Means, ends and meaning in accountability for strategic education governance

Abstract

This working paper was prepared by Glenn Fahey and Florian Köster at the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills. It lays the groundwork for developing tools that help education systems systematically improve their accountability arrangements. It is part of the Strategic Education Governance project at the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI). The Strategic Education Governance (SEG) project supports countries in identifying the best ways to achieve national objectives for education systems in a context of multi-level governance structures and complex environments. It identifies and promotes effective governance processes in the realms of accountability, capacity, knowledge governance, stakeholder involvement, strategic thinking and a whole-of-system perspective.

The relevance of general pedagogical knowledge for successful teaching

“…After Shulman's seminal work research on pedagogical content knowledge proliferated the field, there have unsurprisingly been numerous reviews summarising studies on pedagogical content knowledge. These are offered with a focus on various subjects such as music (Grieser, 2018[46]), English as a foreign language (Gitomer and Zisk, 2015[47]; Evens, Elen and Depaepe, 2016 [48]), geography (Roehrig and Nam, 2011 [49]), math and science (Baxter and Lederman, 1999 [50]; Hashweh, 2013 [51]; Schneider and Plasman, 2011 [52]; Evens, Elen and Depaepe, 2015 [53]; Depaepe, Verschaffel and Kelchtermans, 2013 [54]) and, more recently, technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK, (Willermark, 2018[55]; Rosenberg and Koehler, 2015 [56]; Kasim and Singh, 2017 [57]).…”

“…Guided practical experience and reflection can be provided in practicum, courses with practical components (Cocard and Krähenbühl, 2013[123]) or well-structured teacher induction (Scheerens and Blömeke, 2016[38]). Stimulated reflection on teaching through video or other material, as used for researching teachers' use of knowledge in the classroom in qualitative studies, can also be an effective tool for improving pedagogical skills of teachers (Kleinknecht and Gröschner, 2016[175]; Gamoran Sherin and Es, 2009 [176]; Es and Sherin, 2010 [177]; Evens, Elen and Depaepe, 2015 [53]). In addition, video-and computer-based trainings represent "lighter" ways to begin with the practical training of knowledge application (Piwowar et al, 2017[178]; Barth et al, 2019[179]).…”