margaret ellen mcglynn cindy ellen singer st. john’s ... files/movieproject5419.pdf · advanced...

Margaret Ellen McGlynn

Cindy Ellen Singer

St. John’s University, 2004 Advanced Studies of Organizational Theory 5419

Chapter 1

Problem The purpose of this study was to determine how two schools differ in their culture by looking at the typology of institutional regimes and the management of instruction. This study examined how instructional regimes influence management and instruction within two schools: North Eastern High School and Central Park East Secondary School, as presented by Frederick Wiseman’s film documentaries. This was accomplished by a review of literature and analyzing Carlson’s questions pertaining to organizations. Chapter 2

Review of the Literature Viewing organizations is like looking at a painting. Art offers an opportunity to reflect and discover thoughts about ourselves and others that may result in new insights worthy of further contemplation. Metaphors, individually or mixed and remixed, should be used to enrich and challenge perceptions. The value of reframing, and the contradictions and paradoxes often exist in organizations. Some metaphors resonate better than others and will vary in their impact from time to time. (Carlson, 1996). The typology of institutional regimes can be looked at from various perspectives in regard to the managerial and instructional views of Carlson, Popkowitz, Cunningham, Gresso, Shafritz and Ott, Copland, Bolman and Deal, Wagner, and Spear and Bowen.

Organizational Culture of

North Eastern High School and Central

Park East Secondary School

(Bolman & Deal)"Product and

Process"

(Wagner)"Seven Disciplines for Strengthening

Instruction"

(Toyota)"Commitment to

Learning"

(Copland)Bay Area School

Reform Collaborative"Leadership of

Inquiry"

(Popkowitz)"Typology of

Regimes"

(Cunningham & Gresso)

"The Culture of Excellence"

(Shafritz & Ott)"Organizational

Culture and Sense Making"

(Carlson)"Cultural Reframing

and Reform"

In the book “Cultural Reframing and Reform,” Carlson analyzes organizations

based on various questions:

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DIAGNOSTIC QUESTIONS Organizations as Culture

1. What is the theme/glue that appears to connect part of this organization? 2. What are the overarching cultural norms for this organization? 3. What “meaning” do persons take from this organization? 4. What is the dominant culture of this organization? How does it treat minority

cultures? 5. What are the common and core values, understandings, beliefs, and expectations

in this organization? 6. To what degree is the culture integrated, differentiated, and/or fragmented in this

organization? 7. How do cultures differ in this organization at the center and periphery? Between

occupational groups? 8. What external, environmental cultures (e.g., general society, region, local,

community, and professional organizations) affect this organization? What is the nature of its relationship with external cultures?

9. What historical values are emphasized in this organization? Past heroes/ heroines? 10. What are the organizational ambiguities in this organization? 11. What “incidents” of a recent nature seem to capture and hold the attention of

people in this organization? 12. What are the patterns of interactions, activities, sentiments, and symbols in this

organization?

Thomas Popkewitz reflects on the "particular way of thinking and reasoning about social science" that emphasizes a detachment from matters of value, assumes the social world is a system of empirical variables, and seeks explanation by way of formal laws and propositions. This way has been dominant in the English-speaking world for about a half century. But Popkewitz points out it is just one of three traditions of thinking about the social world; one of three "paradigms." Along with this "empirical-analytic" paradigm we should consider those of "symbolic or linguistic inquiry," and "critical inquiry." (Popkewitz, 1984)

A B C Know: Technical

Positivists Objective/Count Definite

Illusory Procedures How to do

Construct. Interpersonal Create knowledge interdisciplinary

Work: Physical functional Series of preparations

Imagination Unpredictable Hands on Self-directed

Authority: Because they said so…

Parents want us to In order to Purpose is ours

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Cunningham and Gresso point to various themes that affect leadership:

teaming approach, vision, not criticism, collegiality, shared decision making, trust, continuous improvement, not reform, professional development, employee empowerment, sustained innovation, school university partnerships and transforming school culture. All of these variables affect the culture of an organization.

Bolman and Deal look at the leadership through four frames of the organization, the

structural, human resource, political and symbolic. Each play an important role in the organizations performance and effectiveness. They found that wise leaders understand their own strengths, work to expand them and build teams that together can provide leadership in all four modes. They believe that culture is both product and process. As product, it embodies the accumulated wisdom of past members of an organization. As process, it is continually renewed and re-created and new members are taught the old ways and eventually become teachers themselves.

Shafritz and Ott discuss four decision making models, rational, bureaucratic, decision

process/organized anarcy and political power as they relate to eight relevant dimensions. Table 1 * Overview of Four Organizational Decision Making Models Dimension Rational Bueaucratic Decision

Process/Organized Anarcy

Political Power

Goals/preferences Consistent within and across social actors

Reasonably consistent

Unclear, ambiguous, may be constructed ex post to rationalize action

Consistent with social actors; inconsistent, pluralistic within the organization

Power and control

Centralized Less centralized with greater reliance on rules

Very decentralized, anarchic

Shifting coalitions and interest groups

Decision process Orderly, substantively rational

Procedural rationality embodied in programs and standard operating procedures

Ad hoc Disorderly, characterized by push and pull of interests

Rules and norms Norm of optimization

Precedent, tradition

Segmented and episodic participation in decisions

Free play of market forces; conflict is legitimate and expected

Information and computational

Extensive and

Reduced by the use of

Haphazard collection and use of

Information used and

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requirements systematic rules and procedures

information withheld strategically

Beliefs about action-consequence relationships

Known at least to a probability distrubution

Consensually share acceptance of routines

Unclear, ambiguous technology

Disagreements about technology

Decisions Follow from value-maximizing choice

Follow from programs and routines

Not linked to intention; result of intersection of persons, solutions, problems

Result of bargaining and interplay among interests

Ideology Efficiency and effectiveness

Stability, fairness, predictability

Playfulness, loose coupling, randomness

Struggle, conflict, winners and losers

The Bay Area School Reform Collaborative is a five year reform effort involving schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area that seeks to re-culture schools in ways that support school change. Roles and processes of leadership:

• Must be accomplished collectively by those at the school level. • Leadership for improving teaching and learning-continual inquiry into work at the

school, inquiry focused on student learning, high standards, equity, and best practices.

• Decisions regarding problems and the solutions should be made collectively, and focus on improving the learning of all students.

• Based on work of Sergiovanni (1984), Murphy (1988) and Elmore(2000) studies. • McLaughlin and Talbert(2001) “Successful principals were men and women with

varied professional backgrounds who worked in collaboration with teacher leaders and with respect for the teaching culture. They found ways to support teachers to get the job done.

Policy for building capacity and sharing leadership

• BASRC adopted a Cycle of Inquiry- broad participation in problem identification, school and classroom-based research, development, testing and implementation of solutions, and ongoing assessments.

1. Identify problems 2. Redefine the focused effort-what are we going to do about it 3. Identify measurable goals for school and grade levels/and/or departments 4. Build concrete action plan both schoolwide and/or at grade-level

departments. 5. Take action 6. Analyze results from the data

Sample and Method • Survey of principals across all BASRC Leadership schools. • Survey data collected from a sample of Leadership School teachers.

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• Evidence of shared leadership New Leadership Structures

• Rotating lead teacher instead of a principal • Two co-principals • Principal/reform coordinator partnership • inter-school leadership structures and strategies • leadership teams- administrators, teachers, classified staff members, parents and

students • framing problems and questions and framing space and support for inquiry to

occur. • Hiring the right people to sustain the effort (culture) Turnover of leadership is the most disabling factor in the support and encouragement

of reform. According to Tony Wagner, “Reform has been a failure so….create new

knowledge about how to improve the level of instruction for all students.” Wagner sites seven disciplines that create the reform process:

The Seven Disciplines

1. The district creates an understanding and a sense of urgency among teachers and in the community for the necessity of improving all students’ learning, and it regularly reports on progress. Data are disaggregated and are transparent to everyone. Qualitative data (for example, from focus groups and interviews) as well as quantitative data, are used to understand students’ and recent graduates’ experience of school.

2. There was a widely shared vision of what good teaching is which focused on rigorous expectations, the quality of student engagement, and effective strategies for personalizing learning for all students.

3. All adult meetings are about instruction and are models of good teaching. 4. There are well-defined standards and performance assessments for student work

at all grade levels. Both teacher and students understand what quality work looks like, and there is consistency in standards of assessments.

5. Supervision is frequent, rigorous and entirely focused on the improvement of instruction. It is done by people who know what good instruction looks like.

6. Professional development is primarily on-site, intensive, collaborative, and job-embedded, and is designed and led by educators who model the best teaching and learning practices.

7. Data are used diagnostically at frequent intervals by teams of teachers, schools, and districts to assess each student’s learning and to identify the most effective teaching practices. There is time built into schedules for this shared work.

The 4C’s 1. Competencies of educators to do this new work 2. Creating a school and district culture that supports active engagement and

collaboration for continuous improvement is essential. 3. Attend to the district conditions that support the improvement of teaching and

learning. 6

4. Deeper knowledge of the context of our work.

Rather than arguing the merits of more testing, the conversations among educators should be “What does good teaching look like, and how do create systems of schools and districts where every teacher has the opportunity and the support needed for continued improvement?” (Wagner, 2003)

Similarly, Toyota has four rules. Rules include 1) How people work, 2) How People

Connect 3) How the Production Line is Constructed and 4) How to Improve. The answer is the rules. By making people capable of and responsible for doing and improving their own work, by standardizing connections between individual customers and suppliers, and by pushing the resolution of connection and flow problems to the lowest possible level, the rules create an organization with a nested modular structure, rather like traditional Russian dolls that come one inside the other. (Spear, Bowen) Below is a visual representation which will be utilized in the analysis of Wiseman’s films and their relationship to Carlson’s questions regarding cultural framework.

Managerial Logic Significant Managerial Incidents Recorded in this Column Rows X Y Z

Illusory Learning Procedures How to Behave

Technical Learning correct answers Working alone on assigned task

Constructivist Creating Meaning Curiosity, Imagination

Significant Instructional Incidents Recorded in Row A B or C

X Congenial Illusory

Y Collected/Market Bureaucratic Because they said so

Z Vital/Inquiry In order to….

Chapter 3 Collection of data involved a global view, note taking and analysis during viewing of the two documentaries. A multitude of key poignant scenes or scenarios that exemplified the institutions are listed below. Carlon’s questions provided the framework for the following notes:

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Central Park East Secondary School

Video by Frederick Wiseman Notes #Peer Mediation #Outside Forces change Exit Project (AP) test #Parent Involvement #Peer Mediation #Program flexability #Counseling #Five Habits #Curriculum #Informal atmosphere #Institute philosophy #Counseling Session #Teenage Pregnancy #Lehman Brothers Intern #Student Inquiry Based Instruction #Shakespeare #Graphing #Five Habits #Artwork #Opportunities for internship #Cooperative Learning North Eastern High School

Video by Frederick Wiseman #Faculty worked together #Administration dealing with students behavior #Faculty Discussion on foreign policy #Simon Says #Guidance Discussion with parents #Cosmotology School #Sex Education #Discipline/Detention #Didactic Teaching – Life is cause and effects #Prom Rules #Family involvement – male vs. female #Marching Band #Typing/Sten Classes #Foreign Language-Rote Instruction #P.E. Instruction #Tee/Simon Says/Rings #Charlie Brown Bulletin Board #Poetry – “Casey at the Bat” #Letter from Vietnam #Student Council #Celebrating Space Program

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#Thought of the Day #Simon and Garfunkel #Cooking Class In viewing these notes, we classified their placement in terms of their managerial or instructional logic. Chapter 4 Results of Data In the film depicting North Eastern High School, Frederick Wiseman paints a picture of a school that is both technical from an instructional standpoint and bureaucratic from a managerial standpoint. In Central Park East Secondary School, the managerial logic is constructivist, while the instructional philosophies utilize a cycle of inquiry.

Typology of Institutional Regimes North Eastern High School

Video by Frederick Wiseman INSTRUCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Managerial Logic Significant

Managerial Incidents Recorded in this Column Rows X Y Z





Didactic Teaching – “Life is cause and effects” Prom Rules Family Involvement-male vs. female

Sex Education Discipline/Detention Marching Band Typing/Sten Classes Foreign Language – Rote Instruction P.E. Instruction Tee/Simons Says/Rings Charlie Brow bulletin board Poetry – “Casey at the Bat” Letter from Vietnam

Student Council Celebrating Space Program Thought of the Day Simon and Garfunkel Cooking Class


Faculty worked together

1. 2. 3.


Administration dealing with students behavior Faculty Discussion on foreign policy Simon Says

4. 5.

X 6.


Guidance Discussion with parents Cosmotology School

7. 8. 9.

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Typology of Institutional Regimes Central Park East Secondary School

Video by Frederick Wiseman INSTRUCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Managerial Logic Significant

Managerial Incidents Recorded in this Column Rows X Y Z





Counseling Session Baby Peer Mediation

Lehman Brothers Intern

Student Inquiry Based Instruction Shakespeare Graphing Five Habits Artwork Opportunities for internship Cooperative Learning Peer Mediation Sex Education


1. 2. 3.


Outside forces change Exit Project (AP test)

4. 5.

6.


Parent Involvement Peer Mediation Program flexability Counseling Five Habits Curriculum Informal atmosphere Institute Philosophy

7. 8. 9.

x

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Chapter 5 CONCLUSIONS The issues that each of these schools faced are similar in nature, however, the instructional and managerial regimes differ. In North Eastern High School, the managerial logic is technical, while the instructional philosophies are of a bureaucratic philosophy. In North Eastern High School the managerial style can be characterized by the gym teacher who said to the student: “Don’t talk and you just listen, is that clear?” Also the administrator speaking to the student regarding detention: “You’re a man and you can take orders. Don’t fight with the teacher. Take the detention. She felt you were out of order. I don’t see anything wrong with that.” When a girl asked “Can my boyfriend wear a suit because he can’t afford a tux.” The answer was “No.” Individuality in this school was not an option.

In stark contrast, in Central Park East Secondary School, the managerial logic is constructivist, while the instructional philosophies utilize a cycle of inquiry. Children have input. Students are seen as participants in the process of education. They call the teachers by their first names. For example, the student calling the teacher Paul. The population is open in terms of community. School is the educator of children. People hold one another accountable. Members have to buy into it and accept responsibility. By looking at Carlson’s questions regarding culture, Popkowicz’s topology of regimes, Cunningham’s look at “The Culture of Excellence,” Shafritz & Ott’s “Organizational Culture.” “Leadership of Inquiry,” by Copland, “Product and Process” by Bolman and Deal, Wagner’s “The Seven Disciplines for Strengthening Instruction,” and Spear & Bowen’s “Commitment to Learning,” Inquiry is necessary for managerial and instructional purposes to impact students at the highest level necessary. There learning can become instrinsic in the culture of the organization.

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Dimension Rational Bueaucratic Decision Process/Organized Anarcy

Political Power

Inquiry/Culture

Goals/preferences Consistent within and across social actors

Reasonably consistent

Unclear, ambiguous, may be constructed ex post to rationalize action

Consistent with social actors; inconsistent, pluralistic within the organization

Can be based determined by group or subgroups within the group

Power and control

Centralized Less centralized with greater reliance on rules

Very decentralized, anarchic

Shifting coalitions and interest groups

People responsible for their own work but leadership is collective

Decision process Orderly, substantively rational

Procedural rationality embodied in programs and standard operating procedures

Ad hoc Disorderly, characterized by push and pull of interests

Based on production solving and revisting critical problems

Rules and norms Norm of optimization

Precedent, tradition

Segmented and episodic participation in decisions

Free play of market forces; conflict is legitimate and expected

Constantly under review and interpretation

Information and computational requirements

Extensive and systematic

Reduced by the use of rules and procedures

Haphazard collection and use of information

Information used and withheld strategically

Group related

Beliefs about action-consequence relationships

Known at least to a probability distrubution

Consensually share acceptance of routines

Unclear, ambiguous technology

Disagreements about technology

Constantly changing

Decisions Follow from value-maximizing choice

Follow from programs and routines

Not linked to intention; result of intersection of persons, solutions, problems

Result of bargaining and interplay among interests

Everyone has a part

Ideology Efficiency and effectiveness

Stability, fairness, predictability

Playfulness, loose coupling, randomness

Struggle, conflict, winners and losers

Based on the good of the group

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Bolman, L. & Deal, T. (1991). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice and leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Inc. Carlson, Robert V. (1996). Reframing & Reform, Perspectives on Organization, Leadership, and School Change. NY: Longman Publishers, White Plains. Copland, Michael A. (2002). Leadership of inquiry: Building and sustaining capacity for school improvement in the Bay Area Reform Collaborative. Cunningham, William G., Gresso, Donn W. (1993). Cultural Leadership. Allyn & Bacon, Needham Heights, MA.

Popkewitz, T. S. (1984). Paradigms in educational science: Different meanings and purpose of theory. Ch 2. in Paradigm and ideology in educational research: The social functions of the intellectual. London: Falmer Press.

Popkewitz. Class notes from Dr. Smith Shafritz, Jay M., Ott, J. Steven. (2001). Classics of Organization Theory. CA: Wadsworth Group. Spear, S. and Bowen H. K. (1999). Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System. Harvard Business Review. 97 – 106. Wagner, T. (2003). Beyond Testing: The 7 Disciplines for Strengthening Instruction. Education Week. 1-6.

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