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Typologizing Teachers’ Instructional Practices: Ambitious, Procedural, and Culturally Responsive Teaching?

Fri, April 9, 10:40am to 12:10pm EDT (10:40am to 12:10pm EDT), Division L, Division L - Section 3 Paper and Symposium Sessions

Abstract

Objectives
Decades of education scholarship have shown that the context in which instructional reforms are implemented and educators’ interpretations of reforms greatly influence the extent to which those policies result in change (Hill, 2001; Spillane, 2009). Teacher learning scholarship also indicates that teachers’ confidence is associated with their instructional quality (Holzberger, Philipp, & Kunter, 2013). Building on both reform implementation scholarship and studies that connect teachers’ practices with their confidence, this study asked: What features of teachers’ policy environments related to PL and curriculum are predictive of teachers’ confidence with and frequency of rigorous, equity-oriented instructional practices?

Theoretical Framework
This study is grounded in policy attributes theory (Porter, Floden, Freeman, Schmidt, & Schwille, 1988; Porter, 1994), which identifies factors critical for successful policy implementation. This study focuses on three of five policy attributes: specificity (degree of detail and clarity), consistency (alignment with ongoing initiatives), and authority (buy-in and resources). The policy attributes theory attends to the complexity of a policy environment in order to understand implementation and takes into account how perceptions influence implementation of reforms (Desimone, 2002). Thus, it offers a valuable lens for examining complex instructional reform efforts.

Data Sources and Methods
This analysis leveraged the responses from the teacher survey. Drawing on survey data, we employed linear regression to examine the extent to which teachers’ perceptions of their policy environments predicted their confidence in implementing a variety of instructional strategies and their frequency of implementing various instructional practices. Confidence was measured using three scales (0-10): confidence with meeting students’ needs, with experimentation, and with culturally responsive (CR) teaching. Instructional practices were measured using two frequency scales (0-3): the frequency with which their instruction included CR practices and a focus on practices that build conceptual understanding. The key explanatory variables of interest were seven scales related to policy attributes: specificity, authority, and consistency.

Findings
Preliminary results showed that teachers’ perceptions of the authority of the curriculum mattered for all outcomes except confidence with CR instruction (Table 1). Teacher buy-in (normative authority) to curriculum positively predicted their confidence in meeting student needs and their confidence experimenting, persevering, and aligning instruction to standards. Institutional support for the curriculum (institutional authority) positively predicted teacher reports of the frequency of implementing conceptually-focused instruction and CR instruction.

Scholarly Significance
This study contributes to the body of work that examines the relationship between features of policy and instruction (Cohen, Moffitt, & Goldin, 2007; Edgerton & Desimone, 2018). By attending to teachers’ perceptions of their policy environments, this study examines features of implementation that matter for supporting equitable and rigorous teaching practices, such as teacher buy-in and institutional support, and thus offers implications for both research and practice.

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