About

James P. Spillane is the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Professor in Learning and Organizational Change at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. He also holds positions as a professor of Human Development and Social Policy, a professor of Learning Sciences, and a faculty associate at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research. Spillane has published extensively on issues related to education policy, organizational change, school leadership, and the relations between policy and teachers’ and administrators’ practice. His research focuses on policy implementation and the ways in which educational policies influence organizational practices within schools. He is known for his contributions to understanding how policy and practice intersect in educational settings, emphasizing organizational change and leadership in education.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Pedagogy
• Computer Science
• Mathematics education
• Public relations

Selected publications

• The Emotional Dimensions of Educational Change: A Review and Interdisciplinary Framework for Future Research

  Educational Researcher · 2025-06-17

  reviewSenior author

  Extensive research documents how teachers’ understandings of education reforms impact implementation and outcomes. However, the role of teachers’ emotional sensemaking in the context of reform remains underexplored. This article reviews research on teachers’ emotional responses to reform and argues that an overreliance on retrospective, self-report measures limits our understanding of teachers’ real-time emotions during the reform process. To build a deeper understanding of teachers’ emotions in the context of reform, we propose integrating methods from affective science that incorporate physiological and behavioral measures to complement traditional methods, such as surveys and interviews. This interdisciplinary approach could help practitioners and policymakers design reforms and associated professional learning that support teachers’ emotional well-being, thereby increasing the likelihood of successful implementation.

  PublisherDOI

• It’s about Time

  The Elementary School Journal · 2025-07-03 · 2 citations

  article

  Within elementary science reform, time is a crucial consideration, yet conceptions of time in education research are undertheorized. To address this gap, we use sociological literature to identify three conceptions of time that help us understand and interpret leaders’ and teachers’ sensemaking and decision making about time in their efforts to improve elementary science education and use national survey data to uncover systems’ time-focused decisions related to elementary science. Drawing on data from 13 US educational systems that were working to improve elementary science, we present three cases to illustrate how leaders’ decisions, collectively, constitute dilemmas for which there are no easy solutions. We construct an expansive conceptual framework of time in educational systems’ decision making, showing how the typical conception of time as objective and limited is, itself, limited, and that conceptions of time as political and organizational time round out an understanding of system actors’ sensemaking and the dilemmas therein.

  PublisherDOI

• Leading Systemwide Improvement in Elementary Science Education: Managing Dilemmas of Education System Building

  American Educational Research Journal · 2024-08-21 · 8 citations

  article

  Reforming instruction is challenging. In this comparative case study of 12 school districts, we investigated the dilemmas that emerged for system leaders as they engaged in system building for elementary science and the approaches leaders took in managing them. We found that system leaders’ efforts to manage their environments contributed to the preferential treatment of literacy and mathematics relative to science. Leaders managed this dilemma using three strategies: (a) integration of science with other subjects, (b) specialization of teachers, and (c) adopting curriculum materials. This study contributes to literature on dilemma management by showing that dilemmas in education system building are school-subject sensitive, emerge in relation to system building for other subjects, and are embedded in school and education systems’ structural/organizational arrangements.

  PublisherDOI

• Teachers Learning On-the-Job Through Participation in an Organizational Routine: A Comparative Case Study of Three Curriculum Materials Adoption Processes for Elementary Science

  Journal of Science Teacher Education · 2024-10-15 · 2 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Leading Elementary School Science: Taking a Multilevel Distributed Perspective to Explore Leadership Practice

  Educational Administration Quarterly · 2024-07-21 · 7 citations

  article

  Purpose: Most empirical work using a distributed perspective to frame research on leadership practice uses the school as the unit of analysis, focusing on how leadership is stretched over people and aspects of the situation within schools. This study investigates leadership practice for elementary science, using a multilevel distributed framework, to understand the interrelationships among educational leaders operating at various levels—from classrooms, to schools, to educational systems, and, beyond, to the educational sector. Research Methods/Approach: Using an embedded, comparative case study design, we analyzed leadership practice for elementary science reform in 13 school districts in the U.S. as leaders worked to bridge from the Next Generation Science Standards learning ideals to classroom instruction. Data collection included interviews, observations, and documents. Findings: Leading elementary science reform involved three core components of leadership practice: (1) garnering attention for science in a situation that prioritized the instruction of English Language Arts and mathematics; (2) cultivating and channeling essential relationships not only within the system but also in the broader education sector to access the resources needed to (re)build an educational infrastructure for elementary science instruction; and (3) supporting the use of educational infrastructure in everyday practice in schools. Implications: This study makes the case for using a multilevel distributed leadership perspective to frame studies of leadership practice to understand how efforts at different levels interact in shaping the practice of leadership.

  PublisherDOI

• Research Hidden in Plain Sight: Theorizing Latent Use as a Form of Research Use

  American Educational Research Journal · 2024-04-28 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  Calls for evidence-based practice are pervasive. In response, extensive scholarship has employed four categories of research use—instrumental, symbolic, conceptual, and imposed—to examine how research is used in schools and districts. We draw on sociocultural learning theory and empirical data from one school district to newly theorize latent use as another category of research use. We define latent use as when educators participate with a research-embedded tool in ways that guide their work practice. We call this “latent” use because educators use research via their participation with tools embedded with research quotes, citations, and/or summaries rather than directly engaging with traditional research products (e.g., journal articles). We then discuss latent use's potential merits and limitations.

  PublisherDOI

• State-Level Efforts to Reform Elementary Science Education

  Educational Policy · 2023-03-24 · 4 citations

  article

  This comparative case study explores how 18 state education agencies (SEAs) support school districts in advancing standards-based elementary science reform. We identify how SEAs understand their work in advancing elementary science reform and describe how SEAs sought to engage districts in bridging from standards to classroom practice. Based on our analysis, we argue that the school subject is a critical explanatory variable in understanding SEA efforts to support standards implementation and SEAs lean on a resource-based approach for instructional policy implementation. This study contributes to the growing research base on the role of state policy in supporting standards implementation.

  PublisherDOI

• Framing educational leadership as a multilevel distributed practice: a systemwide perspective

  Elsevier eBooks · 2022-11-18 · 14 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Learning Sciences and Policy

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2022-03-14

  book-chapter

  This chapter describes three strategies for learning scientists to contribute to policymaking and implementation. First, educational systems design and redesign – where all aspects of school systems (curriculum, assessment, teacher professional development, school leadership, resources to coordinate and maintain instructional quality) are designed to improve instructional quality and redress educational inequities. Second, formative implementation research that studies both micro- and macro-levels of systems including classrooms and schools, local administrative offices, and regional education agencies as well as community organizations and cultural institutions. Third, family- and community-centered organizing to pursue systematic societal transformation, such as shifting power relations and addressing systemic oppression in society.

  PublisherDOI

• Striving for Coherence, Struggling With Incoherence: A Comparative Study of Six Educational Systems Organizing for Instruction

  Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis · 2022 · 50 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Public relations

  This article examines how leaders in public, private, and hybrid educational systems manage competing pressures in their institutional environments. Across all systems, leaders responded to system-specific puzzles by (re)building systemwide educational infrastructures to support instructional coherence and framed these efforts as rooted in concerns about pragmatic organizational legitimacy. These efforts surfaced several challenges related to educational equity; leaders framed their responses to these challenges as tied to both pragmatic and moral organizational legitimacy. To address these challenges, leaders turned to an array of disparate government and nongovernment organizations in their institutional environments to procure and coordinate essential resources. Thus, the press for instructional coherence reinforced their reliance on an incoherent institutional environment.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• The Practice of School Leadership and the Improvement of Mathematics and Science Instruction in Urban Elementary Schools

  NSF · $1.1M · 1998–2005

• RETA: Distributed Leadership for Middle School Mathematics Education: Content Area Leadership Expertise in Practice

  NSF · $2.3M · 2004–2010

• Collaborative Research: Next Generation Science Standards and Designing School System Educational Infrastructure to support Elementary School Science Instruction

  NSF · $1.6M · 2018–2025

Frequent coauthors

• John B. Diamond

  Brown University

  18 shared

• Megan Hopkins

  University of California, San Diego

  17 shared

• Matthew Shirrell

  George Washington University

  11 shared

• David K. Cohen

  10 shared

• Donald J. Peurach

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  9 shared

• Eric M. Camburn

  University of Missouri–Kansas City

  8 shared

• Patricia Burch

  8 shared

• Penelope L. Peterson

  7 shared

Labs

• Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling (CCL)PI

Education

• Ph.D., Education

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  1986

• M.A., Education

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  1982

• B.A., Education

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  1979