What Can Institutional Analysis Tell Us About School Improvement Reforms?

Changing ineffective, counterproductive, and sometimes harmful beliefs, practices, and structures in schools is especially difficult because schools are not merely organizations but also institutions. While many recognize that institutional processes operate in schools, the study of institutions in education research often employs numerous concepts in disparate ways and connections to important outcomes can be unclear. This paper develops an integrative conceptual framework for institutional analysis illustrated with a systematic review of 147 U.S. school improvement reform articles from 1989 to 2022. The review illuminates key themes in how institutional processes maintain or change the institutional status quo in schools. This includes, for example, the role of the institutional environment, societal institutions and their constitutive logics, field-level institutional pressures, the forces they propagate, and how institutional agency and work contribute to the institutional outcomes of reform. The broad themes suggest important avenues for future research and propositions about the institutional conditions needed for reform.