TY - JOUR
T1 - Organizing for instruction in education systems and school organizations
T2 - How the subject matters
AU - Spillane, James P.
AU - Hopkins, Megan
N1 - Funding Information:
Work on this article was supported by NebraskaMATH Study, a Distributed Leadership Study project (http://www.distributedleadership. org/DLS/projects), funded by a research grant from the National Science Foundation (DUE-0831835). We gratefully acknowledge our collaborators at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, including Jim Lewis, Carolyn Edwards, Ruth Heaton and Wendy Smith. The work was also supported by the Distributed Leadership Studies funded by research grants from the National Science Foundation (REC-9873583, RETA Grant # EHR-0412510). Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and Institute for Policy Research supported this work. All opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agency.
PY - 2013/12
Y1 - 2013/12
N2 - Teaching, the core technology of schooling, is an essential consideration in investigations of education systems and school organizations. Taking teaching seriously as an explanatory variable in research on education systems and organizations necessitates moving beyond treating it as a unitary practice, so as to take account of the school subjects implicated in the work. Building on and extending earlier work, in this paper we examine subject matter differences in how one education system (Local Educational Agency) and its elementary schools organize for instruction in the core elementary school subjects. Specifically, this paper explores how education leaders and teachers in one local American school district interact with one another with respect to advice and information about teaching and learning in literacy, mathematics and science. We examine similarities and differences in school staff members' advice and information networks and consider how these differences relate to the formal organizational infrastructure intended to support instruction.
AB - Teaching, the core technology of schooling, is an essential consideration in investigations of education systems and school organizations. Taking teaching seriously as an explanatory variable in research on education systems and organizations necessitates moving beyond treating it as a unitary practice, so as to take account of the school subjects implicated in the work. Building on and extending earlier work, in this paper we examine subject matter differences in how one education system (Local Educational Agency) and its elementary schools organize for instruction in the core elementary school subjects. Specifically, this paper explores how education leaders and teachers in one local American school district interact with one another with respect to advice and information about teaching and learning in literacy, mathematics and science. We examine similarities and differences in school staff members' advice and information networks and consider how these differences relate to the formal organizational infrastructure intended to support instruction.
KW - instructional improvement
KW - instructional systems
KW - school organization
KW - school subject matter
KW - social networks
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U2 - 10.1080/00220272.2013.810783
DO - 10.1080/00220272.2013.810783
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84888020737
SN - 0022-0272
VL - 45
SP - 721
EP - 747
JO - Journal of Curriculum Studies
JF - Journal of Curriculum Studies
IS - 6
ER -