Equity-focused Technical Assistance in the Transition of United States Public Schools

Author(s):

Kathleen Thorius(presenting / submitting)Brendan Maxcy(presenting)Thu Suong Nguyen

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

32. Organizational Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

32 SES 09 B, Organizing Transition in a Diverse World

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

11:00-12:30

Room:

3008. [Main]

Chair:

Maria Grazia Riva

Contribution

For nearly sixty-five years, the United States has invetsed in technical assistance projects to aid in international and domestic development efforts. For almost as long, the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) has invested in technical assistance and dissemination (TA & D) projects to build capacity of state and local education agencies (SEAs/LEAs) to carry out federal education policies and programs (Haslam & Turnbull, 1996): to support them in their organizational learning and transition. Currently, the USDOE funds 82 TA & D centers under 18 categorical programs grouped by special populations or purposes (e.g., Outcomes, Early Childhood, and Equity Assistance centers).

Domestically, Desegregation Assistance Centers legislated through Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 offered TA to help educators educate all children regardless of race. Over the past fifty years, these evolved into the network of ten federally funded regional Equity Assistance Centers within which we operate, and which now focus on equity in relation to gender and national origin, as well as race.

Despite USDOE’s heavy investment, theoretical and methodological models emerging from TA are largely absent. Recently, Kozleski and Artiles (2012) expanded critiques of TA as a top- down, expert-novice consultation paradigm (Haslam & Turnbull, 1996; McInerney & Hamilton, 2007) asserting TA should seek to remediate how systems might facilitate equity in student outcomes rather than simply consult on technical improvements to existing operations. Informed by and building upon these concerns, the purpose of this paper is to offer a TA framework that emphasizes the use of tools to mediate critical reflection and improvements to systemic organization and centers attention on equity, applicable across transnational contexts. We illustrate the framework with examples from our work in an equity assistance center within the USDOE-funded TA & D network noted above.

Drawing from sociocultural theories, our TA framework emphasizes tools and processes from cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and is characterized by three features:
1. Explicit concerns for equity in social outcomes and transformation of systems (Artiles & Kozleski, 2012).
2. The situation of learning within practice-embedded activities (Argyris & Schön, 1978; Scribner, 1999).
3. Views of learning and praxis as emerging through the development of tools and practices that disrupt the current system (Engeström & Sannino, 2010).

Method

Our center seeks to ensure equity in student access to and participation in high quality, research-based education by expanding capacity to provide robust, effective opportunities to learn for all students, regardless of race, sex, and national origin. In doing so, we employ several approaches to support transformative organizational learning within public educational agencies. Aligned with our first TA feature, we assert educational equity efforts must move beyond diversity awareness and cultural proficiency trainings (Gorski, 2011) and attend to long-standing disparities in opportunities to participate and learn for students from historically underserved groups, as well as on the basis of gender and dis/ability (Battey, Kafai, Nixon, & Kao, 2007; Tan & Barton, 2008). Illustrating our approach, state leaders sought center assistance with a so-called “achievement gap” between African American and White students. With leaders, we broadened inquiry beyond achievement of these student groups to encompass what Ladson-Billings (2006) calls the education debt including students’ access to experienced teachers, equitable development and distribution of financial resources across districts and schools, and histories and features of district/school/community partnerships. Regarding the second feature, situation of learning within practice, we work alongside partners to examine the routines of policy and practice contributing to local conditions within which equity concerns have emerged. We partnered with an LEA working under an Office for Civil Rights resolution agreement due to inadequate addressing of bullying and harassment of students on the basis of race. We have not only engaged in an extensive review of existing policy related to the definitions and prevention of bullying and harassment, but also in ongoing dialogue across stakeholder groups (e.g. family members, students, teachers) about LEA conditions contributing to environments where bullying and harassment are more and less likely. The third feature of TA—development and introduction of tools to disrupt current systems and inequities inherent within—is the primary means through which we attend to the previous two features. Specifically, we introduce and co-develop with local stakeholders tools to facilitate critical analysis of the way things are, who benefits, and who does not in relation to the status quo, including groups’ histories of access and participation and deficit thinking about students, families, and communities. Within the achievement gap initiative, we developed a tool to engage SEA offices in reviewing agency policies, procedures and structures for potential to enhance equity. The reviews informed a cross-office equity-focused strategic planning effort guided by center staff.

Expected Outcomes

There is a death of theoretical and methodological models emerging from and guiding TA despite heavy federal heavy investment in TA. We provide a framework and examples of our work not to proffer a single TA model, but to promote a richer dialogue across transnational contexts. If we are to realize the potential and avoid the pitfalls of TA that discussion must aim at theoretical development and be grounded in accounts of TA in practice. Informed by our exploration of the origins of TA, recognition of the need for equity-focused supports for schools responding to performance pressures, and critiques of traditional overreliance on top-down TA approaches to spur technical improvements to existing operations (Kozleski & Artiles, 2012; McInerney & Hamilton, 2007), we offer a process-oriented approach to assisting local and state education agencies promote systemic transformation through contextualized support for organizational learning.

References

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Author Information

Kathleen Thorius (presenting / submitting)

Indiana University School of Education

Indianapolis

Brendan Maxcy (presenting)

Indiana University School of Education, United States of America

Thu Suong Nguyen