Assessment and evaluation in education is a critical factor shaping educational systems and processes. It is directly linked to future opportunities for individuals, whether in terms of students’ entry exams to higher education or the evaluation of teachers for future job prospects and the ensuring of education quality (Little, 2011). Consequently, assessment and evaluation can be perceived as high stakes by those whose work is being evaluated or by those responsible for conducting the assessments. 

When considering school principals, who play a significant role in shaping educational systems and processes, we find that assessment is closely tied to accountability. This is particularly evident when external evaluations or control systems are employed for governance purposes through ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ accountability mechanisms (Ólafsdóttir et al., 2022). According to Ydesen et al. (2023), this suggests that assessment in education encompasses a multitude of interests, perspectives, and stakeholders, and is regulated and monitored in various ways. This likely has different implications for the autonomy and professional discretion of school principals. 

Germany and Norway are particularly interesting for a comparison, as the two countries have different historically developed educational traditions, but similarities in recent educational reforms (Wermke & Prøitz, 2021). Both countries have enacted similar educational reforms aimed at increasing local autonomy for schools while simultaneously enhancing accountability measures to ensure educational outcomes. This shift has transferred greater decision-making responsibilities to school principals, who must navigate the dual demands of adhering to overarching regulations and making context-specific decisions, also based on teacher assessment and evaluation. Consequently, the assessment and evaluation of teachers poses significant challenges for school principals as they have to locally assess teachers but are at the same time being steered by regulations and guidelines. To narrow down this topic and address the implications for autonomy, this paper therefore investigates the following questions:  

What characterizes accountability structures in teacher assessment and evaluation in Germany and Norway? What are the implications of these structures for school principal autonomy? 

As exemplified by Bell and Kane (2022), systems of teacher assessment and evaluation are highly contextual and influenced by both social and historical traditions and understandings of for instance the purpose and value of education. This includes and impacts structures of accountability and the stakes at play when teachers work is evaluated in different country contexts. In order to understand implications of teacher assessment and evaluation for school principals’ autonomy, this study leans on a theoretical perspective of accountability as a combination of answerability, responsibility and capacity (Hatch, 2013). This understanding of accountability is combined with the theoretical lens of discretionary reasoning in professional work as proposed by Wallander and Molander (2014), thereby interlinking accountability and professional autonomy.

This study focuses on school principals, aiming to better understand the connections between their autonomy, professional discretion, and accountability in assessment within different governance contexts. To address this aim, the study is designed as a comparative case study (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017), utilizing semi-structured interviews with school principals in two German municipalities (N=12) and five Norwegian municipalities (N=12) conducted between 2023 and 2024. A variety of documents from the same municipalities have also been included in the study for contextualization, since a thorough contextual description is essential for this comparative study in order to categorize the phenomenon (Landman & Carvalho, 2003). All interviews were transcribed in their respective languages, and relevant sections discussing the assessment or evaluation of teachers were extracted. This information was organized into an Excel spreadsheet for a clear comparison and analyzed inspired by thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). This method was selected because it identifies patterns within the data, allowing extensive datasets to be categorized in an organized manner. Similarities in this cross-country comparison may provide evidence for universal accountability structures, whereas differences might indicate government-specific particularities.

An initial preliminary analysis indicates that in Germany, local education authorities provide administrative, functional, and legal oversight to ensure school quality. School principals must follow the local education authorities’ directives while also evaluating teachers locally. Teacher evaluations typically occur during the probationary period before they can enter civil service. Once teachers achieve civil servant status, evaluations are no longer regular but occur in specific situations, such as when applying to another school (Terhart, 2016). Principals have to use a strict grading system and are encouraged to utilize only specific parts of the grading scale to ensure comparability across schools and districts. This suggests that German principals have limited autonomy due to a high degree of answerability in the area of teacher assessment. In contrast, in Norway, there is no formal grading of teachers and few formal systems for teacher assessment. However, initiatives have been undertaken at the upper secondary education level where students evaluate teachers. Presently, the implementation of such evaluations is at the discretion of local education authorities or individual schools (Elstad et al., 2015). Nevertheless, school principals are still responsible for the quality of teaching and the follow-up of teachers’ work. This indicates a broader scope of discretionary reasoning for Norwegian principals, as their work emphasizes responsibility rather than answerability.

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