Session Information
23 SES 11 A, Global Perspectives on Market-Based Teacher Accountability Policies
Symposium
Contribution
This year’s ECER theme asks us to consider the ways in which ‘short-term and performance oriented forms of accountability’ influence education research environments. With a focus on teacher accountability policies, this symposium discusses the prominent role of economics-based principles as applied to contemporary education research and policy formation on a global scale, as well as their practical implications in particular school contexts.
Driven by market-based logics, a (re)imagined ‘flat world’ has demanded new ways in which countries’ education systems can be measured and evaluated, so as to render school quality visible and comparable (Rizvi & Lingard, 2009). Simultaneously, schools are re-conceptualized as market entities, subjecting them to unprecedented levels of competition and in need of new technologies to increase their market value. This has given rise to a set of accountability mechanisms that function to standardize, quantify, and incentivize nearly every aspect of school performance.
Touted as ‘front-line workers’ (OECD, 2014), teachers have been assigned a crucial role in the modernization of education systems for economic competitiveness worldwide. Accordingly, mechanisms for quantifying and incentivizing teacher performance have proliferated in recent decades, affecting teachers around the world in similar albeit different ways (Ball, 2012; Sahlberg, 2011).
The emergence of these technologies has coincided with a thickening of the global educational policy field. Major policy actors such as the OECD, UNESCO, the European Commission, and the World Bank have also during the last 10-15 years shown unprecedented interest in the teaching profession with several large-scale projects involving the development of statistical indicators and quantification of teacher performance (OECD, 2008; OECD, 2014; Rutkowski, 2007; Sellar & Lingard, 2013; Verger & Curran, 2014; World Bank, 2012).
The profound interest in the quantification of teacher performance for economic competitiveness has resulted in the development of particular statistical tools of value-added modelling (VAM), designed to measure the influence of teacher effects on student learning over time. This technology emerged and has been taken most far in the United States (Hanushek & Rivkin, 2010; Author(s), 2015). However, after decades of research, many education researchers and research organizations (e.g., the American Education Research Association, the American Psychological Association) continue to recommend caution, given mounting concerns over the reliability, validity, bias, and fairness associated with VAMs (Amrein-Beardsley, 2014; Capitol Hill Briefing, 2011), yet U.S. policymakers continue to embrace VAMs.
While countries elsewhere have heeded caution with VAMs, many of them have embraced teacher accountability policies that are nonetheless predicated on the same neoliberal logic that undergirds VAM-use (OECD, 2014; Sahlberg, 2011). Moreover, lending conditionalities and the adoption of a more performance-oriented Education 2030 Framework for Action under the UN Sustainable Development Goals might further promote the quantification of teacher performance in development contexts (World Bank, 2015).
The purpose of this symposium is to bring together a group of scholars who are studying market-based teacher accountability policies and mechanisms in different contexts, across various scales, and from different theoretical and methodological perspectives. With a focus on quality performance indicators (e.g., VAMs) and quality performance incentive policies (e.g., performance-based pay), the researchers explore the historical, social, and political backdrops of these technologies and their implications for education systems, practices, policies, and individuals.
The goals of the symposium are to (1) present empirical research regarding the current issues surrounding market-based teacher accountability policies and mechanisms; and (2) engage an international audience in a conversation regarding the ways in which neoliberalism is conditioning the possibilities for such practices to not only exist, but to proliferate, globally.
References
Ball, S. J. (2012). Global education inc: New policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary. Routledge. Capitol Hill Briefing. (2011). Getting teacher evaluation right: A challenge for policy makers. A briefing by E. Haertel, J. Rothstein, A. Amrein- Beardsley, and L. Darling-Hammond. Washington DC: Dirksen Senate Office Building. Hanushek, E. A., & S. G. Rivkin. (2010). Generalizations about Using Value-Added Measures Teacher Quality. American Economic Review, 100(2): 267–71. OECD (2008). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2008). Measuring improvements in learning outcomes: Best practices to assess the value-added of schools. Paris: OECD. OECD (2014). TALIS 2013 Results: An international perspective on teaching and learning. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2009). Globalizing education policy. Routledge. Rutkowski, D. J. (2007). Converging us softly: how intergovernmental organizations promote neoliberal educational policy. Critical Studies in Education, 48(2), 229-247. Sahlberg, P. (2011). Fourth Way of Finland. Journal of Educational Change, 12(2), 173–185. Sellar, S., & Lingard, B. (2013). The OECD and global governance in education. Journal of Education Policy, 28(5), 710-725. Verger, A., & Curran, M. (2014). New public management as a global education policy: its adoption and re-contextualization in a Southern European setting. Critical Studies in Education, 55(3), 253-271. World Bank (2012). SABER: Systems Approach for Better Education Results. What Matters Most in Teacher Policies? A Framework for Building a More Effective Teaching Profession. World Bank (2015). The Rise of Results-Based Financing in Education.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.