This paper develops a new, broader, and more realistic lens to study (lacking) linkages between government policy and school practices. Drawing on recent work in organization theory, we advance notions on cluster of organization routines and the logic of complementarities underlying organizational change. This lens allows looking at how schools do…

What happens when a state's literacy reform policy allows for ownership and individualized diversification of the policy's instructional mandates at the level of district and school? How do systems and individuals experience the change in reform and respond to both the power and the pressures of having to design and implement their own literacy…

This paper undertakes a critical analysis of a planned change, the Safe Learning Model (SLM), devised over time by Concern Worldwide, and implemented in 100 primary or elementary schools in a rural district of Sierra Leone. We situate the documentation pertaining to the SLM (micro) within its wider national (meso) and international (macro) context…

Using educational advisors to facilitate the implementation of innovations in schools is a widespread, yet still relatively little studied and understood strategy in reform policies. This article reports on an exploratory, multiple case study on the support provided by external advisors to secondary schools in Flanders (Belgium) on the…

The Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) has become one of the most influential forces in global education. The growing influence has been accompanied by growing criticism. For nearly two decades since the first round of PISA was conducted in 2000, the global assessment program has been roundly scrutinized and criticized by…

This paper discusses the change of educational governance by developing and using a theory of policy instrumentality. It is based on the policy instruments approach in political studies and on the cultural-historical activity theory. It is used to study the relationships and changes of policy instruments and objectives of a major school…

The Common Core State Standards Initiative (Common Core) was spearheaded by policy entrepreneurs, unveiled nationally in 2010, and initially received strong support from leaders in state and federal government, philanthropic foundations, the business sector, and teacher unions. However, the reform came into the crosshairs of an ideologically wide…

Educational reforms are often translated in and implemented through artifacts. Although research has frequently treated artifacts as merely functional, more recent work acknowledges the complex relationship between material artifacts and human/organizational behavior. This article aims at disentangling this relationship in order to deepen our…

Principal leadership is the key to successful implementation of mandated, high-accountability, teacher evaluation systems. Given the magnitude and complexity of change at the school level, understanding principals' perceptions, responses, and concerns is essential for effective change and support during implementation. Thus, research that…

This multiple case study investigated 143 teachers' responses to focus group questions about their experiences with the simultaneous implementation of three disruptive innovations as part of the U.S. Race-to-the-Top (RTTT) agenda: the Common Core Learning Standards, data-driven instruction, and annual professional performance reviews. We asked:…

We report on a study of three school jurisdictions in the province of Alberta. The original premise for the research on which this report is based was to investigate the diverse ways that school districts had administered resources that were provided through a major initiative to improve learning in the province. This account is not centrally…

In a recent publication, Senge ("All systems go: the change imperative for whole system reform." Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, 2010, x) stated "at no time in history has there been a more powerful need for a new vision of the purpose of education." Increasingly citizens, academics and practitioners are calling for radical…

In most parts of the world today, the goal of providing all children with free and Universal Primary Education (UPE) has received broad national and international support and some educational systems have evolved from predominantly "fee-charging" towards "fee-free" status in recent times. In Ghana, for example, the endorsement…

This paper documents the initial process by which a San Diego middle school, located in a low-income and predominantly Hispanic neighborhood and repeatedly failing to meet No Child Left Behind provisions, restructured into an academically rigorous, detracked charter school. The discussion of the political experience and working relationships…

Guided by theories of institutions, organizations, and sense-making, this manuscript examines how public, charter, and Catholic school staff in a large urban area organize for instruction and respond to educational change. To build theory about institutional processes of "organizing" from participants' perspectives, data included a…