Duel or Duet?: A portrait of two logics of reading instruction in an urban school district by Sarah Woulfin

Over the past fifty years, there have been swings in United States education policy between didactic, basic-skills reading instruction and constructivist, whole language reading instruction. Under pressure to improve reading achievement, districts devote attention to issues of literacy and leadership. Many districts have initiated coaching as a lever to catalyze teacher development and reading reform. In this context, policies, ideas, and leadership play roles in influencing instructional—and institutional—change. I wrestle with these issues in a recently published article, entitled Duel or Duet?: A portrait of two logics of reading instruction in an urban school district. My article in the American Journal of Education uses neo-institutional theory to demonstrate how two logics of reading instruction were represented in policy and enacted by district leaders and coaches.

Advancing the scholarship on structure-agency, this paper centers upon the lived logics structuring the implementation of an ambitious reading reform. My concept of lived logics refers to a strand, principle, or practice of a logic that an actor espouses, enacts, or ‘dances’ with. Bridging the divide between structure and agency, lived logics provides a lens to view the ways in which logics, as structures, play out in actors’ practice. I determined that lived logics were reflected in educators’ beliefs and practices, and administrators and coaches refracted these logics. Thus, logics were not merely embedded in policy documents or instructional materials in a static manner. Instead, logics were apparent in actors’ encounters, or connections, with the environment.

The findings of this paper are grounded in data from a thirteen month, qualitative case study of a reading reform in a medium-sized district in California. Data sources included: interviews with district and school leaders, coaches, and teachers; observations of coaches’ work, professional development sessions, and classroom practice; and artifacts (e.g., instructional materials, professional development handouts, posters in classrooms). First, I characterize two logics of reading instruction: Accountability First and Just Read. Second, I show that the principles and practices of these logics ‘lived’ in educators’ values, beliefs, and practices. In this paper, I portray how district leaders advanced both logics. I also portray the ways in which coaches hybridized Accountability First and Just Read, with consequences for reform efforts.

The qualitative findings regarding the manner in which these logics ‘lived’ in this district are important because they explicate the interrelationship between institutional structures and agency in the context of education reform. Accountability First and Just Read set goals for reading instruction and defined appropriate ways to teach reading; these logics were reflected and instantiated in this district, its coaching system, and its educators’ beliefs and practices. District leaders and coaches danced with these logics in different ways. It is evident that district and school actors worked in multiple ways to advance the ideas of these logics. Coaches played a pivotal role in refracting Accountability First and Just Read. In particular, coaches communicated ideas about reading instruction, emphasizing specific ideas in certain contexts. In the metaphor of dance, sometimes coaches were doing classical ballet, while other times improv dance.

This paper breaks ground by operationalizing how educational leaders deploy logics. My findings provide insights on how leaders innovate by combining ideas in a novel way. Specifically, I present how leaders—from the assistant superintendent and coaches to teachers—created new forms of reading instruction melding the principles and practices of Accountability First and Just Read. This means that, rather than being pawns controlled by macro-level forces, leaders improvised while engaging with logics. It is important to note that, at times, these new constructions of reading differed in substantive ways from policymakers’ intentions.

Duet or Duel addresses the intricate dance of instructional leaders with conceptualizations of reading instruction within an urban district, and it would be beneficial to also consider how these leaders engage with other logics of the education field. Furthermore, more research is needed on the degree to which leaders are more—or less receptive—to ideas brokered by non-system actors, such as professional development vendors and school reform consultants. This would shed light on the dance moves of instructional reform’s extended cast of characters. Additionally, this could yield understandings of the structural factors and micro-processes influencing the linkages between the system and non-system. If we’re serious about instructional reform, it will be vital to expose the mechanisms by which educators encounter, weave, and communicate ideas from policy.

Sarah L. Woulfin is an assistant professor in the department of Educational Leadership at UConn’s Neag School of Education who studies the relationship between education policy, leadership, and instructional reform. Using lenses from organizational sociology, she investigates how leaders affect teachers’ responses to school reform.