Teachers' beliefs about standardised testing and test-based accountability: Comparing the perceptions and experiences of teachers in Chile and Norway

The global popularity of test-based accountability appears to signal political trust in standardised assessments as valid and relevant measures of education quality. Nonetheless, research shows that educators' perceptions of standardised testing and test-based accountability can vary significantly, as do their responses to accountability demands. Considering the key influence of teachers' beliefs on the way in which they respond to education reforms, in this article we examine teachers' beliefs and opinions about standardised tests and test-based accountability. We analyse a comparative study on interpretations and experiences of standardised testing and test-based accountability demands of compulsory education teachers in Chile and Norway. These cases were selected following a most-different-systems design approach. The data was derived from an electronic survey (n = 2,531) and in-depth interviews (n = 41). The analysis shows how in both contexts, teachers are relatively critical about the validity, usefulness and fairness of standardised tests. This indicates lacking teacher trust in standardised testing and test-based accountability. Still, despite similar trends, some key differences in the beliefs of Chilean and Norwegian teachers are found, which highlight the influence of the sociocultural context in shaping teachers' beliefs. By illuminating how teachers in different contexts make sense of test-based accountability, our analysis contributes to the understanding of why the often-reported mismatch between policy expectations and policy outcomes might occur.     

21世纪中国体育场馆政策法规效用研究

为了摸清中国现阶段体育场馆相关政策法规的现状,为今后制定体育政策法规提供理论和现实依据,对国家体育总局现行有效政策法规以及与体育事业相关的国家或部门政策进行梳理。结果发现:中国在21世纪出台了大量的体育政策法规。这些政策法规虽不是为专门解决体育场馆问题而制定,但对体育场馆的建设、资金保障、使用与维护、经营与管理等问题十分重视,提出了很多宏观的规定和具体的措施来推动体育场馆的建设和发展。然而,事实表明,这些政策法规的实际规范作用并不理想,效率不高。中国体育场馆政策法规的完善不仅需要"量"的积累,更需要"质"的提高。提高体育政策的执行力是中国政府的当务之急。     

论增强教师创生取向课程实施认同的策略

创生取向课程实施是课程实施的理想、未来与最终归宿,但目前实践中遭遇到了阻抗。教师创生取向课程实施认同障碍是其中非常重要的原因。增强教师创生取向课程实施认同,要做好如下工作：研究者和策动者通过转变角色,转变交往方式,提高自身素质来提高自己被教师信任的信任度;研究者通过提高创生取向课程实施理论的价值性,增强可行性,提升可操...     

创生取向课程实施中教师行为不当的含义、成因及矫正

创生取向课程实施中教师行为不当,是指教师由于受传统课程实施观念、自身素养等因素的影响所表现出来的与创生取向课程实施理念相悖或不足的行为现象,主要有创生的载体单一、创生的过程不清、创生的方法不明三种表现形式,主要是由于创生取向课程实施理论本身"难且乏"、教师对创生取向课程实施理论认知不足造成的。可以通过研究者易化、丰富创生取向课程实施理论,教师提高对创生取向课程实施理论的认知,研究者和策动者优化创生取向课程实施理论的认知环境等进行矫正。     

Knowing Asia: creative policy translation in an Australian school setting

Policy implementation at school level is often recognised as transformative enactment. Positioning school leaders as gatekeepers in this enactment is limiting. This study of one Australian school explores the complex contextualised agency of school leaders showing that their role, far more than gatekeeping, can be enabling and transformative. Identifying the agency of school leaders in enacting policy imperatives to ‘know Asia’ creates space to imagine localised narrative possibilities that negotiate and potentially challenge policy agendas. Accounts of policy work by school leaders are heteroglossic and densely intertextual in their mobilisation and collocation of discourses. A metaphor of a frog in a well is taken up to translate policy in locally specific ways that make it much more than a template of externally devised policy. Deep contextual knowledge empowers school leaders to imagine policy in innovative ways; however, it is paired with a cautionary note on risks inherent to shaping policy for ‘like-minded’ futures.     

Incompatible enactments of learning outcomes? Leader,teacher and student experiences of an ambiguous policy object

Proliferating claims have been made for Learning Outcomes (LOs) potential to re-shape higher education: as forces for transparency and harmonisation, new forms for measurement or a format that fundamentally challenges traditional teaching and learning. Evidence of their actual influence remains sparse, however. This analysis of 45 interviews with university teachers, students and leaders from England and Norway investigates their experiences of LOs. The results suggest LOs are received as an ambiguous policy object, resulting in varied interpretations and uses. However, two persistent tendencies emerge. While LOs have been introduced in relatively flexible ‘process’ forms, which can support reflection and communication around teaching practices, respondents describe pressures to develop more high-level, standardised and measureable ‘product’ LOs. Tensions between the forms seem likely to reduce the scope for LOs to support teaching and learning practices.     

Doing without believing – enacting policy in the English primary school

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how six English primary school teachers enact assessment and attainment-focused policy and asks what this performative policy work does and whether it shapes or requires a new kind of primary teacher subjectivity. The paper draws on a small study of policy enactments in two primary schools in Greater London in order to discuss two dimensions of policy enactment that emerged from our data: first, shifting assessment regimes in primary schools which create an enactment environment of second-guessing policy; second, a shift in focus from the individual child to targeted groups that raises questions about more traditional primary school values. The paper concludes with a reflection on the effects of contradictory values and practices and how this policy context creates a form of ‘doing without believing’ in the English primary school.     

“Better to be a pessimist”: A narrative inquiry into mathematics teachers' experience of the transition to the Common Core

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a focus of state education policy today influencing curriculum implementation and assessment in public schools. The purpose of this narrative inquiry is to understand how high school mathematics teachers experience the transition period. Based on interviews with mathematics teachers in a high school in the Midwest, we aim at bringing teachers' voices to the forefront. Through teachers' stories, we find that: a) Teachers live in the different zones of enactment; and b) Teachers' ecological view of agency should be used as a link to a transition to the CCSS for creating a genuine dialogue. This article is significant in two ways. First, it informs the administrators and policy makers of how there will be inconsistencies across states, districts, schools and classrooms in the implementation and assessment, and second, it helps to explain the need for new professional development approaches.     

教师课程创生的缘起、涵义与价值

“教师的课程创生”源于但又超越“课程实施的创生”。它主张作为课程主体的教师自觉地主动地变革课程的各要素以达到促进课程完善、教师成长和学生发展的目的;强调教师在整个课程运作过程中都应该充分发挥主体性和创造性;具有自觉性、批判性、全程性和持续性等特征。倡导和认可“教师的课程创生”这一命题,将使:我们的课程观念由单一封闭静止转向多元开放和动态建构;教师的课程角色由忠实执行者转向反思性建构者;课程运作的价值取向由追求技术理性转向追求实践理性和解放理性。     

MIND THE GAP

The study of journalistic role conceptions rests on the assumption that these conceptions shape the news stories that journalists create. However, limited empirical evidence exists to support this assumed linear relationship between role conception and role enactment. This exploratory study compared role conceptions deduced from survey data of 56 journalists with a content analysis of those same journalists' articles (N=270). The findings suggest that this assumed linear relationship between role conception and role enactment should be questioned rather than presumed.