Effects of quality assurance and evaluation on schools’ room for action

Gurova, Galina; Candido, Helena Hinke Dobrochinski; Xing-guo, Zhou

doi:10.4324/9780203712306-7

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 14 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…Simultaneously, as regions, schools and even individual teachers are increasingly controlled through the practices of data production, small-scale paid-for services emerge to offer, for example, commercial diagnostics of student achievement, paid-for student academic contests and a variety of local ranking exercises providing documentary proof of "high performance." In this manner, governmentsponsored datafication initiatives, carrying high stakes, feed the emergence of supplementary datafication services to help students, teachers and schools to manage the pressure, amplifying data collection exercises and the volumes of data produced (see Gurova et al 2018).…”

Section: Datafication Extending Spaces Of Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Digitalization of Russian Education: Changing Actors and Spaces of Governance

Piattoeva

Gurova

2020

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

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This chapter discusses the operation of digital education in relation to the changing governance of education in Russia. It examines how digitalization changes the character of traditional actors and enables new actors and actor assemblages to enter the scene of education governance and provision. It then looks at how datafication extends spaces of governance in both a topographical and a topological manner. Topographically, some practices of datafication follow established administrative structures enabling tighter vertical control over regions and education institutions by the federal authorities. But datafication also generates spaces that overcome topographical distance through relationality and connectedness. These manifest, first, in intensifying proximities to the global level of education governance bypassing the national authority, and, second, in the possibilities of intimate governance reaching into individual subjectivities.

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Section: Datafication Extending Spaces Of Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Digitalization of Russian Education: Changing Actors and Spaces of Governance

Piattoeva

Gurova

2020

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

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“…This means that QAE is a non-neutral policy instrument of governance and the data produced by QAE policies fills the space between the state and the new user-consumer citizen (Ozga, 2009). Having multiple facets, QAE policies do not represent a single mode of governance, but permeate different models (Gurova et al, 2018). They incorporate the principle of standardisation from the 'bureaucratic-professional' model of governance (Maroy, 2009), embedded in Weber's (2015) ideas of efficiency and rationality organising and maintaining social order.…”

Section: Quality Assurance and Evaluation Policies As A Means Of Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As such, overlapping interests, competitiveness and tensions coexist alongside some sort of teamwork (Ball et al, 2012). School actors are 'subject to and objects of policy' (Ball et al, 2012:3), but also political actors (Gurova et al, 2018). Negotiation, contestation and struggles among school actors and in relation to different groups (e.g., government) form mechanisms of policymaking (Ozga, 2000).…”

Section: Policy Enactment In Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, little attention has been devoted to how school actors incorporate the policies related to quality and evaluation in education. The international literature suggests that policies resonate in distinct manners at the school level (Gurova et al, 2018;Maroy et al, 2017;Hardy, 2015;Braun et al, 2011;Coburn, 2004;Tyack & Cuban, 1995), often in ways different to policymakers' outlines. Whilst this phenomenon has been widely studied in Anglo-American and European countries, it remains under-examined in the Global South.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Datafication in schools: enactments of quality assurance and evaluation policies in Brazil

Candido

2019

International Studies in Sociology of Education

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This paper investigates datafication in schools through an analysis of the enactments of quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) policies in Brazil. In doing so, I question how data permeates and changes school environments, school actors' conduct and their imaginaries. QAE policies encompass large-scale assessments, indicators, rankings and other steering mechanisms, but importantly connect data to quality in education. Here, I analyse the discourses of school actors (principals, coordinators, supervisors, teachers, students and parents) from three Brazilian public schools collected through semistructured interviews (n = 28). Data manifests in those schools as a technology of government. Schools enact QAE policies in distinct ways, incorporating the idea of governmentality, but also proposing alternative patterns of action.

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“…These indicators served as the criteria in school rankings, performance-based salary schemes for teachers and principals, and for the promotion of teachers to higher professional categories. If a school showed a performance significantly below the regional average, it could be inspected, with potential consequences such as lay-offs of members of the school administration, although such severe measures were rare (Gurova et al, 2018). However, even in the case of poor student performance, schools would not be closed as long as they complied with state regulations and had a sufficient number of students relative to their facilities.…”

Section: Russian Accountability Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

School actors’ enactment of a performative accountability scheme in Russia: Tensions, dilemmas and strategies

Gurova

Camphuijsen²

2019

European Educational Research Journal

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In European and global educational debates, performative or test-based accountability has become central to modernizing and raising the performance of education systems. However, despite the global popularity of performative accountability modalities, existing research finds contradictory evidence on its effects, which tend to be highly context-sensitive. With the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of the mechanisms and contextual factors that explain the effects of performative accountability, this study investigates the enactment of a performative accountability scheme adopted in the Russian school system. The analysis is based on interview and observation data collected during an in-depth qualitative study of two neighbouring schools with contrasting logics of action. Our findings illuminate the specific ways in which accountability policy outcomes are mediated and shaped by schools’ context and agency. We show how schools with different logics of action react to external pressures, and how different professional groups within schools experience policy pressures in dissimilar ways. We conclude that performative accountability mechanisms reinforce instrumental, and impede expressive, logics of action in schools. In both cases they produce tensions, particularly for schools in disadvantaged areas.

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Effects of quality assurance and evaluation on schools’ room for action

Cited by 7 publications

References 14 publications

Digitalization of Russian Education: Changing Actors and Spaces of Governance

Digitalization of Russian Education: Changing Actors and Spaces of Governance

Datafication in schools: enactments of quality assurance and evaluation policies in Brazil

School actors’ enactment of a performative accountability scheme in Russia: Tensions, dilemmas and strategies

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