Commitment to Change: Teachers' Actualised Commitment to Small Learning Communities in a Bronx High School

Abstract

My purpose in this study was to investigate teachers’ commitment to educational reform in the context of changes that followed ratification of the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) as systems and schools pursued educational reforms intended to improve students’ achievement. I began with an examination of educational change literatures, which showed that systematic observations of where teachers were placed in reform agendas in relation to knowledge and utilisation of their commitment to change seemed relatively under-theorised and thus through this study I hoped to advance the understanding of that commitment. A provisory schema derived from this review of educational change research, organisational change literature and my own experience as an educator guided the research and evolved as the study unfolded. With the addition of data from this study, the framework was adjusted to model teachers’ commitment to change as a multi-layered phenomenon with particular predictive power invested in personal and contextual factors. The study was undertaken at a large comprehensive high school in the Bronx. The school had been deemed by the New York State Department of Education to be a “School in Need of Improvement”. Under this determination, the school’s administration had five years to meet Annual Yearly Progress targets or face federal intervention. To deter intervention, the principal took a decision in consultation with the regional superintendent and teachers of the school, to restructure it into Small Learning Communities (SLCs).