Brian Rowan

Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony

Many formal organizational structures arise as reflections of rationalized institutional rules. The elaboration of such rules in modern states and societies accounts in part for the expansion and increased complexity of formal organizational structures. Institutional rules function as myths which organizations incorporate, gaining legitimacy, resources, stability, and enhanced survival prospects. Organizations whose structures become isomorphic with the myths of the institutional environment-in contrast with those primarily structured by the demands of technical production and exchange-decrease internal coordination and control in order to maintain legitimacy. Structures are decoupled from each other and from ongoing activities. In place of coordination, inspection, and evaluation, a logic of confidence and good faith is employed.

Effects of Teachers’ Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching on Student Achievement:

This study explored whether and how teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching contributes to gains in students’ mathematics achievement. The authors used a linear mixed-model methodology in which first and third graders’ mathematical achievement gains over a year were nested within teachers, who in turn were nested within schools. They found that teachers’ mathematical knowledge was significantly related to student achievement gains in both first and third grades after controlling for key student- and teacher-level covariates. This result, while consonant with findings from the educational production function literature, was obtained via a measure focusing on the specialized mathematical knowledge and skills used in teaching mathematics. This finding provides support for policy initiatives designed to improve students’ mathematics achievement by improving teachers’ mathematical knowledge.

The Instructional Management Role of the Principal

This review of related literature and research prompted the development of a framework for understanding the role of the principal as an instructional manager. A number of links between school-level variables and student learning are proposed. The discussion includes consideration of instrictional organization, school climate, influence behavior, and the context of principal management.

Organizational Structure and the Institutional Environment: The Case of Public Schools.

Work on this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Texas Christian University Research Foundation. The author wishes to thank John W. Meyer, W. Richard Scott, Lynn Zucker, and two anonymousASQ reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper. Revisions of the manuscript were supported bya grant from the National Institute of Education, Department of Education, under Contract No. 400-80-0103. The contents of this paper do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Education and the National Institute of Education. This paper develops an institutional approach to the problem of administrative expansion in public schools. It is argued that public schools add and subtract administrative positions to come into isomorphism with prevailing norms, values, and technical lore in the institutional environment. Using historical data on school districts in California, the natural histories of three specific types of administrative services were traced from their emergence as innovations to their diffusion and retention at the local level. The historical data revealed that administrative services supported by balanced institutional environments diffused morewidelyandwere morestably retained atthe local level than were services supported by imbalanced institutional environments. Further data analysis contrasted the institutional approach with more common approaches that stress size as a causal factor promoting innovation and structural differentiation. The data revealed that organizational size alone was an insufficient explanation for structural expansion and demonstrated the utility of examining the institutional determinants of organizational structures-

Higher Order Instructional Goals in Secondary Schools: Class, Teacher, and School Influences:

We consider three explanations for variation in emphasis on teaching for higher order thinking in U.S. secondary classrooms: (a) current conceptions of learning encourage pursuit of higher order objectives primarily for high-track students in advanced courses; (b) many teachers lack adequate preparation to teach for higher order thinking; and (c) organizational norms discourage pursuit of higher order objectives. We asked secondary teachers in 16 schools to identify their instructional goals for each of their classes and constructed scales to capture higher order emphasis in math, science, social studies, and English. A three-level hierarchical regression analysis revealed powerful effects of track on higher order objectives in all disciplines, especially math and science. Effects of teacher preparation and organizational norms were manifest in English and social studies, but not in math or science. Differentiation of instructional objectives based on academic track is apparently deeply institutionalized, particularly in math and science.

A Multilevel, Multivariate Model for Studying School Climate With Estimation Via the EM Algorithm and Application to U.S. High-School Data

In many studies of school climate, researchers ask teachers a series of questions, and the responses to related questions are averaged or summed to create a scale score for each teacher on each dimension of climate under investigation. Researchers have disagreed, however, about the analysis of such data: Some have utilized the teacher as the analytic unit, and some have utilized the school as the unit. In this article, we propose a three-level, multivariate statistical modeling strategy that resolves the unit-of-analysis dilemma and unifies thinking about the analysis in such studies. A reanalysis of U. S. high-school data illustrates how to estimate and interpret: (a) the level of interteacher agreement on each climate dimension; (b) the internal consistency of measurement at the teacher and school levels; and (c) the correlations among “true” climate scores at each level. A linear model analysis utilized teacher control over school and classroom policy and teacher morale as bivariate latent outcomes to be predicted by school-level variables (e.g., sector, size, composition) and by teacher-level variables (e.g., education, race, sex, subject matter). Implications for conceptualization, design, analysis, and interpretation in future studies of school climate are considered.

Opening Up the Black Box: Literacy Instruction in Schools Participating in Three Comprehensive School Reform Programs

This study examines patterns of literacy instruction in schools adopting three of America’s most widely disseminated comprehensive school reform (CSR) programs (the Accelerated Schools Project, America’s Choice, and Success for All). Contrary to the view that educational innovations seldom affect teaching practices, the study found large differences in literacy instruction between teachers in America’s Choice schools and comparison schools and between teachers in Success for All schools and comparison schools. In contrast, no differences in literacy teaching practices were found between teachers in Accelerated Schools Project schools and comparison schools. On the basis of these findings and our knowledge of the implementation support strategies pursued by the CSR programs under study, we conclude that well-defined and well-specified instructional improvement programs that are strongly supported by on-site facilitators and local leaders who demand fidelity to program designs can produce large changes in teachers’ instructional practices.

Using Teacher Logs to Measure the Enacted Curriculum: A Study of Literacy Teaching in Third‐Grade Classrooms

In this article we examine methodological and conceptual issues that emerge when researchers measure the enacted curriculum in schools. After outlining key theoretical considerations that guide measurement of this construct and alternative strategies for collecting and analyzing data on it, we illustrate one approach to gathering and analyzing data on the enacted curriculum. Using log data on the reading/language arts instruction of more than 150 third‐grade teachers in 53 high‐poverty elementary schools participating in the Study of Instructional Improvement, we estimated several hierarchical linear models and found that the curricular content of literacy instruction (a) varied widely from day to day, (b) did not vary much among students in the same classroom, but (c) did vary greatly across classrooms, largely as the result of teachers’ participation in 1 of the 3 instructional improvement interventions (Accelerated Schools, America’s Choice, and Success for All) under study. The implications of these findings for future research on the enacted curriculum are discussed.

Organizational Strategies for Promoting Instructional Change: Implementation Dynamics in Schools Working With Comprehensive School Reform Providers:

This article develops a conceptual framework for studying how three comprehensive school reform (CSR) programs organized schools for instructional change and how the distinctive strategies they pursued affected implementation outcomes. The conceptual model views the Accelerated Schools Project as using a system of cultural control to produce instructional change, the Americas Choice program as using a model of professional control, and the Success for All program as using a model of procedural control. Predictable differences in patterns of organizing for instructional improvement emerged across schools working with these three programs, and these patterns were found to be systematically related to patterns of program implementation. In particular, the two CSR programs that were organized to produce instructional standardization produced higher levels of instructional change in the schools where they worked. The results of the study suggest organizational strategies program developers can use to obtain implementation fidelity in instructional change initiatives.

Studying Reading Instruction With Teacher Logs: Lessons From the Study of Instructional Improvement

This article describes some of the conceptual and methodological issues that arise when researchers use teacher logs to measure classroom instruction. Data and examples come from the Study of Instructional Improvement, which used teacher logs to study patterns of literacy instruction in schools implementing three comprehensive school reforms. Over the course of this study, more than 75,000 logs were collected from nearly 2,000 teachers in Grades 1 through 5. This article discusses why teacher logs were chosen as the data collection strategy, various psychometric issues associated with their use, and some of the substantive findings that emerged as part of the study.