ABSTRACTBySandra Morante BrockA growing body of research supports the idea that large scale school reform efforts often fail to create sustained change within the public school sector. Proponents of school reform argue that implementing school reform, effectively and with fidelity, can work to ensure the success of reform initiatives in public education. When implementing deep organizational change, both novice and veteran educators are challenged to learn new skills, reexamine their instructional practice and content knowledge, and re-shape their underlying beliefs and values about schools. The ways in which principals frame school reform initiatives and broker knowledge for their teachers can also aid teachers in both collective and individual understanding while supporting teacher's application of reform concepts. By supporting both individual and collective sense-making for teachers, principals can build and sustain networks of teacher learning and sound implementation of reform. This dissertation investigated the importance of principal leadership and how information regarding the Common Core State Standards reform flowed both to the principal and from the principal to the teachers. This research also examined the educational and professional background of each participant-principal. The Common Core State Standards seek to minimize variance in K-12 curriculum across the United States by aligning grade level content expectations and increasing rigor. The Standards also require adjustments by instructional practitioners to target critical learning targets and to increase the depth at which they are taught. This study assessed the assertion that principal leadership practices impact what key elements of reform individual principals frame and how three middle school principals constructed teacher knowledge. The research reported here is a multi-case study developed through qualitative methods over a period of seven months. Primary data collection was accomplished through a series of three interviews with each of three public, suburban middle school principals in a mid-western state. The first stage of this study examined each principal's background and educational experience. It aimed to create a profile of the individual principal and to identify any relationship between principal experience and perception of the Common Core State Standards reform. The second stage investigated how these three principals received information and built professional knowledge about the Common Core State Standards. The last stage sought to identify how these principals organized and disseminated Common Core State Standards information for teachers within their building and how they prepared their staff for adaptive change. This study also included a review of the documents that these principals used to both garner information about the Common Core State Standards and to disseminate information to staff members. Additionally, this study yielded secondary data for the analysis and triangulation with primary data. Transcriptions of interview data and field notes, along with interpretive comments of the researcher, were checked for validity with each participant.
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