Power Within Distributive Leadership: A Consideration of Teacher and Administrator Relationships as Constructed and Deconstructed through Discourse
Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Reform is constant but there is little or no change in the achievement gap. As \nthe nation begins yet another reform effort, the Common Core State Standards, the \nquestion proposed in this study is ever more pressing. Are we seeing real reform or is \nit that underlying these many reform efforts are unchallenged and unchanged \nepistemological assumptions that nurture existing theories-in-use despite whatever the \ncurrent flavor of espoused theory. \nThe primary purpose of this study is to identify how leadership practice is \ndistributed at the school site. Current literature on distributed leadership has identified \nthat for distributed leadership theory to be explanatory it will need to account for not \nonly that leadership practice is being distributed but how it is being distributed. Since \ndistributed leadership is the espoused leadership practice in education today a method \nto uncover the theory-in-practice of leadership is required. The study used discourse analysis and Micropolitical theory to analyze the conversations of teachers and \nadministrators during 18 team meetings at two elementary schools over the course of a \nyear. The research questions of the study focused primarily on how conversations \nrevealed the power and position of specific discourses. \nThis study has observed that standards-based instruction and the high-stakes \ntesting that drives it have changed the paradigm of learning. This paradigm is that \nlearning is quantifiable and represented by the results of high-stakes testing. Raising \ntest scores is not only the indicator of closing the achievement gap but discursively \nsubstitutes for closing the achievement gap. The study found that the discourse of \nhigh-stakes testing was the most powerful discourse at the two schools and established \nthe context for conversations around learning. This discourse was more powerful at \nthe school where scores were more important and was more influential on the \napproach teachers at that site had toward instruction. The discourse of high-stakes \ntesting served as a substitute for leadership, which reduced teacher and principal \nautonomy. The study also found that the discourse of distributed leadership provided \nspaces where participative discourse occurred. Further, it found that leadership was \nlargely hierarchically distributed at the two sites partly due to macro-discourses from \nbeyond the school site. Distributed leadership did not necessarily reduce and may have \nincreased the hierarchical power of the principal position. \nThese findings lead to a conclusion that the most recent version of standardsbased \ninstruction, the Common Core state standards, will continue to have the \ndiscourse of high-stakes testing set the context for conversations around learning since it continues the same discourse. Another implication of the study is that how the \nCommon Core affects authentically engaging instruction will be more around the \nconstruction and implementation of the assessment tools than around the \naccompanying rhetoric. \nAdding to research on distributed leadership theory the study demonstrated \nthat research on how leadership practice is distributed must incorporate some \nmechanism to consider how power and position influence the distribution. \nStudies using discourse analysis participate in the social construction of reality \nwhere meaning is never fixed and all analysis is open to alternate interpretations. The \nfindings that seemed emerge from the many conversations considered have other \nalternative interpretations that are accessible to the reader through the extensive \npresentation of text in chapter four.
Author: Jerry Douglas Merica-Jones
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W799801930