Building networks for change: how ed-tech coaches broker information to lead instructional reform

In the past decade, school districts have faced increasing pressure from federal and state policies to use technology to innovate teaching and learning. In response to these pressures, districts are spending billions of dollars to outfit their schools with new technologies (e.g., laptops, iPads, broadband internet, new software), and to hire expert teachers to work as education technology coaches or “ed-tech coaches” to guide teachers in using technology creatively and effectively in the classroom. While ed-tech coaching programs are gaining prominence among districts, these programs make strong assumptions about the capacity of ed-tech coaches to shift teacher practice that are grounded in little evidence. In this dissertation, I focus on the instructional leadership responsibilities of ed-tech coaches, especially with regards to understanding how these coaches circulate information on instructional change among central office staff, school leaders, and teachers to facilitate district-wide improvements in instruction. I explore the instructional leadership of these coaches in a mid-sized urban district that recently completed a one-to-one rollout of laptops and iPads to support instruction of the Common Core State Standards. In this reform setting, I use social network theory and methods, and along with complementary qualitative data collected from four case schools, to describe how ed-tech coaches broker information on instructional change between and among central office administrators and schools and the organizational conditions that shape their brokering practices.