Systemic Reform Initiatives Research Articles

Building Our Families: Navigating Barriers in 2SLGBTQ+ Family Building Through Doula Supports

Queer and transgender individuals often encounter barriers when attempting to build their families, Beginning by identifying barriers that 2SLGBTQ+ people face in their fertility and reproductive journeys -- including limited access to information, inadequate diversity in donor gametes, and minority stress -- this article looks to the role of doulas in mitigating challenges by providing critical and tailored support, educational resources, and support and advocacy in navigating medical systems. Using a reproductive justice and intersectional framework, the article highlights the need for inclusive care practices that address the historical and ongoing exclusion of marginalized 2SLGBTQ+ communities. It underscores the importance of improved training for healthcare providers and systemic changes to ensure equitable family-building experiences for 2SLGBTQ+ individuals. By integrating community supports and peer advocacy, the article proposes strategies to enhance both the physical and mental health outcomes of 2SLGBTQ+ intended parents and their families. It calls for a comprehensive approach that combines professional training, systemic reform, and community-based initiatives to create a more inclusive and supportive environment for family-building among 2SLGBTQ+ individuals.

Districts, local education authorities, and the context of policy analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present the author's commentary on the special issue of Journal of Educational Administration entitled “Systemwide reform: examining districts under pressure”.Design/methodology/approachThe author gives her personal opinions, draws upon her recent experiences in the national study of US district leadership for school improvement, recent engagement with one specific US district's improvement efforts and work with colleagues in Europe on how a nation's culture mediates global policy trends.FindingsOne striking feature is the degree to which the language of “New Public Management” (is suffused within all of the papers).Originality/valueThe author notes that each paper peels a layer of the opaque onion of systemic school reform initiatives in the USA and was struck by the papers’ insight into current policy and administrative dilemmas facing districts in the USA – and also by their uniquely American perspective.

Second Opinions on the Reading First Initiative: The View from Utah

This article provides a summary of the five years of implementation of the first cohort of schools participating in Utah's Reading First Initiative. Fifteen schools across six districts comprised this cohort. Performance is compared to the performance of a cohort of matched comparison schools as well as the average state performance on the Utah Language Arts Criterion-referenced Tests (CRTs). Results indicate that Reading First schools appeared to have made greater gains than comparison schools or the state average in the percentage of students achieving proficiency on the CRTs. In addition, the achievement gap for most disaggregated groups was reduced, and greater performance was noted for students who spent three years in Reading First schools rather than one or two. These data are in contrast to the results of the Reading First Impact Study, but highlight the need to examine the contextual effects of systemic reform initiatives such as the Reading First Initiative.

Organizational learning and program renewal in teacher education: A socio-cultural theory of learning, innovation and change

Pressures for change in the field of teacher education are escalating significantly as part of systemic education reform initiatives in a broad spectrum of economically developed and developing nations. Considering these pressures, it is surprising that relatively little theoretical or empirical analysis of learning and change processes within teacher education programs has been undertaken. In this paper, we illustrate some ways in which contemporary socio-cultural learning theory may be used as a lens for addressing these issues. Using a theoretical framework developed by Harré [Harré, R. (1984). Personal being: A theory for individual psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press], we show how processes of individual and collective learning led to changes in a teacher education program observed over an eighteen month period of time. Important innovations in program practice were generally found to have their sources in the creative work of individual faculty. However program level changes required negotiation of new ideas and practices within small groups of faculty, and with the larger collective of the program. We conclude that the Harré model, and the socio-cultural learning theories from which it is derived, may offer a useful theoretical framework for interpreting complex social processes underlying organizational renewal, innovation, and change.

The Politics of Accountability: The Rise and Fall of Goals 2000

In 1994, Congress reauthorized Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and passed the Goals 2000: Education America Act. Together, these two laws were supposed to support the development and implementation of standards‐based, systemic reform initiatives in the states. Despite these high hopes, Goals 2000 and Title I faced a number of problems after they were passed, particularly in regard to the implementation of their accountability provisions. Similar problems appear to be surfacing in the course of the implementation of No Child Left Behind, the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Accordingly, this article examines the political and implementation problems of the 1994 statutes and the relationship between these problems.

Systemic Education Evaluation

Recent reforms in K-12 education have increasingly emphasized the educational system as the unit of change. The theory underlying systemic or system wide educational reform is that powerful improvements in teaching and learning can come from developing coherence and alignment across the complex and different elements and components of an educational system. The growth of systemic reform efforts has led to a rise in attempts to systemically evaluate these initiatives. Systemic evaluations involve several distinct challenges for evaluators including capturing the system as the unit of intervention, assessing the alignment and coherence between components within the system, and identifying reasonable external comparison groups. Using the example of a school district’s systemic reform initiative, the authors examine the challenges and implications of systemic evaluation.

Achieving standards in urban systemic reform: An example of a sixth grade project‐based science curriculum

AbstractA challenge for urban systemic reform initiatives in science education has been to achieve local, state, and national standards for teaching and learning. We have collaborated with teachers in the Detroit Public School System to design project‐based curriculum materials that contextualize the learning of science in meaningful real‐world problems, engage students in science inquiry, and use learning technologies. We present a sixth grade project‐based science unit in which students explored the driving question “How Do Machines Help Me Build Big Things?” and address the science learning goals of balanced and unbalanced forces, simple and complex machines, and mechanical advantage. Twenty‐four teachers and over 2500 students in Detroit participated in enactments of this project over 4 years. Student learning outcomes were determined for the three learning goals and inquiry process skills using pre‐ and postachievement tests. Achievement outcomes as measured by the pre/posttest show significant and consistently high learning gains, even as participation in the project increased to include greater numbers of teachers and students in successive enactments, and leadership of the professional development support for this project transitioned from university researchers to district teacher leaders. These results illustrate that materials which contextualize learning and support student inquiry as part of an urban systemic reform effort can promote learning of important and meaningful science content aligned with standards. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 669–692, 2004

Professional development for outcomes‐based education curriculum implementation: the case of UNIVEMALASHI, South Africa

Following the implementation of the new Curriculum 2005, outcomes‐based education, professional development is one of South Africa's national goals in the continuing reform of its education system. Most school teachers are not familiar with teaching outcomes‐based education and need training to be able to do so. Project UNIVEMALASHI, a district‐level systemic reform initiative for teacher development has been successful in improving the content knowledge, skills and attitudes of 110 participating foundation phase (6–9 years) teachers during the first three years of its implementation. Data collected through classroom observation, questionnaire, surveys, and tests given to participating teachers revealed a positive impact of the project on teacher classroom practice. The essential components of the programme are described as a guide for delivering school‐based professional development in outcomes‐based education.

Creating a Framework for Research on Systemic Technology Innovations

This article examines why cognitively oriented technology innovations, designed to foster deep thinking and learning, have not become widespread in K−12 schools. We argue a key reason is that most design-based research does not explicitly address systemic issues of usability, scalability and sustainability. This limitation must be overcome if research is to create usable knowledge that addresses the challenges confronting technology innovations when implemented in real-world school contexts. This is especially important in an era when political forces push schools away from the cognitively rich, inquiry-oriented approaches espoused by the Learning Sciences. We suggest expanding our conception of design-based research to include research on innovations in the context of systemic reform as a potential solution to the problem. To that end, we introduce research questions and issues arising from our own experiences with a technology-rich innovation in the context of a systemic reform initiative as a starting point in the creation of an expanded design-based research agenda. These questions and issues have important implications for both the continued viability of research on technologies for learning and on the future of technology use in schools that stems from such research.

Use of learner‐centered instruction in college science and mathematics classrooms

AbstractLearner‐centered approaches to science and mathematics instruction assume that only when students are active participants will learning be deep, enduring, and enjoyable, and transfer to contexts beyond the classroom. Although their beneficial effects are well known, the extent to which learner‐centered practices are used in college classrooms may be low. Surveys of undergraduate science and math majors reveal general dissatisfaction with how courses in their majors are taught, and their number is half what it was 2 decades ago. In response, federally funded systemic reform initiatives have targeted increasing the use learner‐centered instruction in science and mathematics courses to improve undergraduate education generally and the training of preservice teachers specifically. Few data exist regarding how effective these initiatives have been or how frequently learned‐centered instruction occurs as assessed from faculty's perspective, which may not corroborate undergraduate perceptions. Accordingly, a survey was developed to assess the use of learner‐centered techniques and was administered to science and math professors of Louisiana over the Internet. The return rate was 28%. Analyses reveal that they are used infrequently, but when used, are applied to all aspects of teaching. Data also suggest that federal funding has been slightly effective in promoting its use. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 566–584, 2003

Tightly coupled policy in loosely coupled systems: institutional capacity and organizational change

This article examines the loosely coupled nature of the US educational system and explores recent systemic reform initiatives designed to improve education through more tightly coupled education policy and practice. The utility and limitations of loose coupling as an organizational construct are examined and critiqued. A number of significant forces are exerting ever‐greater pressure on policymakers to more tightly couple US education, including environmental pressures, the emergence of powerful new institutional actors, an emergent institutional capacity, and institutional isomorphism. After reviewing the effectiveness of systemic reform initiatives in several states, the article concludes that education in the USA is moving toward a system of fragmented centralization in which policymakers have greater opportunity to craft more coherent, systemic education policy amidst competing demands for limited resources.

From gap gazing to promising cases: Moving toward equity in urban education reform*

AbstractA case analysis of the Miami‐Dade Urban Systemic Initiative is presented in this article, citing this initiative as one of the sites with the greatest promise for affecting equity issues. Using a grounded‐theory methodological approach, a general framework for systemic reform was developed as a tool to examine the particulars of systemic reform initiatives and their potential to impact the teaching and learning of science and mathematics in diverse school contexts. It was found that to better understand the effectiveness of systemic reform initiatives requires answering two basic questions: What is the (pedagogical and ideological) systemic conceptual clarity guiding the reform efforts? And, what is the operational approach? Once answers to these questions are found, it becomes easier to explore how key officials are implementing or not implementing other aspects of systemic reform. The article also explains why less attention should be given to student outcomes (based on standardized tests) as the main indicator of success in systemic reform. Instead, it is proposed that insights gained from studying the particulars of promising initiatives can help others stimulate systemic reform in their own contexts, especially in urban contexts, which usually have few resources and a large population of students who are traditionally underserved. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 1115–1129, 2001

Design, validation, and use of an evaluation instrument for monitoring systemic reform

AbstractOver the past decade, state and national policymakers have promoted systemic reform as a way to achieve high‐quality science education for all students. However, few instruments are available to measure changes in key dimensions relevant to systemic reform such as teaching practices, student attitudes, or home and peer support. Furthermore, Rasch methods of analysis are needed to permit valid comparison of different cohorts of students during different years of a reform effort. This article describes the design, development, validation, and use of an instrument that measures student attitudes and several environment dimensions (standards‐based teaching, home support, and peer support) using a three‐step process that incorporated expert opinion, factor analysis, and item response theory. The instrument was validated with over 8,000 science and mathematics students, taught by more than 1,000 teachers in over 200 schools as part of a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of Ohio's systemic reform initiative. When the new four‐factor, 20‐item questionnaire was used to explore the relative influence of the class, home, and peer environment on student achievement and attitudes, findings were remarkably consistent across 3 years and different units and methods of analysis. All three environments accounted for unique variance in student attitudes, but only the environment of the class accounted for unique variance in student achievement. However, the class environment (standards‐based teaching practices) was the strongest independent predictor of both achievement and attitude, and appreciable amounts of the total variance in attitudes were common to the three environments. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 646–662, 2001

Higher Education's Role in the New Jersey Systemic Reform Initiative in World Languages

Higher Education's Role in the New Jersey Systemic Reform Initiative in World Languages

Impediments to change: An application of force-field analysis to Leader Master Teacher training in an elementary level science systemic reform initiative

This study identifies Leader Master Teachers’ (LMTs) perceptions of restraining and driving forces in the implementation of an elementary level science systemic reform initiative. A group process technique utilizing Lewin’s force-field analysis concept provided the framework for professional development activities for 124 LMTs. Categories of supporting and restraining forces to implementation were created. Follow-up interviews determined the successes and problems experienced by LMTs as a result of action taken to reduce constraints. This study provided evidence that LMTs now share a portion of the burden of implementation and this initiative is gradually progressing toward successful implementation.

Systemic Reform through Teacher Change: Congruence and contradiction

The need for the systemic reform of science and mathematics education in the USA has become a national priority. Politicians, business and the learned societies are demanding change in the performance of US students relative to the best international standards such as those measures by the TIMMS tests. The National Science Foundation is responding to this challenge in providing funding for systemic reform initiatives across many school districts. These reform efforts usually over five years are beginning to show signs of institutionalized change in teacher practice. However the community chorus for enhanced student test scores has resulted in the proliferation of high stakes standardized tests, usually the low-cost pencil and paper variety. These tests have the potential to sidetrack genuine reform efforts in science education such as those contained in the National Science Education Standards (NSES). This paper analyses the congruence and contradictions of this current reform agenda.

NSF Urban Systemic Initiatives

In their Editorial “Science learning, science opportunity ( Science 's Compass, 8 Oct., p. [237][1]), National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Rita R. Colwell and National Science Board Chairman Eamon M. Kelly give a glowing but what seems a largely unfounded report on the accomplishments of the NSF systemic reform initiatives. The authors cite as evidence an increase in student performance in mathematics in Chicago, Illinois (61 out of 62 high schools), and a tripling of students passing science and mathematics advanced placement (AP) tests in Dallas, Texas. Although it is true that Chicago public high schools have shown increases in standardized (Illinois Goals Assessment Program) test scores in mathematics over the past 2 years (in 51 out of 60 schools reporting), increases in the same students' reading scores have been even greater (57 out of 60). It seems plausible that Chicago's lower performing students are doing better on math tests because they can read the problems, not necessarily because of NSF systemic reform. Only the three top-scoring high schools in Chicago exceeded the Illinois average for math scores in 1997, and all three showed a drop in math scores the following year. Seven out of the nine Chicago schools with falling math scores started above the district average. Student scores on science and math AP tests have also risen in Dallas, but once again the role of NSF systemic reform is questionable. The Dallas-based O'Donnell Foundation has developed a long-running incentive program in which AP teachers receive special course training and a salary supplement, and AP students receive a subsidy for exam fees and a $100 minischolarship if they pass the AP College Board exam. The O'Donnell Foundation has tracked and reported on the efficacy of their work and can account for the student gains. In their Editorial, the NSF director and the National Science Board chairman appear to take credit for what is very likely to be another group's accomplishment. “Discovery learning” methods of science and math instruction may be widely embraced by the education community, but if the scores from Chicago and Dallas are the most robust data that NSF can assemble to justify their systemic initiatives, then the program should be carefully scrutinized. # Response {#article-title-2} Metzenberg's letter questions the specific examples we used to illustrate our comments on the NSF-supported Urban Systemic Initiatives (USIs). The nature of systemic reform activity—aligning and integrating the uses of different types of resources—makes explicit cause-and-effect attribution difficult. There are always several related indicators of performance and multiple contributors to changes in performance for any one indicator. The factors Metzenberg cites in Chicago and Dallas may well contribute to the phenomena we described. However, we are confident, on the basis of the reports of similar results across the USIs, that the systemic reform activities played an important role as well. We are pleased that NSF has helped so many urban public school systems to move forward in improving their science and mathematics education. Our examples—drawn from public testimony at a National Science Board hearing on kindergarten through grade 12 education held in Chicago—are just the tip of an iceberg of data coming from Chicago and Dallas; Detroit, Michigan; El Paso, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; and many other locations. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.286.5438.237

Science Teaching in the Middle Grades: Policy Implications for Teacher Education and Systemic Reform

For several years, state governments in collaboration with the National Science Foundation (NSF) have focused on systemic reform in mathematics and science education. These initiatives may focus on three levels of the system--the state, individual school districts, and multiple schools (Kahle, 1997). Regardless of which level is the focus, the challenge for reform--seeking improved and intellectually authentic science education for all students--is enormous. Systemic reform initiatives generally aim at creating policies that may result in new and improved practice for teachers and learners (Cohen, 1995). Teacher professional development has been a primary focus because teachers translate policy into practice. In his analytical review of several large-scale systemic reform initiatives in science and mathematics education, Knapp (1997) urges researchers to explore the contexts and processes intervening between reform initiatives and actual practice in school mathematics and science classrooms. He concludes, To grasp what such reforms may accomplish involves an ongoing dialogue between diverse and powerful ideas about policy-to-practice connections and emerging evidence from instances of systemic reform (p. 227). Studies of educational policy indicate that researchers give much attention to the development and implementation of policies, but they often ignore the evolution of policy (Jennings, 1996; Odden 1991). It is important to study classroom practice and other factors that may mediate between the goals of reform and student learning so that those functions can inform and guide policies to help teachers become effective agents of reform. Because the academic area may influence the dynamics of reform, it is also necessary to examine the policy-to-practice connections in light of the culture of a discipline (Grossman & Stodolsky, 1994). For decades, researchers in science education have demonstrated the importance of inquiry-based instruction for effective learning and urged a shift from the transmission mode of instruction. Researchers have urged teachers to involve students in constructing ideas from observations and in incorporating personal experiences into instruction as well as encouraging interactions with their peers and teachers. Ohio's Statewide Systemic Initiative (SSI) focused on middle school teachers (Grades 5 through 9) who attended 6-week summer institutes to learn science content through open-ended and guided inquiry. Inquiry instruction in the summer institutes was modeled after the work of physicists who have successfully used inquiry to teach basic physics concepts to pre- and inservice teachers (Arons, 1990; McDermott, 1996). A major goal of the SSI reform effort was to change science teaching from didactic to inquiry-based instruction. The instruction and assessment envisioned by Ohio's systemic initiative were consistent with the tenets of the two national science education groups (American Association of Advancement of Science, 1993; National Research Council, 1996). All lessons were designed to help teachers develop an under standing of scientific concepts through the basic reasoning processes that scientists use. Thus, questions such as How do we know ...? Why do we accept or believe ...? What is the evidence for ...? (Arons, 1990, p. 314) guided the inquiries that teacher participants conducted as they carried out in-depth studies of various systems and their interactions (McDermott, 1996). Teachers also designed projects in life science by inquiry institute courses. Current research on pedagogy, pedagogical content knowledge, cooperative learning groups, and equity was embedded in the institutes and their six follow-up seminars during the next academic year. In summary, teachers learned to engage students actively, to focus on and support student inquiry, and to foster a collaborative and equitable learning environment. The basic tenets of Ohio's science and mathematics education reform are * Students actively engage in constructing meaning from what they do; * Teachers guide the construction of meaning through appropriate questions; * Teachers design or select lessons that are connected and represent the central ideas of a discipline and the relationships among ideas, instead of choosing discrete exercises; * Students work cooperatively in groups and learn to develop ideas through discussion with their peers and the teacher; and, * Teachers incorporate various assessment measures that examine student learning from various perspectives at different points in each lesson instead of using only end-of-the-unit, paper and pencil tests. …

Crossing borders: Learning from inclusion and restructuring research in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the United States

Shool improvement strategies of the past have been dominated by a fragmented, “fix it” orientation — fix the parts, fix the teachers, fix the schools. The papers in this issue move us toward a broadened approach to the problem — fix the system. Systemic education reform initiatives are based on the assumption that all children can learn; they depart from past categorical restructuring efforts in that they are designed to align policies and programs with expectations. In this context, special education must become an instructional support and active partner in creating classrooms and schools that meet the diverse needs of today’s students.

Between Systemic Reforms and the Mathematics and Science Classroom: The Dynamics of Innovation, Implementation, and Professional Learning

This review assembles studies and analyses of large-scale systemic reform initiatives aimed at mathematics and science education, especially those undertaken by state governments and the National Science Foundation. The review concentrates on qualitative investigations, which reveal whether and how these initiatives converge on the improvement of instruction. The evidence to date, though inherently incomplete, has much to say about the logic of systemic reforms, the avenues by which these reforms may reach the classroom, and the kinds of classroom-level impacts that are apparent so far or likely to occur in the near term. The implementation and effects of these reforms can be understood productively in the theoretical terms applied to the study of innovation and change, implementation of governmental policies, and professional and organizational learning.