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Adam Gamoran	Tona Williams

Researchers studying schools as organizations often confront a tension between the need to achieve an in-depth understanding of local organizational conditions, on the one hand, and the need to know whether the knowledge gained from such case studies can be generalized more broadly, on the other.

Drawing on a national database helped WCER researchers Adam Gamoran and Tona Williams say more about how a school's organizational context can support teachers' efforts to improve their teaching.

Gamoran and Williams and their colleagues were concerned with how schools and school districts support teachers' efforts to improve their teaching. In their examination of cases of teacher change in Massachusetts and Wisconsin, they discovered that leadership and autonomy were important aspects of schools' organizational contexts that supported change. The question then became: Was the level of autonomy and leadership they found in these cases really significant, in a national context?

In two districts Gamoran and Williams interviewed teachers, surveyed them, and observed them in professional development seminars. In these districts, teacher change occurred through partnerships between university researchers and mathematics and science teachers as they developed classroom practices of "teaching for understanding" - that is, attending to student thinking, focusing on powerful scientific and mathematical ideas and practices, and developing equitable classroom learning communities. Gamoran and Williams' study explored how the organizational context of each site affected collaboration to teach for understanding.

Gamoran and Williams found that the sites encouraged collaboration through a combination of two elements: organic management and distributed leadership. Organic management means that leaders respond to needs that emerge from teaching, instead of simply allocating resources in a bureaucratic manner. Distributed leadership takes advantage of expertise at all organizational levels and allows both teachers and administrators to make important decisions, instead of centralizing authority. These two practices enabled the schools to adapt to changes in teachers' thinking and classroom activities in ways that would not have been possible had the schools relied solely on more traditional school organization.

The study also found that administrators who adopted a style of organic management that responded to teacher initiatives faced two important tradeoffs: (a) when teachers were more autonomous, it was more difficult to establish a coherent direction for the school; and (b) when teachers provided their own leadership, it was more challenging to ensure the completion of routine administrative tasks. Across the sites, administrators adopted a range of strategies to address these tradeoffs.

In the cases studied, leadership in support of teacher change tended to focus either on establishing a compelling district vision that supported teaching for understanding or on providing teachers with the autonomy to develop their own visions. Each approach appeared to be effective. Gamoran and Williams also found that leaders most effectively supported change when they distributed authority beyond conventional leadership positions, while also finding ways to manage the necessary logistical details of professional development and other teacher improvement processes.

Comparison to national averages

Analysis of only two districts could not give Gamoran and Williams the perspective necessary to interpret the broader significance of their findings. Without knowledge of national averages for the factors they studied, Gamoran and Williams would have been limited to comparing the cases to one another and guessing about their overall importance. Therefore, when designing their survey, they drew most of the questions from the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). This allowed them to compare their findings with national data. When applied systematically, such national-sample data sets can bridge macro-/micro-level, and qualitative/quantitative, gaps in education research.

In the case studies, Gamoran and Williams found that leaders in the Wisconsin site emphasized providing teachers the autonomy to establish their own visions, whereas leaders in the Massachusetts site developed a district-wide vision to overcome a prior lack of coherence among teachers and schools. In survey responses, compared to national averages, teachers in both states reported higher levels of classroom autonomy and influence over school policy, which suggests the presence of distributed leadership. Teachers in the Wisconsin district reported a great deal of influence over the selection of instructional materials and teaching techniques, and an extraordinary level of influence over school policy. Massachusetts teachers, in contrast, scored lower on autonomy and influence. This pattern was consistent with interview responses from teachers, principals, and district staff that indicated the prominence of distributed leadership in the Wisconsin site, in particular.

At the same time, the Wisconsin and Massachusetts teachers both scored below national norms in the degree to which they perceived administrative personnel (and especially principals) as offering strong leadership and support. These findings, which suggest a lack of focus on centralized, top-down leadership, are consistent with Gamoran and Williams' interpretation that opening opportunities for teacher autonomy means reducing principals' vision-setting role.

Though Gamoran and Williams' study centered on developing an in-depth understanding of a small number of cases, the process of comparing some of their data against national norms made their analysis more robust.

For more information, contact Gamoran at gamoran@ssc.wisc.edu or Williams at twilliam@ssc.wisc.edu.

Funding for this research was provided by the National Center for Improving Student Learning and Achievement in Mathematics and Science, supported by funds from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (Grant No. R305A60007). Findings and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the supporting agencies.

Reference
Gamoran, A., Anderson, C. W., Quiroz, P. A., Secada, W. G., Williams, T., and Ashmann, S. (2003). Transforming teaching in math and science: How schools and districts can support change. New York: Teachers College Press.