Enacting school self-evaluation: the policy actors in Irish schools

Abstract

School self-evaluation is a low-stakes policy recently mandated in Ireland and while schools are becoming more consistent in engaging in this internal mode of evaluation, their engagement has not been uniform. This paper provides new ways of thinking about, understanding, and explaining how school self-evaluation plays out in Irish schools. Subscribing to the view that policies are not simply implemented but enacted through the creative processes of interpretation and translation, this paper shows how school self-evaluation is performed in Irish schools in various ways by various people. We identify numerous policy actors in our qualitative data: narrators, entrepreneurs, outsiders, transactors, enthusiasts, translators, critics, and receivers. This assortment of actors helps to bring school self-evaluation to life but as it comprises heterogeneous entities with varying characteristics, levels of experience, and motivations it is simply not possible for this policy to be implemented in schools as policymakers envisage.

Researching how student voice plays out in relation to classroom practice in Irish post-primary schools: a heuristic device

“…(Ball, Maguire, and Braun 2012, 10) While SSE is at present officially focused more on improvement than accountability, student voice does present, even unintentionally, opportunities for the monitoring of teacher performance. It would perhaps be naive to not consider that this is now occurring in schools, and there are signs that this is taking place (see Skerritt et al 2021). The arrival of the Student and Parent Charter Bill could possibly give rise to increased surveillance.…”

“…(Salokangas, Wermke, and Harvey 2020, 343) It is not necessarily solely principals undertaking surveillance, however. The current authors have found that some post-holders in Irish post-primary schools engage in policy monitoring and monitor the work of teachers through student voice initiatives such as surveys (see Skerritt et al 2021).…”

“…While principals might find student voice useful, including in relation to classroom practice, as elsewhere, will different teachers have different views? Like all schools, Irish schools are made up of teachers who are at different career stages, have a range of characteristics, and are variously motivated (see Skerritt et al 2021) and recent research indicates that more senior teachers can be fearful of collaborative practice (Moynihan and O'Donovan 2021) while competitive individualism is emerging as a dominant trait of the country's early career teachers (Murray 2021). Not only does strong anecdotal evidence suggest that teachers towards the beginning of their careers are more open to and relaxed about student voice, but it has recently been found that many practising teachers feel that demography and experience play a key role in determining how open staff are to the inclusion of stakeholders such as students and parents in SSE (Brown et al 2020a).…”

“…It raises questions and sets out to provoke more critical thinking regarding how student voice plays out in Irish post-primary schools vis-à-vis classroom practice. In doing so, it draws a distinction between consultations that take place inside classrooms between students and teachers and consultations that take place between management and students, and it is not only mindful of the different actors inside schools but of the need for more research that looks at how SSE and its features such as student voice play out in different types of schools, including schools serving disadvantaged areas (Skerritt et al 2021). Thus, cognisance is paid to school patronage, school socio-economic context, and the career stage of teachers as well as positions in the school hierarchy.…”

Embedding Self-Evaluation in School Routines

“…In this new realm of allegedly greater school autonomy, inspection regimes have emerged in most countries, even those with no such tradition but, again somewhat paradoxically, alongside a drive for control and regulation by external inspectors, most inspection regimes give greater or lesser emphasis to some form of internal regulation, often referred to as SSE (Brown et al, 2018). School self-regulation or SSE is expected to be conducted, at least to some extent and within an externally designed structure, by the “stakeholders,” school leaders, teachers, parents, and students (Brown et al, 2019, 2020a; Brown, McNamara et al, 2021; Skerritt et al, 2021). This, supposedly, “reflects the democratic values of participation and transparency” (Kyriakides & Campbell, 2004, p.24) of schools as the judgment about the quality of education provision is made by those who are most affected (students and parents) or who affect it the most (teachers and school leaders).…”