Children of the market: performativity,neoliberal responsibilisation and the construction of student identities

This paper draws on interview data gathered from a broader study concerned with examining issues of social justice, cultural diversity and schooling. The focus is on five students in Years 5 and 6 who attend a primary school located on the edge of a class-privileged area in outer London. The children are all high achievers who are very invested in doing well in school and in life within the parameters of neoliberalism. The paper examines the ways in which neoliberal discourses of performativity and individual responsibilisation permeate the children’s talk in relation to their understandings of education and their future, and their worth and value as students. Such examination enriches the findings of important research in this area that draws attention to the ways in which neoliberal discourses have become naturalised and taken-for-granted in what counts as being a good student and a good citizen. The paper problematises the individualism, competitiveness and anxiety produced by these discourses and provides further warrant for supporting students to identify, challenge and think beyond them.     

The political economy of higher education in the era of neoliberal globalization: Latin America in comparative perspective

During the last two decades, Latin American universities have experienced intense pressure to abandon the main principles established in the 1918 Córdoba Reform (i.e., autonomy and autarchy). While funding for public higher education has declined, they are pressured to relinquish a large portion of institutional autonomy in order to accommodate to market demands and to a new set of control strategies emanating from the state.We argue that current changes in Latin American higher education cannot be examined in isolation from larger political and economic changes in the region, which in turn are related to the dynamics of globalization. After the decline of socialist and welfare-state models, neoliberal regimes have become hegemonic in many parts of the world. In most countries, changes in financial arrangements, coupled with accountability mechanisms, have forced universities to reconsider their social missions, academic priorities and organizational structures. Concerns about equity, accessibility, autonomy or the contribution of higher education to social transformation, which were prevalent during previous decades, have been overshadowed by concerns about excellence, efficiency, expenditures and rates of return. The notion that higher education is primarily a citizens right and a social investment – which has been taken for granted for many decades – is being seriously challenged by a neoliberal agenda that places extreme faith in the market.Though we focus on the international dimension of university change, it is important to note that global trends are promoted, resisted and negotiated differently in each national context and in each individual institution. In the emerging knowledge-based society, the polarization between North and South is expected to increase even further if the scientific and technological gaps are not narrowed. Latin American universities have a crucial role to play in this regard. The paper is organized in two parts. The first describes the context of university change, focusing on issues of globalization and neoliberalism. The second examines the main features of university restructuring in comparative perspective, with a particular focus on Latin America.     

The consequences of “school improvement”: Examining the association between two standardized assessments measuring school improvement and student science achievement

For more than half a century concerns about the ability of American students to compete in a global workplace focused policymakers' attention on improving school performance generally, and student achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) specifically. In its most recent form—No Child Left Behind—there is evidence this focus led to a repurposing of instructional time to dedicate more attention to tested subjects. While this meant a narrowing of the curriculum to focus on English and mathematics at the elementary level, the effects on high school curricula have been less clear and generally absent from the research literature. In this study, we sought to explore the relationship between school improvement efforts and student achievement in science and thus explore the intersection of school reform and STEM policies. We used school‐level data on state standardized test scores in English and math to identify schools as either improving or declining over three consecutive years. We then compared the science achievement of students from these schools as measured by the ACT Science exams. Our findings from three consecutive cohorts, including thousands of high school students who attended 12th grade in 2008, 2009, and 2010 indicate that students attending improving schools identified by state administered standardized tests generally performed no better on a widely administered college entrance exam with tests in science, math and English. In 2010, students from schools identified as improving in English scored nearly one‐half of a point lower than their peers from declining schools on both the ACT Science and Math exams. We discuss various interpretations and implications of these results and suggest areas for future research. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 804–830, 2012     

National Plan for School Improvement and Students First: the predictable nature of school education policy and the problem of student achievement

This paper explores two Australian school education policy documents and the inputs they describe to boost student achievement. The paper suggests that current reform efforts in schooling like others previously configure student achievement in input–output terms confining school education policy to predictable inputs that sideline broader influences on educational output including, for instance, school funding. The national policy documents that are the subject of the case study in this paper are the National Plan for School Improvement and the current Students First. Student achievement is explored as an object of study that can be worked on by policy, including for across-the-board national ‘non-educational’ purposes. The analysis, critical in outlook, suggests that current school education policy trades on a predictable set of evidence-based inputs as correctives to declining levels of student achievement without weaving into the student learning equation the complex mix of relations that frame the educational system.     

On the testing of standards and standardized achievement testing: Panacea,placebo, or pandora's box?

Parents and educators concerned with the quality of education in Canadian schools have been subjected to a concerted campaign (through editorials, columns, and letters to the editor in major dailies and magazines, as well as a spate of books with alarmist titles) aimed at convincing them that the lack of adequate testing represents a major shortcoming and a stumbling block to educational reform. Provincewide and nationwide standardized achievement tests are offered as an indispensable tool to understand what works and what does not, to let parents know how schools are doing and how well their children are performing, and to make teachers and school boards accountable. Provincial education authorities are finding it increasingly difficult to resist the pressure, with Ontario the latest to jump on the testing bandwagon. However, although concerns about school curricula and about the best methods for testing student learning and performance are legitimate, the belief that standardized achievement tests are part of the solution to many ills allegedly afflicting our educational system does not stand up to the increasingly clear evidence of the many problems associated with the construction and administration of these tests, as well as the misuse and abuse of test scores. Far from being a panacea, this approach has proved to be fraught with dangers and adverse effects, from a narrowing of the curriculum to overemphasis of routine processes at the expense of higher learning skills, with virtually no empirical support for the purported benefits. With Canadian students facing the risk of being subjected to the same abuses as their U.S. counterparts, this paper reviews recent contributions and attempts to alert educators and policymakers to the serious deficiencies of this type of testing.     

Examining the yields of growth feedback from science teachers and students' intrinsic valuing of science: Implications for student- and school-level science achievement

Students' science knowledge and skills are considered critical to growing the intellectual capital on which societies rely to innovate and prosper. However, recent research has documented notable declines in students' intrinsic valuing of science and science achievement in Australia and other western countries. As a result, there have been calls to investigate factors at both the student- and school-level that can improve intrinsic valuing of and achievement in science. Growth feedback from science teachers to students has been identified as one such factor. Growth feedback, which specifically targets individual student growth and improvement, is considered an effective form of teacher feedback. Because recent research has demonstrated the benefits of effective teacher feedback on intrinsic valuing of science and the positive link between intrinsic valuing of science and science achievement, the present investigation examined (at both the student- and school-level) the extent to which growth feedback in science predicts intrinsic valuing of science and the extent to which intrinsic valuing predicts science achievement and mediates the relationship between growth feedback and achievement. This study examined this hypothesized process with the 2015 Australian PISA sample (N = 14,530 students in N = 758 schools) via a multilevel structural equation model. Findings indicated that at both the student- and school-level, growth feedback significantly predicted intrinsic valuing, and intrinsic valuing significantly predicted achievement; growth feedback also had significant indirect effects of achievement via intrinsic valuing. Taken together, our findings indicate that there are personal and whole-school yields for science achievement from the experiences of growth feedback in and intrinsic valuing of science.     

comparison of three growth modeling techniques in the multilevel analysis of longitudinal academic achievement scores: Latent growth modeling, hierarchical linear modeling, and longitudinal profile analysis via multidimensional scaling

This study introduces three growth modeling techniques: latent growth modeling (LGM), hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), and longitudinal profile analysis via multidimensional scaling (LPAMS). It compares the multilevel growth parameter estimates and potential predictor effects obtained using LGM, HLM, and LPAMS. The purpose of this multilevel growth analysis is to alert applied researchers to selected analytical issues that are required for consideration in decisions to apply one of these three approaches to longitudinal academic achievement studies. The results indicated that there were no significant distinctions on either mean growth parameter estimates or on the effects of potential predictors to growth factors at both the student and school levels. However, the study also produced equivocal findings on the statistical testing of variance and covariance growth parameter estimates. Other practical issues pertaining to the three growth modeling methods are also discussed.     

Advancing the construct validity of the Early Communication Indicator (ECI) for infants and toddlers: Equivalence of growth trajectories across two early head start samples

The Early Communication Indicator (ECI) is a measure for universal screening, intervention decision-making, progress monitoring for infants and toddlers needing higher levels of support, and program accountability. In the context of the ECI's long-term wide-scale use for these purposes, we examined the invariance of ECI measurement in two samples of the same Early Head Start (EHS) population differing in the years data were collected. Invariance or equivalence across samples is an important step in measurement validation because making inferences assumes that the measurements are factorially invariant. A number of time-covarying factors (e.g., assessors, children, etc.) can be hypothesized as threats to measurement invariance. Results of latent growth curve analyses indicated similarity in the functional forms (velocity and shape) of the ECIs four key skill trajectories between groups of children and ECI vocalizations, single, and multiple words trajectories met strong factorial and structural invariance. Gestures met only weak factorial invariance. ECI total communications, a weighted composite of the four scales, also met both strong factorial and structural invariance. With one exception, results indicated that the ECI produced comparable growth estimates over different conditions of programs, assessors, and children over time, strengthening the construct validity of the ECI. Implications are discussed.