Special Issue Send Off

It has been a pleasure to release the special issue in AJE called: “Understanding How Structure and Agency Influence Education Policy Implementation and Organizational Change.”

Thank you for reading the blog posts and engaging with the articles. As we mentioned in the first post, we have opened up access to the issue’s intro and commentary. If you missed our blogs from earlier in the week, here are the links:

1) The Special Issue Alert

2) Stability and change of mentoring practices in a capricious policy environment: Opening the black box of institutionalization

3) Principals’ conceptions of instructional leadership and their informal social networks: An exploration of the mechanisms of the mesolevel

4) Duel or Duet? A portrait of two logics of reading instruction in an urban school district

As a send off, here are the last two abstracts of the special issue. They are great articles, so check them out at the main website for the journal:

“Between Structure and Agency: Contextualizing School Leaders’ Strategic Responses to Market Pressures”

Huriya Jabbar, University of Texas

Abstract

School choice is expected to place pressure on schools to improve in order to attract and retain students. However, little research has examined how competition for students actually operates in socially embedded education markets. Economic approaches tend to emphasize individual actors’ choices and agency, an “under-socialized” perspective, while sociological approaches provide an over-socialized view, emphasizing social structure, such as race, class, and institutions, over agency. In this study, I examine the interplay between structure and agency in education markets to (a) examine how a school’s position in the market hierarchy influences how it is represented and viewed as a rival by network competitors, and (b) explore how a school’s position in the network of competitors influences the possible and actual strategic actions that schools adopt in response to market pressures. Using case-study methods in New Orleans, I find school leaders’ positions in the socially constructed market hierarchy and in a social network of competitors influenced their course of action, which further determines their market positions.

“Going Off Script: Structure and Agency in Individualized Education Program Meetings”

Laura E. Bray, University of Pittsburgh

Jennifer Lin Russell, University of Pittsburgh

Abstract

In this comparative case study, we draw from neoinstitutional and structuration theory to examine the Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings for five high school students identified with specific learning disabilities. Specifically, we examined how participants interacted during the IEP meetings, and how learning, instruction, and postsecondary transition were discussed. Findings suggest that the IEP document served as the dominant script, or structure, for the IEP meetings. This dominant script established roles for participation, and influenced participants’ agency within the meetings. We also highlight instances of disruption when participants exerted agency and went off script breaking from the institutionalized structure of the meetings.