Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The purpose of this research is to explore if policy makers and implementers shift
and/or change their understandings of the portfolio management model (PMM) when
engaged in equity-oriented transformative professional learning. The portfolio approach
to urban education, at present, is being implemented or considered by over one third of
the US. There are 20 states, 40 cities, and the District of Columbia that are pursuing
and/or implementing the portfolio management model (PMM). This research study
examines how systemic, socio-political, socio-historical, and interconnected policy
networks have resulted in inequity. Furthermore, this study focuses on how policy makers
and implementers engage with one another and their context(s) while learning about
educational equity. This occurred via facilitating transformative professional learning
opportunities aimed to illicit critical self-awareness, reflection, and examination of
perhaps the more pernicious underpinnings of authentic decision and choice making in
US education reform. The study also explores the ways in which institutional context and
the research design itself may have impacted and/or impeded shifts in learning.
The study’s theoretical frameworks guided the decision to use critical qualitative
inquiry and narrative inquiry to investigate the raced, gendered, sexed, and classed
experiences of policy makers and implementers, and further, implications for policy implementation regarding other forms of othering such as ableism, linguicism, ageism,
etc.
Thematic analysis of the data, analyzed using critical frameworks, were
articulated as interspliced data vignettes. Findings suggest that learning is social and that
designed experiences around educational equity can provide ways in which policy
makers and implementers can formally intervene in their own practices of developing
and/or cultivating critical consciousness, as well as decision-making toward PMM
adoption and implementation in their respective contexts. Participant’s narratives both
challenge and perpetuate dominant, historical approaches of urban education reform
adoption and implementation, and exposes how US urban education policy arenas have
not systemically centered critical consciousness, resulting in equity-oriented policies
being interpreted and implemented in inequitable ways. Findings from this study guide
future research and practice that focuses on urban education policy creation, adoption,
and implementation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:IUPUI/oai:scholarworks.iupui.edu:1805/11644 |
| Date | 24 May 2016 |
| Creators | Kyser, Tiffany S. |
| Contributors | Scheurich, James Joseph, Henry Anthony, Ronda C., Helfenbein, Robert J., Jr., Hong, Youngbok |
| Source Sets | Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
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