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Distributed Leadership Practice: the Subject Matters1 Distributed Leadership Practice: The Subject Matters1 Jennifer Z. Sherer Northwestern University Preliminary draft prepared for the symposium Recent Research in Distributed Leadership at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA, April 15, 2004. Please do not distribute. 1 Work on this paper was supported by the Distributed Leadership Project which is funded by research grants from the National Science Foundation (REC-9873583) and the Spencer Foundation. Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy and Institute for Policy Research also supported work on this paper. All opinions and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agency. Please send all correspondence to the author at Northwestern University, School of Education and Social Policy, 2115 North Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60201 or to [email protected]. Case study chapter jz 4/28/04 Page 1 of 52 Introduction The distributed leadership perspective suggests that one way to examine leadership practice is to focus on how the situation of practice shapes the activity of instructional leadership. In schools, the situation of instruction is shaped in part by the subject-matter organization of the curriculum (Stodolsky, 1988; McLaughlin and Talbert, 1993). This paper investigates how this subject-matter organization of instruction constitutes a key aspect of the situation of school leadership practice. Elementary school leaders often talk about their leadership in general terms, but I claim that there are differences between subject matter leadership practice. My argument centers on the question of how leadership practice in literacy is similar to and/or different from leadership practice in mathematics. To illustrate the effect of subject-matter organization on school leadership, I consider the case of an urban elementary school. This case study reveals that subject does matter. In this paper I discuss two significant ways in which math leadership practice varies from the leadership practice in literacy at Adams School2 from the fall of 1999 to the spring of 2003. First, I consider how the school’s leadership prioritizes literacy. Second, I discuss how the leaders and followers3 interact differently in mathematics leadership activities than they do in literacy leadership activities. The tools used in these leadership activities frame some of those differences. When we think of school leadership for instructional change, we often think of this leadership generically. In fact, when researchers in the Distributed Leadership Study spoke with principals across eleven schools about their leadership practice as it relates to instructional change, they often spoke initially about leadership in very general terms. When asked: “What are your goals at Adams this year for math and science and literacy? 2 Adams is a pseudonym. All names associated with Adams are also pseudonyms. 3 For the purposes of this paper, I use the term ‘leaders’ to describe individuals who take on some leadership role (be in a positional leader such as the principal or an informal leader such as the four math teachers who act as the lead math team) and ‘followers’ to describe individuals who are not in leadership roles at that particular moment in time. This term usually refers to teachers. I see these roles as dynamic—a leader in a particular activity may become a follower in the next activity. Case study chapter jz 4/28/04 Page 2 of 52 So we can take one subject matter at a time. Whichever you want to start with,” one assistant principal immediately responded, “Well basically our overall goal is to strive for having 50% of our kids at or above grade level in all subject matter. (DATE)” This was a very typical response; in fact, at one school, every positional leader we interviewed had a similar initial response. However, when we probed more deeply, both in our questions about practice and in our observations of leadership practice, we found that instructional leadership does not happen generally. Rather than just leading for instruction, school leaders lead differently in specific disciplines such as mathematics, science, and language arts. I begin with my theoretical framework, using distributed leadership and activity theory, as well as subject matter literature, to frame my work. Next, I discuss my case study methodology. In the remainder of the paper, I discuss two broad differences in leadership practice between literacy and mathematics.4 I first show how the leaders prioritize literacy over mathematics through variations in their leadership practice. While the prioritization of literacy over math in elementary school leadership may not be surprising, an understanding of how priority shapes leadership practice is valuable for the insight into school leadership it provides. Second, I discuss how the interactions between followers and leaders vary across subject matter. I conclude the paper with ideas for future work. Theoretical Framework The theoretical framework that guides my research and analysis draws on two bodies of work: distributed cognition and its relation to distributed leadership and activity theory. These theoretical strands are connected to my belief in the distributed nature of leadership practice. By this I mean that the practice of leadership is distributed across multiple people; it lives in how leaders interact with other leaders as well as followers; it lives in how they use tools and artifacts; it lives in both the people who are the leaders as well as the activities that they carry out. In the distribution of leadership, Case study chapter jz 4/28/04 Page 3 of 52 activity is key. To build an understanding of leadership activity, and how to study it, I draw on work from activity theory. Distributed Leadership The distributed leadership framework approaches the study of leadership with the notion that leadership is distributed across different people and artifacts, within a particular context. (Spillane, Halverson, Diamond, 1999, 2004) It borrows from Lave's 1993 notion of "stretched across” suggesting that leadership is stretched across different people and different artifacts, within different contexts. This does not mean that leadership tasks are merely delegated to multiple people, although that is one aspect of distributed leadership. In his discussion of distributed cognition, Roy Pea states that distributed cognition is not about the end result being more than the sum of the parts, it is about the end result of distributed cognition being different than the sum of the parts. (Pea, 1993) In taking this idea of distributed cognition, and applying it to leadership, we then ask, how is leadership practice distributed? What are the subtleties in this distribution, how can we study them, and what do they reveal about leadership practice? In choosing to look at leadership in this way, by acknowledging that it is a complex system that is about the people, the tools, and the context, but also the activity, I have a conceptual framework with which to look at leadership. (See Figure 1.) Figure 1. Leadership practice as a system Context Activity. Tools People Graphic 1: The focus of my work: the leadership system 4 Because science does not directly fit into the school’s main goals, I have reduced this subject matter Case study chapter jz 4/28/04 Page 4 of 52 Activity Theory The scholarship on activity theory is extensive. I find Engestrom and Cole’s (Cole, 1996; Engestrom, 1999) frameworks the most helpful in guiding my analytical work. In Engestrom’s model of activity theory (1987), an activity system integrates the subject (who does the activity), the object (who the activity is done to), and the instruments (what is used to accomplish the activity) into a unified whole. According to activity theory, contexts are activity systems. Engestrom suggests that contexts are better seen as activity systems that tie actors, outcomes, and mediating artifacts into a unified system of action. “This is a thoroughly relational view of context,” (Engstrom, 1999). I adopt this view, taking as my context two different subject matter divisions in elementary schools. I will analyze the context of leadership practice in literacy as well as the context of leadership practice in math. Cole (1996) discusses context as being both something that surrounds as well as weaves into the situation. Using this notion applied to the work of school leadership, math and literacy both surround leadership activity as well as weave into the activity. Michael Cole extends Engestrom’s mediational triangle (discussed above) and this provides me with a way to identify (by breaking down) critical components of leadership activity (Cole, 1996). It guides me toward what data to collect and how to organize it. Figure 2 (see next page) is a sketch of Cole’s expansion of Engestrom’s mediational triangle with examples of data that we collected. analysis to mathematics and literacy. Case study chapter jz 4/28/04 Page 5 of 52 Mediating artifacts--resources: Read Write Well, word wall, 5 Week Assessments, research books and articles Participants--"every teacher is a writing teacher first,” various administrators, Goals—increase test teachers, and assistants scores; get all students at or above grade level LITERACY Rules Division of labor--2 literacy Community-- coordinators; literacy committee; Breakfast Clubs principal involved; writing team Literacy Committee Meetings; Teacher Leader Meetings School Improvement Planning Mediating artifacts--external classes and programs, text books, various teacher bought and produced books and packets, ISAT item analysis, 5 Week Assessment timeline. Participants—math teachers, various administrators and assistants Goals—increase test scores; get all students at or above grade level MATH Rules Community— Professional Development Meetings Division of labor--no formal School Improvement Planning math leader; 4 teachers form math team Figure 2: M. Cole’s expansion of Engestrom’s mediational triangle with some relevant data points identified.
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