Suburban School Districts and Demographic Change
Suburban School Districts and Demographic Change
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郊区学区和人口变化
DOI：
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发表时间：
2014
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
A. Welton
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. J. Holme;Sarah Diem;A. Welton
目的：在过去的几十年里，郊区学区经历了重大的人口变化。然而，迄今为止的研究文献还没有探讨郊区领导人如何应对这种变化，或研究形成反应的因素。在这篇文章中，我们应用“调解区”的框架，以研究如何在得克萨斯州的一个大的和迅速变化的郊区学区的领导人回应其不断变化的学生人口。在我们的分析中，我们考虑了该地区对人口变化的反应的技术，规范和政治层面。研究方法/Approach：我们对圣安东尼奥大都会区的一个快速变化的大型学区进行了深入的定性案例研究，我们将其命名为“南部独立学区”。我们的数据包括对28名区级和社区参与者的采访，以及对三所“重点”学校26名教育工作者的采访，这些学校正在经历特别迅速的人口变化。调查结果和影响：我们发现，南部独立学区对人口变化的反应集中在课程和教学的技术变革上。我们发现，这些技术变化被明确采用，以解决区内低收入学生和有色人种学生比例不断增加的需求。与此同时，我们说明了该地区如何未能解决区内更具挑战性的规范和政治动态。我们发现，这一失败极大地限制了所采取的技术改革。
Purpose: Suburban school districts have undergone significant demographic shifts over the past several decades. The research literature to date, however, has yet to explore how suburban district leaders are responding to such changes, or examine the factors that shape response. In this article, we apply a “zone of mediation” framework to examine how the leaders of one large and rapidly changing suburban school district in Texas responded to its changing student population. In our analysis, we consider the technical, normative, and political dimensions of this district’s response to demographic shifts. Research Methods/Approach: We conducted an in-depth qualitative case study of a large and rapidly changing district in the San Antonio Metropolitan area, which we named “Southern Independent School District.” Our data included interviews with 28 district-level and community actors and interviews with 26 educators across three “focus” schools that were undergoing particularly rapid demographic shifts. Findings and Implications: We found that Southern Independent School District’s response to demographic change focused intensely on technical changes in curriculum and instruction. Such technical changes we found were explicitly adopted to address the needs of the increasing proportion of low-income students and students of color within the district. At the same time, we illustrate how the district failed to address the more challenging normative and political dynamics within the district. This failure, we show, placed significant limits upon the technical reforms that were adopted.