RETA [electronic resource] Chicago School Staff Social Network Questionnaire Qualitative Interviews, 2006 James Spillane, Penelope Peterson, Miriam Sherin, Stephen Fisher, Spyridon Konstantopoulos

2013-01-11

Ann Arbor, Mich. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor] 2012

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The Chicago School Staff Social Network Questionnaire Qualitative Interviews, 2006, is a part of the RETA: Distributed Leadership for Middle School Mathematics Education: Content Area Leadership Expertise in Practice study. The goal of RETA was to design and validate a series of research instruments to identify leadership for mathematics instruction in middle schools and for documenting instructional leadership practice. Adopting a distributed perspective on leadership, this work focused on both formally designated and informal leaders and their leadership routines. The objective was to develop valid and reliable instruments that make the day-to-day practice of school leadership for mathematics instruction more transparent, as well as measure changes in this practice over time. This project utilized Social Network Surveys, Experience Sampling Methods (ESM), and Daily Practice Logs. To validate these instruments, a combination of shadowing, end of day cognitive interviews, and semi-structured interviews was used. These instruments were used to describe and analyze when and how teachers and other educators solicit or provide instructional advice and the degree to which these resources influence their work. In order to validate the survey, qualitative interviews were conducted with a subset of teachers at 6 of these 22 schools in early Spring 2006. A purposeful sample of schools was selected to maximize variation so that the sample included two public schools (an elementary and a middle school), two Catholic schools, and two charter schools. The interviewees were selected based on an analysis of the SSSNQ data. Using a purposeful sampling strategy, the following were selected in each school: formal leaders (i.e., Principal, Assistant Principal, Math Specialist, Literacy Specialist), informal leaders (i.e., two teachers who were not formally designated leaders but had more people go to them for math advice relative to other people in their school), and followers (i.e., two to four teachers who were not formal or informal leaders). Interviews with 49 staff members focused mainly on their advice-seeking practices around mathematics instruction. Using a semi-structured protocol, researchers asked interviewees about their advice or knowledge seeking related to mathematics instruction and their views of leadership and change efforts underway at the school. Cf: http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR33582.v1

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June 17, 2019

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