Advisor Role Structure: How Schools Support or Undermine Expanded Teacher Roles

Abstract

Policymakers and researchers have recently focused on schools’ contributions to the quality of teachers’ work as well as student outcomes. This fascination has manifest itself in standards-based accountability policies’ emphasis on schools’ average achievement (Jennings & Rentner, 2006; Valli, Croninger, Chambliss, Graever, & Buese, 2008), controversy about the existence and prevalence of “high flying” schools where students meet high performance standards despite economic and educational disadvantages (Baeder, 2011; Harris, 2006; Rothstein, 2004), and research that connects school-level factors to student achievement (e.g., Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010) and teacher retention (Ingersoll & Perda, 2010; Johnson & Kardos, 2008). To continue the study of the advisor role’s context that began in chapter 2, I focus here on the school’s influence on the work of advising, and how the school contributes to the implementation of expanded teacher roles such as the advisor role.