Storying teacher education policy: Critical counternarratives of curricular, pedagogical, and activist responses to state-mandated teacher performance assessments

Abstract

The rise of high-stakes, standardized, teacher performance assessments (TPAs) is central to the industry being created out of the regulation, policing, and evaluation of university-based teacher education In addition to reinforcing a narrow and counter-critical framework, TPAs can shift responsibility for the evaluation of teacher candidates from university-based teacher educators with a comprehensive and nuanced fluency in candidates' preparedness to external scorers trained to standardize and depersonalize effective practice. In this article, four social justice-oriented teacher educators from three different states examine the practical and political effects of TPAs in their local contexts. By analyzing the curricular, pedagogical, and political implications of this high-stakes standardization of their field, they speak back to a policy landscape that too often marginalizes the voices of the teachers and students it purports to serve. Throughout, they examine the dilemmas of practice created by TPAs, as teachers and teacher educators seek to redefine what it means to enact justice-oriented professional agency in an increasingly regulated context. A critical counternarrative methodological approach was used to collect and process the authors’ lived stories and then to collaboratively reflect upon each other’s personal/professional experiences with TPAs. Several strategies are identified for enacting agency in response to TPAs, including curricular acts of resistance, resistance through participation in state legislative processes, policymaking within teacher education programs, the production of activist scholarship, and refusal to participate at all. Ways are suggested for teacher educators to minimize, mitigate, and resist unjust policy through curricular, political, and scholarly activism.

Respuesta e interpretación a políticas de rendición de cuentas de formación docente en Chile

“…Las culturas profesionales, basadas en diferentes nociones de profesionalización, permiten comprender la aceptación o críticas a la política, y el alineamiento con o resistencia a ella. Diversos estudios ahondan en prácticas de resistencia al analizar las implicancias de la instalación de las políticas en aspectos curriculares, pedagógicos y políticos (Henning, Dover, Dotson, & Agarwal-Rangnath, 2018). Las críticas y respuestas a la política nacional de los directores de programa del segundo y tercer grupo muestran matices, que pueden ser categorizados bajo distintas nociones de resistencia.…”

“…En el segundo grupo, las direcciones de programa critican fuertemente la política y enfatizan su compromiso con la educación pública; sin embargo, reconocen haber realizado cambios en su currículum para asegurarse de cubrir los contenidos declarados en los estándares nacionales y evaluados por la prueba nacional diagnóstica. Esta forma de resistencia o subversión encubierta (Henning et al, 2018) estaría movilizada por la tensión entre los compromisos éticos institucionales, que a su juicio no están presentes en la política, y a su calidad de funcionarios públicos, cuyo llamado es a alinearse con las directrices nacionales. En cambio, las direcciones de programa del tercer grupo, aun cuando reconocen cambios en el currículum basado en las demandas de la política, plantean una resistencia manifiesta (Henning et al, 2018).…”

“…Esta forma de resistencia o subversión encubierta (Henning et al, 2018) estaría movilizada por la tensión entre los compromisos éticos institucionales, que a su juicio no están presentes en la política, y a su calidad de funcionarios públicos, cuyo llamado es a alinearse con las directrices nacionales. En cambio, las direcciones de programa del tercer grupo, aun cuando reconocen cambios en el currículum basado en las demandas de la política, plantean una resistencia manifiesta (Henning et al, 2018). Esta resistencia se expresa no solo en el discurso, sino también en decisiones curriculares que buscan mantener las competencias del perfil de egreso y cursos asociados al sello institucional (religioso, local, o regional), a pesar de la constante presión por las prioridades que establece la política (estándares y contenidos de prueba diagnóstica).…”

Vol 10 No 2 (2020)

“…Along with state-mandated Teacher Performance Assessments (TPAs) in the US, came TEs' difficulties to implement them in ITE programs. By story-telling and collaborative reflection, four TEs researched the effects of TPAs on their justice-oriented agency, while keeping committed to educating pre-service teachers to meet and resist the demands of standardized testing (Henning, Dover, Dotson & Agarwal-Rangnath, 2018). Aligned to feminist research, a group of TEs used collective art-based poetic inquiry to address their emotional experiences-from despair and resignation to agency and empowerment-when confronting high-stakes testing and standardization of ITE, contrary to their social justice commitments (Cross, Dunn & Dotson, 2018).…”

“…Following the ecological perspective on agency, it could be argued that the findings suggest that TEs are as much "able to be reflexive and creative," acting counter to the structural constraints of education reform, as "enabled and constrained" by their contextual and biographical factors (Priestley et al, 2015, p. 22). Hence, despite being precarized by discourses of competitiveness, performativity and academic capitalism (Ellis et al, 2014), they find spaces for expressing their emotions, and engaging in critically reflective dialogue and writing that enhance professional agency (Cross et al, 2018;Henning et al, 2018). For TEs, language becomes a creative tool to achieve agency in their professional lives, challenging and resisting their working environments and conditions collectively.…”