AMP-ing Up: A Quality Improvement Project for the West Coast Preparatory School Advisory Program

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Craig C. Phimister

Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations, Peabody College LLO 8910: Capstone Two

Professor Cynthia Preston April 9, 2023

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ADVISORY PROGRAM QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

West Coast Preparatory School (Prep),¹ an independent day school, has served the educational needs of students in its southwestern American city since 1961. Two years after its founding, Prep opened with sixty-three students in grades seven through nine, and it has expanded its size gradually since then, with a current enrollment of approximately 320 college preparatory students in grades seven through twelve. Forty-five academic faculty work at Prep, and 71% of them hold advanced degrees. It is one of seven schools in its state accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest, or ISAS (www.isasw.org/school-

directory/school-directory), and it is also a member of the National Association of Independent Schools. Since its nearest NAIS peer institution is sixty miles away, Prep does not have another independent day school with which it competes for enrollment.

Community

Prep serves the needs of a broad range of students in terms of socio-economic standing, race, gender, ethnicity, and country of origin. As is the case at many independent, tuition-driven college preparatory schools in the United States, the cost of tuition at Prep, approximately

$24,540 for the 2021-22 academic year, likely prevents many families of modest economic means from enrolling. One faculty member in Prep's self-study, conducted in the spring of 2022, said that attending the school is "cost prohibitive" for most families in the area.

Prep's robust financial aid program supports 30% of all families, with a total amount of almost 1.5 million dollars allocated in 2021-22 and an average grant of $15,352. The $9,000 balance that remains once this average financial aid amount is deducted from tuition, however, represents more than 14% of the mean household income for the county in which the school is

1 West Coast Preparatory School is a pseudonym for my partner organization school. Community members refer to their school as "Prep," so I will use this abbreviation throughout this document.

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located (American Community Survey, 2023). Despite Prep's generous financial aid, the school community profile tends to feature more affluent families than are found in the general

population of the area because of Prep's tuition. This means that some students may, to some degree, find themselves minoritized at Prep in ways that they are not in their home communities, and this in turn could have an effect on the school community's inclusivity.

In addition to economic factors that can affect community building at Prep, diversity by race and ethnicity are important considerations as well. Prep celebrates and appreciates racial, ethnic, religious, and other forms of diversity, and the school encourages inclusivity in its effort to build community. In a region where almost 57% of the population identifies as people of color (American Community Survey, 2023), however, only 38% of Prep's enrollment consists of students of color. What racial diversity the school does have could erode inclusivity or encourage it, depending on how the school manages this aspect of its community.

The advisory program is one way that Prep strives to engage students in conversations about their school society as well as about the city and region in general. Prep endeavors to be a catalyst for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice within its school and beyond its property lines, and it sees discussions and activities related to advisory as one way to progress in these respects. As conceived and articulated by the school, the advisory program aligns with Prep's broader curriculum, but perceptions by faculty, families, and students indicate that, in practice, advisory does not fulfill its purpose.

Prep conducted a self-study during the 2021-22 academic year in preparation for its ten- year accreditation visit by ISAS in the fall of 2022. The school claims on its website that advisory is "fundamental to Prep's commitment to being present for our students and engaging them actively in their education," a statement echoed by faculty and administrators during the

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self-study, but in-house survey results and the testimony of Prep teachers, parents, and students from the spring of 2022 pointed to an incongruity between descriptions of the program and ways in which advisory operates. Faculty feedback, for example, revealed a disconnect between perceptions regarding the value, efficacy, and significance of some aspects of Prep's advisory program and the school's statement of purpose, which asserts that Prep "cultivate[s] qualities of character, scholarship, and citizenship in our students that inspire them to act responsibly and compassionately at home, at school, and in the world." Fifty-nine percent of faculty and staff agree or strongly agree that the advisory program is doing what it is designed to do (see Appendix A), but some commentary indicates that faculty also recognize the gaps and weaknesses in the school's approach to this critical facet of Prep's curriculum. One faculty member wrote in the school's in-house survey that "Advisory needs more robust programming.

Most advisories are just informal checkins [sic]." Another asserted that "[W]e have no advisory program except students assigned to an adult to talk to them [as] need be but not direction or formal ideas to follow with said students." A third claimed that "Many students still feel we meet too much with little purpose; I sometimes feel that way too."

Problem of Practice

The advisory program at Prep, in practice, does not match its rhetoric despite everyone's best intentions and commitment to the students in general (see Table 1). When one considers that a primary purpose of advisory at Prep is to foster the development of a diverse, equitable,

inclusive, and just community, the consequences of failing to fulfill that purpose take on a greater sense of gravity and urgency.

Table 1

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Community-Identified Shortcomings of the Advisory Program at Prep

 Unclear Purpose

 A Lack of Clearly Articulated Expectations

 Unclear Responsibilities

 Insufficient Training or Ongoing Professional Development

 No Curriculum or Repository of Activity Options

 Little Accountability for Advisors

 Unclear Understanding of Leadership

Advisories can not only build community but also have other benefits to students and their development (Benson & Poliner, 2013), but in order for students to realize the benefits of a strong advisory program, their advisors must know what they are doing and must have a

rationale for their leadership based on sound, clearly articulated pedagogy. "If advisors are unclear about the responsibilities and limits of their role," Bolman and Deal (2003) claim, "they may shape their role around personal preferences instead of the larger vision of the program" (as cited in Benson & Poliner, 2013) instead of the school's mission. This could be what has

happened at Prep.

West Coast Prep's advisory program, central to its mission and identity, has been placed in the hands of dedicated faculty and administrators who are invested in the well-being of children but whose expertise, in most cases, is in academic content areas, not advisory. The program does not seem to have a structured, ongoing training apparatus, a curriculum or other educational framework, a set of clearly articulated expectations, or a formal means of

accountability. "There really isn't a curriculum," one faculty member asserted during a self-study interview. "There really isn't any kind of formal structure. There's attempt, but there's never been anything laid out where we are following a sequential or developmental curriculum."

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Moreover, advisory leadership seems to lack clarity. Individual educators run advisories, which meet once a week for the final twenty-five minutes of the school day in the Middle School and once a month for twenty-five minutes for Upper Schoolers (grades 9-12)², and they do so according to their own preferences. Advisories produce a spectrum of outcomes as a result. The engagement and investment of the advisor leading the group seems to determine perceptions about the group's effectiveness. One teacher skeptical about the importance of advisory told me that she and many of her peers seek ways to "fill the time" with their six to ten advisees as advisory meetings approach. "[Advisory] is sort of off the cuff a bit . . . There's discussions around it, and ideas get shared, but it's not anything formal." Another teacher, who does not see advisory as a priority, said that preparing a lesson plan for advisory is "the last thing that people are going to try to think of . . . That's why I just pull out the (playing) cards or something to color."

Such approaches, attitudes, and habits have become accepted as inevitable by some community members at Prep since advisory performance is not an itemized part of faculty members' annual evaluations and since, in practice, academics and extracurriculars take priority over advisory on a day-to-day basis. For example, Prep decided to forgo advisory during the 2020-21 academic year, when Prep conducted school in an online-only format for the first 75%

of the year to protect students, faculty, and staff from COVID-19. School leaders made the decision to eliminate advisory time in order to maximize academic instructional time during that era of unprecedented uncertainty. A by-product of their decision was the implicit message that advisory is a secondary component of the Prep educational experience.

2 Upper School advisors meet with their advisory groups on the first Wednesday of each month and hold office hours during advisory time during the other Wednesdays each month. Prep expects advisors to meet with each advisee once a month for individual consultation and guidance.

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Both parents and students at Prep recognize that the effectiveness of advisory depends, at least in part, on which teacher or staff member is leading the group. Results from Prep's spring 2022 in-house survey indicated that while parents and students were pleased in general with the support and guidance provided by faculty and staff, few cited the advisory program specifically as a channel through which faculty and staff provided that support and guidance. Moreover, it is unclear if the relationships that students developed with faculty members were the result of advisory-based interactions or through dialogue related to academics, extracurriculars, or some other school-related concern outside of the purview of advisory time. Parents used the expression

"hit or miss" in the in-house survey to describe the effectiveness of advisory and the usefulness of their children's advisors; one parent's comment, that "(Advisory) is truly one of the very weak links of the school," was echoed by others. Some put their criticism more bluntly: "Advisory is a waste of time."

West Coast Preparatory School sees itself as a community in which everyone matters, as its statement of purpose declares. Though most aspects of its operations align with and strive toward the fulfillment of this mission, the advisory program does not. This capstone project investigates the disconnect between Prep's mission for advisory and the program's performance within its groups.

Purpose of Capstone

Prep's administrators recognize the value of an examination of its advisory program to determine what policies and practices are driving current outcomes, how advisory may be improved as a core component of Prep's plan to fulfill its mission, and how various community members will assess the effectiveness of the program moving forward. This capstone project, a quality improvement case study, aims to provide that examination of Prep's advisory program,

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using a systems lens to explore the reasons why some faculty and other constituent groups regard advisory as a less than effective aspect of the school's overall curriculum.

The purpose of this capstone project is to identify the factors that led to community members' survey responses in Prep's spring 2022 in-house survey. The school asked me in June of 2022 to determine how it can improve the effectiveness of its advisory program, not only for the immediate benefit of its fall 2022 accreditation visit but also, and more importantly, for the long-term and sustained benefit of current and future students and faculty.

Project Question

Prep's aspirations, intentions, struggles, and frustrations with advisory are hardly unique among schools in the United States, but because Prep is dedicated to providing its students and faculty with an optimal learning environment and experience, these advisory challenges have become a source of vexation for both the school and the people who, as teachers, administrators, and parents, invest in its success in a number of ways. The school recognizes that it can improve its advisory program.

This leads to the following project question:

What contributes to perceptions among community members at West Coast

Preparatory School about the value and utility of advisory to the development of the school's students?

Review of Literature

Advisory programs often replaced homerooms when schools shifted from the junior high school to the middle school model in the mid-20th century to better facilitate the personal

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development of students. The success of such development relied on building community with peers and teachers at a stage of children's maturation when they begin to separate from their parents (Galassi, Gulledge, & Cox, 1997). The benefits of providing a close community

specifically designed to support students led to advisory programs, which took hold in many high schools at the same time as well.

Schools adopted the advisory model to benefit students in a number of measurable ways, including academic achievement and engagement at school (Makkonen, 2004). The value and utility of advisory depends in large part on the advisor's ability and willingness to connect with students and to foster a community that welcomes and appreciates each member of the group (Burkhart, 1999). Indeed, the National Association of Secondary School Principals has endorsed advisory, and the National Middle School Association has included advisory as "one of the 10 essential elements of a 'true' middle school" (Anfara, 2006; Galassi, Gulledge, & Cox, 1997, pp.

301-302; NAASP, 1985; NMSA³, 1982).

Since their widespread establishment, however, advisory programs have struggled for a variety of reasons, ranging from design flaws, poor leadership, insufficient training, and a lack of clarity about the point of advisory, among others (Bennett & Martin, 2018; Johnson, 2009). Too often in schools, the resources of time, attention, professional development funding, and personal investment do not foster the successful, organized implementation of advisory. Specifically, "the success rate for most advisory programs is minimal since the traditional notion of homeroom is deeply embedded and difficult to change, and many teachers and stakeholders consider advisory a frill" (Anfara, 2006, p. 55).

Challenges and negative perceptions about advisory programs, then, are not unique to Prep. Many schools' advisory programs are considered ineffective because of poor leadership

3 Note: NMSA is now known as AMLE, the Association for Middle Level Education.

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and weak support from rank-and-file educators (Stegeman, 2021). Some schools, regardless of their best intentions, use advisory as little more than a clearinghouse for administrative purposes (Johnson, 2009). Many reasons account for this, including college admissions pressures, time constraints, scant professional development for faculty, and the lack of clarity about advisory's purpose.

At best, positive outcomes tied to Prep's advisory activities seem less the result of the program and more the by-product of the individual effort or intrinsic motivation of dedicated advisors whose independent development of lessons and learning opportunities benefits the advisees who belong to their groups. More often, however, advisories are little more than waiting rooms in which students count down the final minutes of the school day on Wednesdays.

Advisor and advisees in these groups socialize, eat snacks, and kill time. For them, advisory becomes in reality what Prep parents said about their own children's experiences in advisory: a

"hit or miss" experience that, too often, is "a waste of time" (see Figure 1). For the purposes of this investigation, I conceptualize a "hit" advisory as one in which advisees, their parents, and/or the advisor recognize the value and usefulness of the advisory experience as a fulfillment of the school's statement of purpose, specifically the development of character and citizenship within the community. Workshops and discussions about diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice are examples of “hit” advisory activities. Conversely, an advisory considered a "miss" fails to deliver experiences that advisees, parents, and/or advisors recognize as valuable and useful.

A successful school recognizes the importance of relationships, and this is particularly true at independent schools such as West Coast Prep. Roughly half of all high school students are not engaged when at school (Blum, 2005), a statistic that provides one possible reason why families choose to enroll their children in independent schools. One Prep parent claimed that she

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ADVISORY PROGRAM QUALITY IMPROVEMENT Figure 1:

Conceptual Framework

enrolled her daughter at the school in part because of its reputation for being a community in which each person is valued. "I think it's helpful just even knowing somebody else is paying attention (to her daughter) like you are, or paying attention to what you'd like them to pay attention to." Parents who invest in their children's education by sending them to independent schools, which have mission-driven cultures (Gulla, 2021), do so in part, then, to keep their children engaged. The development of relationships within advisory groups, which at Prep remain together throughout their two years in the Middle School and their four years in the Upper School, provide independent schools with a unique and potentially key means of fulfilling their missions. The development of close relationships is also an opportunity to attract families that recognize the importance of keeping their children engaged when at school.

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If the perceptions about the worth of advisory at Prep are predicated on the advisor's intrinsic motivation to lead their group with activities that foster community building, then investigating the organizational dynamics that do or do not activate intrinsic motivation within that advisory may prove more productive than the implementation of a new curriculum or system of accountability. In short, Prep must determine how to nurture implicit motivation in advisors so that community perceptions regarding the worth of advisory improve.

Theoretical Framework

Intrinsic Motivation Theory (Pink, 2011) contends that dynamic, creative, and collaborative work spaces such as schools require people who are intrinsically motivated to participate in and accomplish tasks. This occurs when their learning and work environments activate three intrinsic drives: autonomy, mastery, and purpose (referred to collectively as AMP hereafter). The "flow" state that individuals experience when they feel AMP creates "a kind of Table 2:

Intrinsic Motivation Theory (IMT), or Motivation 3.0

Daniel H. Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us (2011).

Central Claim: People are motivated not by the prospect of rewards and punishments but by three internal drives: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Motivation 3.0: Humans are driven "to learn, to create, and to better the world" (p. 225).

Autonomy: People thrive when they can act with choice about four aspects of work: "what people do, when they do it, how they do it, and with whom they do it" (pp.

91- 92).

Mastery: "[T]he desire to get better and better at something that matters" (p. 109).

Purpose: "[O]ur deep-seated desire . . . to make a contribution" to the world that is independent of a profit motive (p. 145).

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'optimal existence' ultimately more rewarding than even the biggest bonus" (Jenkins, 2009). Pink refers to this as Motivation 3.0 (see Table 2 and Figure 2).

This aspect of Pink's Intrinsic Motivation Theory asserts that the carrot-and-stick models of rewards and punishments--such as found in Motivation 1.0 and 2.0--that are so prevalent in highly structured and mechanized work environments do not generate the intrinsic motivation that is crucial to the 21st century workplace. "Motivation 3.0 describes what today's professional talent--those who produce value mostly through creative and collaborative work in dynamic, diverse, and uncertain environments--want" (Esque, 2015, p. 9). Schools, as dynamic

environments that thrive on creativity and collaboration, require educators who are intrinsically motivated.

Prep does not attempt to motivate its advisors using rewards and threats. Advisors have broad autonomy (the "A" in AMP) to conduct advisory time as they see fit. Since some advisors, however, do not see a purpose (the "P") to the meetings as they are currently structured and supported, and since even those who do see the purpose have little opportunity or incentive within Prep's organizational framework to pursue mastery (the "M") as advisors, many of them bypass their chances to build community within their groups and to make their time together meaningful. The relationship diagram in Figure 3 expresses how Implicit Motivation Theory applies within the context of Prep's advisory program. If intrinsically-motivated lead advisory groups that students and parents perceive as value-added components of a Prep education, then an investigation of the three motivational drives associated with Pink’s model—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—will shed light on why some advisories do not meet the school

community’s performance expectations. It may also indicate how Prep can improve its advisory program moving forward.

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Theoretical Framework: Pink's Intrinsic Motivation Theory (or Motivation 3.0)

Project Design

Exploratory case studies provide a means of thorough analysis from several perspectives using both qualitative and quantitative data (Newcomer, Hatry, & Wholey, 2015). Through these multiple perspectives and modes, I developed a means to understand the forces that contribute to perceptions about the value and utility of advisory at West Coast Preparatory Figure 3:

Relationship Diagram of Prep's Advisory Using Pink's Intrinsic Motivation Theory

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School. This inductive process also brought into sharper focus the reasons why some advisors may lack the intrinsic motivation to conduct advisory sessions in mission-driven ways.

Data Collection Plan

To investigate the nature and quality of the relationships among students, faculty, and staff as they pertain to advisory at Prep, I used a mixed methods approach to gather data. These methods included surveys, structured interviews and focus groups, and field notes. The

triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data helped to ensure the validity of that data and to substantiate claims.

Surveys

Prep's 2021-22 In-House Surveys

Prep administrators and I engaged in initial discussions about advisory during the summer of 2022. I then studied the results from the school's spring 2022 in-house surveys of parents, faculty, and students. These data indicated the need for curricular improvement of advisory, which, in turn, led to Prep's decision to partner with me for the purposes of this capstone project.

Figure 4:

Phimister Capstone Data Collection Timeline

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Fall 2022 Surveys

Using data from these in-house surveys and initial conversations with Prep

administrators, I developed short surveys for parents and for faculty and staff consisting of Likert-style questions and short responses about their positionality within the school community and their opinions about the advisory program at Prep (see Appendices A and B). In addition to the surveys developed for parents and faculty, I created a survey for alumni, which I decided to eliminate from consideration in early December 2022 because of a low response rate.

I based my fall 2022 faculty survey questions in part on the results of the spring 2022 in- house faculty survey. For example, several faculty indicated in the spring survey that they do not understand the purpose of advisory, and others questioned the value of using school time for advisory in lieu of what they perceive as more important facets of the curriculum. I crafted my 2022 survey questions to provide teachers with opportunities to express their perceptions, interpretations, and preferences about advisory. For example, Question Six of the fall 2022 survey, which was open-ended, asked "If you were put in charge of the advisory program, what would be the first change that you would make, and why?" One participant responded by saying

"I would make sure that the designated time is not given away on a regular basis. I feel that advisory has been sacrificed for the leadership teams several times this year." Another said "I don't have clarity about what advisory should be, honestly, and I am okay with it being a moment to have a snack and hang out." These types of questions helped me ascertain how much faculty opinions about advisory differ and to better understand why some faculty opt not to use the advisory period to best advantage. I decided to create my own survey to focus specifically on

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Prep's advisory program and the school's desire to improve this particular aspect of its overall curriculum. I developed the parent survey using the same rationale.

Another reason for the fall 2022 surveys was to develop an initial response to my project question. Results from these surveys helped me develop both a beginning list of key concepts related to advisory and an understanding of participants' disparate conceptualizations of it. Ten of the eleven questions on the faculty survey I created were multiple choice, which collected data about participants' length of tenure, where in the school they work (Middle School, Upper School, or both), and if they were willing to participate in interviews and focus groups at a later date. Likert scale multiple choice questions provided participants with opportunities to express their opinions about the value of advisory and about their preferred method of delivery, the duration and frequency of each advisory meeting, and clarity of advisory's purpose. Five questions used semantic differentials for these ordinal measures. Two questions asked participants to provide their interpretations of the reasons for having advisory and the

opportunity costs associated with the advisory curriculum. Faculty and staff participants could choose multiple answers for these questions and had an "other" option, with a comment box provided. Lastly, the survey had one open-ended question for participants to articulate a change that they would make to advisory and why they would make that change.

Three-fifths of the faculty (27 of 45) completed the survey, which I introduced to Upper School faculty through email and direct messaging from the Head of the Upper School. I personally introduced the survey to Middle School faculty via Zoom at a division meeting on October 19, 2022, and I opened it to faculty shortly thereafter, on October 25.

I limited the number of questions that I asked in the survey to make participation as easy and accessible as possible for faculty. Asking survey participants about their willingness to sit

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for interviews also helped me make time-efficient connections to those faculty with whom I met for one-on-one and focus group discussions during the weeks that followed.

The parent survey (see Appendix B) was similar to the faculty survey in length and design for purposes of comparison with faculty responses, but the parent survey featured

questions phrased to reflect their specific positionality within the community. The parent survey consisted of eight questions, seven which were multiple choice. Parent responses provided data about the duration of families' connections to Prep, the number of their children who attend and/or have attended Prep, the reasons why they enrolled their children at the school, and their feelings and impressions about Prep's advisory program. As was the case with faculty, parents could indicate in the survey if they were willing to participate in subsequent interviews. Parents from 166 of Prep's 210 families completed the survey, a participation rate of 79%.

I used the results from the faculty and parent surveys to help me modify and refine initial drafts of my structured interview questions and focus group discussion prompts, which through iteration focused on emerging themes of value and utility as well as on drivers of purpose and action. For example, 10 of 27 respondents to the faculty survey indicated that the purpose of advisory was unclear to varying degrees (37%), and 15 said that the purpose was either moderately or extremely clear (56%). The polarity in faculty responses led to interview and focus group questions that focused on why Prep has advisory; these data align with the Purpose drive from Pink's Implicit Motivation Theory. Similarly, parents' written responses about ways they would improve the advisory program varied widely, from commendations to criticisms, so I tailored questions specifically about program improvement in the parent interview protocol.

Surveys were constructed and administered using Qualtrics, which collected data and provided descriptive statistics, including minimums, maximums, means, standard deviations,

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variances, and counts. I also generated graphs and charts from this data and collected contact information from survey participants who agreed to participate in interviews and focus groups as well. Eighteen faculty responded that they would be willing to complete an interview, and several others approached me during my data collection visit to ask if they too could participate.

Of the 166 parents who took the survey, 79 of them (48%) said that they would be willing to participate in an interview or focus group.

The results of these surveys did more than indicate the types of questions to ask during interviews and the focus group. They also gave me initial ideas for identifying the themes that emerged as I coded the data that interviews and focus groups generated.

Structured Interviews and the Focus Group

My original data collection plan included structured interviews with three individuals from four of Prep constituencies: alumni, parents, administration, and faculty. The alumni survey had only nine respondents, so, as mentioned earlier, I eliminated this constituency from the study in December 2022 as they no longer have a direct connection to the advisory program. I wrote a semi-structured interview protocol for each group to reflect their positionality within the

community. In each case, our dialogue departed from the protocol when the participants and/or I had questions or comments that added greater clarity or broader understanding. These departures enhanced my understanding of organizational dynamics and individuals’ feelings, and they provided participants with room to articulate their thoughts fully.

Administration

I spoke with the Middle School Division Director and the Head of School on Zoom in November and early January, respectively. Time limitations prevented me from interviewing the Upper School Division Director, who, shortly after my campus visit in early November 2022,

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announced her intention to leave Prep at the end of the current school year. Her availability was limited as a corollary of this decision, and this prevented me from interviewing her.

Faculty

I interviewed five teachers, who represented both divisions at Prep. Five others

participated in a focus group. Some of these interviews were conducted during my campus visit to Prep on November 2nd and 3rd, and others were conducted on Zoom during November and December.

Parents

Of the 166 parents who took the survey, 79 agreed to participate in interviews. I chose five of these parents using random selection in mid-December of 2022, and two of them agreed to meet with me on Zoom.

I budgeted 30 to 45 minutes for interviews, but because some participants welcomed the opportunity to talk expansively about their perspectives and experiences with advisory in

particular and about their time at Prep in general, most interviews lasted longer than 45 minutes, regardless of whether interviews took place in person or on Zoom.

Individuals who agreed to participate in either an interview or a focus group signed a consent form (see Appendices F, G, and H) and also received verbal confirmation that their interview would remain anonymous, would be stored in a secure location throughout the study, and would be destroyed at the conclusion of the study. Interviews, whether conducted in person or remotely, were recorded on Zoom. I then used the Dictate function on Word to capture the Zoom audio and create transcripts from each interview. I reviewed the transcripts to correct for errors that Dictate created. I then sent these transcripts to participants for verification of

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accuracy, and I incorporated participants' corrections, clarifications, and redactions into my transcripts.

In addition to the Zoom recordings and the participant-verified transcripts, I took notes using a pen and hard copies of the interview protocol for each interview participant. I used these interview notes to record impressions of the participants' responses and to provide a back-up plan in case technical difficulties resulted in loss of recordings.

Field Notes

In addition to surveys, interviews, and focus groups, I observed and took field notes on Middle School and Upper School advisory meetings during my visit to Prep on November 3, 2022. Floating from group to group in both divisions, I took notes using a pen and a clipboard, recording how many students were in each group, where they met, and what they were doing.

Because the advisory period lasts for only 25 minutes, I chose not to remain with any of the two Middle School and five Upper School advisory groups that I observed for more than a few minutes. For example, I stayed with one Middle School advisory group, which met on the Middle School quad to eat snacks and play with a soccer ball, for three minutes. I spent five minutes with another Middle School group of three advisees and one advisor since they were having a substantive discussion about how one advisee could best manage a negative social dynamic with a friend. I observed Upper School advisories from a distance and did not remain for long with any one group since most were not supervised and did not seem to have a lesson plan or any type of structure or objective. For less than one minute, I watched one Upper School advisor meet with her advisees individually to discuss grades. Her work began before my arrival and continued after I left.

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ADVISORY PROGRAM QUALITY IMPROVEMENT Data Analysis Plan

Surveys

I began my analysis by studying data from Prep's 2021-22 in-house survey and the fall 2022 survey that I constructed. Initially, I intended to use these data mainly as a springboard to generate targeted interview and focus group questions and to align Prep's organizational context with literature about advisory. These data had additional utility since survey results helped me substantiate the claims made by participants during interviews and the focus group, creating a reciprocal validation process. For example, one administrator observed that many of Prep's faculty have never worked at another school, which means that a critical mass of teachers know only one protocol or framework for completing a task. He told me "The fact that [Prep's single- institution educators are] not familiar with any other system tends to limit their perspective."

Data from the fall 2022 faculty survey corroborated this claim. One survey question, for example, asked faculty participants how long they had worked at Prep. Fifty-six percent (15 of 27) reported a tenure of at least six years, and nearly 30% (8 of 27) have been at Prep for at least 13 years (see Appendix A). Four of the ten faculty whom I interviewed indicated that they have always worked at Prep or have spent the overwhelming majority of their teaching careers at the school. Interview and survey data provided me with the opportunity to triangulate claims as possible influences on perceptions of the value and utility of Prep's advisory program. Results seem to support the administrator's assertion that the subject-specific instructional benefits of a long-tenured and/or single-institution faculty can exist side-by-side with drawbacks for the organization, such as those faculty members' possible limited vision and inflexibility of mindset, reinforced through institutionalized conceptualizations of norms and best practices.

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ADVISORY PROGRAM QUALITY IMPROVEMENT Structured Interviews and the Focus Group

I studied the transcripts from the semi-structured interviews and the faculty focus group as the second stage of my data analysis plan. Because I had relatively few transcripts to consider, I chose not to use coding software for the transcripts, opting instead to scrutinize each of the transcripts myself using highlighters and moving quotes into a database using Microsoft Excel.

Looking specifically for two key concepts from my research question, value and utility, categories emerged from the data as I coded the interviews and the focus group transcripts.

Almost all participants, for example, talked about the importance of community at Prep and the value that they place on knowing, supporting, and caring about one another. Also, every participant talked about citizenship, which includes investment or buy-in to the school's statement of purpose. This is an individual's sense of responsibility to the school and the

expectations for inclusion, honesty, and integrity. Lastly, a recurring comment from participants was their appreciation for the freedom to make curricular decisions about how best to conduct the business of their instructional spaces. Even advisors who called for a plug-and-play curriculum to implement in their groups expressed, paradoxically, a desire to retain their freedom. Teachers also appreciated the sense of accountability that they feel in general to the school's students, colleagues, and families. The school, the students, and their parents rely on advisors to care for the children in their charge. I collected testimony relating to such concerns under the category I call trust.

I used these three categories as codes for my analysis of transcripts and survey

comments, and with them in mind, I was better able to shunt participants' comments into more narrowly defined a priori sub-codes that helped me see not only large patterns relating to my research question but also the texture within each element of the patterns. For example, the

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community code included data about school culture, which spoke to the perceptions that

participants had about their school and to the traits that make it unique within the city and region.

For the category of trust, two sub-codes emerged that were of great concern to participants:

freedom (the entitlement to make decisions for oneself on a limited scope) and autonomy (the empowerment to make decisions that affect the educational experiences of others, such as one's child, one's student, one's advisee, or one's colleague).

These codes and sub-codes formed the first two columns of the codebook that I developed as a key part of my data analysis. This approach also required me to create a fourth code, emerging, into which I put comments that did not correlate with community, trust, or citizenship. Data coded as emerging was then broken down further into three sub-codes:

statements about desire, which include aspirational commentary; statements about futility, such as expressions of hopelessness that advisory will improve; and statements of emotion, such as frustration, sorrow, apprehension and even antipathy.

Once autonomy emerged as a trait that all administrators and faculty valued, I began to study the data more closely for alignment with the other two drives of Pink's Intrinsic Motivation Theory: mastery and purpose. I began to see these traits everywhere in the transcripts. Statements about the purpose of advisory connected clearly to discussion about the traits and mores of the school, its cultural norms and traditions, and its emphasis on community. Mastery appeared in the transcripts in two ways: participants' confusion about how to be a good advisor and

participants' degree of interest in working toward continuous improvement as an advisor. In the end, my four codes aligned with the three traits of Intrinsic Motivation Theory. Everything--the codes, the subcodes, the traits--connected to the two terms from the research question: value and utility (see Figure 5).

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Qualitative Analysis Codebook (excerpted)

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ADVISORY PROGRAM QUALITY IMPROVEMENT Field Notes

The limited amount of time that I had to witness advisory at West Coast Prep on November 2nd in 2022 meant that my field notes served mainly as a means of triangulating claims made through surveys, interviews, and the focus group. These notes also provided specific examples of how advisors used their time with their advisees on the day that I observed them.

Findings

This quality improvement study focused on a single research question: What contributes to perceptions among community members at West Coast Preparatory School about the value and utility of advisory to the development of the school's students? The study resulted in three findings.

Finding One: West Coast Prep community members do not have a clear understanding of the purpose and mission of advisory, which results in inconsistent implementation.

Educators who participated in interviews had difficulty articulating the vision or purpose of advisory and seemed to have strong feelings about how they themselves conceptualized it. In the fall 2022 survey, one faculty member asked "What should we be doing with students during that time?" Another expressed a desire for the development of "an intentional curriculum," a wish echoed by others. Prep "needs a curriculum or some specific direction to make (advisory) effective." "Part of what I'm feeling," one faculty focus group participant said, "is, I'm confused about what my role is."

In surveys, faculty and administrators indicated their strong belief in the value and utility of advisory. Sixty percent of faculty surveyed said that advisory is an important element of

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students' educational experience at Prep, and only 3.7% said that it was not important. One faculty member reinforced these sentiments when he said in an interview that "having an advisory is one of the main functions at the school." At least as an abstract concept, then, advisory Prep employees recognize the importance of advisory.

Some Prep advisors practice what they preach. Others do not. During my visit to Prep's campus in November 2022, I saw some advisories in which advisor and advisees worked with one another with varying degrees of purpose, direction, and engagement. Clearly, some advisory groups engaged in meaningful conversation about academics and other issues important to them.

Many teachers interacted either with their entire advisory group (some as small as three students) or with one student at a time. In other words, many teachers oversaw advisory activities that appeared to align with their estimations of the program’s worth. A few other advisors seemed to use advisory time as free time, which allowed students to gather and socialize independent of their advisor. This was particularly noticeable in the Upper School quad. On the Middle School side of campus, advisors remained with their advisees even if there was no advisory activity beyond eating a snack. One interview participant admitted "Yeah, we're just not super clear in our articulation of what's supposed to happen in that time."

Middle School advisory occurs during the final twenty-five minutes of the school day on Wednesdays. The Upper School advisories meet on the first Wednesday of the month during this time, when both teachers and students are tired and many are preparing their transitions to after- school activities such as sports and clubs. "You're kind of like, oh man, these kids are just totally burnt out Wednesday afternoon, last period of the day, after a really busy day," one middle school advisor said. And they just, I just, want to have, just fun. It's just hard." Another faculty interview participant said "I think part of what makes my advisory hard sometimes is apathy

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from all ends. It's the end of the day. They're there for snack, they're forced to be there." Having advisory at the end of the day on Wednesdays may benefit the school's schedule, but its

placement sends a tacit message that advisory does not have the same degree of importance as academic classes or even the sports that sometimes require Upper School advisees to leave campus early and, as a result, miss their one advisory meeting of the month.

Inconsistent Implementation

Individual advisories, in the absence of structure or accountability, seemed to be manifestations of each advisor's beliefs, which may explain why students and their families perceived some advisories as a "hit" and others a "miss." This dynamic aligns with Benson and Poliner's (2013) statement: "If advisors are unclear about the responsibilities and limits of their role, they may shape their role around personal preferences instead of the larger vision of the program" (p. 52). A teacher who does not understand the school's vision for advisory and who is not provided with the means and direction to succeed as an advisor may or may not cultivate an advisory culture conducive to the school's aims. "People here want high quality (advisories)," an interview participant told me, "but I just don't know that we all agree what that looks like. I think we know that it's . . . we're not there yet. We have room to grow in this area." An administrator conceded this point, saying that "the lack of structure doesn't do us much good."

Though strong in their beliefs about the importance of advisory, faculty and administrators are split about the best path forward since some want more structure and

accountability. "Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it!," one teacher said. Others want the latitude to create bespoke activities that bring out the best in their advisees. Administrators seem unsure how best to proceed. One administrator brought up "a tendency in small schools such as ours to not overly articulate something" so that educators have the agency and latitude to meet the

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individual needs of students. "because when things are overly articulated, it puts boundaries and limits and, constraints in such a way that don't [sic] allow for creativity." Given the vast

autonomy that Prep teachers currently enjoy and the lack of oversight for advisory, top-down attempts to implementing structure would not likely translate to fidelity of implementation.

Some advisors have clearly benefited from this autonomy and have created vibrant, productive advisory groups that nurture the development of the students in their charge. Other advisors, starving for structure and support, do not know how to use the advisory time to best advantage and, out of a sense of urgency, scramble for ways to fill the time. "We sometimes have objectives and sometimes we don't have objectives," one teacher said. "I think that's why I sometimes struggle to feel like we're being successful, because I'm a little confused on what my role is." Pink's Intrinsic Motivation Theory provides another way to articulate this dynamic.

Many advisors have autonomy but lack a path toward mastery or a sense of purpose, and as a result, they do not feel motivated to improve.

Obscuring Advisory's Purpose

That lack of a clearly identifiable purpose is obscured further by the school's use of other facets of its organizational structure to address issues that could fall within advisory's purview.

"Some of those things that another school might choose to put into a curricula for advisory, we have in life skills and health curriculum," an administrator explained. Also, both the Middle School and the Upper School have assemblies twice a week, during which school culture as well as local and global issues are discussed. For advisors, Forums and assemblies may obviate the need to broach these topics with their advisory groups. Lastly, either the school counselor or the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Committee oversees Forum, which students attend once a month for 45 minutes to discuss issues pertaining to socio-emotional learning, interpersonal

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health, and social awareness, to name just a few. Though the division heads will ask advisors to debrief these assembly and Forum topics with their groups, advisors expressed discomfort with a lack of clarity about objectives or end goals. For one teacher, planning for advisory after Forum

"feels like it's more on a week-by-week basis, trying to figure out what we're going to do an advisory and how we're going to spend our time." Others expressed discomfort with discussing some subject matter with students, especially since their rapport with their groups does not normally include or permit discussions of a personal, sensitive nature. "We frequently discuss Forums in advisory, and that can be great, except it's kind of heavy lifting to talk about, for example, White privilege or systemic racism in America or the social construction of race," one administrator said.

Lack of Perceived Value

Just as a poorly communicated vision for advisory and a poorly articulated statement of its purpose seem to contribute to disparate faculty perceptions about the value and utility of advisory to the development of students, survey data suggests that parents' perceptions about advisory are affected similarly. When asked in the fall 2022 about the importance of advisory to the development of a West Coast Prep graduate, 61% of survey participants called it "vitally important/indispensable" or "extremely important/as important as academics, athletics, and/or the arts." As was the case with faculty, however, parents' comments in the survey and interviews demonstrated a lack of understanding about the specific value or utility of advisory since they do not know if their perceptions of advisory's purpose align with the reality of what is actually happening during the meetings. "I'm actually unsure (about advisory)" one parent wrote. "I'm so glad it is there but I don't have a clear idea of the main reason (for it)." Another parent said that

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"On paper, it's supposed to help the students. It does not actually serve that purpose." Several others admitted that they do not know what advisory is.

Put simply, this investigation found that faculty and families do not recognize or realize the value and utility of Prep's advisory program as a whole because the school's actions and guiding principles have not adequately communicated its purpose. Also, Prep has not established expectations for faculty members who conduct advisory groups and has not delineated advisory's role within the context of Prep's other educational facets.

Finding Two: West Coast Prep does not hold faculty and staff accountable for their leadership of advisory groups.

Without oversight or a structure in which administrators and faculty co-create advisory objectives and activities, the school cannot have a formal assessment process or a means of establishing expectations for continuous improvement in advisory. Every interview participant said that though their division head was supportive and present in all other aspects of school life, no administrator had ever visited their advisories. Also, these participants said that they have never received feedback about advisory from administrators, aside from their division head's informal comments about advisory as a minor component of their work with their academic students. These interview participants offered terse one-word answers such as "never," "no," and

"nothing" when asked about visits or support from leadership regarding advisory. Many shared these answers reluctantly because, in all other respects, they hold their division directors in high regard. This was particularly true among Middle School advisors.

Because they have their own advisories, administrators lack the freedom to visit others' advisory groups to see what is happening in their divisions and across the campus. These leaders assume that advisors implement effective advisory group meetings and follow directives to

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debrief after Forums, but even if the school articulated what effective leadership means,

administrators have no way to ensure that objectives are met. One advisor talked about how she and her advisees spent one advisory meeting eating candy and chatting. Shortly after an

administrator asked her how a prescribed discussion about that day's Forum went, "I was like, Oh, I never asked them about it," she said. "Like, I could have asked them about the Forum, which was about gender, and I just didn't, and I don't know why."

Several faculty interview participants said that they did not know who was in charge of advisory and that they were more inclined to seek out guidance and feedback from nearby colleagues when they had questions or concerns. "Nobody else really knows what happens in my advisory," a participant said, "so it's hard to ask (someone) to come in and observe my advisory, like I would for a class." They also reported that their annual performance evaluations do not include their work in advisory in part because the school's approach to advisory prevents substantive observation and assessment. Administrators confirmed in their interviews that they focus on instructional performance when evaluating faculty.

The advisory program, then, lacks accountability, based on the testimony of those who participated in interviews and the focus group. Advisors have abundant autonomy–a key driver of intrinsic motivation–to construct meaningful advisory activities and culture. Many of them, however, express no desire to work toward mastery–another key driver–since advisors do not know how to seek support to improve their mastery and do not have incentive to pursue it on their own. The lack of clarity about the advisory's purpose–the third key driver of AMP–may suppress any kindling interest among some advisors in pursuing mastery and/or making the most of their autonomy to create meaningful advisories. This lack of accountability contributes to per-

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ceptions among community members at West Coast Preparatory School about the value and utility of advisory to the development of the school's students.

Finding Three: "AMP-ed" advisors at Prep create meaningful advisory experiences that are a "hit" with advisees and their parents. Prep advisors who are not "AMP-ed" create advisory experiences that are a "miss."

Even with the absence of an advisory curriculum, a set of objectives, an articulated professional development strategy, or a system of accountability, some "AMP-ed" Prep faculty members (i.e., those who have intrinsic motivation because of their autonomy to create

meaningful curricula, their desire for mastery, and their sense of purpose) invest their time and energy to provide their advisory groups with experiences that contribute positively to the West Coast Prep student experience. In other words, they have the intrinsic motivation to meet their advisees' needs for belonging, safety, and community by developing traditions, activities, and expectations for their groups. They function as effective school leaders based on their thoughtful, mission-appropriate actions as well as their devotion to their advisees.

Practically unlimited autonomy as advisors allows these high-functioning educators to create outstanding advisory experiences that are a "hit" with students and their parents. Advisors who go above and beyond their ill-defined mandates exhibit the three internal drives of intrinsic motivation. What makes them effective as advisors, however, is their commitment to mastery.

One member of the faculty focus group told me that every advisor, regardless of how

comfortable they are discussing academic or social-emotional topics with their advisory groups, can find approaches to make the advisory time meaningful for their advisees. She called for

"parameters for advisors, like, 'Here are four (advisory activities) in your back pocket that you can pull out.' So if you're not that person who's designing that, I can be like, cool, here's the

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ready-to-run activity that has some instructions and some ideas." This advisor believes that everyone can work toward mastery as an advisor, just as she does.

Similarly, advisors who make their group meetings a "hit" see the purpose of advisory as a part of the school's mission, and they recognize that their contributions as advisors are

fundamental to fulfilling their roles as educators in the lives of students. Those advisors who do not see the value or utility of advisory may not connect their work as educators to the unique purpose of the advisory program. For one high-performing advisor, the purpose of advisory "is culture building and ritual building of like, 'Hey, I don't care what everybody else is doing. We spend fifteen minutes talking to each other.'" For her, the payoff has been fulfilling. "The group I have right now, they actually really, just enjoy being together. You just have a group that kind of bonds and enjoys being with you and being together in the room, and that really helps the whole thirty minutes. A lot."

When an advisor is AMP-ed, then, they are more likely to develop meaningful activities and discussion questions for their groups. This in turn makes their advisees more cohesive and supportive of one another. This group sense strengthens the perceptions about the value and utility of advisory among advisors, students, and parents. When an advisor is not AMP-ed, students perceive their advisory groups as "a miss" or "a waste of time." And because the school does not foster an appreciation for advisory mastery or an understanding of advisory's purpose for its faculty and staff, advisors who are not AMP-ed lack the intrinsic motivation to produce meaningful advisory experiences on their own. Instead, they conserve their time and energy during advisory and focus these limited resources on their academic responsibilities.

Put another way, because the school does not foster advisory AMP at the faculty/staff level, Prep allows some advisors to deny students the full Prep experience. Using candy and

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coloring books in lieu of advisory activities aligned with school values has consequences detrimental to Prep students. Students who feel marginalized for any number of reasons may continue to feel like they do not belong when they are cut off from advisory opportunities to bond with the school community. This demonstrates the urgent need for Prep to develop a new approach to advisory.

It is worth noting that advisors who are not AMP-ed about advisory may be intrinsically motivated about other facets of their jobs at Prep. One would be hard pressed to find a person who became an educator at the secondary level primarily because they want to oversee an advisory group. Classroom teachers and coaches at Prep excel when working with students in English, orchestra, or basketball. In these contexts, Prep faculty and staff have inexhaustible AMP, and it is from these educators' reservoirs of passion and talent that Prep has earned its reputation for excellence. These same outstanding teachers and coaches, however, may view advisory as a secondary component of their roles at school. As a result, they lack the motivation to improve in this facet of their jobs and may even see advisory as an impediment to their goals as teachers, conductors, and coaches. This is especially true if they believe that advisory is not valuable or useful for their advisees and if they do believe that the school administration feels the same way. When a faculty member neglects their individual responsibilities as advisors, they are undermining the school’s over-arching efforts to achieve its statement of purpose. Though an advisory program that community members perceive as a “miss” is not akin to death by a thousand cuts, allowing these perceptions to accumulate and fester does wound the school’s reputation for excellence.

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ADVISORY PROGRAM QUALITY IMPROVEMENT Recommendations

The following recommendations will help West Coast Prep achieve its goals for improving perceptions of the value and utility of its advisory program.

Recommendation One: Develop clearly articulated vision and mission statements for the West Coast Preparatory School advisory program. Survey data and interview and focus group responses indicate a lack of clarity about the purpose of advisory, and without a sense of purpose, advisors' AMP short-circuits, affecting their implicit motivation. Prep should define the end goal for advisory and provide clear means to achieve that goal. Faculty should participate in the creation of these statements.

Recommendation Two: Assemble an advisory development committee. Faculty interview and focus group participants indicated that they would like to participate in an advisory

development committee to articulate advisory vision and mission statements. These faculty have ideas about how best to increase the value and utility of advisory based on their experiences as advisors at other schools, and their strong sense of AMP motivates them to help the school improve in any way that they can. They await an opportunity from Prep administrators to share what they know. "Whether beginning an advisory program or evaluating one that has been in place for many years, it is useful to provide the staff with opportunities to discuss, design, and modify the operational aspects of the program" (Burkhardt, 1999, p. 53). Advisor involvement in planning and implementation stages makes sense since they are the street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 2010), who interact directly with advisees and their parents and who administer the advisory curriculum. Their buy-in is critical for purposes of fidelity as well as an understanding of mission and purpose.

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Ideally, this committee will consist of faculty representatives from each of Prep's six grades and from all corners of the campus, from the Middle and Upper Schools to the library to the outdoor education program. This would encourage all faculty and staff to add their voices to the committee's discussions, either directly or through their representatives.

The co-creation of mission and vision statements by the advisory development committee members will produce guiding documents that work at the classroom level since the statements will foster the development of all three AMP drivers and nurture advisors' investment of something that they had a hand in creating. These statements will also help school leadership develop program activities that foster the achievement of community goals in each advisory group.

Recommendation Three: Articulate the differences between advisory in the Middle School and Upper School for students, faculty, and parents. The developmental needs of the Middle School students differ from those pertaining to students in Grades 9 through 12, which may explain why, for example, Middle School advisory groups meet every Wednesday whereas Upper School advisories currently meet only once a month.

Parents suggested through interviews and survey responses that they did not understand the fundamental differences between what their children experienced as seventh and eighth graders, and as a result, they expressed concern about what they perceived as a lack of communication and oversight from their child's Upper School advisor. Also, publishing an advisory handbook for each division would complement the school's mission and vision

statements for advisory and would provide parents with a better understanding of what they and their children can expect from advisors and the program.

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Recommendation Four: Reserve advisory for advisory activities. Currently, Prep treats advisory as a time for administrative tasks, including scheduling, grade checks, and discussions following Forums. These activities are important, but survey data, interview feedback, and field notes suggest that substantive conversations about academic performance are not happening in advisory anyway. For those few advisors who do meet with their advisees for one-on-one discussions about grades, dialogue consists of questions from the advisor and tepid responses from the advisee, promising to follow through on missing work or improving their effort. Some Upper School advisors do not seem to have any kind of discussion about academics with their advisees; at best, they meet not with their advisees but with their students during office hours to provide extra help and make-up assessments.

Important tasks, such as scheduling for the following year and checking on academic progress, should not necessarily fall on the shoulders of advisors simply because a better, other option does not currently exist. It is beyond the scope of this quality improvement study to posit how the school can accomplish these tasks in a better way, but in its current approach, Prep's connection of such academic matters to the advisory system underserves students in terms of academic support and frustrates advisors' attempts to build community within their groups.

Recommendation Five: Upper School advisory should meet every week. In its current form, advisory groups meet once a month for twenty-five minutes. This means that every year,

advisory groups convene only nine times for a total time of 225 minutes. A student who is absent on a Wednesday or leaves campus early for an athletic event, then, misses a significant amount of advisory time each year. Increasing the frequency of meeting times to once a week will allow group identity and a sense of inclusion to form and will diminish the significance of a student’s absence from the meeting.

AMP-ing Up: A Quality Improvement Project for the West Coast Preparatory School Advisory Program

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