Evaluative relationships: teacher accountability and professional culture

ABSTRACT

Research on recently adopted methods for teacher evaluation are largely focused on issues of validity and pay less attention to the consequences of implementation for the everyday practices of teaching and learning in schools. This paper draws on an ethnographic case-study to argue that the joint tasks demanded by neoliberal teacher evaluation policies structure interactions among teachers and between teachers and administrators in ways that erode professional culture. Implications for policymakers, school leaders, and teachers are considered.     

VAM Under Scrutiny: Teacher Evaluation Litigation in the States

As teacher quality is judged and tenured teachers are rated ineffective, educators are challenging teacher evaluation systems in the courts as they adversely affect their employment. Teachers have lost jobs, pay, tenure, and career advancement. This article reports on these cases, providing an interpretation in light of court cases about teacher evaluation with an emphasis on value-added models (VAM), and focuses on the litigation working its way through the courts.     

Federal policy and the teacher labor market: exploring the effects of NCLB school accountability on teacher turnover

The media suggest that accountability pressure increases teacher stress and drives teachers away from teaching, resulting in teachers leaving disadvantaged schools that serve larger proportions of poor and minority students. However, no prior work has systematically examined the changes in the national trends of teacher turnover in response to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) school accountability. Drawing on nationally representative samples of schools and teachers from the Schools and Staffing Surveys and Teacher Follow-Up Surveys from 1993–2009, this study applied difference-in-differences approaches to examine the effects of NCLB on teacher turnover. We found a weak increase in the average rate of teachers transferring involuntarily to other schools following school-initiated separations, particularly in disadvantaged schools that served larger proportions of poor and minority students. We also observed that NCLB reduced the involuntary attrition rates of teachers. Importantly, the policy effect is indistinguishable from zero on voluntary transfer between schools or voluntary leaving the teaching profession.     

Using standards to evaluate accountability policy in context: School administrator and teacher perceptions of a teacher evaluation system

Accountability policy in the United States requiring school districts to design and implement state policy-directed teacher evaluation systems that utilize multiple measures, most often observations of professional practice and student achievement data, has been reflective of shifting international public discourse surrounding educational accountability, specifically related to teacher quality. Although the most recent wave of policy change provides states some flexibility in determining how teachers are evaluated, many are still mired in debate on how to improve teacher professional practice and increase student learning. This study examined the perceptions of school administrators and teachers in a large, suburban, public school district regarding their district’s new teacher evaluation system. Understanding the convergent and divergent views of participant groups regarding how (i.e., the standards by which) they defined and measured the effectiveness of the evaluation system is necessary to not only better understand their lived experiences but also to potentially inform policy change.     

Dissecting the teacher monolith: Experiences of beginning basic school teachers in Zambia

This article explores the multifaceted experiences of beginning basic school teachers in Southern Province, Zambia, through a qualitative study comprised of interviews with 35 basic school teachers. Our research examines the uniqueness of beginning teacher experiences in the global South, and points to the need to recognize the implications of ‘Education for All’ for this particular sub-group of the teaching population. We found that these teachers faced significant personal and professional difficulties, while receiving little support. Nevertheless, teachers expressed a commitment to the profession. Recommendations are provided to suggest improvements to the transition and socialization process for future beginning teachers.     

Teacher effectiveness and teacher growth from student ratings: An action research of school-based teacher evaluation

Teacher effectiveness evaluations are considered an effective mechanism for promoting teacher growth. We implemented teacher effectiveness evaluations in three Chinese secondary schools over two years and (a) developed an action research framework for school-based teacher evaluations composed of five links, i.e., purpose and consensus, data collection and analysis, data interpretation and feedback, data use, and evaluation of the actions and (b) found that “school-based” instruments of student ratings have valid statistical properties, and teacher effectiveness can be regarded as a single-factor holistic concept in different schools. We also (c) analysed 2-year longitudinal data and identified changing trajectories of teacher effectiveness as an example for data feedback and use. Teacher effectiveness presents changing trajectories for different subgroups, representing different ecologies in three schools and provides insights for teacher growth. A (d) meta-evaluation of the actions shows that most teachers are positive about this evaluation, although differences are observed between schools.     

Teacher evaluation in Chile: highlights and complexities in 13 years of experience

The paper examines the process of establishing a teacher evaluation system in Chile and its acceptance by teachers over time. The conceptual base upon which the system was established is described. Evidence is also examined from a variety of data sources and research related to the evaluation system as well as teachers’ use of its results. This evidence includes information from an external review of the system noting tensions between the formative versus accountability purposes of the evaluation system and that are being attended to in the new Teacher Professional Development Law (2016).     

Through the nominations of principals: Effective teachers of African American students share limitations of high-stakes testing

This study examines how elementary school teachers, nominated by their principals as effective teachers of African American students, perceive their effectiveness in an era of high-stakes testing that is influenced and constrained by policy dominance. The implications in this study might be useful in preparing prospective and practicing teachers to examine their instructional practices as they pursue successful outcomes with culturally diverse students.     

Making accountable teachers: the terrors and pleasures of performativity

This article draws from Stephen Ball’s work on markets, managerialism, and performativity to frame a comparative study that examines the reconstitution of the teacher–subject across a pivotal decade in which neoliberal standards and accountability reforms effected significant changes in US education. It juxtaposes two qualitative studies conducted during the implementation of successive standards and accountability movements. The first study of early career English teachers coincided with the implementation of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), and the second took place nearly a decade later as states began to implement value-added teacher assessments in conjunction with the Obama administration’s Race to the Top (RTTT). The juxtaposition of these two studies points to a paradigmatic shift in the construction of teachers’ professional knowledge and subjectivity. While teachers of the first accountability stage positioned NCLB’s (self-) disciplinary mechanisms as external intrusions on their autonomy, professionalism, and practice, the second group positioned RTTT’s accountability mechanisms as the very modes by which they knew themselves and their quality. Thus, these studies show a collapse between the governed (i.e. teachers) and the government (i.e. accountability mechanisms) and the normalization of the marketized teacher, the managed teacher, and the performative teacher.     

The evaluation turn in the higher education system: lessons from Italy

This article explores how new public management policy ideas and technologies circulating in the globalised education space have been re-contextualised in the re-design of the Italian Higher Education System. In doing so, it uses the governmentality studies as a sensitising framework to problematise what we term here as the ‘calculative and instrumental turn’ in the evaluation of Higher Education. The work reflects on the complex assemblage of forms of knowledge, technical means and collective and individual subjects through which the evaluation of the Italian universities unfolds in its current form. The attempt is to highlight the changes produced in how Higher Education and its ethical subjects are thought and their qualities are conceived and appraised. The article presents some conclusive remarks on some of the paradoxical risks of the Evaluation turn, namely contractualisation, depoliticisation and fabrication, but also insists on its reflexivity potential, interpreting the current developments as a missed opportunity.     

Learning from those who no longer teach: Viewing teacher attrition through a resistance lens

Most public school teachers in the United States now leave the classroom before reaching retirement. Research on teacher attrition has tended to focus on novice teachers, using human capital or organizational theories to understand trends in teacher exit. This study examines the accounts of certified, experienced teachers who left teaching after making significant investments in the career. The accounts of these invested leavers are examined through a lens of resistance, illuminating issues of power as well as the ideals of teaching that may be expressed through the decision to leave.     

Teachers' perception of the new teacher evaluation policy: A validity study of the Policy Characteristics Scale

Teachers' perception of the educational policy is vital to understand the success or failure of the policy's implementation. In this article, we describe the development and use of the Policy Characteristics Scale to measure teachers' perception of a new teacher evaluation policy. An exploratory factor analysis (n = 347) and a confirmative factor analysis (n = 263) revealed a three-factor structure of teachers' perception of the new educational policy: policy's practicality, need, and clarifying function. Our research results indicated that teachers confirm the policy's need. They perceive the reform as clear but they have questions about the policy's implementation. Implications for policy makers and school leaders are discussed.     

From the bottom-up: New York City teacher evaluation and the narration of mediated institutional assault

Following the trend of consequential accountability in US public education, New York City introduced a teacher evaluation program during the 2013–2014 school year that linked teachers’ individual performance ratings with their students’ exam scores. As this program systemically alters the nature of teacher–student relationships by transforming students into the means to an end (teachers’ professional viability), this study investigated the implementation of this accountability program from the point of view of the teachers – those who were the subject of this new policy. This study of 15 teachers’ narratives from 3 distinct schools illuminates a social-organizational process that I refer to as mediated institutional assault – a perceived attack on the teachers’ sense of personhood and moral agency perpetrated by mediating figures whose actions were facilitated by bureaucratic policies and institutionally coordinated tools of control. Thus, this study reveals that the consequence of this new mode of accountability is not merely the threat of losing one’s job, but also an insidious form of psychological assault, which in its masked delivery violates teachers’ sense of relational morality and challenges deeply engrained beliefs about their role as educators.     

Novice teachers learning through participation in a teacher study group

Using Lave and Wenger’s framework of legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice, this case study explores the experiences of three novice teachers engaged with more experienced teachers in a teacher study group during their first year of teaching. The study illustrates how, over time, the novices moved from more peripheral to more central participation as revealed through changes in their talk and feelings about participating. The study highlights the importance of legitimacy and peripherality provided by the more experienced teachers and identifies the ways in which the facilitator scaffolded and mediated the novices’ participation and learning.     

Within the teacher evaluation policies black box: two case studies

This paper analyzes the relationship between teacher evaluation policies in Chile and Uruguay, teacher professional development, and teacher performance effectiveness. The analysis tries to understand the extent to which the existing processes for teacher evaluation stimulate an improvement in the quality of teaching. The comparison of two national cases with similar educational results but radically different educational policies allows the authors to take a close look within the ‘black box’ of educational policy-making. The paper is based on in-depth analysis of the PISA survey to heads of schools and in-depth interviews with teachers, heads, and key informants. The paper finds that policies aiming to strengthen teacher development and teacher performance through teacher evaluation cannot be understood in dichotomist ways; lack of attention to teachers’ perspectives and unintended effects of policy implementation can lead to marginal effects. Uruguay, where teacher evaluation policies have weak practical effects, has managed to obtain similar educational results to Chile. However, the experience of Chile shows that teacher evaluation can have an effect on teacher professional development and, in the long run, this may have an effect on the quality of teaching and student results.     

Queensland teachers’ conceptions of assessment: The impact of policy priorities on teacher attitudes

The conceptions Queensland teachers have about assessment purposes were surveyed in 2003 with an abridged version of the Teacher Conceptions of Assessment Inventory. Multi-group analysis found that a model with four factors, somewhat different in structure to previous studies, was statistically different between Queensland primary and (lower) secondary teachers. Primary teachers agreed more than secondary teachers that ‘assessment improves teaching and learning’, while the latter agreed more that it ‘makes students accountable’. The inter-correlation of ‘assessment is irrelevant’ to ‘makes students accountable’ was statistically stronger for primary teachers. Teacher beliefs reflected the differing practices of assessment by level of schooling.     

Curriculum reform in Turkish teacher education: Attitudes of teacher educators towards change in an EU candidate nation

Educational development is one way through which Turkey enhances progress towards its social goals and prepares itself for European Union membership. A major effort to upgrade the Turkish educational system was made through a multi-phased comprehensive reform of the sector introduced during the 1990s. One part of this reform, perhaps most crucial to the long-term effectiveness of other developments in education, was a transformation of the approach to teacher education. This paper utilizes recently conducted research to assess the nature and extent of that reform as well as identifying the factors which enhanced its effectiveness.     

Teacher evaluation policy as perceived by school principals: the case of Flanders (Belgium)

In Flanders (Belgium), a new teacher evaluation policy was issued which placed a lot of autonomy with school principals to develop and implement a new teacher evaluation system. In this study, we explore how Flemish principals perceive the new teacher evaluation policy and what influences their perception. Results demonstrate that principals perceive the policy as clear, but they are rather negative about the need, practicality, and complexity of the summative teacher evaluation. This perception is influenced by policy, context, and individual factors as is demonstrated in our qualitative analyses.