Thesis advisor: Rebecca Lowenhaupt / Leading discussions in education today center on closing academic achievement gaps and it is widely believed that school districts are responsible for creating the conditions for all students to be successful in school. Recent state and federal policies place demands on central office administrators to help schools improve, which has resulted in a shift in the work of central office administrators. As central office administrators shift work practices to help schools develop their capacity for improving teaching and learning, they need to collaborate to build new and collective knowledge. This qualitative case study describes the collaboration of one central office administrator team when working to support historically marginalized populations. It is one section of a larger research project on how central office administrators organize their work in support of historically marginalized populations. Two research questions guided this study: (1) How do communities of practice emerge within the central office when working to improve outcomes for historically marginalized students? (2) What conditions foster or hinder administrator collaboration? Interviews, a document review, and an observation were used to answer the research questions. Findings suggest that structures in the district existed that both support and hinder collaboration of central office administrators. Time to collaborate and tools used provided structural support for collaboration. The organizational structure of the central office and limited authority to make decisions hindered efforts at collaboration. To better understand how communities of practice emerge, I focused on two specific elements, joint enterprise and learning in practice. The joint enterprise of central office administrators related broadly to improving outcomes for all students, however there were limitations to the extent that joint enterprise existed in the district. Further, there were instances in which learning in practice seemed to occur in the district, however an implementation orientation and overreliance on prior knowledge limited adult learning, at least at the central office level. Collaboration is held up as an improvement strategy for schools and districts, yet there is limited research on central office administrator collaboration. This study contributes to the body of research on central office administrator collaboration, specifically those working in support of historically marginalized populations. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_108002 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Smith, Kathleen M. |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0). |
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