Instructional reform and multiple institutional logics: insights from executive leadership in English Multi-Academy Trusts

ABSTRACT

The systemic changes in the education policy landscape in England under the academies reform movement have nurtured a growing prevalence of educational organisations such as Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) operating as meso-level institutional actors that shape the implementation of policies and mediate between social structures and individual contexts and environments. This paper presents findings from an analysis of instructional improvement efforts in two MATs drawing on data from interviews with 13 executives and school leaders. Insights from neo-institutional theory provide an important lens for examining the ways in which logics of state, market and community influence executive leaders’ decisions and practices towards system-wide instructional reform. Findings demonstrate the different ways in which executive leaders perceived these logics influencing their actions and how school leaders experienced the expectations from the executive leaders in the wake of multiple accountability demands. The contextual analysis of institutional logics provides new knowledge on the perceived impact of the macro level policy development and implementation at the meso- and micro-level structures, beliefs and practices revealing the complexity of instructional reform.

KEYWORDS:

• Instructional reform
• institutional logics
• policy enactment
• Multi-Academy Trusts
• England

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).