When Reason Confronts Uncertainty: Continuous Improvement, Technical Ceremonies, and the Changing Structure of American Schools

Abstract

As a result of the multi-decade effort to hold schools accountable for student learning and parental satisfaction, there is a wide consensus that the traditional conception of the school as symbolic, loosely connected, and disinterested in monitoring or improving instruction is no longer apt. What’s less clear is what image should take its place. Although school and system leaders are now more concerned with improving teaching and learning, there are still numerous examples of schools complying with the letter of new reforms and prioritizing incentivized outcomes over the slower work of improving teaching and learning. In this dissertation, I seek to develop a more refined understanding of the contemporary school organization that accounts for these conflicting patterns. In Paper One, I argue that as a result of the demanding institutional environment surrounding schools and the uncertainty that pervades deeper levels of educational practice, accountability reforms are successfully changing surface-level aspects of educators’ practice, but these changes are becoming loosely connected to deeper aspects of practice. I develop the concept of technical ceremonies as a way of theorizing this emerging pattern of school organizations. I build on these arguments in my two empirical papers, which investigate two districts’ implementation of a continuous improvement (CI) method. Drawing on principles from improvement science and design, CI methods offer an approach to improvement that is tailored to the endemic uncertainties that pervade educational systems. I focus on the Data Wise Improvement Process, a prominent CI method in education. In Paper Two I identify three sources of uncertainty that pose challenges for educators as they engage in Data Wise, and find that educators developed ways of coping with and lessening uncertainty to support their improvement work. In Paper Three I focus on the role of school leaders in implementing Data Wise. I find that they engaged in a range of behaviors that correspond with different images of the school organization: actively shaping practice to align with Data Wise, buffering teachers from external influence, and getting caught up in technical ceremonies that influence teachers’ practice but in a way that privileges external legitimacy over internal improvement. These responses were shaped by leaders’ professional identity, their assessment of the alignment of Data Wise with their beliefs and the technical demands of their work, and their (varied) perceptions of the degree of regulation around Data Wise.