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theses

This case study focused on the process through which educators make meaning of the purpose of developing student growth objectives (SGOs) as measures of teaching effectiveness in the first year (2013-2014) of the statewide rollout of the policy in New Jersey. During the same year, two other components of the comprehensive educational reform were launched - the teacher evaluation initiative (part of which is the development of SGOs) and the statewide implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). As educational reform implementation depends on educators’ meaning-making process, the study used a cognitive approach to the study of reform implementation, based on work by Spillane and colleagues (2000, 2002), and explored assumptions of a proposed theory of change, built around the policy’s officially stated outcomes. Data were collected in three separate rounds of interviews with seven 3rd grade teachers and three administrators. Questions addressed multiple aspects of the policy’s mandates, including the nature of collaborative practices, selection of appropriate assessments, and perceptions of the policy’s adequacy in providing valid measures to be used for teacher evaluation purposes. The findings show that teachers and administrators developed distinctly different implementation goals based on their interpretation of the policy’s purpose. Teachers approached the implementation process with the goal of showcasing their teaching talent and obtain high evaluation ratings. Administrators saw the SGO policy as means to boost students’ overall academic performance, and more specifically to improve outcomes on the state’s year-end test. Consistent with findings in other studies of policy implementation, educators adopted mostly form-based interpretations (Spillane and Callahan, 2000, Coburn, 2004) of needed changes. Although teachers and administrators used common language to describe implementation, the meanings they derived differed significantly. Educators also developed rudimentary function-based understandings of the policy’s intent which were suppressed by strong regulatory pressures

ETD_7703

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Dessislava Gradinarova-Kirova

doi:10.7282/T30P12BP

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.