Distributed Leadership Practice: The Subject Matters1...leadership practice is to focus on how the situation of practice shapes the activity of instructional leadership. In schools,

Case study chapter jz4/28/04

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Distributed Leadership Practice: The Subject Matters1

Jennifer Z. Sherer

Northwestern University

Preliminary draft prepared for the symposium Recent Research in Distributed Leadershipat 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 researchgrants from the National Science Foundation (REC-9873583) and the Spencer Foundation. NorthwesternUniversity's School of Education and Social Policy and Institute for Policy Research also supported workon this paper. All opinions and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect the views of any funding agency. Please send all correspondence to the author atNorthwestern University, School of Education and Social Policy, 2115 North Campus Drive, Evanston, IL60201 or to [email protected].


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IntroductionThe 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 thesubject-matter organization of the curriculum (Stodolsky, 1988; McLaughlin and Talbert,

1993). This paper investigates how this subject-matter organization of instructionconstitutes 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 thequestion 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 leadershippractice 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 prioritizesliteracy. 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 Studyspoke 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 someleadership role (be in a positional leader such as the principal or an informal leader such as the four mathteachers who act as the lead math team) and ‘followers’ to describe individuals who are not in leadershiproles at that particular moment in time. This term usually refers to teachers. I see these roles asdynamic—a leader in a particular activity may become a follower in the next activity.


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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 abovegrade 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, bothin 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 activitytheory, 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 leadersprioritize literacy over mathematics through variations in their leadership practice. While

the prioritization of literacy over math in elementary school leadership may not besurprising, 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 forfuture work.

Theoretical FrameworkThe theoretical framework that guides my research and analysis draws on two

bodies of work: distributed cognition and its relation to distributed leadership andactivity 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 asfollowers; 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,


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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's1993 notion of "stretched across” suggesting that leadership is stretched across different

people and different artifacts, within different contexts. This does not mean thatleadership 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 isabout 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 thisdistribution, 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 complexsystem 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


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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 thesubject (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 toactivity 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). Iadopt 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 contextof 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 weaveinto the activity.

Michael Cole extends Engestrom’s mediational triangle (discussed above) andthis 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’smediational triangle with examples of data that we collected.

analysis to mathematics and literacy.


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LITERACY

Mediating artifacts--resources: Read WriteWell, word wall, 5 Week Assessments, researchbooks and articles

Goals—increase testscores; get all studentsat or above grade level

Division of labor--2 literacycoordinators; literacy committee;principal involved; writing team

Community--Breakfast ClubsLiteracy Committee Meetings;Teacher Leader MeetingsSchool Improvement Planning

Rules

Participants--"everyteacher is a writingteacher first,” variousadministrators,teachers, and assistants

Mediating artifacts--external classes andprograms, text books, various teacher boughtand produced books and packets, ISAT itemanalysis, 5 Week Assessment timeline.

Division of labor--no formalmath leader; 4 teachers formmath team

Community—Professional Development MeetingsSchool Improvement Planning

Rules

Participants—mathteachers, variousadministrators andassistants

MATH

Goals—increase testscores; get all studentsat or above grade level

Figure 2: M. Cole’s expansion of Engestrom’s mediationaltriangle with some relevant data points identified.


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One important element of the mediational triangle is mediating artifacts (tools).The construct of tools is a very powerful one in the sociocultural domain. Many social

theorists believe that learning takes place in the social interaction between people andtools in the context of their environment (Hutchins, 1995; Brown, Collins & Duguid,

1989). Anthropology reminds us that the tools of a culture embody its cultural beliefs.

The construct of cultural tools is, therefore, given many definitions.For the purpose of this paper, I will borrow from Cole and Norman's constructs of

artifact and Wersch's construct of tools when I refer to the tool component of theleadership system. Cole prefers the more generic term artifact, to the term "tool" that was

used by the Russian socio-culturalists. He describes artifacts as fundamental constituents

of culture and sees them as being both material and ideal. He sees artifacts as existingonly in terms of something else--the context of the situation or activity, (Cole, 1996).

Wersch defines a cultural tool as a mediating device used to shape action in certain ways.

Mediation is the process involving the potential of cultural tools to shape actions(Wersch, 1998). Artifacts are externalized representations of ideas and intentions used by

practitioners in their practice (Norman, 1988).In thinking about cultural tools, socio-cultural theory drives us to ask different

questions, and herein lies one element of the importance of cultural tools. We must ask:

How are the tools and people changed by their use? Who is using them? For what endsand in whose interests? And finally, what are the origins of the activity? (Lee, 2001).

This is the beginning of a framework for analysis using activity theory, which looks at themediated action in terms of the interactions between mediating artifacts, division of labor,

and rules--with the community, the individual, and the object of the activity taken into

account (Cole, 1996). Activity theory, and within that the existence of the cultural tools,helps us to better understand a leadership situation. By examining the cultural tools of a

school’s leadership, and how they shape the leadership activity, we are provided with adifferent way to think about leadership practice.

In distributed leadership, as in much socio-cultural work, tools are a critical

component. People do not just lead alone—they use tools in their work. I believe that


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which tools are used, and how they are used, defines one way in which power is wielded.

For the purposes of this paper, I will primarily use the term tool.Activity theory helped frame the data I collected and analyzed. I look at several

tools (mediating artifacts) that leaders use in their work: literacy articles, a frameworkcreated based on a chapter from a literacy book, classroom math activities, and a time

line for teaching math. I also look at the activities in which these tools are used; in

Cole’s triangle this is the community component; in terms of the data collected andanalyzed, it is meetings. Other elements of Cole’s activity system are participants and

division of labor. In response to this framing, I considered the people involved inleadership practice, as well as what tasks and roles they take on. I find goals to be

another important component. I frame my entire data collection and analysis around the

stated goals of the school.

Subject Matter

Shulman (1986) identified the need to consider the relationship between teachers’cognitive understanding of subject matter and their practice. While many researchers see

subject matter clearly as an important context for teachers' work (Ball & Lacy, 1984;Little, 1993; McLaughlin & Talbert, 1993; Siskin, 1990, 1991, 1994), few look at subject

matter as it pertains to elementary teachers. Much of the subject matter scholarship

focuses primarily on the high school grades, where teachers’ practice is structured aroundsubject matter constructs. Because elementary teachers typically teach many subjects,

their practice is often considered non-subject matter specific. However, Stodolsky’s(1988) work challenges this notion, showing that elementary teachers treat subject matter

differently within their own classes. She looked at fifth grade classrooms and found that

time allocations vary for subject areas, as do the patterns of activities teachers use indifferent subject areas.

While much of this work has focused on teaching practice, very little hasexamined leadership or the implications of subject matter on leadership practice. (For

exception, see Stein & D'Amico, (2000) and Burch & Spillane, (in press)). There is a

critical disciplinary difference between math and literacy which forces us toconceptualize the foundations of math and literacy differently. Consequently, leaders


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must approach reform to these subject areas differently (Stein & D’Amico, 2000). This

chapter will explore how the leadership at one school does just that.

MethodologyWhat exactly is this thing we call leadership practice? Capturing leadership

practice is a difficult undertaking, as much of the day to day work of leaders is often done

either behind closed doors, or carried out with a seamless grace that often leaves theobserver blind to the intricate layers of decision making, expertise, experience, and

wisdom at play. My first challenge was to identify exactly who the leaders are at AdamsSchool, and then to capture what it is these key players actually do.5 One way to get at a

leader’s priorities is to look at the actions undertaken by that individual. Research shows

that what people say they do is often different from what they actually do (Argyris &Schon, 1974; Brown & Duguid, 1991; Orr, 1991). My approach was to attempt to

capture leadership practice in two ways: by looking at what leaders and followers do,

(based on data from meetings, informal leader shadows, and field note observations) andby looking at what they say they do (based on interview data of seven administrators and

three teacher leaders, for a total of 18 formal interviews and 8 informal interviews). Ianalyze day-to-day leadership practice in an urban elementary school through a case

study approach, investigating leadership practice as it connects with instructional

improvement in math and literacy. Case study methodology is appropriate for in-depthanalysis of complex issues and processes like school leadership (Shulman, 1987; Stake,

1995; Erickson, 1986; Peshkin, 1993, Yin, 1994). It makes sense to carry out a casestudy for my work, given my questions and the complexities of school instructional

leadership.

I use a constant comparative methodology with within-case sampling, (Glaser &Strauss, 1967; Miles & Huberman, 1994). I collect and analyze data on comparable

dimensions of math and literacy leadership within my case study school. I sampleactivities, processes, tools, people, roles, and times that are theoretically driven by

5 I was not satisfied that administrators are the only school leaders. They are considered positional leadersin this paper, and teachers who take on leadership responsibilities are considered to be teacher leaders,informal in the sense that they do not have titles that distinguish them as leaders.


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elements from my conceptual framework, as this is an important element of within-case

sampling (Miles & Huberman, 1994).

Data collection

Case study methodology pushes for the collection of multiple sources of data:

documentation, archival records, direct observation, participant observation, and physical

artifacts (Yin, 1994). Collecting a variety of data helps reduce the likelihood ofmisinterpretation—it allows for redundancy of data gathering and procedural challenges

to explanations (Stake, 1995). These methods of triangulation help achieve reliability inqualitative work.

For this study, I engaged in an intensive three-year investigation of leadership

practice in the school involving interviews with leaders and teachers, observations ofteaching and leading, the collection of a wide variety of relevant artifacts, and thick

description (Geertz, 1983) field notes for each visit. Meetings involving math and/or

literacy have primarily been video taped; interviews have primarily been audio taped.When taping was not a possibility, copious field notes were recorded. This work is

embedded in a larger research project: The Distributed Leadership Study (DLS), a 5-yearlongitudinal study of elementary school leadership funded by the National Science

Foundation and the Spencer Foundation. The research team conducted the 6-month pilot

phase during the winter and spring of 1999. The first full year of data collectioncommenced in September 1999 and involved eight Chicago elementary schools as

intensive case sites (an additional five schools served as interview only sites). For thepurpose of this analysis, I look at data collected during the course of four consecutive

school years: 1999-2000, 2000-2001, 2001-2002, and 2002-2003.6

Based on the instructional goals of the leadership teams, I have focused myanalysis on activities that directly relate to these stated goals. Interview data have been

collected and analyzed to identify the instructional goals that the leaders have for theschool, across time. Interestingly enough, despite a large shift in leadership that took

6 I began studying Adams School in September, 2000. Prior to 2000, Richard Halverson, and several ofour colleagues (Lisa Walker, Lauren Banks, Baylen Linnekin) collected data at Adams School as well.Therefore, we have data for Adams School that has been collected over the span of four consecutive schoolyears, spanning five calendar years, 1999-2003.


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place over these four years, the goals remain remarkably consistent: raise student

performance on standardized tests both in literacy (reading and writing) and math.7

Because of this singular and clear goal, I chose to concentrate my research on leadership

activities that most strongly connect with the achievement of this goal.Meetings are one of the most tangible ways that leadership practice can be

observed. They provide a powerful opportunity to observe leadership in practice, as well

as to watch the interactions between leaders and followers. Shadowing a leaderthroughout her day and observing meetings are good places to see leaders use tools.

Interviews are a critical way to uncover multiple facets within a case study (Stake, 1995.)The follow-up interviews are critical to determine why and how the changes have

occurred. In addition, interviews are effective ways to get at what leaders think they do,

as well as find out which individuals teachers and leaders identify as leaders. Interviewsare also important venues for learning about the people. They act as a critical place to

identify instructional goals leaders and teachers have. The nuances of leadership are

often found in the in-between places of the school day. For this reason, one of my mostvaluable data components is field notes—observations and snippets of conversations

caught in the hallways, after meetings, before school, and in various offices and publicspaces.

The data collection process has been iterative. As I have found evidence of

leadership activity that is important to the school’s goals, based on formal interviews orinformal chats with people, I have periodically widened, narrowed, or shifted my data

collection net. The purpose of collecting this variety of data, across time, is to gain abetter understanding of leadership practice in both math and literacy. The data captures

the activity of leadership practice across several leadership teams/eras. Information about

the tools used and the people involved are also captured in the data collected.

Data analysis

The purpose of this case study work was to determine how subject matter made a

difference in the way that the same school leaders engaged in their work. In order to

7 This is not very surprising since the district and the state put large emphasis on improving test scores withsevere consequences tied to any failure by schools to do so.


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describe the prioritization of subject matter, I selected a cross section of math and literacy

meetings. This cross section is representative in that it samples from multiple meetings,over time, and across both subject areas. The meetings in this subsection are typical of

meetings at Adams School. I coded meetings across several elements: who led themeetings, who talked at the meetings, how much they talked, how they talked (praising,

inviting, standing up, sitting down, etc.), and what kind of talk they engaged in (setting

expectations, setting goals, offering strategies, etc.). (See Appendix A for codingscheme.) The interview data was initially coded for subject matter relevance—each time

math or literacy came up in an interview it was coded. I then broke down how muchpositional leaders talked about subject matter and looked at what they said about it, based

on the original codes. The interview data, as well as the field note data, were used to

triangulate findings from the meeting analysis.The analysis around the leader/follower interactions looks broadly at a sub-set of

(20) meetings and then on a micro-level at talk in several representative meetings. After

the initial coding of the meetings, a pattern emerged around differences in leader andfollower interactions. I noticed that teachers in literacy meetings participated at higher

levels than they did in math meetings. I looked more closely at this pattern, returning tothe coding scheme to decipher how they talked and what they said. I contrasted this

against the teacher talk in math meetings. It became clear that the elements of the

activity systems vary across math and literacy. While I have only excerpted from a fewmeetings for the purposes of this paper, these excerpts give an accurate portrayal of the

patterns that emerge in the data. Again, I use interview and field note data to triangulatemy findings.

The Subject MattersThe Context

The district context. Urban schools serve as an important focus for the study ofinstructional leadership because of the challenges they face: high poverty rates, high

mobility rates, high teacher turn-over rates. The public, and some scholars, share a

certain skepticism about the appropriateness of intellectually rigorous curricula for poorstudents (Anyon, 1981; Spillane & Jennings, 1996). In light of this, leaders in urban


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schools in high poverty neighborhoods share a heightened challenge in making

instructional changes happen.My focus is a school within the Chicago Public School system. During the time

that I studied Adams School, the district context is particularly relevant as there wereseveral mandates that impacted math and literacy. In 1996, a restructured Chicago Public

School administration introduced two major initiatives that brought high stakes

accountability into the district. First, they put schools with 15% or fewer studentsperforming at or above grade level on academic probation. Second, in an effort to end

social promotion, students in 3rd, 6th, and 8th grades were required to meet certain scoreson the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) in order to move to the next grade. These

accountability measures dramatically transformed the landscape of the Chicago Public

Schools, and Adams was no exception. Many structures that I analyze at the school wereimplemented, to some degree, in response to these district accountability measures. In

year 03, the district implemented a reading initiative that prescribed the amount of time

students were to receive literacy instruction (minimum two hours each day) and the typesof instruction that were to be delivered.

The school context. In order to study leadership practice, I focus on observing the

activities of leadership at one school: Adams School. Adams is a public elementary

school serving between 1050-1200 pre-K through eighth grade students. The students are97% African-American; 97% of them are low income, and the school has a relatively

high mobility rate, somewhere in the neighborhood of 35%.In the late 1980’s, a new principal, Dr. Williams (at the time, Ms. Williams),

arrived at Adams School. She entered a school that housed students in two buildings. A

general lack of community existed between the two faculties (K-3 in the primarybuilding, pre-K and 4-8 in the upper building) that was represented by this geographic

divide. In addition to the rare communication between the buildings, there was littlecommunication among the faculty at all.

It was very strange…There may be four classes at a grade level and they did noteven talk. They did not have a clue at what was going on in each other’sclassrooms, they just basically closed the door… I could not see how kids couldmove from one grade level to the other, and not have a common core of


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knowledge. They would go to the next grade and everybody would knowsomething different. (Dr. Williams, interview, Date)

Teachers closed their doors and did their own thing. The school, like its neighbors, was

struggling with low standardized test scores in both reading and math. When Dr.Williams arrived at Adams, 16.1% of the students were scoring at or above national

norms on standardized tests in reading.

Structures: Dr. Williams worked to build mathematics and language artsinstruction as a way to improve student learning and performance on standardized tests.

In her 14 years at Adams, Dr. Williams also built professional community—and I arguethat this professional community revolved around language arts. There are two goals of

the language arts leadership work that was done at Adams: to improve instruction and to

improve professional community.One structure Dr. Williams created to meet both of these goals is the Five Week

Assessment cycle. With the help of her literacy coordinator, Ms. Tracy, Dr. Williams

implemented the Five Week Assessment cycle to answer the questions, “Are the studentslearning? How do you know?” This cycle was also implemented for math. The literacy

coordinator and the math coordinator distribute assessments every five weeks to grades 1-8. They then use the data to drive a variety of decisions.

In response to a district initiative (199X), Adams created a School Improvement

Plan every spring. The plan has a math and a language arts component. Dr. Williamsinvited the faculty to take part in the creation of these components of the plan, and many

teachers as well as positional leaders collaborated to create the plan each year. The FiveWeek Assessment cycle and the School Improvement Plan were structures built around

math and literacy.

Leadership shift: Dr. Schooler (the math coordinator) left Adams after Year 01 ofour study. Dr. Williams and Ms. Tracy left Adams in the summer of 2002, after Year 02

of our study. The Assistant Principal, Mrs. Richards, became interim principal inSeptember 2001, and was officially selected principal (by the school’s site council) in

January, 2002. This shift in positional leadership changed the school, as any shift of such

magnitude will. While this change has an impact on the structures, people, tools, andleadership activity I discuss in this paper, and is critical in a discussion of leadership


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practice at Adams over time, delving deeply into the shift is beyond the scope of this

paper. I will address it when relevant.

A close look at leadership practice at Adams reveals that subject does matter. Thefollowing sections will outline two significant ways in which math leadership practice

varies from literacy leadership practice at Adams school from the fall of 1999 to the

spring of 2003. The first relates to the school’s prioritization of literacy; the secondrelates to the differences in interactions between leaders and followers across subject

matter leadership activity.

Prioritization of literacyIn response to the district’s emphasis on improving literacy instruction, the

leaders in Adams school prioritize literacy over mathematics through variations in their

leadership practice. In this analysis, I consider several elements of the activity system

discussed earlier. As stated by the school’s positional leadership in interviews, one maingoal they have is to improve student performance in math and literacy (interviews, 1999-

2003). In consideration of this goal, I examine math and literacy meetings (leadershipactivities or communities) to show the four ways in which prioritization is manifested. I

consider the people involved (participants), how they allocate time, the participation of

leaders (division of labor), and the rhetoric of school leadership.

The personnel decisions (participants and division of labor).

According to the formal staff list for the 1999-2000 school year, the principal, two

assistant principals, one counselor, and a disciplinarian are in charge of Adams; at least

they are the five administrators listed at the top. But a look further down that list revealsother positional leaders: a literacy coordinator, a math coordinator, an African American

heritage coordinator8, a science magnet lab teacher. Countless other teachers’ names arefound on this list, and while their titles do not indicate any leadership responsibilities,

some of these individuals also carry incredible leadership weight.

8 This is later referred to as the Reading Coordinator, since her position/responsibilities changed over thetime of our study.


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In the course of our study of Adams School, both the math coordinator and the

literacy coordinator were promoted (externally), and both women left the school. Whilethe math coordinator was not replaced, the literacy coordinator was. When asked about

the decision not to hire a new math coordinator, Dr. Williams said,

“at this point in time, I wouldn’t want to pull any of them (the math teachers) outof the classroom… And so we were trying to work with the structure – becausewhat – you know you start pulling all your best teachers and you’re back tosquare one.” (Principal interview, 01.31.01)9

However, the next year when the literacy coordinator left, Mrs. Richards (the newprincipal) pulled one of her teachers out of the classroom and placed her in the literacy

coordinator position.

As a response to the math coordinator’s absence, the math assistant (a grandparentvolunteer turned staff member) was expected to take on more responsibility for ordering,

distributing, and collecting math resources as well as scoring math assessment tests and

keeping records. She retired after year 03 and was not replaced. The void was also filledby the establishment of the “Math Team”—a team of four, full time math teachers from

grades 1, 3, 6, and 8. As part of this transition, in which the Math Team was expected totake over the responsibility for instructional change in math, they received outside

training by a local university in certain mathematics techniques. The principal’s intent,

and the intent of the university program, was for them to then come back and train themath teachers in the building.

Here we see priority on one level: the distribution of participants varies acrossthe subject areas. In literacy, there are several leaders who are involved in literacy

activities, most of whom have no classroom responsibilities. (See Table 1.) On the other

hand, the math leaders are, with one exception, teachers will full teaching loads, expectedto do math leadership activities (ordering materials, organizing materials, preparing and

running math in-services, meetings, and tutorials; plan out, create, distribute, score, andanalyze Five Week Assessments). One striking difference is that while positional

9 Adams has a tradition of hiring key positions from within. They feel that an outsider cannot effectivelyfill these positions. (field notes, 2000-3)


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leadership is consistently involved in literacy activities, once the math coordinator left the

school, positional leaders are rarely involved in math leadership practice.

Table 1: Personnel decisions—the participantsLeader, position in school, % of contracted day spent in the classroom teaching students.Name Position and subject involvement % of day

spend inclassroom

Year in position

Dr. Schooler Math—Math coordinator 0 Year 01Ms. Dodge Math—Math assistant 0 Year 01, 02, 03Ms. Walthers Math—8th grade math teacher 100 Year 01, 02, 03, 04Ms. Brown Math—1st grade teacher M

Math—Language arts, mathintegration teacher

100100

Year 01, 02, 03Year 04

Ms. Sunny Math—3rd grade teacher MNo involvement—Computercoordinator

1000

Year 01, 02, 03Year 04

Ms.Matthews

Math—2nd grade teacher 100 Year 04

Ms. Holmes Math—6th grade math teacher 100 Year 01, 02, 03, 04

Ms. Smith Math & Literacy—literacyassistant

0% Year 01, 02, 03, 04

Ms. Tracy Literacy—Literacy coordinator 0 Year 01, 02Ms. Ogden Literacy—5th grade teacher

Literacy—Literacy coordinator1000

Year 01, 02Year 0310, 04

Ms. Walsh Literacy—8th grade teacherLiteracy—Literacy coordinator

1000

Year 01, 02, 03, 04Year 03

Dr. Williams Literacy—Principal 0 Year 01, 02Ms. Richards Literacy—Principal 0 Year 03, 04Ms. James Literacy—1st grade teacher L

Literacy—Primary librarian10070

Year 01, 02Year 03, 04

Ms. Baize Literacy—African-AmericanHeritage coordinatorLiteracy—Reading coordinator

50

50

Year 01, 02

Year 03, 04Ms.Grovenor

Literacy—3rd grade teacher L1No involvement—Special Edcoordinator

1000

Year 01, 02Year 03, 04

Ms. Landly Literacy—3rd grade teacher L 100 Year 03, 04Ms. Manny Literacy—2nd grade teacher

Literacy—Reading Coordinator1000

Year 01, 02, 03Year 04

10 Ms. Walsh was the literacy coordinator from September until December of 2001; she then returned to the8th grade and Ms. Ogden became the literacy coordinator.


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Consider how leadership tasks are done, or how the division of labor among participantsvaries across math and literacy (Table 2)

Table 2.Which leaders carry out the leadership tasks? (Snapshot from Year 02; division of labor)Who carries out the

tasks?Leadership Task Who carries out the

tasks?

MATH LITERACY8th grade teacher1st grade teacher M3rd grade teacher M6th grade teacher

Organize and teach in-servicesCreate 5 Week AssessmentscheduleCopy and distribute assessmentsScore open ended problems/writing

Literacy coordinator

Math assistant Orders and distributes materialsDistributes and collects assessment

Literacy coordinatorLiteracy assistant

Math assistantLiteracy assistant

Scores assessmentsTracks and enters scores

Literacy coordinatorLiteracy assistant

8th grade teacher1st grade teacher M3rd grade teacher M6th grade teacher

Sits on subject area committee PrincipalLiteracy coordinator1st grade teacher LReading coordinator3rd grade teacher L12nd grade teacher

8th grade teacher1st grade teacher M3rd grade teacher M6th grade teacher

Runs meetings PrincipalLiteracy coordinatorVarious teachers

Time allocation.

The time that is allocated for literacy activities, as compared with the time

allocated for math activities, is another striking difference in leadership practice at

Adams School. A common thread that runs through all of the schools in our study is thatthe people who work in them share their frustration about not having enough time to do

all of the tasks their practice demands. For this reason, time is a critical issue in schools.While many teachers and administrators at Adams work long hours, they still bemoan the

lack of time (field note and interview data show this). The time that leadership chooses

to dedicate to certain activities is one clear indication of how they prioritize aspects oftheir work.


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For the purpose of this discussion, I analyze time allocation in two ways: the

frequency of meetings that took place over the course of four school years (see Table 3)and the time leaders spent talking about subject matter in formal interviews.

Meetings. Interestingly enough, the time that leaders spend on literacy, as seenthrough the meeting data, is not only shown by the number of meetings they schedule,

but also by the meetings that they attend. School leaders at Adams attend more literacy

meetings, and speak more often at literacy meetings, then they do math meetings. Thiswill be taken up in further detail in the next section that examines the participation of

leaders.

Table 3.Meeting Types and frequency11 (Year 01—04; 48 meetings total)Meeting Type Frequency Literacy Frequency MathBreakfast Club Meeting 6All-faculty Meeting 7 212

Literacy Committee Meeting 2 1Grade Level Meeting 4Professional Development Meeting 5 2School Improvement Planning Meeting 2 2Other Meetings 15 (non-literacy, non-math)Informal Meetings numerous

Subject matter talk in leader interviews. An analysis of the interview data

suggests that literacy gets more attention in interviews as well. As part of the formalinterview protocol, formal leaders were asked about their goals for instructional change

for math, science, and literacy. We asked similar questions in regard to each subject area,and based on my analysis of 60 interviews (of principals, AP, LC, over four years), the

focus of more than half of subject matter leader attention was on literacy goals. The

exceptions to this are: the math coordinator talked exclusively about math, and oneassistant principal spoke equally about math and literacy. Explanations for this may

vary13, but the implication is clear: when positional leaders at Adams were asked subject

11 Based on how many we observed in between the fall of 1999 and the spring of 2003.12 Math is one topic, of several, at these meetings.13 Math and literacy are both the focus of district-wide high stakes testing, which may account for the smallamount of time spent on science. In many cases, the leaders’ personal knowledge base of literacy isstronger—based on their personal history information and previous professional experiences. And finally,


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matter specific questions about their practice, literacy gets more attention, more thought,

and more air time than math.

Participation of leaders (division of labor).

A third striking difference between math and literacy leadership at Adams School

is seen through the discrepancies in the participation of positional and teacher leaders.

The positional leaders at Adams participate more frequently and more actively in literacyactivities than they do in math activities. There are more teacher leaders participating in

literacy activities, and hence the overall participation in literacy far exceeds theleadership participation in math.

In this section I examine the participation of leadership in math and literacy

activities at Adams School. I will focus on meetings for this discussion, first byexploring the participation of leaders at subject specific meetings: which leaders

attended, which leader(s) led the meeting, which leaders spoke. Because it is also

important to look at what was said, not just how often or by whom things were said, thenext section examines the rhetoric of the leadership.

Positional leaders at Adams participate more in literacy meetings than they domath meetings in three ways: they attend more literacy meetings, they lead more literacy

meetings, and they talk at more literacy meetings. This section will consider a close

analysis of a sub set of the meeting data collected (seven). This is a representativesegment of the data both in frequency of literacy vs. math meetings as well in the manner

the data was collected.14

while there is a district emphasis on math and literacy, more expectations have been set out by districtoffice in regards to literacy.14 Literacy meetings happen with more frequency than math meetings in relation to this sample. This isbased on formal lists of scheduled meetings, as well as sampled meetings. The math meetings happen lessfrequently, less formally, and are more difficult to track based primarily on classroom responsibilities heldby the math leaders. The data were collected by attending meetings; some meetings were video taped,some were not. These meetings are a combination of both methods.


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Table 4.Who was in attendance (Year 01 and 02)

Meeting Name and SubjectMatter Focus

Positional leaders present Teacher leaders present

Literacy—Kick off the yearmeeting

All All

Literacy—Literacy committee PrincipalLiteracy CoordinatorAfrican-Am. CoordinatorAssistant Principal

1st grade teacher L3rd grade teacher L15th grade teacher6th grade teacher8th grade teacher

Literacy—Breakfast club PrincipalAssistant Principal(Literacy coordinatororganized the meeting butdid not attend.)

1st grade teacher M1st grade teacher L3rd grade teacher L15th grade teacher

Literacy—Breakfast club All AllLiteracy—Breakfast club All 1st grade teacher L

3rd grade teacher L15th grade teacher6th grade teacher8th grade teacher

Math—School ImprovementPlanning

Literacy coordinatorAssistant Principal

All except 1st gradeteacher L

Math—ProfessionalDevelopment

None 1st grade teacher A3rd grade teacher B

Clearly, positional leaders make it a priority to attend literacy meetings. With the

exception of one Breakfast Club meeting, most or all of the positional leaders are in

attendance at literacy meetings. Conversely, they are rarely in attendance at the mathmeetings. When math is discussed at all faculty meetings—which happens

occasionally— positional leaders are in attendance. A positional leader was inattendance in less than a third of the other math meetings we attended. The story is

similar for the teacher leaders.

Adams School prides itself on empowering teachers. One result of this

philosophy is that the meetings are not always run by positional leaders. In fact, our

subset of meetings shows that teachers led more meetings than did positional leaders.Interestingly enough, the only meetings that the positional leaders ran are literacy


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meetings. All of the math meetings we have collected data on were led by teacher

leaders, with one exception. In the fall of 2000, the principal shared the math componentat a back to school meeting.

Table 5.Who led the meeting (snap shot from years 01 and 02; division of labor and participants) (Positional leaders in bold, teacher leaders in italics)

Meeting Name and Subject Matter Focus Meeting leader(s)

Literacy—Kick off the year meeting PrincipalLiteracy—Literacy committee Principal, Literacy

CoordinatorLiteracy—Breakfast Club 1st Grade Teacher LLiteracy—Breakfast Club 6th Grade TeacherLiteracy—Breakfast Club 3rd Grade Teacher LMath—School Improvement Planning 1st Grade Teacher MMath—Professional Development 1st Grade Teacher M

3rd Grade Teacher L1

The level of participation is not only defined by who attends the meetings and

who leads them but in the overall talk at the meetings as well. Appendix B shows thebreakdown of exactly who talks at these meetings and how often. This complicates the

picture somewhat. When the principal, the literacy coordinator, and the readingcoordinator are in attendance, they speak. They tend to take a back seat in the Breakfast

Club meetings, which is in line with the philosophy of those meetings: for teachers to

talk. In fact, this same meeting, when it takes place for faculty in the upper buildingonly, is called Teacher Talk instead of Breakfast Club. The positional leaders dominated

the other literacy meetings.Conversely, there is little talk of positional leaders in the math meetings, if at all.

(This is largely due to their absence from these meetings.) We observed two instances

(across all meetings we observed) in which positional leaders attended a math meeting.The Literacy Coordinator attended a math SIP meeting (03.17.00), and in another

instance, the Student Needs Director attended a math PD meeting. (01.18.01)

These numbers reveal one layer of leadership practice. In addition, a significantmessage can be gleaned from looking at speech order within these meetings. The power


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position in meetings is typically who starts and ends the meeting. The principal or

literacy coordinator began four of the five literacy meetings and ended all of the literacymeetings. The literacy coordinator began one math meeting with some literacy details

from a previous meeting; this meeting was ended by a comment from a teacher as the bellrang. The other math meeting was started and ended by a teacher leader. Again, we see

positional leaders dominating the power positions in literacy meetings, while teachers

dominate these same positions in math meetings.The patterns of frequency of speech are as follows: Overall, teachers talk about a

third of the time, regardless of the subject matter of the meeting. (see Appendix B, lastcolumn). The positional leaders talk most of the time in the non-Breakfast Club literacy

meetings. At Breakfast Club meetings around literacy matters, the distribution of talk is

about equal between positional leaders, teacher leaders, and other teachers. At mathmeetings, teacher leaders dominate the talk.

Based on these data we know that literacy meetings happen more often than math

meetings, there are more positional leaders in attendance at literacy meetings than thereare at meetings about mathematics, positional leaders tend to lead literacy meetings and

not math meetings, and those positional leaders talk most of the time in literacy meetings(with the exception of Breakfast Club meetings). Talk participation helps us to gain an

overall sense of the participation leaders have in leadership activities. But it doesn’t give

us a complete picture. What do they say when they talk? How does this shape leadershippractice, and what subject matter differences can we see in their speech events?

The rhetoric of leadership.

Not only do positional leaders participate more in literacy meetings, they also

participate differently. This serves as a fourth striking difference between math andliteracy leadership practice at Adams School. In this section I push deeper into the

participation of the individuals at Adams by exploring what it is they actually say aboutmath and literacy. I will look at the nature of the speech of positional leaders, teacher

leaders, and other individuals speaking at meetings in order to better understand the

nature of their participation in math and literacy. (Appendix C shows the coding schemeused.)


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Rhetoric of positional leadership in literacy. In the subset of meetings analyzed,the speech of positional leaders in literacy meetings at Adams centered around a variety

of high level participation. They often provide a broader vision, to tie ideas together. Atthe end of a Breakfast Club meeting, the principal ends the meeting with the following

statement:

I would like to say that when I taught, we always started out with a picturebook and that always motivated them. I saw the connection righthere—our strategy is to make connections: text to text, text to self, text toworld. I also saw that we could use the verbal connections. We’ve beentalking for many years about connecting the subjects. So we’ve beenfocusing on those readers that are struggling. Many of the middle schoolstudents are reluctant to read the harder novels, and we often turn them offon reading… (Principal, Breakfast Club Meeting, 11.14.00)

She takes the opportunity to tie the faculty’s discussion of picture books with the

school’s work on making connections between subject areas, as well as having thestudents make connections in their own reading.

While needs are often identified by people other than the formal leadership,formal leaders dominate the floor when it comes to offering strategies for change.

Consider two examples from a literacy committee meeting:

I have a packet with lessons on teaching vocabulary—I’ll pass it around and ifyou want me to make you a copy, put your name on the green sticky note.(literacy coordinator, literacy meeting, 11.06.00).

Teacher modeling is important—only after the teacher models, then we move tothe next phase, guided practice, scaffolding… Don’t just jump to the strategy.The framework is still: model, guided practice, independent then strategy.(principal, literacy meeting, 11.06.00).

The positional leaders do a lot of coordinating the talk at meetings, selecting who

talks when, and determining how the meetings flow. Finally, they often offer theirexpertise (see above quote about how the principal used picture books in her own

classroom), discuss resources,


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Those of you who have the book, go to page 265, the appendix section. Itis a cheat sheet, so to speak, for making connections. I’m not saying thatthis has to be it, but it gives a starting point if you just want an overview touse for the future. Appendix F, you’ll see it connects to the othersections… (principal, literacy meeting, 11.06.00).

One of the concerns that we had was not enough short stories. I askedMrs. Smith (literacy assistant) to pull the Harcourt text booklets.(literacy coordinator, literacy meeting, 11.06.00).

and encourage collaboration

Take ten minutes right now, as a grade level, and think about what you’regoing to do. The problem is, we don’t expose them (the students) toenough non-fiction. It’s boring so they don’t get through it. We need toexpose them to other genres. How will you make connections acrosscontent areas? How are we going to deal with reading across contentareas? Begin to think about strategies. You will report back to the groupin ten minutes.(principal, 11.06.00)15

Rhetoric of positional leadership in math. When they were in attendance,

positional leaders rarely spoke in the math meetings. The two speech events made by apositional leader in a math meeting are below. In a math professional development

meeting, the Student Needs Director makes a connection to literacy and a resource

clarification. (See excerpt below.)

15 While I use excerpts from only two meetings, these are representative of the broader array of positionalleader rhetoric in literacy meetings. I could sample from numerous meetings to show similar leadershipbehavior.

Student Needs Director: “In the Lighthouse Program for firstgrade, one of the books that we used was Goldilocks and the ThreeSquares. The co-author is Marilyn Burns. It was very cute. Theyenjoyed it.”

Later in the meeting she says:“A lot of the stuff they have goes down to pre-school.”

(Math In-Service for K-3 teachers, 01.18.01)


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The literacy coordinator was at a School Improvement Meeting for math. At this

meeting, she speaks several times. (See excerpt below.)

Here we see the Literacy Coordinator attempting to get the Math Team to takeownership of the math work. The Literacy Coordinator made conscious efforts to stay

out of the math work at Adams (personal communication, 2001). She was often pulledinto the math work, and the above excerpt is an example of her attempt to give ownership

back to the math leaders.

As we have seen in these two excerpts, there are several instances in whichpositional leadership talks in math meetings. However, the talk is in no way parallel to

their participation in literacy. Indeed, in the second example we see the positionalleader’s push for non-involvement.

Teacher rhetoric: The speech of the teachers in literacy meetings centered aroundoffering examples of what they do in the classroom. In math, their speech predominantly

involves asking questions. The speech of the teacher leaders is a mix of the two. Thismakes sense because, as teachers with informal leadership roles, they walk the boundary

between positional leader and classroom teacher. In both math and literacy, they often

offered examples of what they do in their classrooms. In literacy, the teacher leaders alsooffer strategies, identify needs, offer broader vision comments, and discuss professional

development ideas. In contrast, the teacher leaders in math spend most of their time

talking about resources, clarifying, and inviting others to speak.

Teacher1: Would it have to be primary and intermediate, or would it be as a wholestaff?Math Leader 1: It would probably be divided.Teacher2: Are we going to use any of the half day sessions?Literacy coordinator: You have some on the calendar this year. How many Ms.(Math Leader 1)?Math Leader 1: I don’t know.Literacy Coordinator: They were on the calendar. Then it’s up to you to take theinitiative.

(School Improvement Planning Meeting, 03.17.00)


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This analysis of the speech at the meetings shows us dramatic differences between

math and literacy. The biggest discrepancies are in the actions of the positional leaders.They rarely attend or speak at math meetings. In literacy meetings, they not only attend,

but they open and close most meetings and they offer big picture ideas to tie thediscussions together. The discrepancies in speech on the part of the teacher leaders

reveals this prioritization of literacy as well. In literacy, teacher leaders are pushing the

discussion to a higher level, while in math the informal leaders are mainly carrying out alower level of activity: distributing resources and clarifying information for the other

teachers. Another striking difference in the rhetoric is that the literacy meetings tend toinvolve more creative rhetoric from a more diverse population, while the participation in

math meetings tend to be very limited—both in speakers and in scope.

Because the positional leadership is more involved in literacy than math, mathtends to get short changed. The lack of vision in the math meetings may, on first

glimpse, be a result of lack of training in how to lead meetings on the part of the math

teachers. However, I postulate that there is more at play than that. The math teachershave classroom duties that they clearly see as their first priorities. As the 8th grade

teacher, and Math Team Leader says:

“…now this year it’s been hard to monitor. First of all, because they have alanguage arts coordinator that’s not in the classroom. So I’m suppose to be formath, but it’s really hard for me because I have a classroom and my first priorityis my students. I know I have to be responsible for the school as well, excuse me,but I have to worry about them first. So it’s harder with me trying to keep andmonitor the way that the language arts is monitoring because I’m in a classroom.”(02.20.02, 8th grade math teacher, interview)

This leaves them less time to do the work of the school and forces them into more

of a day-to day maintenance position. Additionally, teacher leaders are not in attendanceat district accountability meetings (as administrators are); thus working on a school vision

is not at the top of their priority list. Most likely, they do not view this as part of theirjob.

An analysis of the interview data also reveals this discrepancy between the level

of discourse in literacy and math. The formal leaders tend to talk in more detail andabout higher level elements about literacy than they do about math. For example, the


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principal was asked about her goals for the school for math, science, and literacy in an

interview, (01.31.0). In her responses about math and literacy, she talks about theparticipants as well as their roles in supporting new or struggling teachers. However,

when she responds about literacy, her talk centers more around division of labor as wellas a mediating artifact. She begins by talking about a school-wide literacy coordinator

and “other teachers who’ve taken leadership roles at workshops and opening up their

classrooms to assist other teachers…” She describes how they have built on thatstructure and identified grade level literacy coordinators who work closely with the

literacy coordinator and also support new teachers. She then moves past the participantsand talks about literacy work focused at the middle school level, (we’re) “looking at ways

in which we could hopefully integrate literacy into more of a context area subjects. And

you know so that’s something we really wanted to sort of firm up as we looked at ourliteracy framework, we felt we still needed another layer of leaders, you know, so to

speak…”

In her discourse around math, the principal again describes the key participants

and their roles:

But we have four teachers who went through a math leadership training programat the University of Chicago… it’s designed…to help to enhance the knowledgeof the teachers and then to help them to develop strategies for working with otherteachers.

She then describes how two of these leaders have helped a teacher get needed

materials, and then the principal begins to talk about a teacher who is retiring.

While the principal continues to discuss the literacy goals, the people involved,and the tasks at hand, she trails off on the math example and gets side tracked into a

monologue about personnel challenges and teachers who aren’t performing up to par.Essentially, her literacy response remains content driven, focusing more on the literacy

community and division of labor , while her math discussion soon becomes oriented only

on participants. In this example we see a pattern that emerges across the interview dataas a whole: the positional leaders talk at a higher level about literacy than they do

mathematics.

Summary


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The leadership activity at Adams School clearly reveals that literacy is a priority

over math. This prioritization is revealed in the staffing decisions, the time they allocateto subject matter activities, the leaders’ participation at these activities, and in the rhetoric

of the school leaders. In regards to participants, there are more positional leadersworking on literacy than there are in math. The division of labor is also different: the

positional leadership at Adams schedules more meetings around literacy. They attend

these meetings more frequently, and always talk at these meetings. Their rhetoric aroundliteracy reflects a comprehensive understanding of the goals for the school, and they work

to bring that big picture to the forefront of these literacy meetings. On the other hand,they rarely attend the math meetings. In their absence, a cadre of math teachers has

arisen to fill these leadership roles.

Certain elements exist that explain why literacy is a priority of the leadershippractice at Adams School. While the district emphasizes both math and literacy in their

high stakes testing policies, they also place more emphasis on reading and writing

improvement due to the significant struggles of students in these areas. Overall, readingand writing are seen as part of every subject area (“we are all reading teachers”) whereas

mathematics is seen as a much more narrowly defined field.16 Most of the positionalleaders are more comfortable with, and better versed in, the literacy domain. The

backgrounds and personal histories attest to literacy as a strength, and people tend to

work toward their strengths.

Experts and Learners

In addition to these differences across participants and division of labor in

leadership practice at Adams, I noticed another interesting pattern emerging from thedata. While some meetings looked very similar across math and literacy, other meetings

were quite different. In order to explore this pattern, I categorized the subject mattermeetings into three broad categories: Kick off the year meetings, School Improvement

Planning meetings, and Professional Development meetings. The first two categories are

16 Literacy is discussed at all-school faculty meetings while math is usually discussed at math teacher onlymeetings.


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self-explanatory; in this analysis, I call Professional Development meetings any meeting

in which new ideas are shared and/or discussed.

Literacy: Teachers as experts:

Consider two types of literacy Professional Development meetings: Breakfast

Club and Literacy Committee meetings.

Breakfast Club meetings. When Dr. Williams originally came to Adams, one of

the structures she put into place to support improvement in literacy, as well as get herfaculty to talk to each other about teaching practice, was the Breakfast Club. Breakfast

Club is a monthly gathering in which the teachers voluntarily arrive before school to

discuss an article—typically about literacy teaching practice.

“…we engaged in Breakfast Club and Teacher Leader so that the teachers gotmore opportunity, greater opportunities to discuss with one another and also tofind out what’s going on in each other’s classrooms. Because we didn’t know.Teaching can be a very closed situation, very, very closed,” (literacy coordinator,Tracy, 6.13.01).

The Principal buys breakfast for the teachers (out of her pocket), and the Literacy

Coordinator typically identifies an article and a teacher to guide the discussion. While

the Principal and Literacy Coordinator are in attendance at the Breakfast Clubs, they tendto sit back and allow the teachers to discuss literacy teaching practice among themselves.

In order to further encourage teacher involvement, the Literacy Coordinator empowers

teachers to take the lead at these meetings. She runs the first Breakfast Club of the year,and then she chooses critical players to act as moderator for the remaining meetings. For

example, in November 2000, the article presented at the Breakfast Club was about usingpicture books in the classroom to get students interested and engaged in reading.

Because the Literacy Coordinator was getting resistance from the upper grade

teachers—who claimed this strategy worked for the younger grades but did not work witholder kids (a typical issue at Adams: the divide between the lower and upper

grades)—the Literacy Coordinator chose a sixth grade teacher to lead the discussion. Inhaving a middle school teacher lead this meeting, and talk about her success with this


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strategy in her own classroom, more middle school teachers left the meeting willing to try

it out in their classroom.The talk at these breakfast club meetings is unique. A true give and take occurs at

these meetings, and the positional leaders are unusually quiet. The teachers take over andcollaborate around the ideas offered in the article. The lead teacher offers her insight,

questions, and connections to personal practice, and from there the other teachers join the

discussion. The principal and the literacy coordinator take this back seat approachbecause they want the teachers to be involved, but also because they want the teachers to

do the work of making sense of the ideas and thus be inclined to internalize them andchange their practice.

Literacy Committee Meetings: Another typical literacy Professional

Development meeting is the Literacy Committee meeting. Consider the followingexcerpt from a literacy committee meeting November 2000.


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1. Principal: we’re going to quickly move through the agenda… we would like to focus in, in2. particular, on grades 2-8 although we know there are some first grade teachers here that have3. things to contribute. We’d like to look at the Ten Week assessment results, then we will move4. into Chapter 6 of the book “Strategies that Work.” Some of you have done successful things5. so we will have time for sharing. We’ve found that the things we learn best we learn through6. sharing. We are ensuring we move in the right direction; ensure that the students are successful7. on that ten week assessment. Ms. (Literacy Coordinator), will present the ten week assessment8. results.”9. Literacy Coordinator: First I would like to say congratulations to grade levels—all grade10. levels made some improvements from the five week assessment to the ten week assessment11. which is a reflection of your time and commitment to getting students to learn…Third through12. fifth: need to work on abilities to write descriptive words… probably lacking in vocabulary,13. ability to pick out details from the story. They did a good job identifying the problem and14. solution of the story…which leads me to middle school: problem and solution didn’t15. always match…This is truly a concern. They had a little trouble determining the important16. information in the story. The questions missed were mostly vocabulary questions… I have17. a packet with lessons on teaching vocabulary—I’ll pass it around and if you want me to make18. you a copy, put your name on the green sticky note…19. (When the Literacy Coordinator finishes up Principal indicates to AAHC, who takes the floor.)20. African-American Heritage Coordinator: “Real quick, I did this real quick, Ms. (LC)21. asked me to do Chapter 6 and I did it quickly… (hands out a packet she put together.)22. “The whole chapter deals with three ways to make connections.”23. (she goes through the handout)“24. Get sticky notes and cut them in half (for students to use as they annotate the text)…”25. Teacher1: “Get them at Sam’s—I just did. They’re cheaper there.”26. AAHC: (Gives an example from her life to apply these strategies.)27. Teacher2: “Can I give an example? (We read) Shiloh—not the novel, just part of it. She28. (student in my class) knows how the dog felt. Kicks it just like Shiloh got kicked. (Example29. of student whose parent abuses their dog.) Sounder—both stories involve characters with dogs. I30. brought in the article from the Sun Times about the dog fighting. They didn’t know an abused31. animal but it’s in the world—not a dog fight but still a dog being mistreated.”32. AAHC: “Expose them to as many different genres. Last thing…the children must know33. which connection you’re making.”34. Teacher3: “Excuse me, I don’t have the sheet with the graphic.”35. AAHC: “The last chapter talks about how important it is when children are actually able to relate36. to the text. If you haven’t started, start…Get your little snippets; they’ll be your best friend.”37. Teacher4: “Last year we had ____ which asked for prior knowledge. I’ll make copies for the38. different grades. It worked well.”39. Teacher5: “We need to make sure they understand what it means to connect. What we mean40. by these words.”41. Principal: Teacher modeling. Only after the teacher models, then we move to the next phase.42. Guided practice, scaffolding, finally independent. (The) application of strategy in independent43. situations. Don’t just jump to the strategy. The framework is still: Model, guided practice,44. independent, then strategy.”45. Teacher1: “I can give an example of that. I tell the kids, “Take out a piece of paper, I’m going46. to read aloud. If you have questions, responses, write them down. I know you (motions to47. LC who is nodding her head) told us to do this and of course you are absolutely right…”48. Literacy Coordinator: Talk about a meta-cognitive process. That’s it when you hear that phrase. .

(Fieldnotes, 11.06.00)


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This meeting is another example of the active interplay of teachers aroundliteracy. Positional leaders participate heavily in this meeting. The Principal starts the

meeting and sets the agenda (lines 1-8). The Literacy Coordinator reports on results of

Five Week Assessment and offers resources to support weaknesses (lines 9-18). TheAfrican-American Heritage Coordinator hands out a framework she has created from the

book Strategies that Work (a text that the Principal and the Literacy Coordinatorpurchased for all teachers) (lines 20-24). The chapter is specifically about strategies for

how to get students to make connections when reading. From this point, the teachers

participate in the conversation. Two teachers offer resources to the other teachers:Teacher1, line 25 and Teacher4, lines 37-38.. Another teacher jumps in with an example

from her classroom practice that connects with the framework presented (Teacher2, lines27-32). In participating in this way, this fifth grade teacher enables other teachers to hear

a strategy for doing this in the classroom. Teacher5 identifies a need that they have to

address with their students (lines 39-40). In this way, she pushes the conversation to ahigher level, presenting a real need the school, as a whole, must address. This is a small

sample, but it represents the kind of collaboration and sense-making that commonly takesplace at literacy meetings.

The pattern across most of the Professional Development meetings around

literacy involve this collaborative style. In fact, the percentage of speech between leadersand followers is more even in literacy professional development meetings than any other

meeting type. In fact, on average, teachers talk more than leaders at these meetings. (get

figure here) Teachers are empowered and encouraged to share their expertise, and theydo. They consistently talk about their classroom practice and how it connects to the

theory at hand.

Math: Teachers as learners

Professional Development meetings in math fall into two categories:informational sessions and hands-on activity sessions. Both types of math meeting are

always led by classroom teachers, one of the four that constitute the Math Team.


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The informational meetings are strikingly similar to the kick off the year

meetings. The leaders tell the teachers what is expected of them, and the teachers askquestions. No discussion of ideas or sharing classroom practice occurs, with the

exception of the lead teachers talking about their own classroom practice in relation towhat they are teaching. Here, the teachers function in an empty vessel mode—they are

“filled up” with teaching strategies and content offered by the leaders.

Consider one math professional development meeting that is representative ofmathematics meetings at Adams. This meeting is a meeting for K-3 math teachers. The

meeting is led by two teachers (a first grade teacher and a third grade teacher) from theMath Team who act as Math Leader #1 and Math Leader #2. Typical of mathematics

leadership activities at Adams, there is only one positional leader present at this meeting

(the Student Needs Director). Math Leader #1 and Math Leader #2 provide each teachera folder with pre-packaged activities they can use directly in their classrooms. The

breakdown of the meeting is as follows:

Table 6.Math Professional Development Meeting (Year 02)Activity Person involvedIntroduction and welcome Math Leader #1Explanation of various math resources Math Leaders #1 and #2Questions about the resources TeacherSharing of classroom practice Math Leaders #1 and #2Sharing of NCTM standards Math Leader #1Sharing of computer activties for classroom Math Leader #2Clarification questions Various teachersInvitation to share Math Leader #1Explanation of packet with examples ofclassroom practice

Math Leaders # 1 and #2

The leaders dominate the talk. In this meeting, the math leaders invite theteachers into the conversation, but the teachers do not engage significantly. See the

following excerpt from the math meeting (01.18.01):

Roughly half way through the meeting, when they have gotten very little participationand even some silence when asked specific questions related to the activities they share,one leader pauses and says:

Leader #1: Any questions, comments, suggestions?Teacher1: What’s a reflector?

And again, later in the meeting:

Leader #1: Questions, comments, suggestions? We love suggestions?Silence.


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This interplay between leaders and followers is dramatically different from thecollaboration we see in literacy. In literacy, teachers are eager to share; in math, they sit

and listen, asking the occasional clarifying question. This math meeting is one

directional. The leaders tell the teachers what they can teach, and the teachers listenquietly and rarely interact. The teacher interactions are limited to asking clarification

questions , or to simply not participating at all. In this way, the teachers take on a passive

learner role.

In other professional development sessions around math, we see a slightly

different activity. The math leader or leaders run the teachers through a hands-on activitythat they learned through their math course at the local university (give two dates here).

In these cases, the followers act as learners, or students, carrying out the math task andlearning the material as they go. Take for example another K-3 meeting (10.28.02).

Math Leader #1 and Math Leader #3 give the teachers a folder with several activities.

The meeting is formed around three activities the leaders did at a workshop. The first is awarm up activity in which the teachers have to guess the number on their back, asking

only yes and no questions of their colleagues. The second activity has the teacherswriting directions about a picture they have in front of them and then they give their

partner directions to draw this same picture. In the final exercise, the math leaders have

the teachers trying to solve a tangram puzzle. The teachers are much more engaged inthis math meeting then we see in other meetings. This engagement, however, is limited

to the activity of doing the math. They do not discuss the mathematical concepts, nor do

they share their classroom practice in connection with these ideas as we see in the literacymeeting example. The sense-making we see in the literacy meetings is not present at

these math meetings. The math leaders run through a math exercise without engagingthem in a discussion around what this means for their teaching practice. Again, we see

the teachers acting as learners. They are there to learn the activities they can use, and the

math involved if need be, but they are not an active part of the sense-making process.


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How tools impact practice.

An examination of tools used helps to amplify this difference betweenparticipation in literacy and math meetings. While some tools are consistent between

both practices (Five Week Assessment data, for example), some tools vary dramatically.Literacy leaders bring tools—like frameworks from book chapters and articles about

teaching practice—and the exercise in the meeting is to make sense of the tool. The

teachers then take that sense-making back to their own teaching practice, and create theirown lessons. In contrast, the math leaders often bring pre-packaged tools to the math

teachers. They have removed the sense-making step and have simply offered concreteways for the math teachers to teach in their classrooms. The form of the tool drives the

meeting activity, and consequently we see differences in the leadership practice across

the math and literacy communities.

Sense-making tools. The tool leadership uses in Breakfast Club meetings is the

article up for discussion. This tool acts as an object that spans the boundary between thepositional leaders (the article is selected by the Literacy Coordinator, based on her

perceived need for professional development) and the teachers (the ones who read andmake sense of the article, applying the ideas to their own classroom practice) (Wenger,

1999). In the literacy committee meeting we considered, the tool brought to the table is a

framework from a chapter of a book about teaching literacy that the teachers all own.Conversely, in math the tools do not require any sense-making. They are pre-packaged

and ready to implement in the classroom. This is true about the folders given at the hands-onmeetings, as well as the actual activities the teachers are exposed to. Another example of this

‘pre-packaged’ math tool is the time line the Math Team gave to the math teachers in the fall of

Year 03. In this meeting, the math leaders present the instructional focus for the math teachers.In response to declining test scores in mathematics, the math team met over the summer to

conduct an item-analysis of the ISAT. They created a document that outlined, for every grade,which math concepts were on the test and with what frequency. Using the text-book as their

guide, the math team then mapped out the entire year for every grade, establishing a time table

for chapter completion and assessment dates. This document drove the instruction and


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assessment schedule for the whole school in mathematics. While many teachers struggled within

the timeframe laid out, this became a focal point for mathematics teaching in the building.

This ties back into the lack of big picture elements that the first section of my analysis

reveals about math. The math leaders, as teachers, have strengths. They provide good, usefulresources; they talk about their own practice; they offer model lessons. They do not have the

time, and perhaps even the relevant school and district information, to offer big picture vision.

Thus, the need for positional leaders to take charge of certain components of mathematicsleadership practice becomes highlighted in the case of this school.

While never explicitly stated by any member of the faculty at Adams, my analysis ofleadership activity reveals a distinct difference in leadership practice at Adams: teachers are able

to collaborate and problem solve around literacy but in mathematics that culture does not exist.

An exploration of the tools that leaders use in their leadership activity makes this distinctionmore explicit.

Conclusions and future workIn the case of Adams, the leadership activity around math and literacy varies

across ways in which literacy is prioritized, as well as ways in which leaders and

followers interact—as shaped by tools. The activity systems of math and literacy, at thispoint in time at this particular school, vary dramatically. From this discussion, we can

see that some of the mediating artifacts in literacy are different from the ones that exist in

math. In math they are prescriptive and require little to no teacher input or thought.Conversely, the artifacts in literacy invite the teachers to participate in a collaborative and

more sophisticated manner. There are more participants (positional leaders as well asteachers) in literacy than there are in math, and they speak more often in literacy

activities. The division of labor is different as well. Based on preliminary analysis, the

rules and norms vary across math and literacy as well; this requires more consideration,as does the different role mediating artifacts play across subject matter.

Exploring this prioritization, and this contrast between followers as experts vs.learners, offers us a better understanding of leadership practice. At Adams, the ways that

leaders make decisions about hiring priorities, allocate time, participate in leadership


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activities, and talk about curricular areas are all subject matter specific. Even the ways

that followers participate in subject matter activities vary across math and literacy.It is no longer enough to state that leaders lead instruction. They specifically lead

instruction differently in different domains, as this case study of Adams School reveals.Leaders will always make priorities in their practice; this is the nature of managing their

work. By breaking leadership practice into these components, we can then pay attention

to what priorities are made, and how these impact a school.Future work should extend beyond these components of leadership activity, as we

try to better understand the practice of leadership. In addition, I plan to explore thechanges in these subject matter differences over time. The shift in positional leaders at

Adams provides me with an interesting opportunity to watch these communities of

practice shift over time. By looking at how the communities of practice around math andliteracy are formed at Adams, and how they change, I can learn more about the nuances

of leadership and continue to offer insight into the very nature of leadership practice.

More work is also needed in a more in-depth study of the roles that specific leaders andfollowers play, and the dynamic element within those roles.

We know a lot about leadership. But we still do not know a lot about whatexactly leaders do. A better understanding of the practice of school leadership around

subject matter differences can help as schools continue working to successfully reform

their instructional practice.


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Appendix A: Coding scheme for analysis of meeting dataThis work was heavily influenced by Heller and Firestone (1995) and Firestone andCorbett (1988)

Meeting label:Type of meeting:Math and/or Literacy or Other (specify):

Who is at the meeting, who speaks, and how many times:Who Speaks? How many timesFormal Leaders(administrators)

Teachers

Other

The How (how the talk happens)Talk Coordination PersonPoint Person 1Point Person 2First WordIntroduce Point PersonEnding VoiceLast WordOz


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ReportingAcademicOverlay

Person # of times What they say

SelfClassroom Author

AnnouncerGrade levelSchool Author

AnnouncerOutsideDictate

Announcer

Non-AcademicOverlay

Person # of times What they say

Classroom AuthorAnnouncer

School AuthorAnnouncer

OutsideDictate Announcer

Other "how" Person # of times What they sayClarificationRephrases/Repeats foremphasisAsks for helpOffers help in response torequest (see above)


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Professional community/collegiality

Person # oftimes

What they said

Invites othersTeam playerCollaborationExpertiseSets toneGoes outsideof roleReferencingothersDisagree withsomething thatis said

PeopleMaintenance

Person and #of times

What they said

Provide recognitionRole assignmentBlameCheck inHandlesdisturbancesPraiseEncouragement

Other stuff you notice about how the talk happens:


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The What (what they talk about)ResourcesAcademicOverlay

Person Number oftimes

What they said

ObtainingresourcesDistributingresourcesReminding useof resourcesUsing resourceShortcoming inresourceSharing newresourceTeaching use ofresource

Non-academicoverlay

ObtainingDistributingReminding useofUsing resource


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Broader VisionAcademicOverlay

Person Numberof times

What they said

MakingconnectionsFits to standardoperatingproceduresBig pictureNeedGoalStrategySetsexpectationsWay it is

Non-AcademicOverlay

Person Numberof times

What they said

MakingconnectionsFits to standardoperatingproceduresBig pictureNeedGoalStrategySetsexpectationsWay it is


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The What (continued)

Monitoring Improvement EffortAcademic Overlay Person # of

timesWhat they said

Iowa test(ITBS) (city)ISAT (state)5 wkassessments

Testing

Generic use of"test"

NeedGoalTeachingStrategyStrategySetsexpectationsChallengeChange

Non-AcademicOverlay

Person # oftimes

What they said

NeedGoalTeachingStrategyStrategySetsexpectationsChallengeChange


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Appendix B: Who spoke at the meeting and how often (snap shot from Year 01, 02)(Positional leaders in bold, Teacher leaders in italics, other individuals in regular text.)Meeting Name andSubject MatterFocus

Who speaks Number of turns Percentageof talk

Kick off the yearmeeting—L

Dr. WilliamsMs. TraceyComment made byMs. Richards

455

FL—100IL—0T—0

Literacycommittee—L

Dr.WilliamsMs. TraceyMs. BaizeMs. OgdenMs. WalthersMs. GrovenorMs. Holmes13 teachers

18195122325

FL—56IL—11T—33

Breakfast club—L Ms. James8 TeachersDr. Williams

7161

FL—100IL—0T—0

Breakfast club—L Dr.WilliamsMs. TraceyMs. BaizeMs. HolmesMs. JamesMs. Grovenor10 teachers

43361110

FL—36IL—29T—36

Breakfast club—L Dr.Williams

Ms.TraceyMs. GrovenorMs. BrownMs. WalthersMs. OgdenMs. Holmes9 teachers

6416211114

FL—22IL—47T—31

SchoolImprovementPlanning—M

Ms.TraceyMs. BrownMs. GrovenorMs. WalthersMs. HolmesMs. Ogden

2 (+ 3 around lit. document)1246141

FL—5IL—76T—19


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Ms. Sunny6 teachers

7

ProfessionalDevelopment—M

Ms. BrownMs. Sunny5 teachers

212520

FL—0IL—70T—30

Documents

Distributed Leadership Practice: The Subject Matters1...leadership practice is to focus on how the situation of practice shapes the activity of instructional leadership. In schools,