TEACHER UNIONISM AND PROFESSIONALISM:
AN INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS OF PEER REVIEW PROGRAMS
AND THE COMPETING CRITERIA FOR LEGITIMACY

 

by

Philip P. Kelly

 

 

A DISSERTATION

 

 

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Teacher Education
1998

 

ABSTRACT

 

TEACHER UNIONISM AND PROFESSIONALISM:
AN INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS OF PEER REVIEW PROGRAMS
AND THE COMPETING CRITERIA FOR LEGITIMACY

By
Philip P. Kelly

 

        This study explores the phenomenon of teacher peer review as a response to the increasing pressure for educational accountability as well as a method of reconciling the competing criteria of legitimacy to which teachers and their unions are held. By engaging in teacher peer review, and thus accepting responsiblity for quality of practice among their members, teachers’ unions are able to reconcile the institutions of unionism and professionalism. They do so by expanding the traditional conception of unionism from protecting individual rights to protecting the occupation. Instead of protecting teachers, leaders of the unions studied referred to protecting teaching.

        This study is a comparative analysis of four teacher peer review programs constructed through analysis of documentary artifacts and interviews conducted in each of the four districts visited. Interviews were conducted with union presidents, district superintendents, school board members, consultant teachers, program participants, and groups of classroom teachers. The transcripts were examined to identify patterns of responses along several dimensions.

        It was found that some teachers’ unions are effectively reconciling the competing criteria for legitimacy through engagement in peer review programs resulting in increasing frequency of dismissals of substandard teachers. Repeatedly, it was reported that consulting teachers (peer evaluators) were more demanding evaluators than principals. Furthemore, the findings call into question Meyer and Rowan’s (1977) interpretation of schools as institutional organizations in which ceremony and ritual are central to the legitimation of public schools. Over the past decade these factors have not provided the sense of legitimacy which are traditionally attributed to them. Instead, the public and the economy are demanding of schools to be more technically productive. Increasingly emphasis is being placed not on inputs, but on the end product of the educational enterprise, student learning and competitive student success in wider arenas. Some educational leaders are responding to the increasing pressures and decreasing legitimacy by becoming more technically focused through emphasizing a technology, teacher pedagogy. By taking responsibility for quality through actively monitoring the technical production of their members, teachers’ unions are expanding the narrow confines of industrial unionism to include more professional/technical concerns under the emergent professional unionism.

 

 

Copyright by
Philip P. Kelly
1998

 

 

To Jackie,

for all the dreams you’ve made come true.

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

        I am deeply indebted to many people who have assisted me in countless ways over my career thus far. Without their help, support, and occassional prodding, this study would not have been possible. I first want to recognize and thank the four reseachers who comprise my dissertation committee. Gary Sykes, the chair of my committee, helped tremendously while I struggled to understand the various issues involved in studying professionalism. Maybe not most importantly, but certainly most memorably, I wish to thank Gary for not laughing at my ignorance four years ago, when I informed him that I wanted to write about professionalism because "nobody has written about it." I quickly found out how wrong I was!!!

        David Labaree, my advisor for the past five years, has been the most influential person in my academic career. Although I was assigned as an advisee at the last minute, David was simply a God-send. I will never be able to express the depth of gratitude I feel for the many hours in your office and classroom during which you pushed me to defend my ideas, argue persuasively, and repeatedly humbled me when you expertly destroyed my "great ideas." Besides being a demanding mentor, you have become a good friend whose wit and charm will be sorely missed.

        David Plank has been a tremendous addition to the College of Education and a valuable member of my committee. It was David who, during a class, introduced me to the concept of an institution and has pushed my thinking along this line. Your assistance to my theoretical understanding of organizational analysis and politics of education have been invaluable.

        I must express my deep gratitude to Perry Lanier who three years ago made the kind offer to take me to Toledo, Ohio to meet Dal Lawrence, president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers. It was your offer that started me on the research path that ultimately led to this dissertation. Although we have never had the chance to work closely together, your constant support and interest in my work have been a great comfort.

        I must also thank those professors who, although not on my committee, have been great sources of knowledge and assistance. First among these is Bill McDiarmid, with whom I have worked over the past two years. You have been a great mentor and teacher and, more than anybody else, made me into an educational researcher and policy analyst. Brian Delaney contributed tremendously to my development as a policy analyst through his courses and our many talks together. More than that however, I will always remember our commiseration over being new fathers. Maenette Benham’s generosity has been unparalleled. Allowing me to participant in your research writing/discussion groups have been a tremendous benefit to me. Lastly, I would like to thank Michael Sedlak and Steve Weiland, who during my first year demanded much of me and had faith in me to not let me settle for merely adequate writing.

        Several graduate students and staff members have also greatly enriched my experience at MSU. During my dissertation I am deeply indebted to Jennifer Borman, Cathy Reischl, Steve Sheldon and Brenda Neuman for providing intelligent and critical feedback during data analysis as well as for carefully reading numerous drafts of chapters and papers during the process. Your assistance during this process was integral to completion of this dissertation and the strengthening of the evidence and arguements presented therein. Karla Bellingar’s quick and accurate transcription saved me countless hours of frustration. I also wish to acknowledge the support guidance given to me by Don Hones, Nancy Schwartz, Jim Bowker, Jennifer Collard, and Margaret Selasky.

        In my personal life, I truly cannot express the depth of gratitude I feel to the following people. First, I would like to thank my parents, Pat and Judy Kelly, for instilling in me a work ethic and pride in my work that will never leave me. Ma and Dad, I was paying attention during those rough years. Second, I need to thank my in-laws, Jack and GeorgAnn Turner, for being more supportive than I could have ever asked for. Your countless hours of babysitting made attending graduate school and completing this dissertation possible. Third, I wish to thank Mary Jo Pilat for showing me the way and being a sympathetic friend when times got tough. I also wish to thank the many people who believed in me, wished me well and have prayed for me including many friends, relatives, and the congregation of the First United Methodist Church of Howell.

        Lastly, I am left in a quandry. How can I thank my wife, Jackie, and my three daughters, Maureen, Mary and Sarah? To put into words the feelings of love and thankfulness I feel for you is to do them a disservice. Jack, you know that you are my strength. Thank you for believing in me when my own faith lacked, as well as for the well-needed kick-in-the-pants which you gladly dispensed from time to time. Finally, I have to thank my girls. Although you are too young to read this now, know that you have taught me more than anyone. Maureen, Mary, and Sarah, you taught me what is really important in life. I will never forget --- I promise.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

                                                                                                                                                Page
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES xi

CHAPTER ONE : Teachers’ Unions in Crisis                                                                            1-12

CHAPTER TWO: Institutionalism as a Tool of Organizational Analysis                                    13-36

Institutionalism                                                                                                                            14
Multiple Definitions of "Institution"                                                                                               17
The Three Pillars of Institutions                                                                                                    20
Organizational Analysis within Neoinstitutionalism                                                                         24
Organizational Legitimacy                                                                                                            29
Neoinstitutionalism and Organizational Change                                                                             32
Summary                                                                                                                                     35

CHAPTER THREE: The Competing Criteria of Legitimacy                                                    37-71

Professionalism                                                                                                                           37
What is a "Profession?"                                                                                                               38
Teaching as a Profession?                                                                                                            41
Common Chords                                                                                                                         48
Teacher Unionism                                                                                                                        52
Regulative Constraints                                                                                                                  53
Cognitive Constraints                                                                                                                   56
Generational View of Teacher Unionism                                                                                       63
Professional Unionism                                                                                                                  67
Peer Review and Unionism                                                                                                          70

CHAPTER FOUR: Programmatic Analysis of Teacher Peer Review                                     72-102

District Descriptions                                                                                                                    72
Programmatic Features                                                                                                               74
Consulting Teachers                                                                                                                    76
Selection Process                                                                                                                        77
Typical Activation                                                                                                                        77
Redland’s Program Structure                                                                                                       79
Autonomy and Oversight                                                                                                             80
Support and Professional Development                                                                                        81
Recruitment of Consulting Teachers                                                                                             85
Intervention Process                                                                                                                    86
The Peer Review Experience                                                                                                       90
The Intern Experience                                                                                                                  90
The Intervention Experience                                                                                                         93
Consulting Teacher Recommendations                                                                                          95
Legal Challenges                                                                                                                          98
Summary                                                                                                                                    101

CHAPTER FIVE: Implementation Analysis of Teacher Peer Review                                    103-135

Multiple Goals of Peer Review                                                                                                   103
Program Implementation                                                                                                            114
Presentation of Peer Review to Teachers                                                                                    120
Teacher Reaction to Implementation of Peer Review                                                                   123
Teacher Concerns                                                                                                                      125
Potential Problems                                                                                                                      127
Principal Reaction to Teacher Peer Review                                                                                 132
Summary                                                                                                                                    134

CHAPTER SIX: Reconciliation of the Competing Criteria for Legitimacy                             136-152

Legitimacy within Neoinstitutionalism and Organizational Analysis                                                131
Peer Review as Quality Control                                                                                                  133
Hayesville                                                                                                                                   135
Marine City                                                                                                                                137
Fowlerton                                                                                                                                   139
Redland                                                                                                                                      141
Professional Legitimacy                                                                                                               142
Union Legitimacy                                                                                                                        144
Reconciling the Competing Criteria of Legitimacy                                                                        145
Alternative Perspectives                                                                                                              148
Conclusion                                                                                                                                 151

APPENDICES                                                                                                                   161-184

Appendix A: Methodology                                                                                                          161
Appendix B: Case Study Protocol                                                                                               169
Appendix C: Foundational Interview Schedule                                                                             170
Appendix D: Consent Form                                                                                                        172
Appendix E: Managerial and Professional Occupations                                                                173
Appendix F: Policy Recommendations                                                                                 174-184
        The NEA and AFT                                                                                                             174
        State-level Unions and Policymakers                                                                                   177
        Local Unions and School Districts                                                                                       179

REFERENCES 185-197

 

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Varying Emphases: Three Pillars of Institutions                                                                  20
Table 2 District Demographic Data                                                                                               74
Table 3 Programmatic Overview                                                                                                   75
Table 4 Consulting Teacher Data                                                                                                  78
Table 5 Evaluation Data by District                                                                                             138

 

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Institutional Environments                                                                                                26
Figure 2 Typical Peer Review Process                                                                                          87
Figure 3 Relational Map of Multiple Goals                                                                                  107

 

 

Chapter One

TEACHERS’ UNIONS IN CRISIS

Introduction

Public education is engulfed in a maelstrom of criticism, as usual. The current storm of criticism, however, differs from its predecessors by attacking the very legitimacy of public education and public schools as institutions designed to serve the public’s interest (Mathews 1997). All too often one can read or hear about the government’s monopoly of schools failing to meet the needs and/or desires of the public, parents and children (Brimelow & Spencer, 1995; Chubb & Moe, 1990; Sowell, 1993). Once dismissed as the rantings of conservative ideologues, criticism of public education can be heard throughout the political spectrum. As Kerchner, Koppich and Weeres (1997) note, "reforms on both the political left and right originate from a critique that holds that existing institutions are incapable of performing as they should" (p. 15).

Chief among the complaints levied against public schools are charges of unresponsiveness from school systems to the needs of parents, children, and the economy. Many blame this failure to change and adapt on cumbersome administrative structures and the presence of strong teachers’ unions which, together, developed an organization and culture too inflexible to engage in the types of changes advocated by reformers (Blumenfeld, 1984; Chubb & Moe, 1990; Lieberman, 1997, 1993; Sowell, 1993; Williams, 1981). Because of their historically defensive posture to many educational reforms and often public, acrimonious practice of striking against school districts, teachers’ unions have often been the focus of much of the criticism. A recent book on this topic, The Teacher Unions, (Lieberman, 1997) embodies this focus, displaying proudly on the front of its cover jacket a subtitle, "How the NEA and AFT Sabotage Reform and Hold Students, Parents, Teachers, and Taxpayers Hostage to Bureaucracy." For the most part, throughout my teaching career, I held similar beliefs about the efficacy of unions in a school environment under increasing pressure to hold high standards for all students. This study is an effort to examine and explain one phenomenon in which some teachers’ unions have been proactive in seeking solutions to concerns about educational quality generally, and teacher quality specifically. As you will read in the following pages, some teacher unionists are advocating change, not just in practice, but in the actual conception of unionism, by developing and engaging in teacher peer review.

Teachers’ Unions and the Crisis of Legitimacy

Teacher unionism in the late twentieth century is at a crossroads. For the past two decades, criticism of teachers’ unions has increased in both strength and scope (Bennett, 1992; Blumenfeld, 1984; Cramer, 1980; Lieberman, 1997, 1993). As the legitimacy of public education as a viable and responsible institution has been questioned, so too has the fundamental legitimacy of teachers’ unions. Teachers’ unions contributed to the development of the crisis by purposely rejecting responsibility in issues involving teacher quality. Throughout the past two decades, reports of local unions defending incompetent and harmful teachers have become the stuff of lore (Toch, 1996; Williams, 1981) In the February 26, 1996 issue of U.S. News & World Report, Toch reports one such incident, writing

Because of reports like this, teachers’ unions over the past decade have come under increasingly scathing attacks and currently find themselves in their own crisis of legitimacy. They are being challenged and criticized both externally and internally with increasing intensity. No longer is the unions’ reactionary stance to protect the jobs of all members without regard to merit actively supported by teachers. For years, this aspect of unionism has brought much scorn to unions from the public.

The most prominent indicator of the state of crisis to which teachers’ unions have fallen was the nomination acceptance speech of Robert Dole, 1996 Republican presidential candidate (8/14/96). In his speech, Dole directly challenged, (some say "attacked", American Teacher, 10/96, p. 6) teachers’ unions as impediments to public education.

Because of their traditionally impressive political strength, it is indeed a rare occasion when a political candidate risks alienating a tremendous number of voters, teachers, by attacking their unions (Berube, 1988). By directly challenging teachers’ unions, Dole’s speech highlighted their weakened state, and the current crisis of legitimacy in which they find themselves. While blaming teachers’ unions for the ills of public education is neither a new phenomenon nor necessarily accurate, the strength of the attack appears to have accelerated recently and may be the impetus behind some changes in union positions on some issues such as teacher quality.

This legitimacy crisis is indicative of an institutions facing eminent paradigmatic collapse. The same institutional pressures and environmental conditions that were present during the collapse of the industrial paradigm within industry are now contributing to the paradigmatic evolution of American public education. So fitting is this analogy, that delegates from both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association have turned to leaders of the Saturn plant in Springhill, Tennessee for insight in organizational and institutional change within a unionized workforce. As American corporations faced increasing foreign competition, public schools today face increasing competition from charter schools, vouchers, and schools of choice. As industries down-sized, in education, the push for smaller schools continues, often emulating schools-within-schools. Finally, as American businesses lost the confidence of consumers, public confidence in public schools has sunken to the point that many consider public schools to be "illegitimate," neither responsive to public demands, nor accountable for educational achievement (Mathews, 1997). These conditions have created a crisis of legitimacy for all of public education.

In response to increasing delegitimation, unionists are now addressing issues of quality through programs like peer review, mentoring, and new member induction programs. Leaders of the NEA are presently trying to make the case to their members, policy makers, and the public that the antagonistic characteristics of professionalism and unionism can be reconciled effectively. In his final presidential address to the NEA Representative Assembly (NEA-RA), Geiger (1996) carried the message to his skeptical members saying

Robert Chase (1997a, 1997b), current NEA president, further elevated the idea of peer review in speeches before the National Press Club (1997a) and in his presidential address to the NEA-RA (1997b). Furthermore, Chase is making it a cornerstone of his vision to reinvent the largest national teachers’ union as one more responsive to clients and more responsible for educational quality in the nation’s public schools. While he acknowledges that ideas such as peer review may have been "heretical in the past" (1997b), Chase counters that

Within the much smaller American Federation of Teachers (AFT), long-time president Albert Shanker advocated peer review as first implemented by the Toledo Federation of Teachers in 1981 for more than a decade without much success (Shanker, 1985). Through such statements, union leaders are attempting to widely legitimize a broadened view of unionism to facilitate a paradigmatic evolution to "professional unionism" (Kerchner & Koppich 1993; Koppich, 1993) or "new unionism" (Chase 1997a, 1997b).

Background

Teachers’ unions’ participation in the design, implementation, and operation of peer review programs is significant when considering the history of reform impedance attributed to teachers’ unions (Berube, 1988; Lieberman, 1993, 1997; Urban, 1982). Over the past three decades, the dominant mode of teacher unionism has evolved to embrace the basic tenets of industrial unionism, including a clear delineation between managerial and workers’ duties. In fact, as recently as June 21, 1996, I was informed by a representative of the Michigan Education Association that peer review was a "terrible idea" because teacher evaluation was an "administrative function."

Understandably, unionism among public school teachers arose out of concerns of simple survival. Teaching historically is a poorly paying profession. At the turn of the century, teachers earned barely enough on which to survive. As centralization and bureaucratization spread throughout the country, the criteria for the hiring and retention of teachers changed rapidly. Teachers once hired because of their personal demeanor, and retained because of their strong ties to the community, faced impersonal working conditions and were often treated as interchangeable parts in the cogs of the educational bureaucracy.

Albert Bushnell Hart, a Harvard historian and member of the Committee of Ten, was also a member of the Cambridge (Massachusetts) School Committee during the period in which centralization was considered. The committee on which he served decided in favor of centralization in spite of Hart's showing that

Because of their nearly unanimous opposition to these bureaucratic reforms, organized teachers were often characterized as being unprofessional, and as impeding progress, by both school district officials, education school faculty, and the press.

Further damaging to the professional status of public school teachers was their collective effort to establish salary scales for all teachers within a district. "Once a scale was achieved, city teacher's associations could seek to expand the number of steps on it, a goal which institutionalized experience as the most important criterion of competence for a teacher" (Urban, 1982, p. 21). The natural result of these actions in a meritocratic social organization, was the destruction almost any semblance of professionalism in teaching. As Labaree (1989) notes "membership in an undifferentiated status group is tantamount to an admission of mediocrity, since merit is seen as rising to the top. Thus a profession with no top or bottom cannot be a profession at all..." (p. 185). The unspoken assumption behind salary scales (and of industrial unionism) must be that all employees are of the same quality. This idea, as well as the basic operating principles of teachers' unionism were "developed on an industrial union model, which views the work to be performed as largely unskilled" (Firestone & Bader, 1992, p. 160). Thus, the pursuit of salary scales worked against the professionalization of public school teachers.

The Competing Criteria of Legitimacy

Teachers’ unions’ current crisis of legitimacy is caused by their unique position within the organizational environments of public education and unionism. Because of their position, teachers’ unions must try to fulfill two competing criteria for legitimacy. As labor unions, they must fulfill the traditional obligations required by the statutes of federal and state labor laws, as well as the precedents of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Typically, the traditional concerns of labor unions are characterized as "bread and butter" issues including bargaining over wages and working conditions, and protecting members’ jobs (Atleson, 1983; Brody, 1993; McDonnell & Pascal, 1988).

As professionals charged with educating our children, some attribute to teachers, and thus their unions, the moral obligation to educate our children as well as possible (Chase, 1997a; Geiger, 1996; Goodlad, Soder & Sirotnik, 1990; Gutmann, 1987; Kerchner, Koppich, & Weeres, 1997). Proponents of a more professionally responsible conception of teacher unionism, argue that teachers’ unionism and professionalism do not need to be antagonistic to one another.

However, resistance to professionalization efforts can be found even among those who stand to benefit, individual teachers. When one considers the demands placed on teachers, one must question whether teachers possess two resources necessary for reform implementation, "capacity and will" (McLaughlin, 1987, pp. 171-178). Devaney and Sykes (1988) analyze the situation well, writing

Given the long history of additional burdens being placed upon them without regard to their professional needs, it is only logical for teachers to balk at accepting even more work. Cooper (1988) astutely observes of teachers now faced with "professionalization" reforms, that "secretly they are skeptical, wondering at this sudden interest in their professionalism, ... when for years their behavior has been standardized and prescribed" (p. 46). Teachers as a group have become "accustomed to being run over by hurtling bandwagons" (Cooper, p. 46). As a result, the teaching workforce cannot help but to become cynical of educational reform in general.

Slowly, however, in a few local unions across the country, innovative leaders have begun to challenge the traditional modus operandi of their unions. Kerchner and Koppich (1993), in A Union of Professionals, document several innovations in local labor-management relations such as peer review, policy trust agreements, and active cooperation in decentralized settings. To this emerging form of unionism, the authors give the term "professional unionism." Koppich (1993) summarizes the challenges of professional unionism well writing, "professional unions ... must be willing to assume roles that fly in the face of conventional unionism" (p. 202). She continues,

Historically, however, teachers’ unions have operated within an industrial unionism paradigm, of which two fundamental premises are the importance of solidarity and the inherent separateness of managerial and worker functions. Consequently, actions such as peer review met with strong opposition from unionists.

Purpose of the Study

Although still rare, teacher peer review is not a new phenomenon. Since 1981 the Toledo (Ohio) Federation of Teachers through their Intern-Intervention Program have evaluated all teachers new to Toledo Public Schools, as well as those veteran teachers deemed to be seriously deficient. Initially (and to a large part, still) very unpopular among unionists, the idea of peer review -- taking responsibility for the quality of practice among teachers -- has recently been elevated to national prominence (Chase, 1997; Kerchner, Koppich & Weeres, 1997; National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996).

This purpose of this study is to examine this conception of professional unionism by studying teacher peer review programs implemented by local unions. Teacher peer review has experienced a meteoric rise to prominence over the past two years which can be attributed to two major policy initiatives. The report of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (1996) and the recent policy reversal of the National Education Association (1997) both advocate the implementation of teacher peer review as a means of improving teaching by acting as a gate-keeping mechanism for new teachers as well as assisting experienced teachers whose performance is deemed unsatisfactory.

From this study, I hope to determine how teachers and their unions reconcile the competing criteria of legitimacy to which they are held accountable -- unionism and professionalism, both theoretically and practically. Therefore the research question guiding this study is:

This area was chosen specifically because, where successful, peer review captures the quintessential conflict between unionism and professionalism. As peer review of teachers increases in prominence, local school districts and teachers’ unions will increasingly need accurate information and analyses upon which to base their implementation decisions. By gaining insight into those practices and/or conditions which affect the implementation and maintenance of teacher peer review, future efforts of local teachers’ unions efforts to reconcile the competing criteria of legitimacy may be better informed.

 

Overview of the Dissertation Structure

This dissertation is written in six chapters with an appendices describing the methodology used during data collection and analysis. Chapter one is a general introduction to the context of the study, situating it within the current dynamics of teacher unionism. Chapter two presents for the reader the theoretical framework employed for this study, neoinstitutionalism. It attempts to describe the fundamental underpinnings of neoinstitutional theory as they relate to organizational analysis and the paradigmatic metamorphosis taking place within teachers’ unions. Chapter three examines in depth the competing criteria for legitimacy, professionalism and unionism, and the constraints imposed on teachers’ actions by each. Chapters four and five present the bulk of the data. Chapter four describes peer review programs as implemented and operated in the four school districts visited. Chapter five examines the motives and reactions of those involved in the implementation and design process. It also reveals the cognitive and normative constraints which guide the actions of the local actors. Chapter six is a synthesis of the data with the theoretical framework and directly answers the research questions posed above. Finally, the dissertation concludes with Appendix F which offers readers a set of policy considerations and recommendations for the national, state and district level.

 

 

Chapter Two

INSTITUTIONALISM AS A TOOL OF ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS

 

To examine the phenomenon of fundamental organizational change within teachers’ unions, of which engagement in peer review is indicative, I have chosen to employ the analytical lens of "new institutionalism." This chapter will portray the fundamental underpinnings of institutionalism as well as differentiate between "old" institutionalism and its more recent instantiation. It will then examine organizational analysis of public education and public schools within neoinstitutionalism by focusing upon the seminal works of Meyer, Rowan, and Scott (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Scott, 1995; Scott and Meyer, 1983, 1991). Although Meyer and Rowan’s work was a watershed for organizational analysis and institutionalism, I will argue that their characterization of the environment of public schools as strongly institutional and weakly technical is no longer accurately descriptive. Under ever-increasing demands for technical productivity, the institutional norms of public education are presently evolving. No longer will the maintenance of the symbolic structures as described by Meyer and Rowan (1977) retain the institutional legitimacy of public schools within a society emphasizing accountability for high levels of technical production from organizations. The chapter will conclude with an examination of the role of legitimacy as an organizational resource as well as a source of organizational pressure to change or conform to the wider social environment.

Some may question the use of an institutional theoretical framework to examine organizational change, given its historical bias toward constancy or inertia in institutions. The appropriateness of the application of neoinstitutionalism to the study of change will be made clear through a more dynamic characterization of neoinstitutionalism than has been offered to date. It is this author’s opinion that the significance of organizational legitimacy within the larger social environment has been long underestimated or neglected by other institutional theorists. Indeed, it appears that many critics who have characterized

institutionalism as deterministic fail to recognize Rowan’s (1982) important reminder that "institutionalized beliefs and regulations ... need not remain stable" (p. 261). This study will provide evidence to support this more dynamic version of neoinstitutionalism by examining one small segment of change occurring within some local school districts, teacher peer review.

Institutionalism

Institutionalism, when reduced to its most fundamental basis, simply incorporates the belief that when examining human actions, history and the social environment matter. Within the social sciences, institutionalism arose in response to the ultra-rational "economic man" whose decisions, according to classical economic theory are based solely upon economic maximization criteria, independent of time and environment (Hollis, 1975). Early institutionalists (see for example, Durkheim, 1901; Veblen, 1919; or Weber, 1924) argued that "individuals do not mechanically respond to stimuli (as the economic man does); they first interpret them and then shape their response" (Scott, 1995, p. 11). Furthermore, researchers and analysts cannot expect to "understand social behavior without taking into account the meanings that mediate social action" (Scott, 1995, p. 11).

From dissatisfaction with ahistorical economic analyses, the analytical lens of institutionalism was developed within economics, political science, and sociology. Keohane (1988) notes that some social science researchers came to recognize that

For these researchers, it became imperative that social and organizational analyses hold central the effect of the environment on the decisions of both the individual and the collective group.

Within sociology, the emergent theoretical perspective of institutionalism in the early twentieth century developed several distinguishing characteristics. According to Bill and Hardgrave (1981), the early form of institutionalism was 1) too narrowly focused on formal, dominant structures and legal systems, 2) emphasized detailed descriptive accounts of political systems, 3) "was conservative in the sense that it emphasized the ‘permanent and unchanging," and 4) "was largely nontheoretical, with more attention being given to historical reconstruction of specific institutional forms" (quoted in Scott, 1995, p. 6). Because of these characteristics, institutionalism failed to become dominant within sociology, or any other discipline for that matter. Instead, institutionalism has waxed and waned within the social sciences. Of the cyclic fortunes of institutionalism, Dorothy Ross (1995), professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, notes

Continuing this trend, approximately half a century after the initial rise of institutionalism, the most recent incarnation of institutional theory, aptly referred to as "new institutionalism" or "neoinstitutionalism," came to prominence through the work of social scientists such as DiMaggio and Powell (1983), March and Olson (1984), and Meyer and Rowan (1977).

Of the emergent neoinstitutionalism, Powell and DiMaggio (1991) note in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis that

Within the confines of this study, primary focus will be upon the sociological conception of institutionalism generally, and more specifically upon neoinstitutionalism within organizational analysis. Before continuing however, it is useful at this point to differentiate between "old" and "new" institutionalism. Neoinstitutionalism differs from its predecessor in that it broadens the scope of environmental factors affecting actors and organizations to include non-local factors, such as societal norms or the zeitgeist. In this way, "environments ... are more subtle in their influence" by "creating the lenses through which actors view the world and the very categories of structure, action and thought" (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991, p. 13). Cibulka (1996) notes that a strength of neoinstitutional theory is that

Furthermore, neoinstitutional sociologists (e.g., DiMaggio & Powell, 1988; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott, 1991; and Zucker, 1987) refined earlier constructions of institutionalism to more adeptly analyze social phenomena through concentration on the processes by which institutions are established and evolve.

Multiple Definitions of "Institution"

Before going further into neoinstitutional analysis of organizations, it is helpful to explore what is meant by the term "institution" within the literature pertaining specifically to organizational analysis. From an economic perspective, North (1990) emphasizes the rewards and sanctions embodied in institutions as "the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, ... the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction, ... the rules and informal codes are sometimes violated and punishment is enacted. Therefore, an essential part of the functioning of institutions is the costliness of ascertaining violations and the severity of punishment" (p 3,4)" North attaches no normative value to these "rules of the game," but instead presents them as regulative, environmental factors external to the organization which must be considered in economic analysis.

Sociologist Ronald Jepperson (1991) describes institutions as "organized, established, procedure(s). These special procedures are often represented as the constituent rules of society. ...(Institutions) are variously ‘production systems’ or ‘enabling structures’ or social ‘programs’ or performance scripts. Each of these metaphors connotes stable designs for chronically repeated activity sequences" (Jepperson, p. 143-145). While highlighting the rule-like nature of institutions, Jepperson’s definition differs from that of economist North by focusing on the cognitive limitations imposed by institutions. Inherent in the repeated procedural nature of this definition, institutions become accepted as "the way we do things" within organizations. As such, Jepperson argues that institutions become very strong mechanisms for reproduction within an organization or society. Olson (1965) summarizes this point well, writing, "Action is a much weaker form of reproduction than institutionalization, because it faces all the ‘logic of collective action’ problems" (in Jepperson, 1991, p. 148). Once practices and procedures become institutionalized, "they are considered natural and legitimate (and) a search for alternative approaches is uncommon" (Ginsberg, 1996, p. 159).

Berger, Berger, and Kellner (1973) carry this argument one step further, attributing to institutional procedures perceived normative qualities. Writing about bureaucracies, the authors argue

According to this conception, institutions not only represent cognitive or regulative limitations upon the actions of individuals and organizations, but can actually acquire normative force as the way things should be done. As such, some social scientists attribute to institutions incredible power, going as far as suggesting that institutions "control human conduct ... prior to or apart from an mechanisms or sanctions set up to support them" (Berger and Luckman, 1967,p. 55).

In Institutions and Organizations (1995), Scott attempts to synthesize the above approaches into one, all encompassing, definition:

In this definition, Scott attempts to highlight the often interwoven nature of the various factors which affect the establishment and maintenance of institutions over time. All of the above definitions, however, rely upon the notions of rules or constraints. This is important. Institutions, as presented in the broader sociological and organizational literatures, are usually portrayed as setting limits upon actors’ actions and thoughts.

A common measure of the strength of institutions often referred to is their "taken-for-grantedness" (Powell, 1991). Because institutions often exist in the form of informal rules, or more¢ s, they both confine, and enable, actions and thoughts within the general notion of "the way things ought to be." When actors or organizations violate the "way things should be" criterion, as North observes, sanctions are imposed upon the violators. The strength of sanctions for violating institutional constraints can cause organizations to continue to adhere to their norms even though they may be "suboptimal" and "serve no one’s interests" (Akerlof, 1976; Zucker, 1986). Institutional scholars (Ginsberg, 1996; North, 1990; Powell, 1991) refer to this phenomenon as "path dependence" in which "initial choices preclude future options, including those that would have been more effective in the long run" (Powell, 1991, p. 192). North (1990) explains,

This observation is supported by empirical work such as Stinchcombe’s (1965) analysis of organizational founding processes, in which he argued that the basic structural features of organizations "vary systematically by time of founding and remain fairly constant over time" (in Powell, 1991, p. 192).

The Three Pillars of Institutions

Scott (1991, 1995) provides a useful synthesis of the various institutional factors by highlighting the differing emphases used by institutional scholars of organizational analysis which he terms "the three pillars of institutions" (see Table 1). Scott groups these emphases into three general categories: regulative, normative and cognitive. All three pillars are useful when examining organizational change within teachers’ unions. Through

Table 1
Varying Emphases: Three Pillars of Institutions

 

Regulative

Normative

Cognitive
Basis of compliance Expedience Social obligation Taken for granted
Mechanisms Coercive Normative Mimetic
Logic Instrumentality Appropriateness Orthodoxy
Indicators Rules, laws, sanctions Certification, accreditation Prevalence, isomorphism
Basis of legitimacy Legally sanctioned Morally governed Culturally supported, conceptually correct

(Scott, 1995, p. 35)

their differing foci, each pillar highlights relevant factors either facilitating or inhibiting the change process occurring within the four focal districts of this study. The table above displays some of the facets along which the pillars differ.

Broadly speaking, institutionalists view institutions as confining organizational or individual action. Theorists emphasizing the regulative pillar, however, "are distinguished by the prominence they give to explicit regulative processes -- rule-setting, monitoring, and sanctioning activities" (Scott, 1995, p. 35). Within the regulative pillar, Scott explains that

For labor unions within the United States, including teachers’ unions, the regulative pillar of the institution of unionism lies within the voluminous federal and state labor laws as well as the bylaws, contracts, and procedures by which unions operate. As explained more fully in the following chapter, the regulative laws and policies under which teachers’ unions operate greatly constrain their range of actions on a variety of issues, including teacher evaluation and cooperative ventures with district administrators. Although constraining in nature, mechanisms belonging to the regulative pillar, because of the reliance on formal rules and laws, are the most easily altered. Mechanisms supporting the normative and cognitive pillars of institutions are much more amorphous and thus less amenable to direct action and change.

Rather than formal rules, the normative pillar relies more on societal or organizational values, norms, and ideals. Scott explains that these mechanisms

As such, these mechanisms attach normative, sometimes moral, value upon certain courses of actions or beliefs over others deemed less appropriate or ideal. Within the context of this study, normative mechanisms play a very significant role through both institutions in question -- professionalism and unionism. Details regarding these institutions are reserved for the following chapter, but the professional ideals of service to clients and of quality assurances greatly facilitate teachers’ unions’ abilities to pursue programs such as peer review. On the other hand, normative ideals of unionism, such as solidarity and the inherent separateness of supervisors and workers, act to inhibit the adaptation of peer review. From these competing normative criteria arises the problematic position in which unions considering organizational change find themselves.

The last, or cognitive, pillar of institutions has contributed greatly to the development of neoinstitutional analysis by expanding the definition of environmental factors affecting individual and organizational behavior to include the internal representation actors hold of their environment. Within the cognitive pillar, "to understand or explain any action, the analyst must take into account not only the objective conditions, but the actor’s subjective interpretation of them" (Scott, 1995, p. 40). These interpretations,

Unlike the regulative view, within the cognitive pillar, institutions encompass more than simply rules and sanctions, but actually involve the social construction of actors/or organizations (Berger and Luckman, 1967). The resultant construction then defines for the actors/organizations what their interests are.

For organizations, such as unions, the constructed identity includes certain definitions or interpretations of their environment and the organizations/actors with which they have interactions. These interpretations become routinized over time and become institutionalized as part of the identity of the organizations. In other words, they develop an inherent and self-perpetuating nature, as they become characterized as "the way things are" or "the way we do things here" (Johnson, 1984, pp. 85, 110) Within the context of this study, the cognitive pillar is very important for it aptly describes the way in which traditional unionists think of teacher evaluation as "something we just don’t do." Cibulka (1996) commenting on the effects of the cognitive limitations resulting from institutional constraints, writes

As a result, the cognitive institutional constraints within the American conception of unionism act as an impediment to even the consideration of peer review-based teacher evaluation programs.

 

Organizational Analysis within Neoinstitutionalism

Meyer and Rowan (1977) in their seminal piece, "Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony," provided a watershed for organizational analysts by highlighting the decoupled nature of technical production and organizational structure. In their article, the authors wrote that "many elements of formal structure are highly institutionalized and function as myths," meaning that the long-held notion of bureaucratic efficiency as a driving force for organizational structure is mediated by institutional norms or "myths" (1977, p. 342). Furthermore, Meyer and Rowan highlighted the importance of institutional environments on organizations writing,

When addressing public education and public schools, Meyer and Rowan (1977) observed that schools as organizations "use variable, ambiguous technologies (pedagogies) to produce outputs (student learning) that are difficult to appraise" (p. 354). Baldridge and Burnham (1975) concluded much the same when they observed that

Consequently, Meyer and Rowan (1977) observe that public schools "evolved from producing rather specific training that was evaluated according to strict criteria of efficiency to producing ambiguously defined services that are evaluated according to criteria of certification" (p. 354). Although accurate at the time, now more than two decades past, Meyer and Rowan’s characterizations are no longer accurate. Instead of being evaluated by the "criteria of certification," public education and public schools are increasingly being evaluated according to strictly technical criteria, achievement in student learning. Given the rise in prominence of standardized testing, "high-stakes" testing, and general calls for accountability, schools cannot retain their organizational legitimacy without directly addressing their more technical facets of organizational behavior. This shift in the organizational environment is bringing tremendous pressure to bear on public schools to shift their focus from primarily an institutional one to a more technical focus.

Scott and Meyer (1983, 1991) offer assistance in understanding environmental effects on organizations by further refining the work of Meyer and Rowan through more sophisticated analysis of the institutional environments which they call "societal sector." A "societal sector," according to Scott and Meyer (1983, 1991) is "defined as (1) a collection of organizations operating in the same domain... (2) together with those organizations that critically influence the performance of focal organizations" (1991, p. 117). When engaging in organizational analysis, societal sectors can be classified according to characteristics of the environment. Scott and Meyer identify two such classifications;

The two classifications are not dichotomous but describe characteristics within organizations’ environments. As illustrated in the figure below, it is possible for an organization to operate within an environment which is simultaneously strongly institutional and technical, or weakly characterized on both measures.

Figure 1

                                                                             Institutional Environments
                                                            Stronger                                              Weaker



Technical

Stronger

 Utilities
Banks
General hospitals		 General manufacturing
Environments

Weaker

 Mental health clinics
Schools
Legal agencies
Churches		 Restaurants
Health clubs

(Scott, 1987, p. 126)

While it is possible for strong and stable organizations to exist within either strongly institutional or technical environments, a lack of such commonly-held norms inherent in these environments is deleterious to the survival of organizations (Scott and Meyer, 1991). In environments that are neither strongly institutional nor technical, organizations (typified above as restaurants or health clubs) tend to be small and rather unstable as organizations.

Schools (and teachers’ unions) operate within a strongly institutional environment which relies heavily on conforming to the institutional norms of the sector (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). This emphasis on conforming to traditional norms poses a considerable barrier to significant organizational change through two different mechanisms. First, because of the heavy reliance on norms developed over time path dependence develops through repeated patterns of interaction. Once an organization develops an operational structure and organizational procedures, it is very difficult to diverge from that initial path.

Further facilitating the perpetuation of path dependence are the interorganizational connections formed through routine interactions. Of this Powell (1991) comments,

Within the context of teachers’ unions, interorganizational connections through routine exchanges are very significant. As Kerchner and Mitchell (1988) highlight in The Changing Idea of a Teachers’ Union, district administrators and union leaders, because of their frequent interactions tend to "accommodate" one another through the establishment of routines through various problem solving activities. So even though a given institutional relationship may be suboptimal, as Powell notes above, the costs of changing "the way things are done" between unions and administrations are very high and embody a significant impediment to reform.

The second impediment to significant organizational change within an institutional environment with heavy reliance on norms is strong pressure for organizations to be isomorphic. In their seminal piece, "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields," DiMaggio and Powell (1983), identify three mechanisms facilitating institutional isomorphism. They are

Historically, for teachers’ unions, the mechanisms exerting the greatest influence on organizational development have been coercive and mimetic. Mimetic forces arising from the inherently uncertain act of establishing new organizations during the 1960s and 1970s, led early local teachers’ unions, as collective bargaining agents for large numbers of teachers, to look to the highly successful manufacturing industrial labor unions as a viable organizational model. Furthermore, the isomorphic pressures due to uncertainty were facilitated by coercive elements such as federal and state labor statutes restricting both the activities and membership of unions.

As fledgling organizations within the societal sector of labor relations and union activism, teachers’ unions also experienced, and presently experience, pressure to conform to norms of the traditional union sector. While interviewing the executive director of the Marine City Education Association (MCEA), he reported that the MCEA’s venture into peer review-based teacher evaluation as a means for accepting some responsibility for the quality of education within Marine City schools has engendered animosity from other industrial unions in the area.

Recently, however, as stated in chapter one, the pressures being exerted on teachers’ unions as organizations are evolving and changing in a manner which, at present time, is increasing the strength of the technical demands and expectations of the public school system and teachers. Within the strongly institutional environment of public education, the growing technical pressures are often generating turmoil as they conflict with deeply held institutional beliefs and procedures.

Organizational Legitimacy

As stated earlier, at its core, neoinstitutionalism is based upon the idea that when examining the actions of individuals or organizations, history and the social environment matter. Any organizational analysis, therefore, must be informed by examination of the frameworks within which an organization and its actors operate. For organizations operating in strongly institutional societal sectors, such as teachers’ unions, legitimacy is an integral factor adding to the strength of the cognitive and normative institutional pillars. By definition (Scott 1995), societal sectors which are strongly institutional rely heavily on shared cognitive norms, organizational structures, and operating procedures. Organizations failing to adhere to the sector norms are perceived by others within the sector as illegitimate, which is detrimental to organizational survival (Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975; Mathews, 1997; Meyer and Scott, 1983; Rowan, 1982).

Reviewing the organizational analysis literature, the centrality of legitimacy as an organizational resource is undeniable. Scott (1995) explains that legitimacy is "a condition reflecting cultural alignment, normative support, or consonance with relevant rules or laws" (p. 45). Rowan (1982) refers to the condition of cultural alignment as "balance" within the institutional environment. Organizations, including teachers’ unions, seek to "establish congruence between the social values associated with or implied by their activities and the norms of acceptable behavior in the larger social system of which they are a part" (Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975, p. 122). As Parsons (1960) observed, the establishment of environmental congruence or institutional balance is important "since organizations exist in a superordinate social system and utilize resources which might otherwise be allocated, the utilization of these resources must be accepted as legitimate by the larger social system" (in Dowling & Pfeffer, p. 123). For teachers’ unions, representing large numbers of workers employed with public monies, the importance of their organizational legitimacy when advocating for increased salaries becomes clear. As with everything, however, societal norms and values are not immutable and therefore, the criteria upon which organizations are legitimated are also not immutable.

What appears to be occurring presently within teacher unionism, as well as public education, is a redefinition of the criteria for organizational legitimacy within the societal sector of public education. Herein lies the dilemma in which teachers’ unions are currently immersed. Because public education is public, no clear organizational boundaries exist between society and public schooling. Teachers’ unions, being actors within the system of public education, are also subject to fuzzy delineations between organization and environment. As several reports and authors have observed the environment in which public education operates is changing drastically (see for example, Fullan, 1991; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983; National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996). As a result of changing social norms and values, the level of "environmental balance" upon which organizations can draw support is greatly diminished (Rowan, 1982). The consequences for a highly institutional organization of an "imbalance" in the environment of a societal sector are significant.

In a pattern reminiscent of the painful changes in the auto industry in the 1980s, schools and teachers are presently required to be much more focused on technical production (or student learning) than in the past. Therefore, as the broader culture places more emphasis on the technical production of schools and teachers, school districts and teachers’ unions are forced to evolve to remain legitimate. Dowling and Pfeffer (1975) describe three options for organizations attempting to improve their legitimacy within the larger social environment.

The implementation of teacher peer review as an organizational practice within teachers’ unions is an example of the first of Dowling and Pfeffer’s strategies. Chapter Four will describe in detail the actual changes in teacher evaluation practices inherent in teacher peer review.

So important is legitimacy for schools and teachers’ unions that Kerchner, Koppich and Weeres (1997) write

Society, over the last two decades, has seriously questioned the legitimacy of the public school systems within the United States as well as the role of teachers’ unions within them. Over this period, the technical demands on public schools and the teachers therein have steadily increased. Repeatedly, schools have been subject to demands for improving student achievement, strengthening graduation requirements, and increasing standardized test scores. The increasing technical requirements generated inconsistencies within the institutions of public education and teachers’ unions, which had formerly relied on symbolism and rituals for legitimacy.

Neoinstitutionalism and Organizational Change

Some may question the applicability of neoinstitutionalism to a study of organizational change, claiming as does DiMaggio (1988) that institutional approaches to organizational analysis tend to be deterministic and often neglect, or do not allow for, purposive action and agency. As such, writes DiMaggio

DiMaggio continues claiming that institutional theory tells us little about "deinstitutionalization and how institutionalized forms and practices fall into disuse" (p. 12). Because of these characteristics, DiMaggio argues that there exist certain kinds of changes which institutional theory addresses poorly. Among these are two types of change directly relevant to the development and implementation of teacher peer review programs.

  1. Change in organizational fields that is orthogonal to the wider institutional order: for example, changes in work organization that have neither been embraced by dominant organizations in the field nor by organizations to which dominant actors are tied.
  2. Change in organizations and organizational fields that tends to delegitimate the institutional order of the field. (DiMaggio, 1988, p. 12)

The practice of peer review, teachers as union members making summative evaluations of fellow teachers, is both orthogonal to the institutional order of unionism and delegitimates fundamental tenets of unionism.

Institutional critics (DiMaggio, 1988; Perrow, 1985; Powell, 1985) often portray organizations as "relatively passive actors that simply adapt to their institutional environments" (Rowan and Miskel, 1997, p. 22). What DiMaggio and others fail to understand is the power of legitimacy (or the lack thereof) in institutional sectors to pressure organizations to change, or even abandon, previously institutionalized structures and procedures (Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975; Rowan, 1982, Rowan & Miskel, 1997). As organizations in evolving institutional environments begin to feel the pressure of legitimacy maintenance, they must make a choice. Institutional scholars are beginning to characterize organizations as more proactive in interactions with the broader social environment.

Oliver (1991) provides a typology of actions an organization, such as a teachers’ union, may take when facing institutional pressure (See Table 2). According to this more

Table 2
Strategies

Tactics

Examples
Acquiesce Habit
Imitate
Comply		 Following invisible, taken-for-granted norms
Mimicking institutional models
Obeying rules and accepting norms
 

Compromise

 Balance
Pacify
Bargain		 Balancing the expectations of multiple constituents
Placating and accommodating institutional elements
Negotiating with institutional stakeholders
 

Avoid

 Conceal
Buffer
Escape		 Disguising nonconformity
Loosening institutional attachments
Changing goals, activities, or domains
 

Defy

 Dismiss
Challenge
Attack		 Ignoring explicit norms and values
Contesting rules and requirements
Assaulting the sources of institutional pressure
 

Manipulate

 Co-opt
Influence
Control		 Importing influential constituents
Shaping values and criteria
Dominating institutional constituents and processes

(Oliver, 1991, p. 152)

dynamic view of organizations in institutional environments, organizations act not as simple bobbers tossed passively about in the ebbs and flows of societal norms and values. Instead, organizations make strategic choices when responding to environmental pressures.

For teacher’s unions, an embrace of teacher peer review is only one of a number of responses to the environment that one might offer. Other unions may respond by avoiding pressure for accountability via lip-service to the ideals of high standards and commitment to children’s learning while continuing with standard operating procedures. Others may attempt to redefine pressure for accountability based upon academic standards into accountability for educating the "whole child," which also conveniently evades measurability. Still others may respond with retrenchment, adhering more strongly to traditional unionism norms and attacking critics as unreasonable, uninformed, or engaging in "union-busting." Clearly then, teachers’ unions as organizations are not simply passive recipients of institutional pressures to conform. Neoinstitutionalism, thus can account for organizational change, and incorporating the factor of environmental influence, even predicts organizational change in times of environmental imbalance (Rowan, 1982).

Summary

Under increasing pressure to attain high levels of educational achievement with greater numbers of children and decreasing belief of their legitimacy through ceremonial events, schools have been (are still) undergoing evolutionary metamorphoses. The technical production demanded of schools and teachers is being raised within an institutional sector in which organizations historically have relied on ceremonies and rituals to maintain their legitimacy. However, increasing emphasis is being placed not on inputs or processes, but on the end product of the educational enterprise, student learning (typically measured through standardized test scores). As part of this evolutionary development of public education, the criteria for institutional and organizational legitimacy are changing as well. Thus, the legitimacy of public schools no longer rests upon Carnegie units, graduation ceremonies and empty credentials.

Likewise, but in a delayed manner, teachers’ unions are now responding to pressures of greater accountability and lack of legitimacy. Throughout their history, unions also have been characterized as institutional, stressing ceremony and procedures, actively resisting quality control measures -- or shaping them in such a way that union members and solidarity are not significantly challenged. Recently however, some progressive local unions are responding to the increasing pressures and decreasing legitimacy by attempting to interweave technical and institutional demands. They are becoming more technical through emphasizing the technology of teacher pedagogy and producing demonstrable results by retaining or dismissing teachers on the basis of quality. By taking responsibility for quality control through actively monitoring the technical production of their members, they are expanding the narrow confines of industrial unionism to include more technical, or "professional," concerns under the guise of what is becoming known as "professional unionism."

Although many may deem the development of professional unionism as beneficial to both teachers’ unions and public education, the process of change is bound to be a very painful one. As unions embrace some of the fundamental tenets of professionalism in their attempt to increase technical production, they also embrace criteria for legitimacy (as professionals) which may be antithetical to the legitimacy criteria inherent in traditional unionism. Of such situations, Meyer and Scott (1983) warn

For the teacher’s unions studied here, the technical/institutional tension first mentioned by Meyer and Rowan (1977) manifests itself in the struggle between the competing criteria for legitimacy embodied within the institutions of professionalism and unionism. It is upon these criteria that the follow chapter focuses through detailed analyses of each institution individually, then as combined in the still emergent professional unionism.

 

Chapter Three

THE COMPETING CRITERIA OF LEGITIMACY

Within this chapter, I will examine the institutions of professionalism and unionism within the United States which, in the context of this study, comprise the competing criteria for legitimacy between which some teachers’ unions are currently trying to forge a common ground. It is useful to think of these criteria as the "different authorities" negatively affecting organizational legitimacy to which Meyer and Scott (1983) refer. The chapter will focus first on the institution of professionalism. It will also illuminate and clarify both the connotations and denotations of profession, professional, professionalism and professionalization within the confines of teaching and this study. The focus will then shift to the institution of unionism, by tracing the historic development of unionism within the United States. By highlighting the path dependence of the institution of unionism, insight may be gained into the current conception of unionism which often confines the actions of present-day teachers’ unions with regards to peer review and teacher evaluation. Finally, the chapter will conclude with an examination of the scant empirical literature focusing on the phenomenon of peer review-based teacher evaluation among unionized teachers.

Professionalism

While a great number of participants in the ongoing debate and reform efforts of American public education employ terms such as profession, professional, professionalism, and professionalization, no common understanding of terminology informs this debate. Instead, every participant has his own rather clear, but unique, definitions of these terms, Teachers and their unions tend to color these phrases with references to power, prestige, and income. Administrators tend to think of these words through a more bureaucratic lens, focusing on issues of compliance. Parents, however, tend to view these issues in terms of competence and how well their own children are treated. These are but three parties to the debate, also included are federal, state, and local elected officials and their bureaucratic counterparts, business leaders, and the general public -- each having a unique view of the educational enterprise. As Goodlad (1990) observes of the resultant cacophonous discussion,

It is no wonder then, that both the history of teacher professionalization and the current debate are wreaked with confusion resulting from conflicting arguments couched in support of seemingly similar concepts. This review will explore these issues in an attempt to journey through the fog of ambiguous connotations and denotations to achieve some measure of clarity which may help to inform this study as well as the ongoing debate and possibly further the realization of teaching as a profession.

What is a "Profession?"

Eliot Freidson, author of Professional Powers (1986), aptly warns that "a word with so many connotations and denotations cannot be employed in precise discourse without definition" (p. 35). To facilitate the discourse necessarily needed in the educational debate about teacher professionalism, and for this study, we must first look at the fundamental concept of "profession." Originating from the Latin, professio, profession originally meant a declaration or avowal usually in relation to religious beliefs. However, by the sixteenth century, this rather narrow meaning expanded to include a connotation of insincerity in the profession of secular matters, as in "their professed neutrality" (Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1983, p. 1437). Thus, the ambiguous nature of "profession" is at least four centuries old.

The noun profession, referring to an occupation, also dates back to at least the sixteenth century, and is equally ambiguous. Originally denoting the occupations of university-educated men, specifically men of high social standing, its use was limited to "the learned professions" of medicine, law and divinity. Inherent within this context is the elite and prestigious connotation many hold of "the professions" to this day. As Freidson notes, the original professionals

Although originally limited in its scope, profession quickly came into use when referring to a wide range of occupations by which people made their living, regardless of their social status or prestige. The referent occupation could indeed be common or of ill-repute, including everyone from priests to prostitutes, members of "the oldest profession." Thus, almost from the beginning, the term profession could be used to mean either a small, exclusive set of occupations or its opposite, any occupation at all.

Unfortunately, the denotational ambiguity of profession was transferred to its derivation as an adjective, professional, which, in turn, soon encompassed a variety of connotations as well, both positive and negative in nature. Originally connoting association with gentlemanly occupations and activities, professional also reversed its connotation, referring to things considered ungentlemanly or untoward. A common example can be gathered from athletics, when the term is used in contrast with amateur. An amateur athlete supposedly engages in activities for the sheer love of athleticism alone, with no ulterior motives. A professional, on the other hand, engages in the same activities for monetary compensation, and as such, is considered tainted in comparison to the amateur. One need only think of recent debates regarding the participation of "professionals" in the Olympic Games to see this tension. The disparaging use of professional goes beyond association with money, however. In the nineteenth century, it also came to connote "bad form" or poor taste, as in "a professional partygoer, a professional beauty" (Freidson, p. 23).

As the nineteenth century progressed into the twentieth, industrialization swept across Western Europe and North America. With it came ever increasing occupational differentiation. As people's occupations became more specialized and interdependent, professional added once again to its connotations. However, the normative value of the new additions was reversed, this time from negative to positive. Within this context,

Hence, to refer to one's workmanship as amateurish is to characterize it as being of poor or shoddy quality. In contrast to amateurish stands professional, which connotes workmanship of excellent quality and reliability. Consequently, we are left to inherit a term which can connote either high quality craftsmanship, bad form, or less than ideal motives, about a set of activities that can vary from the occupations of highly learned upper class elites to any occupation for which one is paid. It is no wonder that any debates or reform which center around the concept of "profession" become riddled with contradictions and confusion. "On the whole, as Bell (1979) put it, it is a 'muddled concept" (quoted in Freidson, 1986, p. 43).

As a result of this ambiguity, in today's occupational market, all participants can rightfully lay claim on the label of "profession." Many occupations have actively lobbied to be officially recognized as professions, for with this designation comes not only affiliation (however weak) with the social elite, but also the connotation of professional ethics which in turn can provide "political legitimation for the effort to gain protection from competition in the labor market" (Freidson, p. 33). So wide-spread have the claims to professional status become that the 1994 Statistical Abstract of the United States includes occupations under the heading of "managerial and professional" ranging from craft-artists, recreation workers and athletes to lawyers, doctors, and clergy (the original "learned professions") (p. 407). Given the amorphous nature of professional classification, Freidson declares of the multitude of these occupational claims, that

Terminology harboring connotations and denotations of such an arbitrary nature are practically worthless when trying to engage and sustain informed debates and discussions. Therefore, it is useful to narrow the focus of this literature review on profession and all of its derivations to specifically, those discussions centering on teacher professionalism and professionalization in the late twentieth century.

Teaching as a Profession?

Tomas Englund (1993) informs us that the phrase teaching as a profession "has no unequivocal meaning, and that the conceptual meaning of profession is a void, being no more than a "buzzword" (p. 1). Fortunately, however, the efforts and reforms surrounding the concept of teaching break down into the two somewhat distinct concepts of professionalization and professionalism, both of which are more susceptible to analysis. Professionalization can be viewed as a sociological process by which an occupation gains professional status and privilege. It is both culturally and temporally bound. As Johnson, author of Professions and Power (1972), writes

Therefore, the processes of professionalization undergone by other occupations do not necessarily serve as guideposts for teaching's long struggle toward professional status. Because of its sociological aspect, professionalization is necessarily dependent upon society as a whole, which may either grant or withhold professional designation. Englund summarizes this concept nicely, defining professionalization as "a measure of the societal strength and authority of an occupational group" (italics added, p. 2).

Arguments for the professionalization of teaching usually focus on the privilege and prestige of previously established professions, referring most notably to the institution of medical practice as "the ultimate in status, the elite position in the world of work" (Soder, p. 35). The fundamental basis of educators' argument is that they possess a formal, esoteric knowledge base which can guide practitioners' actions, similar to that of doctor's medical knowledge. Indeed the 1986 Holmes Group report, Tomorrow's Teachers typifies the centrality of knowledge to claiming similarity with other professions.

This plan would make education a strictly graduate level endeavor, much like medicine (the use of "clinical" above is hardly coincidental). Teacher education programs, such as that at Michigan State University, have even adopted medical terminology. Pre-service initiates to teaching are no longer "student teachers" but are referred to as "interns." Professional development schools, among the latest innovations in education, are being purposefully modeled after teaching hospitals. Unfortunately, the claims of similarity with medicine have not served teaching well. The reactions of established professionals to these claims "is rather like the indulgent response of airline passengers to the youngster who announces he is a 'pilot' because he is wearing a pilot pin" (Soder, p. 49).

The very structure of the rhetorical argument from similitude regarding professionalization is self-defeating. "We're like doctors,' teachers say. 'Prove it,' replies the audience" (Soder, p. 71). Given the long history of criticism of the intellectual content of teacher education and the inferior intelligence of teachers, any claim to similarity with medicine immediately becomes laughable (Clifford & Guthrie, 1988; Williams, 1981) To counter this line of argument, some turn to the role of testing in teacher certification as being analogous to the medical board examinations. However, such a comparison serves "merely to underscore the real and considerable differences between medicine and education -- and hardly in favor of education" (Soder, p. 69). It should be evident that the fundamental premise of similarity is flawed, to say the least. Teaching cannot achieve professional status by following the medical model of professionalization. As Soder concludes, "Once teachers (and their leaders) cease attempts to define themselves as 'professionals' in terms of the medical model, they will begin to free themselves from the tyranny of their own dreams" (Soder, p. 72).

In contrast to focusing on professionalization, many feel that concentration on the institution of professionalism, which rather than relying on societal approval refers to aspects more internal to teaching children, is a more appropriate and plausibly more effective avenue to establishing teaching as a profession. Professionalism is characterized by Englund as focusing "on the question of what qualifications and acquired capacities, what competence, is required for the successful exercise of an occupation" (p. 2). Professionalism is then the quality of being professional, of allowing one's actions to be regulated by an "internal code of ethics" (McDonnell & Pascal, 1988, p. 5). This is analogous to the normative pillar supporting some institutions as described by Scott (1995). Therefore, professionalism deals with one's motivations and the mental context with which one approaches one's work. Thus, the only people responsible for, or capable of, developing professionalism among the nation's teaching workforce are the teachers themselves.

There exists two major arguments supporting the centrality of professionalism to the educational debate, professionalism as a state of mind and professionalism as a moral imperative. Popular across a wide range of occupations is framing professionalism as simply a state of mind. In contrast to the more dominant conceptual frameworks in the educational debate, Peter Clamp (1990) writes

Clamp characterizes professionalism instead as being composed of four attributes -- competency, integrity, reliability, and empathic humanism which he defines as evidence of "genuine caring for fellow humans" (pp. 54-55). While no one can really take exception to these attributes, they allow absolutely anybody to claim professional status on the basis of exhibited professionalism. Both a Supreme Court justice and a ditch-digging chain gang member can rightfully claim such status as long as they are in possession of Clamp's four characteristics. For obvious reasons, such an egalitarian conception of professionalism may enjoy vast support from the general populace, including teachers. Unfortunately, Clamp's framework leads further into already ambiguous bog of conceptual confusion.

Further hindering debate based upon such a conception of professionalism is the internal nature of these characteristics. They are possessed in a strictly individual manner and for the most part are not directly observable. An occupation cannot exhibit personal values. In order to be considered a profession an occupation must produce demonstrable results (Sykes, personal communication, 3/2/95). Thus reliance on competency, integrity, reliability and empathic humanism, while noble, will not substantively contribute to either the current educational debate, or the future realization of teaching as a profession. Therefore, I will now focus attention on the place of normative regulation and moral imperative in professionalism.

The concept of teacher professionalism as a moral imperative is based upon the centrality of children in the educational setting. Thus far, children have been noticeably absent from discussions surrounding these issues. Of this situation, Myrna Cooper (1988), Director of the New York City Teacher Center Consortium, laments

Fortunately, focus has recently been placed squarely upon children and the responsibilities of teachers individually, and teaching collectively, to them. In fact, the central focus on children can be seen among such participants in the educational debate as Linda Darling-Hammond, John Goodlad and the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (hereafter referred to as the NBPTS). Goodlad, in the preface of, The Moral Dimensions of Teaching (1990) clearly states, "The teacher's first responsibilities are to those being taught" (p. xii). So important does the NBPTS consider the place of children that it takes children as the central focus of their first policy position statement writing, "(Board-certified) Teachers are committed to students and their learning" (1994, p. 6). Darling-Hammond (1989) most effectively communicates the position of those people arguing from a moral imperative basis, writing

Darling-Hammond's articulation of this position thus answers Sykes' criticism of Clamp's argument. By tying teacher professionalism with classroom pedagogy and student learning, teachers have a demonstrable event upon which to base their claims of professionalism. If teaching as an occupation does not consider the effects of its individual and collective actions upon students' educational experiences, then it does not deserve the honorific of "professional."

In an ironic twist, the argument for professionalism, a concept internally bound within members of an occupation, on the basis of moral imperative actually results in developing support for the professionalization of teaching, a process external to the control of an occupation. The basis of professional claims upon service to children benefits the process of professionalization in three significant ways. First and most basically, it reconnects today's teachers with the ideal of service connoted by the original "learned professions" of medicine, law, and divinity. Hence, it also strengthens the normative pillar supporting the evolving conception of teacher unionism. Darling-Hammond, once again, summarizes this position well by reminding teachers that "professionals are obligated to do whatever is best for the client, not what is easiest, most expedient, or even what the client might want" (1989, italics added, pp. 15-16). Unfortunately, this position in not prevalent in a large majority of literature generated by teachers and their unions when writing about teacher professionalization.

The second way in which a focus on children benefits the process of professionalization arises from the compulsory nature of public education in the United States. Parents are required by law to send their children to school. For the vast majority of these parents, public schooling represent the only feasible way to educate their children and comply with the law. Because children are defenseless, the act of sending one's children to school becomes an act of "surrender" (Soder, pp. 73-74). The "equality of surrender" exhibited by parents in sending their children to the local school, Soder argues, "should imply equality of treatment" (p. 73). Therefore, children should not be subjected to qualitatively differential educational experiences simply because of differences in social class, ethnicity, gender, or other factors over which children have no control. Equality of surrender must necessitate equality of treatment. If this condition does not hold true, then it is immoral to demand surrender of parent's most precious possessions, their children. Consequently, "those responsible for treatment of children in schools have a moral obligation to ensure equality of treatment" (Soder, p. 73).

The equality of treatment argument offered above has recently had significant impact upon the regulative pillar supporting the institution and organization of public schooling. Because of funding inequities and chronically disparate achievement results, some state systems of public education have been declared unconstitutional. The most prominent of these cases was the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision to declare that state’s public school system unconstitutional and to order the Kentucky Department of Education to completely redesign the system. The result of this declaration was the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of 1990, which is a omnibus piece of legislation addressing all aspects of schooling, curriculum, school improvement, teacher professional development, and accountability procedures. The result of KERA was major institutional and organizational change throughout the schools of Kentucky which generated a great deal of discomfort among school personnel (Holland, 1997; McDiarmid, 1997; Rothman 1997).

Amy Gutmann, a political philosopher, offers a third argument that, although similar to Soder’s, does not rely on a moral imperative but on a democratic imperative. In Democratic Education (1987), Gutmann acknowledges that the legitimate interests of citizens in controlling public education must be limited. If citizen interest/control is not limited, schools may "serve simply to perpetuate the beliefs held by dominant majorities" and thus become "agents of political repression" (p. 75). Over a century earlier, John Stuart Mill (1859), expressed the same concerns of unrestrained democratic control of schools establishing "a despotism over the mind" (p. 129). Gutmann answers this fear by arguing for the professionalization of public school teachers by establishing professional autonomy. She writes

The arguments for teacher professionalism on the basis of the moral and democratic imperatives inherent within American public education offer the most promising potential avenue to the realization of teaching as a profession. As Becker (1962) suggests "public willingness to accord honors to an occupation derives from a collective sense of the moral praiseworthiness of that occupation" (quoted in Soder, p. 72). The above arguments supply the "moral praiseworthiness" needed for strengthening the normative and regulative pillars supporting the advancement of teacher professionalization. They also provide demonstrable criteria for competence as required by Sykes, through concentration on student learning at the core. In addition, the moral imperative argument also associates teaching with established professions, not through emphasis on a knowledge base and prestige, but instead in its focus on service as a central guiding factor. Unfortunately, however, these arguments are only two of many, currently lost in the cacophony referred to as the educational debate regarding teacher professionalization.

 

Common Chords

Although often cacophonous, common chords can be distinguished from the disparate arguments and positions offered in the current debate. In order to reduce the confusion clouding issues of teaching as a profession, I bring these chords to the foreground of the ongoing discussions. By carefully blending the chords together, it is possible to forge a single conception of "professional teaching" which can, in turn, provide a basis for the commonly shared terminology necessary for any informed debate.

When reviewing the literature regarding professions in general, and teaching as a profession in particular, one can glean three fundamental bases for professional designation. These are knowledge, competence, and commitment to clients/students. The third of these, commitment to students, is discussed at length in the previous section. Therefore, it will not be reviewed again. Knowledge as a prerequisite for professional designation can be traced throughout the history of professional literature. Talcott Parsons (1951) in his ranking of the "normative world from the popular to the professional" employs a continuum from "the emotional to the cognitive" (emphasis added, quoted in Bledstein, 1985, p. 6). Nathan Glazer does an excellent job of reviewing the position of knowledge in professional designation, in his work, "The Schools the Minor Professions" (1974). In it, Glazer quotes several researchers' perspectives such as that of Carr-Saunders and Wilson (1933) who "recognize a profession as a vocation founded upon prolonged and specialized intellectual training ..." (emphasis added, p. 347). More contemporary researchers continue to echo the importance of a firm knowledge base. Labaree (1992) identifies knowledge as one of "two key elements that are demonstrably part of any successful claim of professional status" (p. 125). Talbert and McLaughlin (1994) in their work, "Teacher Professionalism in Local School Contexts" also point to "a specialized knowledge" as "primary among the conditions that distinguish a 'profession' from other occupations" (emphasis added, p. 126).

Unfortunately, knowledge as a criterion for professional status has proven troublesome to teachers in the past. Within teaching, two types of knowledge must be mastered, pedagogy and subject matter. Most critics ignore this fact. Instead, they demand that high school chemistry teachers to be as well trained in chemistry as professional chemists. Such a demand is unreasonable. This is not to dismiss the criticism which befalls educators, but this fact must be kept in mind when considering the intellectual training of teachers. Unfortunately the intellectual accomplishments and training of our nation's teachers is deserving of much of the criticism. Teachers and teacher education have historically been criticized as intellectually weak and lacking in any respectable knowledge base. As Soder observes,

Of teacher preparation programs, Goodlad remarks that they are "disturbingly alike and almost uniformly inadequate" (1984, p. 315). Clifford and Guthrie, in Ed School (1988), confirm the dismal intellectual resources going into education by observing that teaching "draws heavily form the bottom quintiles of quality" (p. 32). Consequently, any attempt at the professionalization of teachers must aggressively increase the caliber of new teaching recruits. If the intellectual quality of teachers is not elevated, George Bernard Shaw's (1903) adage -- "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches."-- will only become more firmly entrenched in the folk wisdom of the nation (p. 260).

Some may question the utility of separating competence from knowledge as a prerequisite of professional designation. I think the distinction is not only useful, but necessary as well. Thorough understanding of the knowledge base of one's occupational field is absolutely necessary to inform one's actions. Understanding alone, however, does not ensure practical competence. A teacher fully cognizant of both subject matter and pedagogical knowledge may not be able to teach a classroom full of adolescents. Therefore, one may be knowledgeable, but incompetent.

It is within competence that teachers may produce the demonstrable effects necessary for professional claims through such actions as peer review-based teacher evaluation. Because of the unique daily occurrences in teaching, teachers must rely on their own professional judgment to successfully resolve the innumerable problems which they must face. Although not explicitly addressed throughout a good portion of the literature, competence as a prerequisite for professional designation can be found implicitly throughout the discussions of professions and professionals. Bledstein observes that "routine matters do not get professionalized, and that would include a most important dimension of the professional role" (p. 6-7). The NBPTS (1994) policy statement bases two of the five "fundamental requirements for proficient teaching" on "skills" to bring about "effective student learning" (p. 4). The Board continues claiming that teaching "ultimately requires" among other things, "judgment" and "improvisation" (p. 4). More explicitly, Nathan Essex (1992) in "Educational Malpractice" views a professional teacher as one who "exhibits competency and creativity, and conveys subject matter effectively" (p. 230). Darling-Hammond (1988) also contributes, writing, "Effective teaching ... requires flexibility, a wide repertoire of strategies and use of judgment" (p. 61). Thus the case can be made to include competence (the focus of teacher peer review) among the three prerequisites for professional designation.

To this point, I have been careful to use the phrase prerequisite for professional designation. The three prerequisites of knowledge, competence and commitment to students, are only the beginning, a first step on the way to the realization of teaching as a profession. To be a profession, an occupation must act collectively. Indeed, Darling-Hammond declares, "It is the degree to which teachers assume collective responsibility for instructional quality that determines professionalism" (italics added, 1989, p. 18). Individual teachers cannot become a profession. In order to professionalize, the entire occupation must speak with one voice, on behalf of all teachers. Of course, complete uniformity of voice is impossible to achieve, but a dominant voice focused on the issues raised here is within the realm of possibility. Considering the increasing number and intensity of attacks aimed at teachers’ unions from both within and without, as well as leaders of the NEA and AFT both advocating teacher accountability, the time is now ripe for teacher unionism to fully engage in the transformation into the "third generation of unionism," or "professional unionism" (Kerchner & Caufman, 1995; Kerchner & Koppich, 1993; Kerchner & Mitchell, 1988).

It is only through collective, focused action that teaching may attain professional autonomy. Because professionalization is dependent upon societal recognition, the characteristics discussed previously must be in place before teaching as a occupation attempts to actively gain professional status and autonomy. As Cooper puts it, "Status and control are not the characteristics of professionalism, they are the byproducts" (p. 47). In this sense, knowledge, competence and commitment to students are truly prerequisites. Only after the prerequisites are developed with the occupation of teaching, can it hope to make "the bargain that all professions make with society:"

Within schools however, the institutional constraints in which teachers and their administrators typically work pose very significant impediments to reform efforts aimed at altering traditional working patterns. Chief among these impediments is the institution of teacher unionism and the organizational accommodations resulting from union activity.

Teacher Unionism

It has been shown repeatedly that teachers’ unions maintain a unique position within the societal sector of labor/professional organizations (Bascia, 1994; Cresswell & Murphy, 1980; Jessup, 1985; Urban, 1982). Unlike typical labor organizations, such as the United Auto Workers, the determination of legitimate goals for a teachers’ union is influenced by two sets of traditions; labor union traditions and professional traditions. Parsons (1951) highlights the inherent tension in this condition noting that the goals developing out of the two traditions are at times incompatible because "the pursuit of ends associated with self-interest is contradictory to norms emphasizing service to others" (in Jessup, p. 10). As this review will demonstrate, because of a variety of factors -- some of which were beyond the control of teachers or their unions -- the norms of industrial unionism have been dominant in structuring both the goals and the activities of teachers’ unions. Thus, a dilemma exists between professional peer review of teachers and the fundamental operating principles of most local teachers’ unions.

Regulative Constraints

To understand the basic tenets upon which modern unions operate, one must look to the Wagner Act of 1935, a landmark piece of legislation designed to help facilitate the growth of labor unions among the American workforce. While it attempted to secure for American workers the right to collectively organize unions, the Wagner Act also established a set of rules and regulations developed within a particular conception of unionism and collective bargaining. By doing so, the Wagner Act also forged very strong regulative, and eventually cognitive, constraints which greatly affected the path dependence of teachers’ unions. Atleson (1983), in Values and Assumptions in American Labor Law, identifies the following as underlying assumptions resulting from the original conception of unionism which informed the Wagner Act.

The results of these underlying assumptions can be identified in the present day policies and practices of labor relations, both among teachers’ unions and their industrial counterparts.

Of primary importance to the relationship between teachers and peer review is the distinction made in labor laws between supervisors (peer evaluators) and workers (teachers). While the Wagner Act implicitly laid the foundations of the conceptual framework of modern industrial relations, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 explicitly made clear the important distinction between supervisory personnel and regular workers. Specifically, Taft-Hartley amended Section 2 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935 to omit from collective bargaining "any individual employed as a supervisor" which it further defines as

If peer review programs for teachers are held against this standard, it becomes very doubtful that many would support peer review (Shanker, 1986). For if teachers evaluating their peers are deemed to be "supervisory" according to the definition above, some observers claim that teachers would be found to be in violation of the NLRA or state-level versions of it, and as such, forfeit the right to collective bargaining and union representation (Iorio, 1988). It was under this definition that the Supreme Court decided the precedent-setting National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University (1980) case in which the high court ruled that the faculty of Yeshiva University were managerial employees because of their participation in faculty committees which recommended policies in areas such as grading and curricula, and as such had no representation rights guaranteed them under the NLRA (444 U.S. 672 (1980); Jascourt, 1988). Whether the Yeshiva criteria are to be transferred from the private sector to the public sector and applied in K-12 education is yet to be seen.

While some claim that Yeshiva creates at worst, a precedent forbidding unionized teachers from engaging in "supervisory" or "managerial" activities, and at best, a dampening effect on teacher professionalization efforts, others, such as the president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers (TFT), Dal Lawrence, claims Yeshiva to be completely irrelevant to the realm of teacher unionism among our public schools (Iorio, 1988; Lawrence, 1988; Margolies, 1988). In 1981, the TFT, under Lawrence’s leadership, established a peer review system for all first year teachers and for veteran teachers deemed to be unsatisfactory. Over the program’s fifteen years of existence, the TFT has yet to lose a legal challenge in Ohio courts (Kelly, 1997a; Lawrence, 1988). Thus, the nature of the actual effect of Yeshiva on the actions and policies of teachers’ unions cannot be determined at this time.

More serious challenges to implementation of peer review within a unionized workforce come from laws regarding representation duties which constitute a significant portion of the regulative pillar of unionism. Lawrence (1988) describes the confused state of regulative constraints embodied in legal statutes regarding unions’ duties, writing

However, most labor laws prohibit supervisors and workers to be part of the same bargaining unit. Consequently, the fact that peer evaluators and evaluatees are both classroom teachers and thus come from the same pool of employees or "bargaining unit," is very problematic for unions. Efforts to claim joint responsibility with management have met with mixed results. Significant precedents have been set which establish that if the workers (teachers) have demonstrable authority, then the distinction between supervisory personnel and workers must be recognized (Atleson, 1983; Iorio, 1988). Therefore, peer evaluators would lose union representation, while teachers being evaluated would retain union membership and thus be the focus of the union’s obligation for representation.

Cognitive Constraints

Coupled with the legal challenges within the regulative structures which face peer review systems, the norms and traditions of American unionism also pose obstacles to implementation in the form of cognitive constraints. Developing peer review programs within organizations founded upon the premise of equality among members and collective action necessarily challenges these fundamental premises. Upon reviewing the literatures of general U.S. industrial unionism and teachers’ unionism, I have identified four basic tenets underlying most union policies and actions. They are

  1. An adversarial approach to relationships with administration/ management.
  2. A reactionary stance to educational policy and reform efforts.
  3. A focus on maintaining union strength thorough solidarity of membership.
  4. Maintaining a negotiating focus primarily on traditional "bread and butter" issues.

The order of the above list is inconsequential. These four facets of modern unionism are thoroughly interwoven and at times indistinguishable. Furthermore, one cannot place upon them a temporal order, for their interrelatedness generates a symbiotic relationship among them with no single factor necessarily taking precedence over the others.

The first of the above factors, maintaining an adversarial approach in interactions involving administration, significantly impacts all facets of industrial relations between a union and management, whether in education or not. An adversarial stance taken by a union, by definition, generates an "us vs. them" mentality and thus effectively forecloses cooperative efforts between administrators and teachers (Kerchner, unpublished). Furthermore, an adversarial stance cannot be taken alone. Teachers’ unions approaching administrators in an adversarial nature are bound to receive an adversarial response. Thus, even if a local teachers’ union approached the administration about some issue, the administrators will likely view the proposal with an undue amount of skepticism, due to the tenor of past adversarial relationships. Consequently, adversarial relationships greatly inhibit the ability of both teachers and administrators to engage in activities which require a significant level of trust, such as peer review.

Evidence of this phenomenon can be seen in the actions taken by Toledo Public Schools’ administrators when the TFT approached them regarding peer review. For nine years, from 1972 to 1981, during annual negotiations between the TFT and the district, the administrators dismissed Lawrence’s peer review proposal out of hand as a union attempt to gain power, and thus, as a net loss of power for their principals (Gallagher, Lanier, & Kerchner, 1993; Kelly, 1997b). In an adversarial atmosphere, negotiations, as evidenced in the Toledo example, take on a "zero-sum" nature in which any gain by one party must be a loss by the opposing party. The concept of mutual benefit is foreign in such a setting. So dominant is the adversarial/competitive nature of labor relations in K-12 education that Kerchner (1986) refers the contracts resulting from negotiations as "the boxscore that determines how well or poorly each party did" (p. 320). Consequently, adversarial dispositions of the participants in a district’s labor relations create very daunting cognitive impediments for the mere acceptance of the concept of peer review within a school district.

The second factor, a reactionary stance to educational policy and reform efforts, arises from the historical traditions which have developed within American unionism. Fundamentally, any union is "an employer regulating device" (Bakke, 1948, p. 140). Because of this, it has become axiomatic within labor relations that "Management acts, the union grieves. And grieves and grieves" (Geoghegan, 1991, pp. 31, 161). American labor has always had a pragmatic focus aimed at taking care of immediate concerns (Brody, 1993; Kerchner, 1986). Indeed, labor historian David Brody characterizes Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor, as holding firm to the belief that within the American labor movement, "visionary thinking was to be avoided" (p. 87). Gompers’ own words highlight the passive stance which has characterized much of unions’ policies and practices saying,

So dominant are the cognitive constraints embodied in the reactionary and adversarial nature of union/management interactions, that Heckscher, author of The New Unionism (1988), observes

Simply put, modern unions, including teachers’ unions, are not accustomed to being proactive in advocating for policy changes in areas other than working conditions. Heckscher characterizes the typical union stance as "more comfortable in challenging management than in proposing positive solutions" (p. 7). Looking more directly at teachers and public education, Fraser (1989) notes, "when teachers have been the center of attention, the story often has been more of what was done to them by others" (p. 118). This historically fundamental facet of unionism thus helps to explain Berube’s (1988) observation that "teacher unions have yet to become the initiators of sweeping educational change in America" (original emphasis, p. 151). Overall, Kerchner and Caufman (1995) observe, "unions have been more powerful at preventing things from happening than in getting things done" (p. 112).

The third fundamental tenet of modern unionism, unions’ focus on solidarity of membership, is so fundamental that the effects of labor relations or negotiated policies upon a union’s solidarity must inform all actions taken by a union. By the very nature of their work, unions must maintain organizational cohesion and thus go to great measures to avoid matters which challenge their members’ solidarity. So central to unionism is the concept of worker solidarity, that Engels, writing in 1844, observes

Over a century later, Bakke (1967) continues this fundamental theme describing a union as

Bakke continues, highlighting that without solidarity, "the bargaining power of the group as a whole is destroyed" (p. 140). Consequently, unions, to survive, must hold organizational solidarity as a primary concern.

The importance of solidarity to unions has significant ramifications on the range of activities in which a union can engage, including peer review. Jessup, in Teachers, Unions, and Change (1985) observes that

Within the traditional operational paradigm of most local teachers’ unions, the prioritization mentioned by Jessup seriously calls into question the prospect of future adoption and implementation of peer review, which necessarily challenges solidarity of the membership.

Even discounting the legal challenges to peer review among unionized teachers under Taft-Hartley, the challenges peer review may raise within a local union, through members summatively evaluating each other, will be significant. Gould’s (1993) evaluation of reform efforts in labor relations involving workers’ adoption of "management responsibility" showed that union leaders were "critical of such ideas ... in an outspoken and derisive manner" (p. 112). McDonnell and Pascal (1988) summarize well the dilemma in which progressive union leaders find themselves, writing

Consequently, the ethos of union solidarity is a formidable obstacle to the further implementation of peer review.

The final underlying factor of modern unionism, a narrow focus on "bread and butter" issues arises due to two factors. First, gains in wages, salary structures, and concrete working conditions are most demonstrable to union members, and therefore develop confidence in union leadership and union strength most quickly (Urban 1982). Second, as Lortie (1973, 1975) suggests, economic issues may be the relatively narrow "common denominator" on which all teachers can agree, and which "neutralize differences of interest within the occupation" (1975, p. 204). One must be mindful that as typically organized, bargaining units within teachers’ unions include all the teachers in a single district; from kindergarten teachers to college-preparatory teachers, from home economics teachers to welding teachers, from art teachers to computer programming teachers. Considering the often conflicting "differences in interest" which members present teachers’ unions, it is little wonder that the only common ground to be found is economic.

Because of the great disparity of interests held among members of teachers’ unions, the prioritization to which Jessup refers necessarily is severely constrained. Policies and/or programs involving "complex educational issues" only highlight the real lack of unity in the day-to-day lives of K-12 teachers as collective members of a single union. Teacher evaluation through peer review is just such an issue. Because the dominant form of unionism shaping teachers’ unions originated in the industrial sector, most union policies try to treat all teachers not equitably, but as if they were the same. As a result, evaluation clauses in teachers’ contracts are necessarily vague enough to include all teachers. If differentiation among teachers (a necessary component of peer review) were allowed to happen, the complexity of evaluation procedures for different types/levels of teachers and subsequent grievance criteria could indeed be cumbersome. Consequently, because of the great variety among their members, teachers’ unions have avoided issues which could highlight the "differences of interest" and possibly weaken member cohesiveness (McDonnell & Pascal 1988). Thus, teachers’ unions maintain a relatively narrow focus when negotiating, primarily focusing on economic factors.

Generational View of Teacher Unionism

That teachers’ unions may not address issues such as peer review in negotiations does not mean that teachers lose interest in them. Indeed, in her work, Jessup observes that "teacher organizations may ... be subject to continuing demands from within their own membership to respond to such concerns" (p. 5). These demands, if unmet for a significant period of time by a large number of teachers will create discontent, which in turn creates pressure on union leaders to address the unanswered demands. If significant enough, the internal pressure could call into question the legitimacy of union leadership or of the union itself.

The resultant crisis of legitimacy is directly addressed by Kerchner and Mitchell, in The Changing Idea of a Teachers’ Union (1988), in which they account for the rise and fall of discontent within labor relations by taking a generational view of teachers’ unions. According to the authors, the history of teachers’ unions can be divided into three generations. The time span for each generation is unique to each locale for transition between generations is not determined chronologically, but ideologically. As fundamental premises of current labor relations are seriously questioned, the birth of a new generation of teacher unionism may occur. Kerchner and Mitchell describe the generational dynamics of teachers’ unionism as a cyclic process, comprised of four steps.

(a) Discontent -- when flaws in the existing system of labor relations become obvious, new ideas are advocated and gain support. They are strongly opposed, setting the stage for conflict and political crisis.
(b) Crisis -- when intense, and sometimes sustained, conflict is experienced between those who support the old order and those committed to the new idea. The crisis is resolved when advocates for one belief system win a symbolic political victory -- often accompanied by leadership changes on one or both sides.
(c) Institutionalization -- when the representatives of the new unionism idea establish their right to shape the labor relations agenda. They redefine roles and responsibilities and develop new decision-making and resource allocation procedures.
(d) Accommodation -- when the leaders of both labor and management routinize with the new arrangement and engage in practical problem solving. As accommodation proceeds, new sources of discontent also develop initiating the possibility of a new change cycle. (p. 31)

The first generation of teacher unionism, characterized by the meet and confer process, represents the period in which teachers initially gain a legitimate collective voice before local school boards and central administration (Kerchner & Mitchell, pp. 4-7, 61-67). With the dawn of the first generation of teacher unionism comes the realization and acceptance that teachers do indeed have a unique perspective on educational policy and that this perspective is of value. That teachers’ interests and those of the administrators or school board might diverge significantly is not considered during this period. Kerchner and Mitchell describe the underlying premise of the meet and confer era, writing

Although it becomes common practice to include teachers’ voices and concerns in educational decision making, teachers, during the first generation of teacher unionism, lack authentic power to significantly effect local policy.

As discontent rises among teachers, their unions, and administrators, a transition into the second generation of teacher unionism, the era of "good faith bargaining" begins (Kerchner & Mitchell, pp. 122-150). With the realization that teachers and administrators are not unitary in focus or interest, disillusionment of the meet and confer process develops rapidly. With the ideological shift required to acknowledge the difference in interests between teachers and administrators comes the transition into the second generational phase. Generally speaking, the second generation of teacher unionism began for most districts between roughly the mid-1960s to early 1970s. Kerchner and Mitchell characterize the era of good faith bargaining writing,

The above description aptly describes a great number of the relationships found in our nation’s school districts. However, as with the first generation, discontent among participants in the second generation paradigm has formed and is rising, possibly signaling a transition into a third generation.

Although much of the current discontent with teachers, teachers’ unions, and school district officials is unfocused, significant changes in the nature of labor relations can be noticed among a relative few school districts and teachers’ unions. In some of these districts, educational leaders are engaging in behaviors antithetical to the belief structure of the second generation by making "an explicit attempt to shape school district policy through the contract and the union rather than attempting to manage ‘around the contract’ or through informal accommodation with the union" (Kerchner and Mitchell, p. 8). No longer are some teachers or administrators willing to adhere to the underlying assumptions which inform most of American labor policies. Kerchner and Mitchell write that

A third generation of teacher unionism, as described above, is now beginning to develop. It appears that a major shift in the operating principles of teachers’ unions may indeed be afoot. Unlike Kerchner and Mitchell, who place the impetus for generational transformation with "management and the school board," because of the pressures being placed upon teachers unions, I will describe in the following chapters how the impetus for change developed internally, within the unions studied. Investigating school districts in which teachers’ unions advocate peer review is my way of exploring this phenomenon.

Professional Unionism

Some local teacher unions are beginning to evolve into organizations that simultaneously advocate both teacher and student interests in a proactive manner. Kerchner and Koppich, in A Union of Professionals (1993), introduce the concept of professional unionism which contrasts drastically with its predecessor, industrial unionism. In order to evolve toward professional unionism, progressive local unions are distancing themselves from "three of industrial unionism’s most cherished assumptions;"

Such a fundamental organizational and ideological change is difficult to engender, however. Koppich (1993) notes that the pain and discomfort of transformation is endured because of the sense of urgency felt by many public school teachers. Under increasing condemnation and public scorn, unionized teachers are recognizing that drastic changes are going to occur within their schools, either with or without them. Change, therefore, is not an option.

Koppich further notes that a prerequisite for the establishment of professional unionism, developing a belief in expanded teacher roles, may be difficult to establish. Simply put, old habits die hard. A significant level of discomfort may be generated as the general modes of operating and thinking, the cognitive constraints, of various parties involved in the operation of schools undergoes transformation. Because of the interdependency which develops within a societal sector, teachers’ unions, principals, and central office personnel all must change the way in which they conceptualize teachers and teaching. As mentioned previously, as teaching becomes professionalized, teachers’ unions will have to abandon the rigid contractual distinctions between managerial duties and employee duties.

However, inherent in the act of teaching are many managerial functions, from simply "managing" the classroom environment, to the scheduling and acquisition of materials needed to teach, to exercising professional judgment in the isolation of the classroom. In some districts, the realization that manager/employee distinctions do not fit well within the world of teaching is being made (Chase, 1997a-c; Urbanski, 1988). For example, in the Toledo (Ohio) Public Schools, through the actions of the superintendent and the president of the union, the school community was able to develop new conceptions of the proper roles of teachers within the district. The Toledo Federation of Teachers (TFT) facilitated this transition by developing a peer review system which became a national model for other innovative school districts (See Gallagher, Lanier, & Kerchner, 1993; Kelly, 1997). Often, however, many teachers are very reluctant to increase their scope of responsibilities, even for the benefits of professionalization.

After reviewing the role of teacher unionism upon the debate for professionalization, it can justifiably be said that over the past three decades, teacher unionism has had contradictory effects. In the early years of collective bargaining, teachers’ average salaries rose significantly thus placing them socioeconomically closer to occupations considered professional. However, inherent in the form of unionism that developed, based upon the industrial unions of the auto factories, steel mills, and coal mines, teachers effectively eliminated teaching from consideration as a profession. By basing their model of negotiations upon unions which represented unskilled, or semi-skilled workers, teachers’ unions allowed administrators to control managerial processes in exchange for improved working conditions and salaries. These decisions, in turn, resulted in a set of institutional constraints, and a path-dependent course of development which foreclosed alternative considerations over the past three decades. Therefore, teachers have possessed neither the authority nor the formal autonomy representative of professionals in other occupations. Some teachers’ unions, however, are abandoning the underlying values and assumptions of the dominant form of American unionism which inhibited the professionalization of teaching.

It is important for the professionalization of teachers that unions begin the transformation toward professional unionism. Currently, several reform proposals envision the professionalization of teachers being brought about by professional standards boards and certification committees such as the NBPTS. Others look to subject matter associations such as the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics, or the National Science Teachers Association, for subject-specific guidance and quality control of classroom teachers. Unfortunately, neither of these options are organizationally or developmentally mature enough to operationalize such a difficult endeavor (Cohen, 5/26/95). The NEA and the AFT, however, are organizationally very strong and represent almost every public school teacher in the country. Of this situation, Kerchner and Caufman note

Until very recently, however, the unions have not actively advocated the measures necessary to support professional unionism. Therefore, its progress has been anecdotal. The recent shifts in rhetoric, coupled with numerous individual districts’ experiments, may signify a steady coalescence toward a more powerful and coherent movement based upon increased teacher professionalism within both unions and across all schools.

Peer Review and Unionism

Although the teacher evaluation and teacher unionism literatures are both expansive, very little empirical work has been published exploring the controversial relationship between peer review and teacher unions. Most works that address this relationship do so only casually, usually conjecturing that teachers are unprepared to accept teachers in roles traditionally carried out only by administrators (Smylie & Denny, 1990). Others, such as Bodenhausen (1990) report state-level unions’ "unabated opposition to peer evaluation" (p. 3). No one to date has done a comparative analysis of successful programs to identify those factors which may facilitate, or at least be conducive to, peer review implementation among unionized public school teachers.

The empirical work that has been done regarding peer review systems usually focuses on teachers’ attitudes (Benzley, Kauchak, & Peterson, 1985; Bodenhausen, 1990; Hanson, 1990). In each of these studies, researchers concluded that the staunch opposition to peer review reported in the larger literature failed to materialize in their respective studies. All researchers identified initial resistance to the concept of teachers evaluating each other, but the strength of this resistance varied greatly. In fact, a majority of teachers interviewed in these studies reacted positively to peer evaluation after either experiencing the process or learning more about it. In the words of Bodenhausen, "opposition to peer evaluation is no longer the monolith of years past" (p. 14).

Prior to this study, the most detailed account of union-sponsored peer review programs was a chapter written by Gallagher, Lanier and Kerchner in A Union of Professionals (1993) by Kerchner and Koppich. In their chapter, the authors describe in detail the genesis of peer reviews programs in Toledo, Ohio and Poway, California. The programs are very similar with Poway’s program being a direct descendent from its predecessor in Toledo. Each program assigns consulting teachers/mentors to novice teachers and to those experienced teachers "identified as performing in a way so unsatisfactory that improvement or termination is imperative" (Toledo Public Schools, 1991, p. 35).

This is the fundamental similarity of all peer review programs examined during this study. The following chapters present the evidence gathered during this study in an attempt to explain how these local unions reconcile the competing criteria of legitimacy embodied in the institutions of professionalism and unionism. They also describe for the reader how these programs operate and what factors most affected the implementation process either beneficially or detrimentally.