Case study chapter jz 4/28/04 Page 1 of 52 Distributed Leadership Practice: The Subject Matters 1 Jennifer Z. Sherer Northwestern University Preliminary draft prepared for the symposium Recent Research in Distributed Leadership at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA, April 15, 2004. Please do not distribute. 1 Work on this paper was supported by the Distributed Leadership Project which is funded by research grants from the National Science Foundation (REC-9873583) and the Spencer Foundation. Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy and Institute for Policy Research also supported work on this paper. All opinions and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agency. Please send all correspondence to the author at Northwestern University, School of Education and Social Policy, 2115 North Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60201 or to [email protected].
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Case study chapter jz4/28/04
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Distributed Leadership Practice: The Subject Matters1
Jennifer Z. Sherer
Northwestern University
Preliminary draft prepared for the symposium Recent Research in Distributed Leadershipat the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association,
San Diego, CA, April 15, 2004. Please do not distribute.
1 Work on this paper was supported by the Distributed Leadership Project which is funded by researchgrants from the National Science Foundation (REC-9873583) and the Spencer Foundation. NorthwesternUniversity's School of Education and Social Policy and Institute for Policy Research also supported workon this paper. All opinions and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect the views of any funding agency. Please send all correspondence to the author atNorthwestern University, School of Education and Social Policy, 2115 North Campus Drive, Evanston, IL60201 or to [email protected].
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IntroductionThe distributed leadership perspective suggests that one way to examine
leadership practice is to focus on how the situation of practice shapes the activity of
instructional leadership. In schools, the situation of instruction is shaped in part by thesubject-matter organization of the curriculum (Stodolsky, 1988; McLaughlin and Talbert,
1993). This paper investigates how this subject-matter organization of instructionconstitutes a key aspect of the situation of school leadership practice. Elementary school
leaders often talk about their leadership in general terms, but I claim that there are
differences between subject matter leadership practice. My argument centers on thequestion of how leadership practice in literacy is similar to and/or different from
leadership practice in mathematics.
To illustrate the effect of subject-matter organization on school leadership, I
consider the case of an urban elementary school. This case study reveals that subject
does matter. In this paper I discuss two significant ways in which math leadershippractice varies from the leadership practice in literacy at Adams School2 from the fall of
1999 to the spring of 2003. First, I consider how the school’s leadership prioritizesliteracy. Second, I discuss how the leaders and followers3 interact differently in
mathematics leadership activities than they do in literacy leadership activities. The tools
used in these leadership activities frame some of those differences.
When we think of school leadership for instructional change, we often think of
this leadership generically. In fact, when researchers in the Distributed Leadership Studyspoke with principals across eleven schools about their leadership practice as it relates to
instructional change, they often spoke initially about leadership in very general terms.When asked: “What are your goals at Adams this year for math and science and literacy?
2 Adams is a pseudonym. All names associated with Adams are also pseudonyms.3 For the purposes of this paper, I use the term ‘leaders’ to describe individuals who take on someleadership role (be in a positional leader such as the principal or an informal leader such as the four mathteachers who act as the lead math team) and ‘followers’ to describe individuals who are not in leadershiproles at that particular moment in time. This term usually refers to teachers. I see these roles asdynamic—a leader in a particular activity may become a follower in the next activity.
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So we can take one subject matter at a time. Whichever you want to start with,” one
assistant principal immediately responded,
“Well basically our overall goal is to strive for having 50% of our kids at or abovegrade level in all subject matter. (DATE)”
This was a very typical response; in fact, at one school, every positional leader we
interviewed had a similar initial response. However, when we probed more deeply, bothin our questions about practice and in our observations of leadership practice, we found
that instructional leadership does not happen generally. Rather than just leading for
instruction, school leaders lead differently in specific disciplines such as mathematics,science, and language arts.
I begin with my theoretical framework, using distributed leadership and activitytheory, as well as subject matter literature, to frame my work. Next, I discuss my case
study methodology. In the remainder of the paper, I discuss two broad differences in
leadership practice between literacy and mathematics.4 I first show how the leadersprioritize literacy over mathematics through variations in their leadership practice. While
the prioritization of literacy over math in elementary school leadership may not besurprising, an understanding of how priority shapes leadership practice is valuable for the
insight into school leadership it provides. Second, I discuss how the interactions between
followers and leaders vary across subject matter. I conclude the paper with ideas forfuture work.
Theoretical FrameworkThe theoretical framework that guides my research and analysis draws on two
bodies of work: distributed cognition and its relation to distributed leadership andactivity theory. These theoretical strands are connected to my belief in the distributed
nature of leadership practice. By this I mean that the practice of leadership is distributed
across multiple people; it lives in how leaders interact with other leaders as well asfollowers; it lives in how they use tools and artifacts; it lives in both the people who are
the leaders as well as the activities that they carry out. In the distribution of leadership,
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activity is key. To build an understanding of leadership activity, and how to study it, I
draw on work from activity theory.
Distributed Leadership
The distributed leadership framework approaches the study of leadership with the
notion that leadership is distributed across different people and artifacts, within a
particular context. (Spillane, Halverson, Diamond, 1999, 2004) It borrows from Lave's1993 notion of "stretched across” suggesting that leadership is stretched across different
people and different artifacts, within different contexts. This does not mean thatleadership tasks are merely delegated to multiple people, although that is one aspect of
distributed leadership. In his discussion of distributed cognition, Roy Pea states that
distributed cognition is not about the end result being more than the sum of the parts, it isabout the end result of distributed cognition being different than the sum of the parts.
(Pea, 1993) In taking this idea of distributed cognition, and applying it to leadership, we
then ask, how is leadership practice distributed? What are the subtleties in thisdistribution, how can we study them, and what do they reveal about leadership practice?
In choosing to look at leadership in this way, by acknowledging that it is a complexsystem that is about the people, the tools, and the context, but also the activity, I have a
conceptual framework with which to look at leadership. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1.
Leadership practice as a system
Context
Activity.
Tools People
Graphic 1: The focus of my work: the leadership system
4 Because science does not directly fit into the school’s main goals, I have reduced this subject matter
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Activity Theory
The scholarship on activity theory is extensive. I find Engestrom and Cole’s
(Cole, 1996; Engestrom, 1999) frameworks the most helpful in guiding my analytical
work. In Engestrom’s model of activity theory (1987), an activity system integrates thesubject (who does the activity), the object (who the activity is done to), and the
instruments (what is used to accomplish the activity) into a unified whole. According toactivity theory, contexts are activity systems. Engestrom suggests that contexts are better
seen as activity systems that tie actors, outcomes, and mediating artifacts into a unified
system of action. “This is a thoroughly relational view of context,” (Engstrom, 1999). Iadopt this view, taking as my context two different subject matter divisions in elementary
schools. I will analyze the context of leadership practice in literacy as well as the contextof leadership practice in math. Cole (1996) discusses context as being both something
that surrounds as well as weaves into the situation. Using this notion applied to the work
of school leadership, math and literacy both surround leadership activity as well as weaveinto the activity.
Michael Cole extends Engestrom’s mediational triangle (discussed above) andthis provides me with a way to identify (by breaking down) critical components of
leadership activity (Cole, 1996). It guides me toward what data to collect and how to
organize it. Figure 2 (see next page) is a sketch of Cole’s expansion of Engestrom’smediational triangle with examples of data that we collected.
analysis to mathematics and literacy.
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LITERACY
Mediating artifacts--resources: Read WriteWell, word wall, 5 Week Assessments, researchbooks and articles
Goals—increase testscores; get all studentsat or above grade level
Division of labor--2 literacycoordinators; literacy committee;principal involved; writing team
Participants--"everyteacher is a writingteacher first,” variousadministrators,teachers, and assistants
Mediating artifacts--external classes andprograms, text books, various teacher boughtand produced books and packets, ISAT itemanalysis, 5 Week Assessment timeline.
Division of labor--no formalmath leader; 4 teachers formmath team
Community—Professional Development MeetingsSchool Improvement Planning
Goals—increase testscores; get all studentsat or above grade level
Figure 2: M. Cole’s expansion of Engestrom’s mediationaltriangle with some relevant data points identified.
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One important element of the mediational triangle is mediating artifacts (tools).The construct of tools is a very powerful one in the sociocultural domain. Many social
theorists believe that learning takes place in the social interaction between people andtools in the context of their environment (Hutchins, 1995; Brown, Collins & Duguid,
1989). Anthropology reminds us that the tools of a culture embody its cultural beliefs.
The construct of cultural tools is, therefore, given many definitions.For the purpose of this paper, I will borrow from Cole and Norman's constructs of
artifact and Wersch's construct of tools when I refer to the tool component of theleadership system. Cole prefers the more generic term artifact, to the term "tool" that was
used by the Russian socio-culturalists. He describes artifacts as fundamental constituents
of culture and sees them as being both material and ideal. He sees artifacts as existingonly in terms of something else--the context of the situation or activity, (Cole, 1996).
Wersch defines a cultural tool as a mediating device used to shape action in certain ways.
Mediation is the process involving the potential of cultural tools to shape actions(Wersch, 1998). Artifacts are externalized representations of ideas and intentions used by
practitioners in their practice (Norman, 1988).In thinking about cultural tools, socio-cultural theory drives us to ask different
questions, and herein lies one element of the importance of cultural tools. We must ask:
How are the tools and people changed by their use? Who is using them? For what endsand in whose interests? And finally, what are the origins of the activity? (Lee, 2001).
This is the beginning of a framework for analysis using activity theory, which looks at themediated action in terms of the interactions between mediating artifacts, division of labor,
and rules--with the community, the individual, and the object of the activity taken into
account (Cole, 1996). Activity theory, and within that the existence of the cultural tools,helps us to better understand a leadership situation. By examining the cultural tools of a
school’s leadership, and how they shape the leadership activity, we are provided with adifferent way to think about leadership practice.
In distributed leadership, as in much socio-cultural work, tools are a critical
component. People do not just lead alone—they use tools in their work. I believe that
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which tools are used, and how they are used, defines one way in which power is wielded.
For the purposes of this paper, I will primarily use the term tool.Activity theory helped frame the data I collected and analyzed. I look at several
tools (mediating artifacts) that leaders use in their work: literacy articles, a frameworkcreated based on a chapter from a literacy book, classroom math activities, and a time
line for teaching math. I also look at the activities in which these tools are used; in
Cole’s triangle this is the community component; in terms of the data collected andanalyzed, it is meetings. Other elements of Cole’s activity system are participants and
division of labor. In response to this framing, I considered the people involved inleadership practice, as well as what tasks and roles they take on. I find goals to be
another important component. I frame my entire data collection and analysis around the
stated goals of the school.
Subject Matter
Shulman (1986) identified the need to consider the relationship between teachers’cognitive understanding of subject matter and their practice. While many researchers see
subject matter clearly as an important context for teachers' work (Ball & Lacy, 1984;Little, 1993; McLaughlin & Talbert, 1993; Siskin, 1990, 1991, 1994), few look at subject
matter as it pertains to elementary teachers. Much of the subject matter scholarship
focuses primarily on the high school grades, where teachers’ practice is structured aroundsubject matter constructs. Because elementary teachers typically teach many subjects,
their practice is often considered non-subject matter specific. However, Stodolsky’s(1988) work challenges this notion, showing that elementary teachers treat subject matter
differently within their own classes. She looked at fifth grade classrooms and found that
time allocations vary for subject areas, as do the patterns of activities teachers use indifferent subject areas.
While much of this work has focused on teaching practice, very little hasexamined leadership or the implications of subject matter on leadership practice. (For
exception, see Stein & D'Amico, (2000) and Burch & Spillane, (in press)). There is a
critical disciplinary difference between math and literacy which forces us toconceptualize the foundations of math and literacy differently. Consequently, leaders
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must approach reform to these subject areas differently (Stein & D’Amico, 2000). This
chapter will explore how the leadership at one school does just that.
MethodologyWhat exactly is this thing we call leadership practice? Capturing leadership
practice is a difficult undertaking, as much of the day to day work of leaders is often done
either behind closed doors, or carried out with a seamless grace that often leaves theobserver blind to the intricate layers of decision making, expertise, experience, and
wisdom at play. My first challenge was to identify exactly who the leaders are at AdamsSchool, and then to capture what it is these key players actually do.5 One way to get at a
leader’s priorities is to look at the actions undertaken by that individual. Research shows
that what people say they do is often different from what they actually do (Argyris &Schon, 1974; Brown & Duguid, 1991; Orr, 1991). My approach was to attempt to
capture leadership practice in two ways: by looking at what leaders and followers do,
(based on data from meetings, informal leader shadows, and field note observations) andby looking at what they say they do (based on interview data of seven administrators and
three teacher leaders, for a total of 18 formal interviews and 8 informal interviews). Ianalyze day-to-day leadership practice in an urban elementary school through a case
study approach, investigating leadership practice as it connects with instructional
improvement in math and literacy. Case study methodology is appropriate for in-depthanalysis of complex issues and processes like school leadership (Shulman, 1987; Stake,
1995; Erickson, 1986; Peshkin, 1993, Yin, 1994). It makes sense to carry out a casestudy for my work, given my questions and the complexities of school instructional
leadership.
I use a constant comparative methodology with within-case sampling, (Glaser &Strauss, 1967; Miles & Huberman, 1994). I collect and analyze data on comparable
dimensions of math and literacy leadership within my case study school. I sampleactivities, processes, tools, people, roles, and times that are theoretically driven by
5 I was not satisfied that administrators are the only school leaders. They are considered positional leadersin this paper, and teachers who take on leadership responsibilities are considered to be teacher leaders,informal in the sense that they do not have titles that distinguish them as leaders.
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elements from my conceptual framework, as this is an important element of within-case
sampling (Miles & Huberman, 1994).
Data collection
Case study methodology pushes for the collection of multiple sources of data:
documentation, archival records, direct observation, participant observation, and physical
artifacts (Yin, 1994). Collecting a variety of data helps reduce the likelihood ofmisinterpretation—it allows for redundancy of data gathering and procedural challenges
to explanations (Stake, 1995). These methods of triangulation help achieve reliability inqualitative work.
For this study, I engaged in an intensive three-year investigation of leadership
practice in the school involving interviews with leaders and teachers, observations ofteaching and leading, the collection of a wide variety of relevant artifacts, and thick
description (Geertz, 1983) field notes for each visit. Meetings involving math and/or
literacy have primarily been video taped; interviews have primarily been audio taped.When taping was not a possibility, copious field notes were recorded. This work is
embedded in a larger research project: The Distributed Leadership Study (DLS), a 5-yearlongitudinal study of elementary school leadership funded by the National Science
Foundation and the Spencer Foundation. The research team conducted the 6-month pilot
phase during the winter and spring of 1999. The first full year of data collectioncommenced in September 1999 and involved eight Chicago elementary schools as
intensive case sites (an additional five schools served as interview only sites). For thepurpose of this analysis, I look at data collected during the course of four consecutive
school years: 1999-2000, 2000-2001, 2001-2002, and 2002-2003.6
Based on the instructional goals of the leadership teams, I have focused myanalysis on activities that directly relate to these stated goals. Interview data have been
collected and analyzed to identify the instructional goals that the leaders have for theschool, across time. Interestingly enough, despite a large shift in leadership that took
6 I began studying Adams School in September, 2000. Prior to 2000, Richard Halverson, and several ofour colleagues (Lisa Walker, Lauren Banks, Baylen Linnekin) collected data at Adams School as well.Therefore, we have data for Adams School that has been collected over the span of four consecutive schoolyears, spanning five calendar years, 1999-2003.
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place over these four years, the goals remain remarkably consistent: raise student
performance on standardized tests both in literacy (reading and writing) and math.7
Because of this singular and clear goal, I chose to concentrate my research on leadership
activities that most strongly connect with the achievement of this goal.Meetings are one of the most tangible ways that leadership practice can be
observed. They provide a powerful opportunity to observe leadership in practice, as well
as to watch the interactions between leaders and followers. Shadowing a leaderthroughout her day and observing meetings are good places to see leaders use tools.
Interviews are a critical way to uncover multiple facets within a case study (Stake, 1995.)The follow-up interviews are critical to determine why and how the changes have
occurred. In addition, interviews are effective ways to get at what leaders think they do,
as well as find out which individuals teachers and leaders identify as leaders. Interviewsare also important venues for learning about the people. They act as a critical place to
identify instructional goals leaders and teachers have. The nuances of leadership are
often found in the in-between places of the school day. For this reason, one of my mostvaluable data components is field notes—observations and snippets of conversations
caught in the hallways, after meetings, before school, and in various offices and publicspaces.
The data collection process has been iterative. As I have found evidence of
leadership activity that is important to the school’s goals, based on formal interviews orinformal chats with people, I have periodically widened, narrowed, or shifted my data
collection net. The purpose of collecting this variety of data, across time, is to gain abetter understanding of leadership practice in both math and literacy. The data captures
the activity of leadership practice across several leadership teams/eras. Information about
the tools used and the people involved are also captured in the data collected.
Data analysis
The purpose of this case study work was to determine how subject matter made a
difference in the way that the same school leaders engaged in their work. In order to
7 This is not very surprising since the district and the state put large emphasis on improving test scores withsevere consequences tied to any failure by schools to do so.
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describe the prioritization of subject matter, I selected a cross section of math and literacy
meetings. This cross section is representative in that it samples from multiple meetings,over time, and across both subject areas. The meetings in this subsection are typical of
meetings at Adams School. I coded meetings across several elements: who led themeetings, who talked at the meetings, how much they talked, how they talked (praising,
inviting, standing up, sitting down, etc.), and what kind of talk they engaged in (setting
expectations, setting goals, offering strategies, etc.). (See Appendix A for codingscheme.) The interview data was initially coded for subject matter relevance—each time
math or literacy came up in an interview it was coded. I then broke down how muchpositional leaders talked about subject matter and looked at what they said about it, based
on the original codes. The interview data, as well as the field note data, were used to
triangulate findings from the meeting analysis.The analysis around the leader/follower interactions looks broadly at a sub-set of
(20) meetings and then on a micro-level at talk in several representative meetings. After
the initial coding of the meetings, a pattern emerged around differences in leader andfollower interactions. I noticed that teachers in literacy meetings participated at higher
levels than they did in math meetings. I looked more closely at this pattern, returning tothe coding scheme to decipher how they talked and what they said. I contrasted this
against the teacher talk in math meetings. It became clear that the elements of the
activity systems vary across math and literacy. While I have only excerpted from a fewmeetings for the purposes of this paper, these excerpts give an accurate portrayal of the
patterns that emerge in the data. Again, I use interview and field note data to triangulatemy findings.
The Subject MattersThe Context
The district context. Urban schools serve as an important focus for the study ofinstructional leadership because of the challenges they face: high poverty rates, high
mobility rates, high teacher turn-over rates. The public, and some scholars, share a
certain skepticism about the appropriateness of intellectually rigorous curricula for poorstudents (Anyon, 1981; Spillane & Jennings, 1996). In light of this, leaders in urban
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schools in high poverty neighborhoods share a heightened challenge in making
instructional changes happen.My focus is a school within the Chicago Public School system. During the time
that I studied Adams School, the district context is particularly relevant as there wereseveral mandates that impacted math and literacy. In 1996, a restructured Chicago Public
School administration introduced two major initiatives that brought high stakes
accountability into the district. First, they put schools with 15% or fewer studentsperforming at or above grade level on academic probation. Second, in an effort to end
social promotion, students in 3rd, 6th, and 8th grades were required to meet certain scoreson the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) in order to move to the next grade. These
accountability measures dramatically transformed the landscape of the Chicago Public
Schools, and Adams was no exception. Many structures that I analyze at the school wereimplemented, to some degree, in response to these district accountability measures. In
year 03, the district implemented a reading initiative that prescribed the amount of time
students were to receive literacy instruction (minimum two hours each day) and the typesof instruction that were to be delivered.
The school context. In order to study leadership practice, I focus on observing the
activities of leadership at one school: Adams School. Adams is a public elementary
school serving between 1050-1200 pre-K through eighth grade students. The students are97% African-American; 97% of them are low income, and the school has a relatively
high mobility rate, somewhere in the neighborhood of 35%.In the late 1980’s, a new principal, Dr. Williams (at the time, Ms. Williams),
arrived at Adams School. She entered a school that housed students in two buildings. A
general lack of community existed between the two faculties (K-3 in the primarybuilding, pre-K and 4-8 in the upper building) that was represented by this geographic
divide. In addition to the rare communication between the buildings, there was littlecommunication among the faculty at all.
It was very strange…There may be four classes at a grade level and they did noteven talk. They did not have a clue at what was going on in each other’sclassrooms, they just basically closed the door… I could not see how kids couldmove from one grade level to the other, and not have a common core of
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knowledge. They would go to the next grade and everybody would knowsomething different. (Dr. Williams, interview, Date)
Teachers closed their doors and did their own thing. The school, like its neighbors, was
struggling with low standardized test scores in both reading and math. When Dr.Williams arrived at Adams, 16.1% of the students were scoring at or above national
norms on standardized tests in reading.
Structures: Dr. Williams worked to build mathematics and language artsinstruction as a way to improve student learning and performance on standardized tests.
In her 14 years at Adams, Dr. Williams also built professional community—and I arguethat this professional community revolved around language arts. There are two goals of
the language arts leadership work that was done at Adams: to improve instruction and to
improve professional community.One structure Dr. Williams created to meet both of these goals is the Five Week
Assessment cycle. With the help of her literacy coordinator, Ms. Tracy, Dr. Williams
implemented the Five Week Assessment cycle to answer the questions, “Are the studentslearning? How do you know?” This cycle was also implemented for math. The literacy
coordinator and the math coordinator distribute assessments every five weeks to grades 1-8. They then use the data to drive a variety of decisions.
In response to a district initiative (199X), Adams created a School Improvement
Plan every spring. The plan has a math and a language arts component. Dr. Williamsinvited the faculty to take part in the creation of these components of the plan, and many
teachers as well as positional leaders collaborated to create the plan each year. The FiveWeek Assessment cycle and the School Improvement Plan were structures built around
math and literacy.
Leadership shift: Dr. Schooler (the math coordinator) left Adams after Year 01 ofour study. Dr. Williams and Ms. Tracy left Adams in the summer of 2002, after Year 02
of our study. The Assistant Principal, Mrs. Richards, became interim principal inSeptember 2001, and was officially selected principal (by the school’s site council) in
January, 2002. This shift in positional leadership changed the school, as any shift of such
magnitude will. While this change has an impact on the structures, people, tools, andleadership activity I discuss in this paper, and is critical in a discussion of leadership
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practice at Adams over time, delving deeply into the shift is beyond the scope of this
paper. I will address it when relevant.
A close look at leadership practice at Adams reveals that subject does matter. Thefollowing sections will outline two significant ways in which math leadership practice
varies from literacy leadership practice at Adams school from the fall of 1999 to the
spring of 2003. The first relates to the school’s prioritization of literacy; the secondrelates to the differences in interactions between leaders and followers across subject
matter leadership activity.
Prioritization of literacyIn response to the district’s emphasis on improving literacy instruction, the
leaders in Adams school prioritize literacy over mathematics through variations in their
leadership practice. In this analysis, I consider several elements of the activity system
discussed earlier. As stated by the school’s positional leadership in interviews, one maingoal they have is to improve student performance in math and literacy (interviews, 1999-
2003). In consideration of this goal, I examine math and literacy meetings (leadershipactivities or communities) to show the four ways in which prioritization is manifested. I
consider the people involved (participants), how they allocate time, the participation of
leaders (division of labor), and the rhetoric of school leadership.
The personnel decisions (participants and division of labor).
According to the formal staff list for the 1999-2000 school year, the principal, two
assistant principals, one counselor, and a disciplinarian are in charge of Adams; at least
they are the five administrators listed at the top. But a look further down that list revealsother positional leaders: a literacy coordinator, a math coordinator, an African American
heritage coordinator8, a science magnet lab teacher. Countless other teachers’ names arefound on this list, and while their titles do not indicate any leadership responsibilities,
some of these individuals also carry incredible leadership weight.
8 This is later referred to as the Reading Coordinator, since her position/responsibilities changed over thetime of our study.
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In the course of our study of Adams School, both the math coordinator and the
literacy coordinator were promoted (externally), and both women left the school. Whilethe math coordinator was not replaced, the literacy coordinator was. When asked about
the decision not to hire a new math coordinator, Dr. Williams said,
“at this point in time, I wouldn’t want to pull any of them (the math teachers) outof the classroom… And so we were trying to work with the structure – becausewhat – you know you start pulling all your best teachers and you’re back tosquare one.” (Principal interview, 01.31.01)9
However, the next year when the literacy coordinator left, Mrs. Richards (the newprincipal) pulled one of her teachers out of the classroom and placed her in the literacy
coordinator position.
As a response to the math coordinator’s absence, the math assistant (a grandparentvolunteer turned staff member) was expected to take on more responsibility for ordering,
distributing, and collecting math resources as well as scoring math assessment tests and
keeping records. She retired after year 03 and was not replaced. The void was also filledby the establishment of the “Math Team”—a team of four, full time math teachers from
grades 1, 3, 6, and 8. As part of this transition, in which the Math Team was expected totake over the responsibility for instructional change in math, they received outside
training by a local university in certain mathematics techniques. The principal’s intent,
and the intent of the university program, was for them to then come back and train themath teachers in the building.
Here we see priority on one level: the distribution of participants varies acrossthe subject areas. In literacy, there are several leaders who are involved in literacy
activities, most of whom have no classroom responsibilities. (See Table 1.) On the other
hand, the math leaders are, with one exception, teachers will full teaching loads, expectedto do math leadership activities (ordering materials, organizing materials, preparing and
running math in-services, meetings, and tutorials; plan out, create, distribute, score, andanalyze Five Week Assessments). One striking difference is that while positional
9 Adams has a tradition of hiring key positions from within. They feel that an outsider cannot effectivelyfill these positions. (field notes, 2000-3)
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leadership is consistently involved in literacy activities, once the math coordinator left the
school, positional leaders are rarely involved in math leadership practice.
Table 1: Personnel decisions—the participantsLeader, position in school, % of contracted day spent in the classroom teaching students.Name Position and subject involvement % of day
spend inclassroom
Year in position
Dr. Schooler Math—Math coordinator 0 Year 01Ms. Dodge Math—Math assistant 0 Year 01, 02, 03Ms. Walthers Math—8th grade math teacher 100 Year 01, 02, 03, 04Ms. Brown Math—1st grade teacher M
Ms. Landly Literacy—3rd grade teacher L 100 Year 03, 04Ms. Manny Literacy—2nd grade teacher
Literacy—Reading Coordinator1000
Year 01, 02, 03Year 04
10 Ms. Walsh was the literacy coordinator from September until December of 2001; she then returned to the8th grade and Ms. Ogden became the literacy coordinator.
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Consider how leadership tasks are done, or how the division of labor among participantsvaries across math and literacy (Table 2)
Table 2.Which leaders carry out the leadership tasks? (Snapshot from Year 02; division of labor)Who carries out the
The time that is allocated for literacy activities, as compared with the time
allocated for math activities, is another striking difference in leadership practice at
Adams School. A common thread that runs through all of the schools in our study is thatthe people who work in them share their frustration about not having enough time to do
all of the tasks their practice demands. For this reason, time is a critical issue in schools.While many teachers and administrators at Adams work long hours, they still bemoan the
lack of time (field note and interview data show this). The time that leadership chooses
to dedicate to certain activities is one clear indication of how they prioritize aspects oftheir work.
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For the purpose of this discussion, I analyze time allocation in two ways: the
frequency of meetings that took place over the course of four school years (see Table 3)and the time leaders spent talking about subject matter in formal interviews.
Meetings. Interestingly enough, the time that leaders spend on literacy, as seenthrough the meeting data, is not only shown by the number of meetings they schedule,
but also by the meetings that they attend. School leaders at Adams attend more literacy
meetings, and speak more often at literacy meetings, then they do math meetings. Thiswill be taken up in further detail in the next section that examines the participation of
leaders.
Table 3.Meeting Types and frequency11 (Year 01—04; 48 meetings total)Meeting Type Frequency Literacy Frequency MathBreakfast Club Meeting 6All-faculty Meeting 7 212
Subject matter talk in leader interviews. An analysis of the interview data
suggests that literacy gets more attention in interviews as well. As part of the formalinterview protocol, formal leaders were asked about their goals for instructional change
for math, science, and literacy. We asked similar questions in regard to each subject area,and based on my analysis of 60 interviews (of principals, AP, LC, over four years), the
focus of more than half of subject matter leader attention was on literacy goals. The
exceptions to this are: the math coordinator talked exclusively about math, and oneassistant principal spoke equally about math and literacy. Explanations for this may
vary13, but the implication is clear: when positional leaders at Adams were asked subject
11 Based on how many we observed in between the fall of 1999 and the spring of 2003.12 Math is one topic, of several, at these meetings.13 Math and literacy are both the focus of district-wide high stakes testing, which may account for the smallamount of time spent on science. In many cases, the leaders’ personal knowledge base of literacy isstronger—based on their personal history information and previous professional experiences. And finally,
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matter specific questions about their practice, literacy gets more attention, more thought,
and more air time than math.
Participation of leaders (division of labor).
A third striking difference between math and literacy leadership at Adams School
is seen through the discrepancies in the participation of positional and teacher leaders.
The positional leaders at Adams participate more frequently and more actively in literacyactivities than they do in math activities. There are more teacher leaders participating in
literacy activities, and hence the overall participation in literacy far exceeds theleadership participation in math.
In this section I examine the participation of leadership in math and literacy
activities at Adams School. I will focus on meetings for this discussion, first byexploring the participation of leaders at subject specific meetings: which leaders
attended, which leader(s) led the meeting, which leaders spoke. Because it is also
important to look at what was said, not just how often or by whom things were said, thenext section examines the rhetoric of the leadership.
Positional leaders at Adams participate more in literacy meetings than they domath meetings in three ways: they attend more literacy meetings, they lead more literacy
meetings, and they talk at more literacy meetings. This section will consider a close
analysis of a sub set of the meeting data collected (seven). This is a representativesegment of the data both in frequency of literacy vs. math meetings as well in the manner
the data was collected.14
while there is a district emphasis on math and literacy, more expectations have been set out by districtoffice in regards to literacy.14 Literacy meetings happen with more frequency than math meetings in relation to this sample. This isbased on formal lists of scheduled meetings, as well as sampled meetings. The math meetings happen lessfrequently, less formally, and are more difficult to track based primarily on classroom responsibilities heldby the math leaders. The data were collected by attending meetings; some meetings were video taped,some were not. These meetings are a combination of both methods.
Clearly, positional leaders make it a priority to attend literacy meetings. With the
exception of one Breakfast Club meeting, most or all of the positional leaders are in
attendance at literacy meetings. Conversely, they are rarely in attendance at the mathmeetings. When math is discussed at all faculty meetings—which happens
occasionally— positional leaders are in attendance. A positional leader was inattendance in less than a third of the other math meetings we attended. The story is
similar for the teacher leaders.
Adams School prides itself on empowering teachers. One result of this
philosophy is that the meetings are not always run by positional leaders. In fact, our
subset of meetings shows that teachers led more meetings than did positional leaders.Interestingly enough, the only meetings that the positional leaders ran are literacy
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meetings. All of the math meetings we have collected data on were led by teacher
leaders, with one exception. In the fall of 2000, the principal shared the math componentat a back to school meeting.
Table 5.Who led the meeting (snap shot from years 01 and 02; division of labor and participants) (Positional leaders in bold, teacher leaders in italics)
Meeting Name and Subject Matter Focus Meeting leader(s)
Literacy—Kick off the year meeting PrincipalLiteracy—Literacy committee Principal, Literacy
CoordinatorLiteracy—Breakfast Club 1st Grade Teacher LLiteracy—Breakfast Club 6th Grade TeacherLiteracy—Breakfast Club 3rd Grade Teacher LMath—School Improvement Planning 1st Grade Teacher MMath—Professional Development 1st Grade Teacher M
3rd Grade Teacher L1
The level of participation is not only defined by who attends the meetings and
who leads them but in the overall talk at the meetings as well. Appendix B shows thebreakdown of exactly who talks at these meetings and how often. This complicates the
picture somewhat. When the principal, the literacy coordinator, and the readingcoordinator are in attendance, they speak. They tend to take a back seat in the Breakfast
Club meetings, which is in line with the philosophy of those meetings: for teachers to
talk. In fact, this same meeting, when it takes place for faculty in the upper buildingonly, is called Teacher Talk instead of Breakfast Club. The positional leaders dominated
the other literacy meetings.Conversely, there is little talk of positional leaders in the math meetings, if at all.
(This is largely due to their absence from these meetings.) We observed two instances
(across all meetings we observed) in which positional leaders attended a math meeting.The Literacy Coordinator attended a math SIP meeting (03.17.00), and in another
instance, the Student Needs Director attended a math PD meeting. (01.18.01)
These numbers reveal one layer of leadership practice. In addition, a significantmessage can be gleaned from looking at speech order within these meetings. The power
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position in meetings is typically who starts and ends the meeting. The principal or
literacy coordinator began four of the five literacy meetings and ended all of the literacymeetings. The literacy coordinator began one math meeting with some literacy details
from a previous meeting; this meeting was ended by a comment from a teacher as the bellrang. The other math meeting was started and ended by a teacher leader. Again, we see
positional leaders dominating the power positions in literacy meetings, while teachers
dominate these same positions in math meetings.The patterns of frequency of speech are as follows: Overall, teachers talk about a
third of the time, regardless of the subject matter of the meeting. (see Appendix B, lastcolumn). The positional leaders talk most of the time in the non-Breakfast Club literacy
meetings. At Breakfast Club meetings around literacy matters, the distribution of talk is
about equal between positional leaders, teacher leaders, and other teachers. At mathmeetings, teacher leaders dominate the talk.
Based on these data we know that literacy meetings happen more often than math
meetings, there are more positional leaders in attendance at literacy meetings than thereare at meetings about mathematics, positional leaders tend to lead literacy meetings and
not math meetings, and those positional leaders talk most of the time in literacy meetings(with the exception of Breakfast Club meetings). Talk participation helps us to gain an
overall sense of the participation leaders have in leadership activities. But it doesn’t give
us a complete picture. What do they say when they talk? How does this shape leadershippractice, and what subject matter differences can we see in their speech events?
The rhetoric of leadership.
Not only do positional leaders participate more in literacy meetings, they also
participate differently. This serves as a fourth striking difference between math andliteracy leadership practice at Adams School. In this section I push deeper into the
participation of the individuals at Adams by exploring what it is they actually say aboutmath and literacy. I will look at the nature of the speech of positional leaders, teacher
leaders, and other individuals speaking at meetings in order to better understand the
nature of their participation in math and literacy. (Appendix C shows the coding schemeused.)
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Rhetoric of positional leadership in literacy. In the subset of meetings analyzed,the speech of positional leaders in literacy meetings at Adams centered around a variety
of high level participation. They often provide a broader vision, to tie ideas together. Atthe end of a Breakfast Club meeting, the principal ends the meeting with the following
statement:
I would like to say that when I taught, we always started out with a picturebook and that always motivated them. I saw the connection righthere—our strategy is to make connections: text to text, text to self, text toworld. I also saw that we could use the verbal connections. We’ve beentalking for many years about connecting the subjects. So we’ve beenfocusing on those readers that are struggling. Many of the middle schoolstudents are reluctant to read the harder novels, and we often turn them offon reading… (Principal, Breakfast Club Meeting, 11.14.00)
She takes the opportunity to tie the faculty’s discussion of picture books with the
school’s work on making connections between subject areas, as well as having thestudents make connections in their own reading.
While needs are often identified by people other than the formal leadership,formal leaders dominate the floor when it comes to offering strategies for change.
Consider two examples from a literacy committee meeting:
I have a packet with lessons on teaching vocabulary—I’ll pass it around and ifyou want me to make you a copy, put your name on the green sticky note.(literacy coordinator, literacy meeting, 11.06.00).
Teacher modeling is important—only after the teacher models, then we move tothe next phase, guided practice, scaffolding… Don’t just jump to the strategy.The framework is still: model, guided practice, independent then strategy.(principal, literacy meeting, 11.06.00).
The positional leaders do a lot of coordinating the talk at meetings, selecting who
talks when, and determining how the meetings flow. Finally, they often offer theirexpertise (see above quote about how the principal used picture books in her own
classroom), discuss resources,
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Those of you who have the book, go to page 265, the appendix section. Itis a cheat sheet, so to speak, for making connections. I’m not saying thatthis has to be it, but it gives a starting point if you just want an overview touse for the future. Appendix F, you’ll see it connects to the othersections… (principal, literacy meeting, 11.06.00).
One of the concerns that we had was not enough short stories. I askedMrs. Smith (literacy assistant) to pull the Harcourt text booklets.(literacy coordinator, literacy meeting, 11.06.00).
and encourage collaboration
Take ten minutes right now, as a grade level, and think about what you’regoing to do. The problem is, we don’t expose them (the students) toenough non-fiction. It’s boring so they don’t get through it. We need toexpose them to other genres. How will you make connections acrosscontent areas? How are we going to deal with reading across contentareas? Begin to think about strategies. You will report back to the groupin ten minutes.(principal, 11.06.00)15
Rhetoric of positional leadership in math. When they were in attendance,
positional leaders rarely spoke in the math meetings. The two speech events made by apositional leader in a math meeting are below. In a math professional development
meeting, the Student Needs Director makes a connection to literacy and a resource
clarification. (See excerpt below.)
15 While I use excerpts from only two meetings, these are representative of the broader array of positionalleader rhetoric in literacy meetings. I could sample from numerous meetings to show similar leadershipbehavior.
Student Needs Director: “In the Lighthouse Program for firstgrade, one of the books that we used was Goldilocks and the ThreeSquares. The co-author is Marilyn Burns. It was very cute. Theyenjoyed it.”
Later in the meeting she says:“A lot of the stuff they have goes down to pre-school.”
(Math In-Service for K-3 teachers, 01.18.01)
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The literacy coordinator was at a School Improvement Meeting for math. At this
meeting, she speaks several times. (See excerpt below.)
Here we see the Literacy Coordinator attempting to get the Math Team to takeownership of the math work. The Literacy Coordinator made conscious efforts to stay
out of the math work at Adams (personal communication, 2001). She was often pulledinto the math work, and the above excerpt is an example of her attempt to give ownership
back to the math leaders.
As we have seen in these two excerpts, there are several instances in whichpositional leadership talks in math meetings. However, the talk is in no way parallel to
their participation in literacy. Indeed, in the second example we see the positionalleader’s push for non-involvement.
Teacher rhetoric: The speech of the teachers in literacy meetings centered aroundoffering examples of what they do in the classroom. In math, their speech predominantly
involves asking questions. The speech of the teacher leaders is a mix of the two. Thismakes sense because, as teachers with informal leadership roles, they walk the boundary
between positional leader and classroom teacher. In both math and literacy, they often
offered examples of what they do in their classrooms. In literacy, the teacher leaders alsooffer strategies, identify needs, offer broader vision comments, and discuss professional
development ideas. In contrast, the teacher leaders in math spend most of their time
talking about resources, clarifying, and inviting others to speak.
Teacher1: Would it have to be primary and intermediate, or would it be as a wholestaff?Math Leader 1: It would probably be divided.Teacher2: Are we going to use any of the half day sessions?Literacy coordinator: You have some on the calendar this year. How many Ms.(Math Leader 1)?Math Leader 1: I don’t know.Literacy Coordinator: They were on the calendar. Then it’s up to you to take theinitiative.
(School Improvement Planning Meeting, 03.17.00)
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This analysis of the speech at the meetings shows us dramatic differences between
math and literacy. The biggest discrepancies are in the actions of the positional leaders.They rarely attend or speak at math meetings. In literacy meetings, they not only attend,
but they open and close most meetings and they offer big picture ideas to tie thediscussions together. The discrepancies in speech on the part of the teacher leaders
reveals this prioritization of literacy as well. In literacy, teacher leaders are pushing the
discussion to a higher level, while in math the informal leaders are mainly carrying out alower level of activity: distributing resources and clarifying information for the other
teachers. Another striking difference in the rhetoric is that the literacy meetings tend toinvolve more creative rhetoric from a more diverse population, while the participation in
math meetings tend to be very limited—both in speakers and in scope.
Because the positional leadership is more involved in literacy than math, mathtends to get short changed. The lack of vision in the math meetings may, on first
glimpse, be a result of lack of training in how to lead meetings on the part of the math
teachers. However, I postulate that there is more at play than that. The math teachershave classroom duties that they clearly see as their first priorities. As the 8th grade
teacher, and Math Team Leader says:
“…now this year it’s been hard to monitor. First of all, because they have alanguage arts coordinator that’s not in the classroom. So I’m suppose to be formath, but it’s really hard for me because I have a classroom and my first priorityis my students. I know I have to be responsible for the school as well, excuse me,but I have to worry about them first. So it’s harder with me trying to keep andmonitor the way that the language arts is monitoring because I’m in a classroom.”(02.20.02, 8th grade math teacher, interview)
This leaves them less time to do the work of the school and forces them into more
of a day-to day maintenance position. Additionally, teacher leaders are not in attendanceat district accountability meetings (as administrators are); thus working on a school vision
is not at the top of their priority list. Most likely, they do not view this as part of theirjob.
An analysis of the interview data also reveals this discrepancy between the level
of discourse in literacy and math. The formal leaders tend to talk in more detail andabout higher level elements about literacy than they do about math. For example, the
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principal was asked about her goals for the school for math, science, and literacy in an
interview, (01.31.0). In her responses about math and literacy, she talks about theparticipants as well as their roles in supporting new or struggling teachers. However,
when she responds about literacy, her talk centers more around division of labor as wellas a mediating artifact. She begins by talking about a school-wide literacy coordinator
and “other teachers who’ve taken leadership roles at workshops and opening up their
classrooms to assist other teachers…” She describes how they have built on thatstructure and identified grade level literacy coordinators who work closely with the
literacy coordinator and also support new teachers. She then moves past the participantsand talks about literacy work focused at the middle school level, (we’re) “looking at ways
in which we could hopefully integrate literacy into more of a context area subjects. And
you know so that’s something we really wanted to sort of firm up as we looked at ourliteracy framework, we felt we still needed another layer of leaders, you know, so to
speak…”
In her discourse around math, the principal again describes the key participants
and their roles:
But we have four teachers who went through a math leadership training programat the University of Chicago… it’s designed…to help to enhance the knowledgeof the teachers and then to help them to develop strategies for working with otherteachers.
She then describes how two of these leaders have helped a teacher get needed
materials, and then the principal begins to talk about a teacher who is retiring.
While the principal continues to discuss the literacy goals, the people involved,and the tasks at hand, she trails off on the math example and gets side tracked into a
monologue about personnel challenges and teachers who aren’t performing up to par.Essentially, her literacy response remains content driven, focusing more on the literacy
community and division of labor , while her math discussion soon becomes oriented only
on participants. In this example we see a pattern that emerges across the interview dataas a whole: the positional leaders talk at a higher level about literacy than they do
mathematics.
Summary
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The leadership activity at Adams School clearly reveals that literacy is a priority
over math. This prioritization is revealed in the staffing decisions, the time they allocateto subject matter activities, the leaders’ participation at these activities, and in the rhetoric
of the school leaders. In regards to participants, there are more positional leadersworking on literacy than there are in math. The division of labor is also different: the
positional leadership at Adams schedules more meetings around literacy. They attend
these meetings more frequently, and always talk at these meetings. Their rhetoric aroundliteracy reflects a comprehensive understanding of the goals for the school, and they work
to bring that big picture to the forefront of these literacy meetings. On the other hand,they rarely attend the math meetings. In their absence, a cadre of math teachers has
arisen to fill these leadership roles.
Certain elements exist that explain why literacy is a priority of the leadershippractice at Adams School. While the district emphasizes both math and literacy in their
high stakes testing policies, they also place more emphasis on reading and writing
improvement due to the significant struggles of students in these areas. Overall, readingand writing are seen as part of every subject area (“we are all reading teachers”) whereas
mathematics is seen as a much more narrowly defined field.16 Most of the positionalleaders are more comfortable with, and better versed in, the literacy domain. The
backgrounds and personal histories attest to literacy as a strength, and people tend to
work toward their strengths.
Experts and Learners
In addition to these differences across participants and division of labor in
leadership practice at Adams, I noticed another interesting pattern emerging from thedata. While some meetings looked very similar across math and literacy, other meetings
were quite different. In order to explore this pattern, I categorized the subject mattermeetings into three broad categories: Kick off the year meetings, School Improvement
Planning meetings, and Professional Development meetings. The first two categories are
16 Literacy is discussed at all-school faculty meetings while math is usually discussed at math teacher onlymeetings.
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self-explanatory; in this analysis, I call Professional Development meetings any meeting
in which new ideas are shared and/or discussed.
Literacy: Teachers as experts:
Consider two types of literacy Professional Development meetings: Breakfast
Club and Literacy Committee meetings.
Breakfast Club meetings. When Dr. Williams originally came to Adams, one of
the structures she put into place to support improvement in literacy, as well as get herfaculty to talk to each other about teaching practice, was the Breakfast Club. Breakfast
Club is a monthly gathering in which the teachers voluntarily arrive before school to
discuss an article—typically about literacy teaching practice.
“…we engaged in Breakfast Club and Teacher Leader so that the teachers gotmore opportunity, greater opportunities to discuss with one another and also tofind out what’s going on in each other’s classrooms. Because we didn’t know.Teaching can be a very closed situation, very, very closed,” (literacy coordinator,Tracy, 6.13.01).
The Principal buys breakfast for the teachers (out of her pocket), and the Literacy
Coordinator typically identifies an article and a teacher to guide the discussion. While
the Principal and Literacy Coordinator are in attendance at the Breakfast Clubs, they tendto sit back and allow the teachers to discuss literacy teaching practice among themselves.
In order to further encourage teacher involvement, the Literacy Coordinator empowers
teachers to take the lead at these meetings. She runs the first Breakfast Club of the year,and then she chooses critical players to act as moderator for the remaining meetings. For
example, in November 2000, the article presented at the Breakfast Club was about usingpicture books in the classroom to get students interested and engaged in reading.
Because the Literacy Coordinator was getting resistance from the upper grade
teachers—who claimed this strategy worked for the younger grades but did not work witholder kids (a typical issue at Adams: the divide between the lower and upper
grades)—the Literacy Coordinator chose a sixth grade teacher to lead the discussion. Inhaving a middle school teacher lead this meeting, and talk about her success with this
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strategy in her own classroom, more middle school teachers left the meeting willing to try
it out in their classroom.The talk at these breakfast club meetings is unique. A true give and take occurs at
these meetings, and the positional leaders are unusually quiet. The teachers take over andcollaborate around the ideas offered in the article. The lead teacher offers her insight,
questions, and connections to personal practice, and from there the other teachers join the
discussion. The principal and the literacy coordinator take this back seat approachbecause they want the teachers to be involved, but also because they want the teachers to
do the work of making sense of the ideas and thus be inclined to internalize them andchange their practice.
Literacy Committee Meetings: Another typical literacy Professional
Development meeting is the Literacy Committee meeting. Consider the followingexcerpt from a literacy committee meeting November 2000.
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1. Principal: we’re going to quickly move through the agenda… we would like to focus in, in2. particular, on grades 2-8 although we know there are some first grade teachers here that have3. things to contribute. We’d like to look at the Ten Week assessment results, then we will move4. into Chapter 6 of the book “Strategies that Work.” Some of you have done successful things5. so we will have time for sharing. We’ve found that the things we learn best we learn through6. sharing. We are ensuring we move in the right direction; ensure that the students are successful7. on that ten week assessment. Ms. (Literacy Coordinator), will present the ten week assessment8. results.”9. Literacy Coordinator: First I would like to say congratulations to grade levels—all grade10. levels made some improvements from the five week assessment to the ten week assessment11. which is a reflection of your time and commitment to getting students to learn…Third through12. fifth: need to work on abilities to write descriptive words… probably lacking in vocabulary,13. ability to pick out details from the story. They did a good job identifying the problem and14. solution of the story…which leads me to middle school: problem and solution didn’t15. always match…This is truly a concern. They had a little trouble determining the important16. information in the story. The questions missed were mostly vocabulary questions… I have17. a packet with lessons on teaching vocabulary—I’ll pass it around and if you want me to make18. you a copy, put your name on the green sticky note…19. (When the Literacy Coordinator finishes up Principal indicates to AAHC, who takes the floor.)20. African-American Heritage Coordinator: “Real quick, I did this real quick, Ms. (LC)21. asked me to do Chapter 6 and I did it quickly… (hands out a packet she put together.)22. “The whole chapter deals with three ways to make connections.”23. (she goes through the handout)“24. Get sticky notes and cut them in half (for students to use as they annotate the text)…”25. Teacher1: “Get them at Sam’s—I just did. They’re cheaper there.”26. AAHC: (Gives an example from her life to apply these strategies.)27. Teacher2: “Can I give an example? (We read) Shiloh—not the novel, just part of it. She28. (student in my class) knows how the dog felt. Kicks it just like Shiloh got kicked. (Example29. of student whose parent abuses their dog.) Sounder—both stories involve characters with dogs. I30. brought in the article from the Sun Times about the dog fighting. They didn’t know an abused31. animal but it’s in the world—not a dog fight but still a dog being mistreated.”32. AAHC: “Expose them to as many different genres. Last thing…the children must know33. which connection you’re making.”34. Teacher3: “Excuse me, I don’t have the sheet with the graphic.”35. AAHC: “The last chapter talks about how important it is when children are actually able to relate36. to the text. If you haven’t started, start…Get your little snippets; they’ll be your best friend.”37. Teacher4: “Last year we had ____ which asked for prior knowledge. I’ll make copies for the38. different grades. It worked well.”39. Teacher5: “We need to make sure they understand what it means to connect. What we mean40. by these words.”41. Principal: Teacher modeling. Only after the teacher models, then we move to the next phase.42. Guided practice, scaffolding, finally independent. (The) application of strategy in independent43. situations. Don’t just jump to the strategy. The framework is still: Model, guided practice,44. independent, then strategy.”45. Teacher1: “I can give an example of that. I tell the kids, “Take out a piece of paper, I’m going46. to read aloud. If you have questions, responses, write them down. I know you (motions to47. LC who is nodding her head) told us to do this and of course you are absolutely right…”48. Literacy Coordinator: Talk about a meta-cognitive process. That’s it when you hear that phrase. .
(Fieldnotes, 11.06.00)
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This meeting is another example of the active interplay of teachers aroundliteracy. Positional leaders participate heavily in this meeting. The Principal starts the
meeting and sets the agenda (lines 1-8). The Literacy Coordinator reports on results of
Five Week Assessment and offers resources to support weaknesses (lines 9-18). TheAfrican-American Heritage Coordinator hands out a framework she has created from the
book Strategies that Work (a text that the Principal and the Literacy Coordinatorpurchased for all teachers) (lines 20-24). The chapter is specifically about strategies for
how to get students to make connections when reading. From this point, the teachers
participate in the conversation. Two teachers offer resources to the other teachers:Teacher1, line 25 and Teacher4, lines 37-38.. Another teacher jumps in with an example
from her classroom practice that connects with the framework presented (Teacher2, lines27-32). In participating in this way, this fifth grade teacher enables other teachers to hear
a strategy for doing this in the classroom. Teacher5 identifies a need that they have to
address with their students (lines 39-40). In this way, she pushes the conversation to ahigher level, presenting a real need the school, as a whole, must address. This is a small
sample, but it represents the kind of collaboration and sense-making that commonly takesplace at literacy meetings.
The pattern across most of the Professional Development meetings around
literacy involve this collaborative style. In fact, the percentage of speech between leadersand followers is more even in literacy professional development meetings than any other
meeting type. In fact, on average, teachers talk more than leaders at these meetings. (get
figure here) Teachers are empowered and encouraged to share their expertise, and theydo. They consistently talk about their classroom practice and how it connects to the
theory at hand.
Math: Teachers as learners
Professional Development meetings in math fall into two categories:informational sessions and hands-on activity sessions. Both types of math meeting are
always led by classroom teachers, one of the four that constitute the Math Team.
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The informational meetings are strikingly similar to the kick off the year
meetings. The leaders tell the teachers what is expected of them, and the teachers askquestions. No discussion of ideas or sharing classroom practice occurs, with the
exception of the lead teachers talking about their own classroom practice in relation towhat they are teaching. Here, the teachers function in an empty vessel mode—they are
“filled up” with teaching strategies and content offered by the leaders.
Consider one math professional development meeting that is representative ofmathematics meetings at Adams. This meeting is a meeting for K-3 math teachers. The
meeting is led by two teachers (a first grade teacher and a third grade teacher) from theMath Team who act as Math Leader #1 and Math Leader #2. Typical of mathematics
leadership activities at Adams, there is only one positional leader present at this meeting
(the Student Needs Director). Math Leader #1 and Math Leader #2 provide each teachera folder with pre-packaged activities they can use directly in their classrooms. The
breakdown of the meeting is as follows:
Table 6.Math Professional Development Meeting (Year 02)Activity Person involvedIntroduction and welcome Math Leader #1Explanation of various math resources Math Leaders #1 and #2Questions about the resources TeacherSharing of classroom practice Math Leaders #1 and #2Sharing of NCTM standards Math Leader #1Sharing of computer activties for classroom Math Leader #2Clarification questions Various teachersInvitation to share Math Leader #1Explanation of packet with examples ofclassroom practice
Math Leaders # 1 and #2
The leaders dominate the talk. In this meeting, the math leaders invite theteachers into the conversation, but the teachers do not engage significantly. See the
following excerpt from the math meeting (01.18.01):
Roughly half way through the meeting, when they have gotten very little participationand even some silence when asked specific questions related to the activities they share,one leader pauses and says:
Leader #1: Any questions, comments, suggestions?Teacher1: What’s a reflector?
And again, later in the meeting:
Leader #1: Questions, comments, suggestions? We love suggestions?Silence.
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This interplay between leaders and followers is dramatically different from thecollaboration we see in literacy. In literacy, teachers are eager to share; in math, they sit
and listen, asking the occasional clarifying question. This math meeting is one
directional. The leaders tell the teachers what they can teach, and the teachers listenquietly and rarely interact. The teacher interactions are limited to asking clarification
questions , or to simply not participating at all. In this way, the teachers take on a passive
learner role.
In other professional development sessions around math, we see a slightly
different activity. The math leader or leaders run the teachers through a hands-on activitythat they learned through their math course at the local university (give two dates here).
In these cases, the followers act as learners, or students, carrying out the math task andlearning the material as they go. Take for example another K-3 meeting (10.28.02).
Math Leader #1 and Math Leader #3 give the teachers a folder with several activities.
The meeting is formed around three activities the leaders did at a workshop. The first is awarm up activity in which the teachers have to guess the number on their back, asking
only yes and no questions of their colleagues. The second activity has the teacherswriting directions about a picture they have in front of them and then they give their
partner directions to draw this same picture. In the final exercise, the math leaders have
the teachers trying to solve a tangram puzzle. The teachers are much more engaged inthis math meeting then we see in other meetings. This engagement, however, is limited
to the activity of doing the math. They do not discuss the mathematical concepts, nor do
they share their classroom practice in connection with these ideas as we see in the literacymeeting example. The sense-making we see in the literacy meetings is not present at
these math meetings. The math leaders run through a math exercise without engagingthem in a discussion around what this means for their teaching practice. Again, we see
the teachers acting as learners. They are there to learn the activities they can use, and the
math involved if need be, but they are not an active part of the sense-making process.
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How tools impact practice.
An examination of tools used helps to amplify this difference betweenparticipation in literacy and math meetings. While some tools are consistent between
both practices (Five Week Assessment data, for example), some tools vary dramatically.Literacy leaders bring tools—like frameworks from book chapters and articles about
teaching practice—and the exercise in the meeting is to make sense of the tool. The
teachers then take that sense-making back to their own teaching practice, and create theirown lessons. In contrast, the math leaders often bring pre-packaged tools to the math
teachers. They have removed the sense-making step and have simply offered concreteways for the math teachers to teach in their classrooms. The form of the tool drives the
meeting activity, and consequently we see differences in the leadership practice across
the math and literacy communities.
Sense-making tools. The tool leadership uses in Breakfast Club meetings is the
article up for discussion. This tool acts as an object that spans the boundary between thepositional leaders (the article is selected by the Literacy Coordinator, based on her
perceived need for professional development) and the teachers (the ones who read andmake sense of the article, applying the ideas to their own classroom practice) (Wenger,
1999). In the literacy committee meeting we considered, the tool brought to the table is a
framework from a chapter of a book about teaching literacy that the teachers all own.Conversely, in math the tools do not require any sense-making. They are pre-packaged
and ready to implement in the classroom. This is true about the folders given at the hands-onmeetings, as well as the actual activities the teachers are exposed to. Another example of this
‘pre-packaged’ math tool is the time line the Math Team gave to the math teachers in the fall of
Year 03. In this meeting, the math leaders present the instructional focus for the math teachers.In response to declining test scores in mathematics, the math team met over the summer to
conduct an item-analysis of the ISAT. They created a document that outlined, for every grade,which math concepts were on the test and with what frequency. Using the text-book as their
guide, the math team then mapped out the entire year for every grade, establishing a time table
for chapter completion and assessment dates. This document drove the instruction and
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assessment schedule for the whole school in mathematics. While many teachers struggled within
the timeframe laid out, this became a focal point for mathematics teaching in the building.
This ties back into the lack of big picture elements that the first section of my analysis
reveals about math. The math leaders, as teachers, have strengths. They provide good, usefulresources; they talk about their own practice; they offer model lessons. They do not have the
time, and perhaps even the relevant school and district information, to offer big picture vision.
Thus, the need for positional leaders to take charge of certain components of mathematicsleadership practice becomes highlighted in the case of this school.
While never explicitly stated by any member of the faculty at Adams, my analysis ofleadership activity reveals a distinct difference in leadership practice at Adams: teachers are able
to collaborate and problem solve around literacy but in mathematics that culture does not exist.
An exploration of the tools that leaders use in their leadership activity makes this distinctionmore explicit.
Conclusions and future workIn the case of Adams, the leadership activity around math and literacy varies
across ways in which literacy is prioritized, as well as ways in which leaders and
followers interact—as shaped by tools. The activity systems of math and literacy, at thispoint in time at this particular school, vary dramatically. From this discussion, we can
see that some of the mediating artifacts in literacy are different from the ones that exist in
math. In math they are prescriptive and require little to no teacher input or thought.Conversely, the artifacts in literacy invite the teachers to participate in a collaborative and
more sophisticated manner. There are more participants (positional leaders as well asteachers) in literacy than there are in math, and they speak more often in literacy
activities. The division of labor is different as well. Based on preliminary analysis, the
rules and norms vary across math and literacy as well; this requires more consideration,as does the different role mediating artifacts play across subject matter.
Exploring this prioritization, and this contrast between followers as experts vs.learners, offers us a better understanding of leadership practice. At Adams, the ways that
leaders make decisions about hiring priorities, allocate time, participate in leadership
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activities, and talk about curricular areas are all subject matter specific. Even the ways
that followers participate in subject matter activities vary across math and literacy.It is no longer enough to state that leaders lead instruction. They specifically lead
instruction differently in different domains, as this case study of Adams School reveals.Leaders will always make priorities in their practice; this is the nature of managing their
work. By breaking leadership practice into these components, we can then pay attention
to what priorities are made, and how these impact a school.Future work should extend beyond these components of leadership activity, as we
try to better understand the practice of leadership. In addition, I plan to explore thechanges in these subject matter differences over time. The shift in positional leaders at
Adams provides me with an interesting opportunity to watch these communities of
practice shift over time. By looking at how the communities of practice around math andliteracy are formed at Adams, and how they change, I can learn more about the nuances
of leadership and continue to offer insight into the very nature of leadership practice.
More work is also needed in a more in-depth study of the roles that specific leaders andfollowers play, and the dynamic element within those roles.
We know a lot about leadership. But we still do not know a lot about whatexactly leaders do. A better understanding of the practice of school leadership around
subject matter differences can help as schools continue working to successfully reform
their instructional practice.
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Appendix A: Coding scheme for analysis of meeting dataThis work was heavily influenced by Heller and Firestone (1995) and Firestone andCorbett (1988)
Meeting label:Type of meeting:Math and/or Literacy or Other (specify):
Who is at the meeting, who speaks, and how many times:Who Speaks? How many timesFormal Leaders(administrators)
Teachers
Other
The How (how the talk happens)Talk Coordination PersonPoint Person 1Point Person 2First WordIntroduce Point PersonEnding VoiceLast WordOz
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ReportingAcademicOverlay
Person # of times What they say
SelfClassroom Author
AnnouncerGrade levelSchool Author
AnnouncerOutsideDictate
Announcer
Non-AcademicOverlay
Person # of times What they say
Classroom AuthorAnnouncer
School AuthorAnnouncer
OutsideDictate Announcer
Other "how" Person # of times What they sayClarificationRephrases/Repeats foremphasisAsks for helpOffers help in response torequest (see above)
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Professional community/collegiality
Person # oftimes
What they said
Invites othersTeam playerCollaborationExpertiseSets toneGoes outsideof roleReferencingothersDisagree withsomething thatis said
PeopleMaintenance
Person and #of times
What they said
Provide recognitionRole assignmentBlameCheck inHandlesdisturbancesPraiseEncouragement
Other stuff you notice about how the talk happens:
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The What (what they talk about)ResourcesAcademicOverlay
Person Number oftimes
What they said
ObtainingresourcesDistributingresourcesReminding useof resourcesUsing resourceShortcoming inresourceSharing newresourceTeaching use ofresource
Appendix B: Who spoke at the meeting and how often (snap shot from Year 01, 02)(Positional leaders in bold, Teacher leaders in italics, other individuals in regular text.)Meeting Name andSubject MatterFocus