This article offers the application of constructivist grounded theory in inquiring dimensions of accountability in education. The classical version of grounded theory, which was aligned with the positivist epistemology, has been well discussed in qualitative research. However, the constructivist version of grounded theorizing concerning education has not been adequately articulated in the existing literature. In response to this methodological gap, this paper discusses the canons of constructivist grounded theory in reference to inquiring school actors' accountability for service delivery in education. The paper draws empirical evidence from the author's study conducted in the context of community schools in Nepal. The paper argues that theory construction in constructivist grounded theory design is accomplished through the interaction of both data-indicated and extant theoretical concepts by integrating inductive, abductive and deductive reasoning during various stages of the inquiry.The paper also argues that, in constructivist grounded theory, it is not the data saturation as such but the level of researcher's satisfaction where the grounded theorizing terminates. The paper concludes that the constructivist epistemology of grounded theorizing is useful in addressing the localized understanding of accountability in the decentralized context of education governance in Nepal.
Scholars have raised two contradictory issues of particular relevance to current debates of accountability in the utilization of resources for service delivery in public schools. First, that inadequate resource resulted in the poor performance; second, that school actors lack accountability in managing the resources at their disposal. Corresponding to these views, empirical evidence suggests that school head's proactive initiatives find ways to fill up the resource gap; and at the same time, in doing so, school head’s agency has created an invisible power structure putting his accountability practice in paradox. Building on these insights, this paper presents evidences from Nepali community schools on how head teacher’s accountability as managing resources manifests in paradoxes. I argue that under the performativity of market-based accountability narrative, the school head’s accountability is fluid and moving between the two paradoxical extremes of providing service or promoting dominance over other school actors.
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