Standardized tests and performance metrics are becoming increasingly widespread as key components of global education reform (Ball et al. 2017; Sahlberg, 2016). Countries with different teaching models (Voisin & Dumai, 2020) and diverse education policy approaches are adopting performance-based accountability (PBA) as a policy solution to improve the quality of education systems (Lingard, 2013).

As a response to general concerns about education quality, standardized tests are used to hold teachers accountable for students’ results, with the expectation that performative pressures will induce teachers to align their instructional practices with learning standards and utilize the achievement data for school improvement purposes. According to this theory of change, external accountability can be a suitable instrument for enhancing teacher quality, ensuring learning and improving school performance. Moreover, the test data are expected to be employed as a part of an informational system to identify areas that need further attention and eventually implement improvement plans and corrective strategies (Lingard et al., 2017).

Interestingly, existing research on PBA shows mixed results. While some investigations observe an active policy appropriation by teachers (Hardy, 2014), other investigations suggest that performative pressures, far from reinforcing virtuous circles of improvement and policy alignment, tend to erode the professional autonomy of teachers and educators (Daliri-Ngametua et al., 2021; Holloway & Brass, 2018). This mismatch between policy design and actual practices is observed in numerous education systems where accountability mechanisms result in policy decoupling, ritualistic implementation, and instrumental responses (Reinhorn et al. 2017; Thiel et al. 2017).

Indeed, schools and teachers may embrace strategic practices to escape pressure and cope with performance expectations. School competition, teaching to the test and curriculum narrowing or cheating are only some of the undesired responses that schools might adopt to dilute the external pressures associated with testing and accountability (Falabella, 2020;  Koretz, 2017). These results are observed in contexts with different accountability models, but appear to be very frequent in disadvantaged school contexts (Candido, 2019; Diamond, 2012).

Still, little is known about under what conditions such instrumental practices emerge and how they become institutionalized in different education systems. In order to understand this process, we suggest that we need to better understand teachers’ interpretations of accountability mandates. We aim to unpack teachers’ discourses about testing and accountability in order to shed light on the sense-making of accountability policies, with a particular focus on vulnerable school contexts. This investigation focuses on the interpretation of the accountability mandates of schools in disadvantaged contexts because within these institutional environments, school actors appear to be more prone to adopt instrumental and undesired responses. Our argument is that by analysing teachers’ interpretations of accountability policies, we can better understand how and why instrumental practices emerge and become the norm in certain schools.

Accordingly, the research goal of our work is to unpack the different components of teachers’ discourses on PBA in vulnerable schools to better understand how school actors’ sense-making sustains instrumental practices. To do so, we conduct a comparative case study with a qualitative approach, analysing the discourses of teachers working in vulnerable school settings in Spain (Madrid) and Chile. These are interesting contexts for investigating the role of performative pressures since they combine high levels of marketization with different approaches to PBA (Falabella, 2020; Prieto & Villamor, 2012).

The study adopts a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to better understand the teachers’ sense-making of accountability policies and datafication in disadvantaged schools’ contexts in Spain and Chile. The selection of the two cases was made on purpose, according to the accountability policy design and the structure of the educational supply. While Chile and Spain differ in terms of their accountability policy approach, both countries have some similarities in terms of the structure of their education provision, including market-oriented models. In terms of the accountability policy model, Chile has a high-stakes PBA model, which is deeply consolidated in the education system with a long trajectory and relative stability. In contrast, Spain, and particularly the case of Madrid, has adopted accountability mechanisms quite recently, following a lower-stakes model with erratic policy trajectories. Interestingly, both cases share similarities in the structure and governance of education provision. Accordingly, the two cases compared share a market-oriented education system with important levels of private-subsidized schools and salient levels of school competition. In short, we suggest that these are particularly interesting contexts for investigating the role of performative pressures since they combine high levels of marketization with different approaches in relation to PBA (Falabella, 2020; Prieto & Villamor, 2012) To conduct our analysis, we purposefully selected small-n cases (Spain and Chile) to enhance the external validity of our study. We mobilized context-sensitive knowledge for each case to analyse and compare our data in order to ensure internal validity, and developed an inductive and explorative mode of reasoning to interpret our results (Thomann & Maggetti, 2020). Our data are based on a sampling of public and private-subsidized schools with low socio-economic status. We conducted 26 semi-structured in-depth interviews with teachers and school leaders to develop a systematic comparison of teachers’ enactment of PBA in both countries. To analyze the interviews, we combined deductive and emerging codes. We first applied a list of structural codes (Saldaña, 2021) defined in a codebook to share the same criteria to code and analyse interviews in Chile and Spain (Parcerisa & Verger, 2023). With the comparison of the codes, new themes and topics were identified and we iteratively built new labels to classify, interpret and examine these emerging results.

This article shows the importance of school context and meaning-making processes in the enactment of educational policy, and more particularly the key role of interpretation and sense-making as a mediating factor explaining policy decoupling and opportunistic behaviours. Based on a comparative case study, the paper illuminates the similarities (and also some differences) in the policy reception and interpretation of accountability policies by teachers working in disadvantaged contexts. Although the discourses analysed share important ideas and critical understandings of PBA, we do not aim to suggest that the discourses of teachers are univocal or homogenous. Some teachers give more importance to social justice arguments, whereas others highlight pedagogical or professional discourses. Moreover, some discourses of appropriation and negotiation are also found, despite not being the norm. Our results do not suggest that similar discourses imply similar school responses to PBA. Indeed, as we have analysed elsewhere, the school responses to PBA are multiple and diverse (Authors, 2023; Authors, 2021). This suggests that the school's policy responses cannot be understood as a mechanical and linear process from interpretation to translation, but a conflicting and negotiated process mediated by organizational, professional, and contextual factors that modulate different translations within a range of similar forms of policy interpretation. Despite the differences in the characteristics of the educational systems and the design of accountability instruments, our research suggests that teachers working in vulnerable school settings in Madrid and Chile share important arguments when they identify negative components of PBA for disadvantaged schools. However, the article shows that critical discourses on PBA are complex, interwoven, and multifaceted.

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