Research Method in the Postmodern

James Scheurich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135402853
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In recent years, research in the social sciences has been dominated by the debate on the merits of qualitative method versus quantitative methodology. Until recently, the debate appeared to have been won by those promoting the qualitative approach, but then postmodern theory appeared on the scene, challenging all our preconceptions about research method. This book goes one step further than those working at the philosophical level, showing the implications of postmodernism for practice.

1 Educational Reforms Can Reproduce Societal Inequities: A Case Study

With Michael Imber

Often forgotten amidst appeals for the reform or restructuring of the public schools is the fact that those the schools most commonly fail to serve are low-income and minority students. It is not surprising, then, that numerous educational theorists have claimed that schools are strongly influenced by the inequitable distribution of knowledge, power, and resources in society and that schools tend to reproduce these same inequities within their policies and practices (Apple, 1982; Carnoy and Levin, 1976 and 1986; Giroux, 1981; Oakes, 1986; Rodriquez, 1987; among many others¹). Bates (1980a, 1980b and 1987) and Foster (1986) have expanded this important line of argument by contending that educational administration plays an important role in this reproduction. Their critique, though, exists mostly at the theoretical, normative, or even ideological level, leaving interested educators with limited understanding of the mechanisms by which administrative practice contributes to the reproduction of societal inequities.

This chapter shows how such inequities can be reproduced within school systems in one crucial area of administrative responsibility, school reform. It begins by examining the dominant paradigms of educational organizational reform — functionalism, culturalism, and critical theory — and by showing how school reform decisions can have an unequal effect on different student or constituency groups. The second section of the chapter assesses notable examples of functionalist and culturalist scholarly work on educational reform and addresses the inadequate development of critical theory in terms of research on actual administrative practices. The third part of the chapter presents a case study of one school district's reform effort that illustrates how societal inequities can permeate both the process and product of school reform even when that is not the conscious intention of the participants. The final section offers suggestions for countering the influence of such inequities on administrative practices.

Throughout the 1980s, school reform has been prominent on the agenda of educational practitioners and theorists. Although various models of organizational change have been discussed in the administrative science literature, historically the discourse on reform in education has been dominated by the functionalist or instrumentalist approach, typified by the work of Cunningham (1982). During the past fifteen years, though, a compelling critique of the functionalist approach has been developed by several leading theorists, including March and Olsen (1976), Meyer (1983), Scott (1987), and Weick (1979). In response to this criticism, a rival philosophy, often called the culturalist or interpretivist approach, has attracted attention both in business and education. Examples of this are the works of Kilmann (1986) and Peters and Waterman (1982) in business and Sarason (1982) in education. A third perspective is that of critical theory (Anderson, 1990; Bates, 1982; Foster, 1986; Sirotnik and Oakes, 1986; Yeakey, 1987). This approach rejects both the functionalist and the culturalist positions because they ignore the inequitable distribution of knowledge, power, and resources in society and the influence of that distribution on schools (Bates, 1980b and 1987; Foster, 1986). But critical theory also has critics who have questioned its application to educational administration on the basis of several issues, chief among which has been its lack of specific, verifying examples (Lakomski, 1987; Willower, 1985; Yeakey, 1987).

Regardless of which organizational paradigm is utilized, school reforms are policy decisions based on choices about the allocation or reallocation of limited public resources (Sarason, 1982). Several commentators have argued that these choices can inequitably benefit different student groups (such as gifted, at-risk, special education, low or high SES, and majority or minority race students) or different public constituencies (such as low or high SES parents, real estate developers, the local Chamber of Commerce, or residents of older neighborhoods) (Berman, 1985; Bernstein, 1975; Carnoy and Levin, 1986; Katz, 1975; Kirst, 1988; Metz, 1988; Oakes, 1986; Popkewitz, 1988; Whiteside, 1978). For example, a district reform effort may involve building a new elementary school that benefits powerful development interests in the community instead of revitalizing older, underutilized inner city facilities with large percentages of at-risk children. Or a district may choose to fund a new gifted student program, the beneficiaries of which are not likely to be the children of low-income parents, rather than to expand a program for special education students. Thus the question of who has the power to make decisions about school reform becomes particularly important.

Formally, school boards are the democratically elected representatives of the community, empowered to make resource decisions within the mandate given the board by the state (Campbell, Cunningham, Nystrand and Usdan, 1985). Nonetheless, because school boards have overwhelmingly been composed of lay people who have very little expertise in education or politics, they have developed various compensating strategies to assist in making major reform decisions. One strategy, consistent with the functionalist approach, has been to utilize administrators, academicians, or other consultants as technical experts. Another strategy, typical of the culturalist approach, has been to employ pluralistic constituency committees as representatives of community opinion. In the first instance, the school board is getting technical expertise; in the second, the board is creating an additional opportunity for community participation beyond the board's own democratically elected status.

Whenever either of these methods is used to develop recommendations on school reform, the ultimate power of the school board is eroded. If the board has turned to experts, those experts will either control the reforms or control the possible range of reform choices. If the board has turned to a community committee, the board will pay a heavy political price if it ignores the recommendations of that committee. Critical theorists assert that both methods can inadvertently reinforce the inequitable distribution of knowledge, power, and resources in society. Unfortunately, critical theorists have offered little in the way of research showing how educational administrative practices reinforce societal inequities or practical suggestions addressing how administrative practices might enhance or support equity.

The Discourse on Planned Educational Change

The Functionalist Approach

Cunningham's (1982) Systematic Planning for Educational Change typifies the functionalist approach to planned change with its emphasis on technical knowledge and expert control:

The book presents a number of tools — planning process, context, and theory; participation, group process, and communication in planning; management by objectives; function line-item budgeting, planned programmed budgeting, and zero-base budgeting; task planning, Gantt charting, and program evaluation review technique; committee, nominal group, and Delphi techniques; decision making and decision-tree analysis; organizational development and team building; computer and management information systems; and planning for the future — these all have the potential for greatly improving one's skills as an educational planner and agent for change.

(p. xiv)

There is a growing body of systematized knowledge about process, context, theory, structure, tools, and techniques of planning that will improve the administrator's chance of accomplishing his or her organizational and individual goals.

(p. xiii)

The link between knowledge and action develops best when the planning process is built directly into the management system.

(p. 8)

Planning works best when it begins at the top and flows to the bottom.

(p. 22 and 107)

This management-oriented approach is further solidified when Cunningham states that the purpose of the planning is control: 'Planning is used to gain control of the future through current acts' (ibid, p. 4). In other words, planned educational change 'works best' when it is systematically in the hands of the administrator or manager 'at the top' and flows from that position down 'to the bottom' of the organization for the purpose of controlling 'the future through current acts' (ibid, p. 4).

Formally, the school board has power over the administration, and the voters have power over the school board via democratic elections. However, in Cunningham's book there is very little discussion of the school board or its relationship to the administrator and planned change. When he does briefly mention the board, he says that although it 'theoretically' has control over policy, it 'leaves room for interpretation (of that policy and). . . does not give the direction needed ... It is the planner's task, then, to integrate a profusion of goals, on the one hand, and to deal with often ambiguous or vaguely defined goals, on the other' (ibid, pp. 38-9). In other words, while the position of the board is formally recognized, the power to make the reform decisions belongs to the administrator as the planner of the reform.

Cunningham (ibid) also discusses the relationship between the administrator as the reform expert and the school community. He says that involving the community in reform decisions:

takes time, is costly, may cause issues to be aroused in the community, and may not produce the consensus or the majority for the direction needed. . . . the school community may become divided regarding what schools should be and what they should do. This sort of planning should therefore be regarded as potentially politically charged. The superintendent's review of such plans is advised.

(p. 39)

Although obviously very hesitant about community participation, especially if there may be problems of control, Cunningham later devotes an entire chapter to 'Participation in the planning process'. In this chapter, he reviews the literature on participation, concluding that 'although the research seems clearly to suggest that participation is important to the effectiveness of the planning and decision-making process, there is still much debate on exactly how much participation should occur' (ibid, p. 115). He then discusses various technical methods for defining 'how much participation', but he maintains his consistent conclusion that ultimate power should rest with the expert, ending the chapter with the statement, 'The planner must obtain input and assistance through broad participation but never lose sight of his or her own ultimate responsibility for making the final decisions' (ibid, p. 121).

Essentially, Cunningham (ibid) replicates the traditional hierarchical bureaucracy of Weber with the concentration of power and knowledge at the top of the pyramid. But the application of this model to school reform raises the question of whose needs and interests the school administrator serves. If the ultimate power to control school reforms is in the hands of the superintendent or some other similarly positioned administrator, will the reforms tend to benefit some student or constituency groups more than others?

An answer to this question can be suggested by examining the personal characteristics of superintendents and the political context of the superintendency. According to Tyack and Hansot (1982), 'Superintendents in the twentieth century have almost all been married white males, characteristically middle-aged, Protestant, upwardly mobile, from favored ethnic groups, native-born, and of rural origins' (p. 169). Crowson (1987) in his review of the literature reports that this continues to be a correct portrayal. With virtually all holding master's degrees or higher, with an average of more than thirty years experience as professionals, and with salaries that place them in the top 10 per cent of all working Americans (Campbell, Cunningham, Nystrand and Usdan, 1985; Pounder, 1988), superintendents are certainly part of the upper-middle, professional class. In addition, both Tyack and Hansot (1982) and Crowson (1987) emphasize the conservative values of most superintendents.

If this portrait is correct, it is easy to surmise that superintendents will find it difficult to understand the needs and interests of many low-income and minority constituencies. This was confirmed by Campbell, Cunningham, Nystrand and Usdan (1985):

Superintendents (during the time of activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s) . . . found it difficult to communicate and understand the sentiments of the poor and underprivileged. Some admitted, in interviews, their anxiety during such encounters. They expressed support for citizen participation publicly but were privately terrified of it.

(pp. 181-2)

As an outgrowth of the civil rights revolution, most city superintendents in recent years have had difficulty interpreting the will of communities made up largely of blacks or other minority groups.

(p. 218)

Thus it can be concluded that superintendents are limited in their understanding of the needs and interests of significant segments of the community, specifically their least powerful constituents. This would suggest that superintendents' reform efforts are unlikely to be either representative of, or equitably beneficial to, these groups.

Even if superintendents do attempt to serve the whole community, it is highly improbable that they will succeed because of the political position of public schools. Since a public school system is rarely an important power center within a community, it is highly dependent on powerful players in each community for continued support (Campbell, Cunningham, Nystrand and Usdan, 1985; Kimbrough, 1964). The superintendent then is caught between the practical necessity of acquiring the support of the community power structure and the theoretical option of serving the needs of the whole community. In all but the most exceptional cases, the practical necessity will defeat the theoretical option: The superintendent will choose the needs and interests of the powerful over the powerless. The former group can more easily hurt both the district and the superintendent, while the latter will find it difficult to have even a minimal negative effect. For instance, a conflict between the superintendent and the owner of the local newspaper can mean continual bad press, potentially damaging to any effort requiring public support and thus to the superintendent's career. On the other hand, a conflict with one low-income black person, in all but the rarest cases, is likely to cause a small problem at worst.

The Culturalist Approach

Sarason's The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change (1982) is often cited as the leading culturalist commentary on school reform (Firestone and Corbett, 1987; Sirotnik and Oakes, 1986). As Sarason's title suggests, a major culturalist theme is that in order to create change it is necessary to understand and utilize the cu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Educational Reforms Can Reproduce Societal Inequalities: A Case Study
• 2 Social Relativism: (Not Quite) A Postmodernist Epistemology
• 3 A Postmodernist Critique of Research Interviewing
• 4 The Masks of Validity: A Deconstructive Investigation
• 5 Policy Archaeology: A New Policy Studies Methodology
• 6 Toward A White Discourse on White Racism (An Early Attempt at an Archaeological Approach)
• 7 Coloring Epistemologies: Are Our Research Epistemologies Racially Biased? (An Example of an Archaeological Approach)
• 8 An Archaeological Approach to Research, Or It Is Turtles All the Way Down
• Index