Three areas, three themes

I'd like to share some of the studying process on my blog, as well as vent about the anxiety that grad studentdom engenders :O

The big three are starting to feel a bit more real to me, and I have some confidence that, by the date of the exam, my areas of specialization will feel like a pair of broken-in shoes. But I worry that I won't get to say what I really, really want to say about my 3 areas. I'd like the exam to be a time that I present some of my understandings and findings about the states of these academic fields. Below, I take a stab at a few things I'd like to say about each area.

Policy implementation

1) There are many ways to study the path from policy to practice, and it is possible to treat this path as the translation of broad ideas into concrete, discrete organizational and individual practices and behaviors

2) There are many reasons why it is hard to improve schooling--structure of schools, nature of teachers' work, relationship between federal, state, district, and individual school, what school leaders and teachers know and are motivated to do, ambiguity within policies

3) Policies contain information and ideas about structuring schools, teachers' work, and students' learning. Schools, as organizations, and people must interact with, make sense of, experiment with, and learn from policies.

Neo-institutional theory

1) There are many ways to explain stability and change--at the field and organizational level

2) The coupling of the broader environment, including policy, to the technical, core features of schools has multiple consequences--for practice, policy, and research. The contrast between loose and tight coupling of organizational structures and activities is a false dichotomy. It is possible for organizations to be simultaneously loose and tight; the organization can be loose in one place and tight in another.

3) People can act as institutional entrepreneurs who shape the nature & characteristics of institutions. People can engage in framing to manipulate and present logics in particular ways to fellow members of an organization.

Reading Instruction

1) Core reading programs are nothing new--they go all the way back to the 1800s in one room schoolhouses

2) The reading achievement gap is a critical issue

3) Different elements of literacy instruction are treated differently by policy, research, and practice. Who pays attention to phonics versus writing or spelling vs. comprehension?