Becoming Different: Teachers’ Perspectives on the Sustainability of Reform

Purpose: Despite persistent educational reform efforts, sustainability remains an ongoing challenge. This study examines reform sustainability from the perspective of math teachers in urban middle schools under pressure to improve. We address: How did teachers experience the sustainability of reform in the context of a 4-year instructional improvement project? How did teachers’ thinking, practice, and collaboration routines become different through the reform and why? Research Methods/Approach: While sustaining new teacher practices is often the target of reforms, a teacher learning perspective suggests a highly contextualized ongoing process of “becoming different.” Becoming different often involves developing new routines, as routines are where sustainability can be made visible. We draw on longitudinal qualitative data gathered in four schools, resulting in 165 interviews and observations of 185 teacher team meetings and 15 workshops. Findings: Teachers’ initial perspectives about reform were characterized by skepticism, as they had experienced a revolving door of disconnected change efforts prior to (and during) the project. As the improvement project progressed, sustainability was supported by fostering collaboration within and across schools and aligning reform activities with teachers’ problems of practice and other school and district initiatives. Although many teachers described shifts in their collaboration routines, thinking, and instruction, they also highlighted threats to sustainability. These threats included pervasive accountability pressures, complex team dynamics, and the conclusion of capacity-building support. Implications: Understanding teachers’ experiences with sustaining reform is especially important given increased attention on improving instruction and accelerating student learning amid pandemic recovery as well as mounting concerns about educators’ well-being and retention.