Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to develop an institutional account of teacher leadership in
and through curriculum program development. To this purpose I sought to discover how an
advisory homeroom course, organizationally identified as a teacher-led program, was socially
organized to take on a particular form and function in a large, urban, Indiana high school that
serves a population of mostly minority students living in low SES circumstances. I applied
institutional ethnography as the underlying theoretical framework and design of the study.
The research details the program development trajectory of what began as part of a
district-wide secondary school reform initiative and came to be a required everyday advisory
homeroom course. The research focuses on how institutional forces organized the work of
curriculum development including program conception, planning, implementation, and ongoing
improvement. I discovered that the overarching framework of the program was shaped by the
intersecting influences of student scheduling practices, standardized testing procedures,
outcomes of the standards-based movement, and school improvement discourses including college and career readiness, improving senior (12th grade) experiences, and the teaching and
learning of problems-solving skills. Additionally, I found that the work of teacher leaders was
most visible during the late planning and implementation phases of the program when they took
up the work of lesson planning and front-line teacher support. I found throughout the
implementation year, teacher leaders assumed responsibility for the success and sustainability of
the district-wide initiative through the ongoing work of program promotion, management, and
improvement.
