چکیده (انگلیسی):

This study attempts to identify and describe Minnesotan superintendent’s perceptions of barriers to district level reform as well as compare
superintendent’s perceptions of district reform related characteristics. Despite a wealth of literature about the process of educational change
(Elmore, 2000; Fullan, 2010; Hall, 1987; Heifetz, 2005; Hord, 1987; Leithwood, 1999; Linsky, 2005; Seashore, 1996; Senge, 1997) reforming
education to resolve serious achievement issues continues to appear challenging. Our research strives to identify factors preventing one state’s
district level leadership from implementing national reform efforts. A foundational lens for our framework comes from the Public Educational
Leadership Project (PELP) Coherence Framework (Childress, Elmore, Grossman, & Johnson, 2007). We utilized a quantitative descriptive
approach to survey all acting superintendents in the state of Minnesota. Using a quantitative self-perception survey superintendent’s overall
perceptions of the barriers to district level educational reforms were compiled. We also surveyed superintendents’ overall perceptions of their
district’s characteristics relating to school level reform. The study revealed two major findings: superintendents in the state of Minnesota that
claimed that their districts had leadership skills to enact school change and knowledge of successful strategies regarding school reform were
unrelated to the identification of barriers to district level reform; and superintendents who claimed that their districts had passive resistance to
change and ingrained patterns of behavior to resist change were related to the identification of barriers to district level reform.
Keywords: reform, policy, achievement, district leadership, barriers