How high school academic departments impact school reform efforts

ABSTRACT

High school academic departments remain under-examined yet powerful entities in American high schools. High status department leaders create and sustain narratives around teaching and learning, disciplinary-specific best practices, and the overall efficacy and effectiveness of any number of school improvement policies and initiatives promoted by school leaders. This study presents two cases of academic departments in a single, public, comprehensive high school in the United States to explore how and why each department approached the school’s shift to problem-based learning (PBL) differently. This longitudinal, comparative case study employed mixed methods. We draw from data collected between 2010 and 2015 including yearly teacher survey data, teacher interviews, and video recorded department meetings to describe ways each department responded to the school’s PBL initiative and to explore the culture and norms that existed within each department during the time of the study. Quantitative data suggest the Social Studies department adopted PBL, while the English department did not. Qualitative data suggest a relationship between the extent to which each department adopted PBL and the extent to which the underlying principles of PBL aligned with each department’s teaching culture, professional norms, and the deep narratives department leaders established and sustained around teaching and learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic departments
• school reform
• teacher status
• high school

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the U.S. Department of Education (PR/Award # U396C100150) for their support of this work and to the Social Studies and English departments at Salamander High School for their gracious participation in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. All names of places and people are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Education [U396C100150].

Notes on contributors

Paul S. Sutton

Paul S. Sutton is an Assistant Professor of Education at Pacific Lutheran University where teaches in both the undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs. He can be reached at [email protected].

Randy Knuth

Randy Knuth is the President of Knuth Research, Inc.