The social organization of teacher leadership in/through the development of an advisory homeroom program

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.