The COVID-19 pandemic has immeasurably impacted nearly every aspect of schools from day-to-day operating procedures to the way students attend classes to curricular and instructional matters. In the early stages of the pandemic, while COVID-19 spread across the country, the large-scale, nationwide closure of schools in March 2020 forced educators, students, and families alike to adjust to emergency remote teaching with virtually no warning or preparation (Marshall et al., 2020; Hodges et al., 2020). As the 2019–2020 school year came to a close remotely, states began the process of reopening after initial COVID-19 related closures; and the predicament of how to reopen schools in the fall became a major topic of debate. This contentious debate continued throughout the rest of the 2020–2021 school year as school buildings went in and out of in-person, hybrid and remote instructional models; and the public health crisis persisted. Caught squarely in the crossfire of the debate and on the receiving end of policy coming down from state governance were public-school classroom teachers. Historically, this top-down dynamic is certainly not new for the teaching profession (Lortie, 1975; Cohn et al., 1993; Gratch, 2000). Intersecting with this reality is the view of teachers as executors of policy that others create (Cohn et al., 1993; Cochran-Smith et al., 2009) — a view that situates teachers in a web of bureaucracy (Elvira, 2020) that is often at odds with their expertise and local knowledge of practice (Cochran-Smith et al., 2009). This view ultimately results in the exclusion of teachers’ voices in decision-making arenas (Cohn et al., 1993). While preliminary research investigating the impacts of COVID-19 on teachers and the teaching profession has established some of the emotional and physical toll that has occurred, more details with respect to the way that teachers experienced the work of teaching itself in conjunction with policy decisions is necessary. The three studies in this dissertation address these needs by teasing out teachers’ perspectives, challenging the lingering image of teachers as technicians and the status quo of top-down policy enactment, and determining a way to move forward. More specifically, these studies occur within the context of public-school teaching in the state of Massachusetts (MA) and involve data sources that include survey responses from full-time, public-school teachers in MA who actively taught in the 2020–2021 school year as well as policy memos that came from the MA state educational agency (SEA). The combination of articles in this dissertation examines topics including the status of teachers’ voices and influence in decision-making forums, the relationship between policy and teachers’ work, teachers as experts versus technicians, and teacher demoralization throughout the pandemic. By drawing upon teacher survey data from 122 full-time, public-school teachers in MA, the first study captures their experiences teaching during the pandemic from the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 through April of the 2020–2021 school year. This first study provides a window into the direct experiences teachers had teaching during the pandemic in comparison to teaching prior to the pandemic and sets the groundwork to show how teachers’ experiences do not align with images of teaching as put forth by the MA SEA and the policy rolled out during the pandemic. The second study uses document analysis to examine policy artifacts produced by state governance in the wake of COVID-19 and the way they communicate certain perceptions of teachers and the work of teaching. The third study returns to teacher responses to inquire about their perceptions of the state educational agency’s level of support and policy developed during the pandemic. As such, this third study demonstrates the teacher demoralization that results from the lack of inclusion of teachers’ voices in decision-making forums and the disconnect between policy and teachers’ work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Together these studies reflect that the COVID-19 pandemic has further underscored the gap between the individuals in the classroom and those in decision-making forums. As such, it has revealed the need for a more detailed understanding of the commitments that teachers juggle at the classroom level in order to better align policy, research, and state and national responses with the daily needs of students and teachers.

Research on policy implementation suggests that many education reforms designed to improve the quality of education in general have been more rhetorical than substantive in their impact on the organisation of schools and classrooms. Schools and classrooms do change, but the extent and directions of change are not always consistent with the intention of policy initiatives. This same argument applies to the South African education policy process, where a substantial body of literature has documented the gaps between the intention of policy makers (intended policy) and their implementation (implemented policy) in schools. The gap has been especially relevant for those policies focusing on the change of the knowledge, skills and competency levels of teachers through accountability and professional development policies. The purpose of this investigative and descriptive study originated in a hypothesis that the lack of orientation, knowledge sharing, understanding and the capacity building of teachers on policy intentions make it difficult for teachers to implement policies. I assumed therefore that through information and workshop sessions the gap between the policy intentions and the practice of teachers can be solved. In particular, my involvement in the drafting of the Developmental Appraisal System (DAS) policy gave me the sense that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the policy, but that the lack of capacity building among teachers is what is undermining the implementation of the policy in schools. The study therefore intended to investigate the impact of a five-day information session on the implementation process of the DAS policy at Cape Flats Secondary School (CFSS) – this is a pseudo name. These sessions were facilitated by me during the last semester of 2001. Thereafter, the school was given a year to implement the policy during 2002. Regular contact with the chairperson of the Staff Development Team (SDT) to ascertain the progress of implementation brought me to the realisation after eighteen months and still no implementation that the focus of my study had to change to understand the challenges of implementation at the school. As a member of the Policy Formulation team, I could not understand why a policy with such immense potential in enhancing professional development among teachers could not be implemented in a school where staff members publicly stated their commitment to implement the policy. This school (CFSS) in particular, had a high number of union leaders involved at numerous levels within the union who researched and developed the initial ideas and proposals of the DAS policy. The study is therefore guided by the following questions: 1. What made it difficult for the staff of Cape Flats Secondary School to implement the DAS policy, despite a high level of stated commitment to implement the policy and a thorough five-day information session (both theoretical and practical) on how to implement the policy? a) What was the expected level, scope or depth of the policy change, envisaged by policy formulators, necessary by the school to implement the policy? b) Which elements of the policy and the conditions at the school needed to be supported by implementation support agents (national, provincial and district officials) to facilitate the implementation at school level? and c) What was the level of functionality of the school to facilitate the successful implementation of this policy? This research explains how the different levels of functionality of schools affect the potential of implementation of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy. In particular, I reflect on the deliberations which inform the features of the DAS policy, during the policy formulation stage. I furthermore pay special attention to what interviewees called the ‘what was going on’ at the school, as if ‘outsiders’ don’t know what was going on in the school. The research therefore focuses on the functionality of the school through the lenses of ten school functionality components. Teachers at CFSS believe that policy makers do not understand and know what is going on at their school and therefore the effect, relevance and implementability of their policies are disconnected from the operational implementation contexts of schools. The data was collected over a period of six months. In this regard, I used multiple methods of data collection which include critical engagement with the entire staff through information workshop sessions, semi-structured interviews, critical engagements with the strategic liaison team, structured questionnaires, document analysis and photographic records. The main insights of the study include the following: -- Policy makers have to re-assess and re-conceptualise the current policy making paradigm in operation in developing ‘professional’ policy; -- The influence and power relations of employers and employee parties in the policy-making process must be re-assessed and re-conceptualised in order to clarify the policy-making process in South Africa; -- The lack of systems (both technical and human), at different levels of education, makes it impossible to monitor and evaluate the effective and efficient implementation of the DAS policy; -- Understanding schools as individual organisations with unique characteristics, is a key pre-requisite for developing policies that are aimed at addressing real problems at specific schools; -- Leadership and management skills are seriously lacking at South African schools; -- Educators should implement reform policies around clear performance standards and accountability expectations; -- Intervention support agents should help schools make informed choices among a variety of implementation strategies; -- Policy makers should allocate target funding to encourage adoption of proven change practice; -- Policy makers should focus on schools that are ready for change with an expectation that many schools not ready for change this year may in the normal course of events become ready within a few years. The key insights of this research make this study unique and offer critical advice to policy makers. In particular, the re-organisation of the literature on policy-practice gaps (PPG) is insightful. The utilisation of both qualitative and quantitative data adds validity and reliability to the study. More importantly, the study shows that quantitative data can contribute towards understanding the policy implementation challenges in schools. Finally, my ‘insider’ experience of the policy-making process shares rare deliberations of what are the ‘trade-offs’ during the policy formulation stage. / Thesis (PhD (Education Policy Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted