A rising tide meets a perfect storm: new accountabilities in teaching and teacher education in Ireland

This paper examines the emergence of new accountabilities in teaching and teacher education in Ireland in the 15 years period 1997–2012. Framing accountability in terms of the three main approaches to it globally in education systems, that is, compliance with regulations, adherence to professional norms and attainment of results/outcomes, we identify significant changes, particularly, in compliance- and results-driven accountability. A ‘rising tide’ of accountability, due to the interrelated influences of the European higher education space, education legislation and professional self-regulation policies (i.e. Teaching Council), is evident since the late 1990s. This was punctuated by a ‘perfect storm’ in 2010 comprising ‘bad news’ from PISA 2009, the economic bailout and strategic leadership at a system level. The cumulative impact of the ‘rising tide’ and ‘perfect storm’ is evident in how they reframed both ‘to whom’ and ‘for what’ accountability in teacher education relates. Significantly, the new accountabilities in teaching and teacher education reflect a move towards the dominant global education reform movement (Sahlberg 2007) with its emphasis on standardisation, narrow focus on literacy and numeracy and higher stakes accountability.     

Turning old problems into new problems: the role of young citizens in improving accountability in education in Malawi and Kenya

Accountability is increasingly recognised as the key mediating variable that encourages service providers to deliver efficient and effective local services. In the context of education, accountability strategies do not always explicitly consider young citizens as the primary users of education services. In this paper, a client approach to accountability is compared to a citizenship approach. Drawing on community scorecard and social audit research in Malawi and Kenya, the author explores whether education services are more responsive and accountable when young people access information and exercise their voice. The paper outlines a refreshed ‘accountability framework’ for education, placing young citizens at the centre, and argues that a citizenship-led approach in education governance is likely to be more realistic and effective than a ‘client power’ approach. This article makes an important contribution to the development community’s understanding of what constitutes an effective approach for promoting more transparent and responsive education governance.     

Trick or treat: new ecology of education accountability system in the USA

This study tracks American states’ policy choices under the No Child Left Behind Act and explores their consequences for student achievement. Using the path analysis of relationships among state‐level policy input, context, and outcome variables, the study portrays a Halloween‐like ‘trick‐or‐treating’ game between the federal and state governments in the new ecology of the test‐driven education accountability system. States that chose the ‘trick’ path with a calculative policy negotiation and manipulation strategy made significant gains on their own state assessments but not on the national assessment. In contrast, states that followed the ‘treat’ path with a faithful policy implementation for funding strategy have not yet brought about significant gains on either the national or state assessments. The first‐generation accountability states with a prior history of high‐stakes testing tended to employ both strategies at the same time. However, neither effective illusion nor ineffective implementation serves the goal of long‐term, sustainable academic improvement. Implications for research and policy are discussed.     

Standards-based accountability: reification,responsibility and the ethical subject

Over the last two decades, teachers in Australia have witnessed multiple incarnations of the idea of ‘educational accountability’ and its enactment. Research into this phenomenon of educational policy and practice has revealed various layers of the concept, particularly its professional, bureaucratic, political and cultural dimensions that are central to the restructuring of educational governance and the reorganization of teachers’ work. Today, accountability constitutes a core concept of neoliberal policy-making in education, both fashioning and normalizing what counts as teacher professionalism in the ‘audit society.’ This article focuses specifically on the recent introduction by the Australian Federal Government of standardised literacy testing in all states across Australia, and raises questions about the impact of this reform on the work practices of English literacy teachers in primary and secondary schools. We draw on data collected as part of a major research project funded by the Australian Research Council, involving interviews with teachers about their experiences of implementing standardised testing. The article traces the ways in which teachers’ work is increasingly being mediated by standardised literacy testing to show how these teachers grapple with the tensions between state-wide mandates and a sense of their professional responsibility for their students.     

Curriculum policy reform in an era of technical accountability: ‘fixing’ curriculum,teachers and students in English schools

Abstract

Drawing on a Levinasian ethical perspective, the argument driving this paper is that the technical accountability movement currently dominating the educational system in England is less than adequate because it overlooks educators’ responsibility for ethical relations in responding to difference in respect of the other. Curriculum policy makes a significant contribution to the technical accountability culture through complicity in performativity, high-stakes testing and datafication, at the same time as constituting student and teacher subjectivities. I present two different conceptualizations of subjectivity and education, before engaging these in the analysis of data arising from an empirical study which investigated teachers’ and stakeholders’ experiences of curriculum policy reform in ‘disadvantaged’ English schools. The study’s findings demonstrate how a prescribed programme of technical curriculum regulation attempts to ‘fix’ or mend educational problems by ‘fixing’ or prescribing educational solutions. This not only denies ethical professional relations between students, teachers and parents, but also deflects responsibility for educational success from government to teachers and hastens the move from public to private educational provision. Complying with prescribed curriculum policy requirements shifts attention from broad philosophical and ethical questions about educational purpose as well as conferring a violence by assuming control over student and teacher subjectivities.     

Who Counts?

This article recovers a 1972 essay from James Moffett entitled ‘Who Counts?’ that the National Council of Teachers of English commissioned at the onset of US standards and accountability reforms. The essay historicises NCTE’s positions on teacher accountability by comparing its recent positions on teacher evaluation and the Common Core Standards with Moffett’s opposition to behavioural measurement and business-federal collusion in education reform. These historical juxtapositions highlight how NCTE’s recent policy agenda has reconfigured ‘who counts’ in US English education: its positions now hedge NCTE’s longstanding critiques of behavioural measurement in English, mix quality assurance with professional development, and adopt the educational priorities of federal grants, corporate philanthropy and private sector partners. The article de-naturalises NCTE’s political realignment and considers how Moffett’s prescient critiques of ‘who counts’ in English education might inform individuals’ and organisations’ positions on standards and accountability reforms.     

Justice through higher education: Revisiting White Paper 3 of 1997

Interrogating the White Paper 3 of 1997 which upholds academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability, I make the case for justice through higher education using public accountability. I argue that the higher education system in South Africa is capable of fulfilling such a role in the context of extreme injustices but not without a critical engagement of the extent and causes of these injustices and an understanding of their implications for academic curricula, practices and deeply embedded conceptions of knowledge. A redefinition of higher education institutions' public accountability in terms of responsibility to their ‘institutional locale’ or community (the populations whose needs they should be meeting) can be an effective ‘proactive tool’ with which higher education can redress social injustices. This requires an interrogation of the social, political and economic conditions of possibility that either inhibit or aid educational desire and attainment. An investigation of this nature entails a rigorous reappraisal of all three of the key principles within which higher education systems operate—academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability—if they are to guard against the continued perpetuation of epistemic and social injustices.     

Accountability and professionalism: a contradiction in terms?

Declining trust in public services has led to increasing calls for higher education to be ‘accountable’ for the quality of its teaching and learning provision. However, increasing levels of quality evaluation have led academics to feel that their professionalism is under attack. Reflecting on this history and various dimensions of accountability, this paper seeks to interpret accountability by addressing two questions: What is accountability in higher education? How can it be related to academic professionalism? The paper argues that professionalism and accountability appear to be contradictory terms, but can exist simultaneously. If academics' moral and social responsibility becomes requisite to an enhanced social accounting for the quality of university teaching and learning, there could be less perceived tension between academic professionalism and accountability.     

An examination of school accountability from the perspective of Singapore school leaders

School accountability is such a familiar concept in many education systems that questions about what it actually means and entails are rather uncommon, especially to busy practitioners on the ground. This paper reports a research that examines each of the questions of what and to whom Singapore schools are accountable, from the point of practitioners holding leadership positions in Singapore schools. This research was a qualitative study with a sample of 36 vice-principals. This analysis was enriched and interpreted with a literature-based discussion, which pointed out the implications of the research findings. According to the findings, the participants felt that Singapore schools were accountable for students’ holistic development; site, funding and staff management; national survival and nation building; and humanity and the future. Singapore schools were accountable to students, parents, country and citizens, and themselves. Interestingly, for a system that was reputed for its academic achievement, none of the participants mentioned examination results directly but referred to the importance of holistic education. The findings also suggested an inseparability of the concepts ‘accountability’ and ‘responsibility’ in the participants’ minds.     

Bringing universities to account? Exploring some global and local policy tensions

Increased accountability is at the centre of widespread educational reforms which feature the rhetoric of deregulation in many countries across the globe. Not only have educational systems, institutions and practitioners been required to be more accountable, but arguably the nature of accountability has also changed from professional and democratic to managerial and market forms. In particular, within the hegemonic discourses of the market ideology associated with globalization, market accountability to paying customers (both within a nation-state and internationally) has been foregrounded. However, the hegemony is not complete. Governments have often positioned themselves as ‘market managers’, creating a complex and often contradictory relationship between new forms of market and managerial accountability, layered on top of more traditional notions of professional and democratic accountability. This paper explores the changing nature of accountability in Australian and English higher education, and makes comparisons between them. As we enter the twenty-first century, central higher education authorities in both countries are conducting major reviews and revisionings of mechanisms to enhance the accountability of universities in the new global knowledge-based economy. While the analysis finds convergence of policy objectives and discourses, it also finds divergences in the particular structures and processes employed. Further, it finds a disjunction between macro-level policy intent and institutional-level reactions and practices in both countries. We argue that with globalization ‘talk’, it is important not to gloss over policy differences between individual nation-states, and to problematize potentially globalizing concepts such as accountability within policy debates at both national and global levels.     

The instrumentation of test-based accountability in the autonomous dutch system

ABSTRACT

Test-based accountability or ‘TBA,’ as a core element of the pervasive Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), has become a central characteristic of education systems around the world. TBA often comes in conjunction with greater school autonomy, enabling governments to assess ‘school quality’ (i.e. test results) from a distance. Often, quality improvement is further encouraged through the publication of these results. Research has investigated this phenomenon and its effects, much of it focusing on Anglo-Saxon cases. This paper, drawing on expert interviews and key policy documents, couples a policy borrowing with a policy instruments approach to critically examine how and why TBA has developed in the highly autonomous Dutch system. It finds that TBA evolved incrementally, advancing towards higher stakes for schools and boards. Further, it argues that school autonomy has been central to the development of TBA in two ways. Firstly, following a period of decentralisation that increased school(board) autonomy, the Dutch government saw a need to strengthen accountability to ensure education quality. This was influenced by international discourse and accelerated by a (politically exploited) national ‘quality crisis’ in education. Secondly, the traditionally autonomous Dutch system, shaped by ‘Freedom of Education’, has at times conflicted with TBA, and has played a significant role in (re)shaping global policy and in mitigating the GERM.     

Comparing school accountability in England and its East Asian sources of ‘borrowing’

Education reforms in England are increasingly justified by borrowing ‘best practices’ of high-performing East Asian societies, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. However, taking the reforms of school accountability as an illustrative example, this article argues that there are serious variations between England and its East Asian sources of ‘borrowing’ with regard to the ways in which schools are held to be accountable. How school accountability is organised and operationalised in practice deeply depends on socio-political priorities of each society. Therefore, education policy borrowing from East Asia to England is potentially extremely difficult. Furthermore, this article remains alert to the possibility that the claim (about improving the education system in England through imitating East Asian models) is symbolic rather than practical – symbolic in the sense of producing legitimacy for pre-existing policy agendas.     

Doing education policy enactment research in a minor key

This article discusses ‘minor key research’ and doing this kind of research as ‘response-ability’. We explore the possibilities that education policy enactment research might hold for theorising and doing research, not just for work on ‘how schools do policy’, but also for how researchers do policy research with schools. A methodological question is raised here by us with respect to what researchers might ‘do’ in schools and other policy locations (such as when working with bureaucrats or politicians). We also discuss our researcher responsibility with respect to such work, and we have attempted to respond to the questions: ‘Is there an alternative for the current regime of accountability? Are there ways to resist and intervene in the current culture of accountability?’ In the first section, we focus on minor key research, and in the second section we discuss doing minor key research as ‘response-ability’.     

The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education

One of the recent tributes to the success of Finnish schooling was the PISA 2000 project report. As befits the field of education, the explanations are primarily pedagogical, referring especially to the excellent teachers and high‐quality teacher education. Without underrating the explanatory power of these statements, this paper presents some of the social, cultural and historical factors behind the pedagogical success of the Finnish comprehensive school. From the perspectives of history and the sociology of education, it also sheds light on some ironic paradoxes and dilemmas that may be concealed by the success. The focus is on the problematic nature of international comparative surveys based on school performance indicators. The question is whether they really make it possible to understand schooling in different countries, or whether they are just part of processes of ‘international spectacle’ and ‘mutual accountability’.     

Vernacular globalisations: neo-statist accountability policies in France and Quebec education

The article argues that there is no single globalisation of education systems, but rather multiple globalisations of each system taken in its individual context. We propose three explanatory factors to account for these vernacular globalisation processes, that is, for individual policy trajectories in each national context: path dependence on earlier policy choices and institutions, education policy-making through bricolage, and finally the translation by national actors of international-level ideas or tools as a function of the debate, institutions or national power dynamics in question. The research design is based on the study of a most-likely case: accountability policy in two school systems – France and Quebec – which show strong variations. Document analyses and semi-structured interviews were conducted in both cases. In the two countries, distinct vernacular globalisations are at work leading to different neo-statist accountability policies. In Quebec, the reinforcement of state power through a growing vertical accountability and the systematic development of regulation tools between policy actors and levels lead to a ‘centralisation by institutional linkage’. In France, we rather witness a ‘globalisation by discursive internalisation’ in which transnational imperatives are integrated in official discourses on the regulation of the education system, but without radically questioning the mainstays of this regulation.     

A special teacher for a special child? (Re)considering the role of the special education teacher within the context of an inclusive education reform agenda

Notwithstanding the recent signing and ratification by Cyprus of another International Convention on the rights of students designated as having special educational needs and/or disabilities to attend mainstream schools on an equal basis with their peers, local policy and practice promote an ‘exclusionary inclusion’ that draws a discernible line between general and special education. This paper concentrates on exploring the role of special education teachers in Cyprus in the light of policy concerns about providing the ‘least restrictive’ learning environment for this group of students and enabling them ‘to reach their full potential’. It is suggested that the role of special education teachers embodies and reflects reductionist forms of inclusion informed by deficit-oriented and assimilationist special education perspectives, while there is also evidence of a lack of professionalism and accountability. The paper draws on head teachers’ and special education teachers’ interviews in order to portray the ways in which they view and experience the role of special education teachers in mainstream schools in Cyprus. New objectives and future directions are identified and discussed.     

Humanism,administration and education: the demand of documentation and the production of a new pedagogical desire

Through the example of a Danish reform of educational plans in early childhood education, this paper analyses the emergence of a new pedagogical desire related to administrative educational reforms promoting accountability, visibility and documentation. Two arguments are made: first, it is argued that the changes in administrative practices during the last decade constitute a transformation, but also a reproduction of relations between knowledge and governing that goes back to the big expansion of the welfare state. Second, it is argued that these relations between knowledge and governing are not restricted to the administrative practices, but are part of education and its humanistic legacy as well. As such, the administrative demand of documentation becomes possible and recognisable through its reproductive elements. Elements that are constituted in a transformative conjunction in which the ‘professional nursery teacher’ is produced as a reflective daily researcher, who outlives her pedagogical desire as an analytical care for the optimisation of the ‘learning child’.     

The multiple effects of international large-scale assessment on education policy and research

This paper introduces a serendipitous special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, focusing on the rise of large-scale international testing and performance data in school system accountability and the effects that such changes have produced in education policy and research. These developments are theorised in terms of the reworking of the State and networked modes of governance, including the increased involvement of edu-businesses in education policy-making and enactment, and the emergence of new topological spatialities and connectivities associated with globalisation. We contend that the prevalence of international large-scale assessments has greatly enhanced the mutual ‘visibility’ between participating national (and subnational) schooling systems within a commensurate space of measurement, which in turn makes possible new ways of acting in light of ‘evidence-informed’ policy-making. This analysing and theorising serves to both contextualise and introduce the papers included in this special issue. The paper closes by considering the implications of such developments on education policy and research, and how this necessitates the development for a new approach for researchers engaged in policy analysis, now and into the future.     

Authentically assessing graduate teaching: outside and beyond neo-liberal constructs

In this paper, we challenge the current focus on ‘best practice’, graduate teacher tests, and student test scores as the panacea for ensuring teaching quality and argue for ways of thinking about evidence of quality beginning teaching outside and beyond the current neoliberal accountability discourses circulating in Australia and other countries. We suggest that teacher educators need to reinsert themselves as key players in the debates around quality beginning teaching, rather than being viewed as a source of the problem. To enable teacher educators to assume accountability for quality beginning teachers, we propose the framework of a capstone teacher performance assessment—a structured portfolio called the Authentic Teacher Assessment (ATA)—and examine examples of these assessments through the lens of critical discourse analysis. As a measure of ‘readiness to teach’, the ATA is compared with supervising teachers’ assessments of preservice teachers. We argue that structured portfolios that include artefacts derived from preservice teachers’ practice in classrooms along with graduate teacher self assessments provide a stronger accountability measure of effective beginning teaching and demonstrably address the current anxiety regarding ‘evidence’. We suggest that such an approach should be reliable enough to be ‘read’ by external assessors (and moderated across other teacher education institutions). Rigorous research on a national basis is called for in order to develop and implement a structured portfolio as rich evidence of graduates’ quality and readiness to teach.