The Role of Intermediaries in the Implementation of State Education Policy Lorie Owens, PhD candidate, Department of

1. The Role of Intermediaries in the Implementation of State Education Policy Lorie Owens, PhD candidate, Department of Educational Studies ●●● They spoke in superlatives, their language belying the import they attached to their collective role in the implementation of the state policy. Engaged in a great battle, they fought “opposing forces,” “caught in the crossfire,” either “in the trenches” or on “the front.” Though they “expected some pushback,” they [took] “the hill,” “dragging them [the trainees] in by their ankles,” and “hit it hard.” They had a “shared mission” that extended beyond fighting a battle to providing intellectual or spiritual enlightenment. They shared “a vision” and “the hope that once they hear it, they will also embrace it.” It was “all about the mission,” “we were going to go out into the land” to “be the messenger,” to share “the vision… the big picture.” They hoped their own surprise at believing “as deeply as they ended up believing,” (even to the extreme of noting “it saved my soul”) would extend “out in the field” – the battlefield perhaps, or more likely a sporting field, where the trainers saw themselves stepping “up to the plate,” take control of “how it played out,” to “actually even out the playing field,” inviting school district personnel to “stay in the game or ahead of the game.” They would work “hand in glove,” “watch each other’s back,” realizing “we were both gonna fall” [or succeed] and so “play [it] out as friends.” • ●●● ABSTRACT PRELIMINARY RESULTS • In 2009, Ohio ended its 10-year teacher induction program based on Praxis III and initiated the Transition Resident Educator Program. • The Ohio Department of Education (ODE), charged with developing the replacement policy and program, hired the New Teacher Center to facilitate the program development and provide the initial training to a team of state trainers. • ODE then appointed state trainers to facilitate mentor training to credential district level personnel for the new program. • This study examines how the state trainers stood between the state education agency and the mentors they were assigned to train, transmitting the new policy, while also changing aspects at will. It considers how the state trainers/intermediaries’ growing expertise and state funding empowered and united them, and examines how their collective trust shaped the implementation process and influenced the state’s transition to the new induction policy. Emerging Themes • The state trainers, by virtue of their expertise, skill and proximity to the local districts functioned as both “idea champions,” (Daft & Becker, 1978) promoting and mobilizing support for the program and as “intermediaries” (Honig, 2004), increasing the implementation capacity of the ODE. • Metaphorically, the state trainers represented their task as confrontational, using metaphors of battle and athletic competition to express their frustration with pressures from the New Teacher Center and ODE. • State trainers simultaneously aligned themselves with the ODE and set themselves apart from it. The insider-outsider role became as seamless as a Mobius strip. Collective Trust • Trust: “a generalized expectancy held by the work group that the word, promise, and written or oral statement of another individual can be relied upon” (Hoy & Kupersmith, 1985). • Collective trust is a social phenomenon which extends beyond a simple aggregation of trust experiences and beliefs of individual group members (Forsyth, Adams & Hoy, 2012). The state trainers exhibit collective trust in their collaboration, collegial interactions and collective efficacy. RESEARCH QUESTIONS METHODS • As individuals responsible for translating the state-defined induction program into practice, how do the state trainers understand the policy? • To what extent, for what reasons, and through which strategies do they re-shape it across the trajectory of implementation? • How do the state trainers construct their roles in the policy implementation? • How do they define and enact their role(s)? • How do they impact implementation? • Policy: Ohio new teacher induction - The Ohio Resident Educator Program and its precursor, The Transition Resident Educator Program • Participants: 12 state trainers; the researcher (observer, actor, participant, mediator, manager, trainer, insider ethnographer) • Method: Extended case (Burawoy, 1998); Burawoy’s Dialogues and Context Effects • Theory: Collective Trust (Forsyth, Adams & Hoy, 2012) • Data : Policy and program documents, individual interviews with state trainers and field notes.