Globally, reform discourses and policy texts increasingly press standardization, test-based accountability, and evidence-based approaches to decision-making in education systems. These ideas have become staples in policy discourses (Ball, 2008), pushing education leaders to engage with technically rational problem-solving approaches. Although some challenges entail problem solving, others do not. Rather, they pose dilemmas for educators to manage. Dilemmas, as distinct from problems, refer to “messy, complicated, conflict-filled situations” where the alternative solutions are roughly equally desirable (or undesirable), necessitating compromise on the part of education and school leaders on some fundamental values (Cuban, 2001, p. 10). Dilemmas pose distinctive challenges for educational leadership.

In this presentation, we focus on the dilemmas that system leaders encounter in reforming primary school science in response to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Primary school science offers an interesting case for two reasons:  First, reformers press for ambitious changes that will require system leaders to engage in educational system-building to support science teaching. Second, primary school science has not figured as prominently as literacy and mathematics in policy texts that advance test-based accountability.  Historically science is often sidelined in the primary school curriculum (Murphy & Beggs, 2005; NASEM, 2022), with primary teachers often lacking confidence in teaching science (Klepaker & Almendingen, 2017; Murphy et al, 2007), and as a result likely poses unique challenges for system leaders.            

We motivate and frame our research by bringing three distinct literatures into conversation. First, education system-building refers to the work that system and school leaders, often in collaboration with teachers, do to organize, support, and manage the core work of schooling—teaching. It involves five core domains of work, distributed across levels (e.g., local education agencies, schools, and classrooms) of the education system, including building educational infrastructures; supporting the use of educational infrastructure in practice; managing environmental relations; managing practice and performance; and developing and distributing instructional leadership (Datnow et al., 2022; Peurach et al., 2019; Spillane et al., 2022). Our analysis focuses on system leaders’ efforts to build education systems to support primary school science and the dilemmas they construct in doing that work (Peurach, Yurkofsky, & Sutherland, 2019).

Second, we take a school subject specific approach to education system-building because the available empirical evidence suggests that the school subject matters not only for how teachers think about teaching and its improvement (Ball, 1981; Siskin, 2013), but also for school and system leaders’ efforts to lead and organize instructional improvement (Spillane & Hopkins, 2013). Further, the institutional environments that form around particular school subjects differ, shaping the work leaders must engage in. For example, some subjects––notably literacy and mathematics––receive considerably more attention from policymakers and other institutional actors than others, such as science and social studies (Burch & Spillane, 2003; Murphy & Beggs, 2005).

Third, while the rise of technical rationality globally has contributed to foregrounding the problem-solving work of educational leadership, scholars have long documented the centrality of dilemmas andmanaging dilemmas in educational practice from classroom teaching (Lampert, 1985) to school and district leadership (Cardno, 2007; Cuban, 2001; Spillane & Sun, 2022; Spillane & Lowenhaupt, 2019). Dilemmas captured situations in which educational leaders face two or more prized values, where choosing would lead to sacrificing something else they value, potentially making matters worse. Hence, dilemmas do not lend themselves to technically-rational approaches to problem-solving; rather they must be managed – coped with – over time.   

Our research questions are:     

1.  What are the core dilemmas that education system leaders grapple with in improving and supporting elementary science education? 

2.  How do education system leaders manage these dilemmas?

Our analysis is based on data from a five-year study exploring the work of instructionally focused system-building to support primary school science teaching at the school system- and school-levels. We used a qualitative comparative case study design (Yin, 2014) involving 13 education systems (i.e., school districts, charter school networks) across the U.S., focusing on systems leaders’ instructional decision-making about primary science. Our theoretical sampling approach involved two steps. First, using snowball sampling, we selected six states that had either adopted the NGSS, or developed standards based on the NGSS. We then selected four case study school systems within each state. In deciding on a final sample of 13 education systems, we worked to maximize variation in system size, urbanicity, and student demographics, as well as diversity in approaches to system-building for primary science education. We conducted 116, 60-minute, semi-structured virtual interviews with 101 district leaders (some were interviewed more than once). We asked science district leaders questions on (1) their roles, responsibilities, and background; (2) state, district, and community context; (3) current priorities and visions for primary science; (4) infrastructure in place supporting primary science; (5) plans for continuing primary science reform; and (6) challenges they were experiencing in this work. For non-science system leaders, such as literacy/math coordinators, Title 1 coordinators, and data managers, the interview focused on their role and how it interfaced with science system-building efforts. We also observed district routines relating to primary science in each system. For data analysis, we coded the interviews deductively into broad analytic categories based on the five domains of system building described above, and references to challenges and dilemmas system leaders were facing in system-building work for primary science. Then, working inductively, we coded the references within the challenges and dilemmas code to identify key themes and dilemmas across different systems (Saldaña, 2021). Having identified four central dilemmas, we approached the data in layers, coding for each dilemma one at a time, and distinguishing codes into (a) identifying the nature and origins of the dilemma and (b) the management of each dilemma. By working in layers, with some sections double or triple coded, we were able to see how the four dilemmas intersected for system leaders to write analytic memos. We used observation data to further enrich and extend our memo writing.

Our analysis documents how system leaders’ efforts, historically and currently, to manage their environments and build structural arrangements to support teaching contribute to the preferential treatment of literacy and mathematics relative to science. For example, the availability and use of performance metrics tied to student achievement in literacy and mathematics and educators’ lack of comfort with teaching science contributed to legitimizing the prioritizing of literacy and mathematics relative to science in organizational structures such as organizational routines and formal positions. This, in turn, created a series of dilemmas for system leaders eager to reform primary school science. In building education systems, leaders managed this dilemma using three strategies. First, the integration of science with literacy and/or mathematics to ‘double count time’ and ensure science gets taught. Second, the specialization of teachers, either by employing science specialists or by departmentalizing teachers within year groups to mitigate against the effect of primary teachers’ lack of preparation and comfort teaching science. Third, by adopting curriculum materials that could be used to manage primary science teaching, for example by making teachers accountable for using the hands-on materials provided. These management approaches were also combined in some cases. In Silverbay school district, for example, integration and the creation of instructional time were central aims of their curriculum design efforts. System leaders chose strategies based on their beliefs about and goals for science learning but were also required to manage the resulting dilemmas that emerged from their efforts. This study contributes to literature on dilemma management by showing that the dilemmas in education system-building (1) are school-subject sensitive, (2) emerge in relation to system-building for other school subjects, and (3) are embedded in school and education systems’ structural/organizational arrangements.

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