Eric M. Camburn

Professional Community in Chicago Elementary Schools: Facilitating Factors and Organizational Consequences

Professional community is receiving markedly increased attention as part of both practitioner and scholarly efforts to promote improvements in instruction and student learning. Interest in this area joins two previously distinct literatures, one dealing with the benefits of communal school organization and another with enhanced teacher professionalism, to formulate a theoretical framework for a school-based professional community. Using data from a large urban school district, this article tests the impact of structural, human, and social factors on the emergence of school-based professional community and examines the extent to which such developments in turn promote learning and experimentation among faculty.

Taking a Distributed Perspective to the School Principal's Workday

Focusing on the school principals day-to-day work, we examine who leads curriculum and instruction- and administration-related activities when the school principal is not leading but participating in the activity. We also explore the prevalence of coperformance of management and leadership activities in the school principals workday. Looking across a range of administration-related and curriculum and instruction-related activities school principals participate in, we show that who takes responsibility for leading and managing the schoolhouse varies considerably from activity to activity and from one school to the next.

School context and individual characteristics: what influences principal practice?

Purpose – As they operate in complex schools principals must allocate their attention to numerous responsibilities. This paper seeks to ask three questions: how do principals allocate their attention across major realms of responsibility; to what extent do principals in different contexts emphasize different realms of responsibility; and to what extent do individual attributes affect how principals allocate their attention across realms?Design/methodology/approach – A cluster analysis is applied to data from a daily log of principal practices to identify principals who allocate their attention across major realms of responsibility in similar ways. With the three groups identified in the cluster analysis a discriminant analysis is then used to examine the individual attributes of the principals and the contexts within which these groups work to identify those individual characteristics and contextual conditions that best predict each principals cluster membership.Findings – The data from the log indicate ...

Taking a Distributed Perspective: Epistemological and Methodological Tradeoffs in Operationalizing the Leader-Plus Aspect.

Purpose – This paper is concerned with the epistemological and methodological challenges involved in studying the distribution of leadership across people within the school – the leader‐plus aspect of a distributed perspective, which it aims to investigate.Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the entailments of the distributed perspective for collecting and analyzing data on school leadership and management. It considers four different operationalizations of the leader‐plus aspect of the distributed perspective and examines the results obtained from these different operationalizations. The research reported in this paper is part of a larger study, an efficacy trial of a professional development program intended to prepare principals to improve their practice. The study involved a mixed method design. For the purpose of this paper a combination of qualitative and quantitative data, including an experience sampling method (ESM) principal log, a principal questionnaire (PQ), and a school staff qu...

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.

Assessing the Validity of a Language Arts Instruction Log through Triangulation

In this study we attempted to illuminate why measures of instruction sometimes fail to meet discrete tests of validity. We used a triangulation strategy—multiple methods, data sources, and researchers—to investigate teachers’ and observers’ reports on a daily language arts log. Data came from a pilot study of the log conducted in 8 urban public elementary schools. Statistical results increased our confidence in the log’s ability to measure (a) instruction at grosser levels of detail, (b) instructional activities that occurred more frequently, and (c) word analysis instruction. Some qualitative evidence gave us greater confidence in the instrument, for example, when teachers differed from observers because they possessed background knowledge not available to observers. Other qualitative evidence illustrated dilemmas inherent in measuring instruction. Overall, we believe triangulation strategies provided a more holistic understanding of the validity of teachers’ reports of instruction than past validity studies.

Developing Instructional Leaders: Using Mixed Methods to Explore the Black Box of Planned Change in Principals’ Professional Practice:

Purpose: This study examines learning, and both cognitive and behavioral change among a sample of randomly assigned urban principals, half of whom participated in a sustained, district-based professional development program (DPD). Research Methods: Latent class analyses of daily log data, qualitative typology development, and case studies of change provide a rich portrait of the learning and change process. Findings: Few dramatic transformations of practice. Instead, principals attributed to the DPD a gradual refinement of existing practice through a process that allowed them to “break down” declarative knowledge to better understand its consequences for their work, but also provided knowledge structures, tools, and routines for reintegrating ideas from the program into strategically valuable procedural knowledge. Implications: Results suggest potential for developing principals’ competencies within continuing practice communities, but expectation of incremental rather than a dramatic “turn around” in principals’ leadership through program interventions.

Assessing the Utility of a Daily Log for Measuring Principal Leadership Practice

Purpose: This study examines the feasibility and utility of a daily log for measuring principal leadership practice. Setting and Sample: The study was conducted in an urban district with approximately 50 principals. Approach: The log was assessed against two criteria: (a) Is it feasible to induce strong cooperation and high response rates among principals with a daily instrument? and (b) Can daily logs accurately measure important aspects of principal leadership? The first criterion was assessed through a discussion of data collection procedures and results. The second criterion was assessed through mixed-method analyses comparing daily logs, observations, and an experience-sampling instrument. Results: The authors found that substantial participant contact time and strategic follow-up achieved strong cooperation and yielded high response rates. The accuracy of the log was confirmed through comparisons with an experience-sampling instrument and direct observations. The results also contribute to a broader understanding of how principals allocate their time across leadership domains. Like earlier structured observation studies, the authors found that principals spend more time on management, personnel issues, and student affairs and less time on instructional leadership than advocated by leadership scholars and professional standards. Implications for Research and Practice: Daily logs appear to be a viable means of measuring important aspects of principal practice and overcoming measurement errors associated with one-time surveys that are common in leadership research. Strategies used to maintain high participation rates are discussed in detail, and an example of a district’s adaptation of the daily log methodology is provided.

Embedded Teacher Learning Opportunities as a Site for Reflective Practice: An Exploratory Study

Framed by sociocultural learning perspectives, this study examines whether embedded learning opportunities for teachers are more supportive of reflective practice than traditional professional development. All schools in this study implemented a comprehensive school reform program. The designs of the programs introduced embedded learning opportunities for teachers by adding teacher leadership positions and encouraging various forms of teacher collaboration. The results indicate that these two kinds of embedded learning opportunities are positively and strongly associated with teacher reflection, and the effects of these variables were twice the size of the effect of traditional professional development. Implications and limitations of the results are discussed.

Investigating Connections Between Distributed Leadership and Instructional Change

To date, the literature on distributed leadership has mainly developed along twopaths – conceptual writing about what distributed leadership is, and empirical stud-ies describing whether and how leadership is distributed. At this stage of its devel-opment, this literature has not seriously addressed the potential consequences northe benefits of distributed leadership. In summarizing a recent edited volume onthe subject, Leithwood et al. (2008) acknowledge that the volume, and the largerbody of research on distributed leadership has not yet assessed “the contributionof greater leadership distribution to the long list of desirable outcomes typicallyinvoked by advocates” (p. 280). What benefits can be expected for schools in whichleadership is distributed and how might distributed leadership help bring about suchbenefits? In this chapter, we take a small step towards addressing such questions byinvestigating the association between the distribution of leadership to teachers andinstructional change in schools.There is growing evidence that comprehensive school reform (CSR) programscan support improved achievement by facilitating the adoption of new instructionalstrategies in schools (Borman et al., 2007). There is also emerging evidence thatCSR programs can support student achievement and instructional change by reor-ganizing the ways in which schools manage and support instruction (Rowan et al.,2009). Research has further shown that distributed leadership is used by a numberof these programs as a primary tool for reorganization (Camburn et al., 2003). Thischapter reports an investigation of the America’s Choice CSR program. The designof this program is intended to distribute leadership responsibilities to teacher leadersin schools, and this distribution of leadership in turn, is intended to act as a keylever for instructional change. In this chapter, we examine how this intended designplayed out in about 30 urban elementary schools that implemented the America’sChoice design. We begin by describing persistent barriers to instructional change