Between What Is and What Is Possible: Theorizing the Role of Institutional Interstitiality in State-Led School Turnaround

Abstract

State-led school turnaround in the United States has raised important questions about state efficacy and capacity for school improvement and institutional change. State intervention conventionally relies on compliance-driven coercive pressure drawing on the regulative underpinnings of institutions. State technical assistance for turnaround is an opportunity to examine how microlevel interactions between state- and site-level staff draw on the normative and cognitive underpinnings of institutions to help create conditions for change. Sensemaking research suggests that site-level staff cognition is important for change. Yet less is known about the internal cognitive process through which sensemaking unfolds, especially when existing cognition is conditioned by the institutional status quo and when competing cognitions are instantiated by those outside of local institutional contexts. This conceptual essay proposes a theory arguing that change is more likely when local actors experience accumulating moments of institutional interstitiality precipitated by forms of institutional work that undermine existing beliefs and assumptions. Implications for future academic and action-oriented research are discussed.

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