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
41.
SpillaneJ., & BurchP. (2006). The institutional environment and the technical core in K–12 schools: “Loose coupling” revisited. In MeyerH. D., & RowanB. (Eds.), The new institutionalism in education (pp. 89–100). Albany: State University of New York Press.
42.
SpillaneJ. P., ReiserB. J., & ReimerT. (2002). Policy implementation and cognition: Reframing and refocusing implementation research.Review of Educational Research,72(3), 387–431.
43.
SpillaneJ. P., & ZeuliJ. S. (1999). Reform and teaching: Exploring patterns of practice in the context of national and state mathematics reforms.Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis,21(1), 1–27.
44.
SteinM. K., & NelsonB. S. (2003). Leadership content knowledge.Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis,25(4), 423–448.
45.
SzabocsikS. (2008). An examination of administrators’ leadership content knowledge in literacy and their self-reported approaches to supervision (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
46.
TyackD., & CubanL. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
47.
WatersT., MarzanoR. J., & McNultyB. (2003). Balanced leadership: What 30 years of research tells us about the effect of leadership on student achievement.Aurora, IL: McRel.
