Abstract:
Reform is constant but there is little or no change in the achievement gap. As
the nation begins yet another reform effort, the Common Core State Standards, the
question proposed in this study is ever more pressing. Are we seeing real reform or is
it that underlying these many reform efforts are unchallenged and unchanged
epistemological assumptions that nurture existing theories-in-use despite whatever the
current flavor of espoused theory.
The primary purpose of this study is to identify how leadership practice is
distributed at the school site. Current literature on distributed leadership has identified
that for distributed leadership theory to be explanatory it will need to account for not
only that leadership practice is being distributed but how it is being distributed. Since
distributed leadership is the espoused leadership practice in education today a method
to uncover the theory-in-practice of leadership is required. The study used discourse analysis and Micropolitical theory to analyze the conversations of teachers and
administrators during 18 team meetings at two elementary schools over the course of a
year. The research questions of the study focused primarily on how conversations
revealed the power and position of specific discourses.
This study has observed that standards-based instruction and the high-stakes
testing that drives it have changed the paradigm of learning. This paradigm is that
learning is quantifiable and represented by the results of high-stakes testing. Raising
test scores is not only the indicator of closing the achievement gap but discursively
substitutes for closing the achievement gap. The study found that the discourse of
high-stakes testing was the most powerful discourse at the two schools and established
the context for conversations around learning. This discourse was more powerful at
the school where scores were more important and was more influential on the
approach teachers at that site had toward instruction. The discourse of high-stakes
testing served as a substitute for leadership, which reduced teacher and principal
autonomy. The study also found that the discourse of distributed leadership provided
spaces where participative discourse occurred. Further, it found that leadership was
largely hierarchically distributed at the two sites partly due to macro-discourses from
beyond the school site. Distributed leadership did not necessarily reduce and may have
increased the hierarchical power of the principal position.
These findings lead to a conclusion that the most recent version of standardsbased
instruction, the Common Core state standards, will continue to have the
discourse 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
Common Core affects authentically engaging instruction will be more around the
construction and implementation of the assessment tools than around the
accompanying rhetoric.
Adding to research on distributed leadership theory the study demonstrated
that research on how leadership practice is distributed must incorporate some
mechanism to consider how power and position influence the distribution.
Studies using discourse analysis participate in the social construction of reality
where meaning is never fixed and all analysis is open to alternate interpretations. The
findings that seemed emerge from the many conversations considered have other
alternative interpretations that are accessible to the reader through the extensive
presentation of text in chapter four.
