Teacher autonomy in the age of performance-based accountability: A review based on teaching profession regulatory models (2017-2020)

Abstract

In recent decades, the governance of educational systems has experienced dramatic changes in many countries. Schools have been given more autonomy whilst being held increasingly accountable at the central level through standardized testing and other forms of external evaluation. The mechanisms of performance-based accountability (PBA) and the consequences attached to test results vary. In high-stakes systems, teachers’ careers are more directly connected to students’ performance, and low performing schools might risk closure, whereas in lower-stakes systems, the official administrative consequences of accountability for school actors are more symbolic than material. The main aim of this paper is to understand the impact of different forms of PBA on teachers’ work from a comparative perspective. Most research on this topic is based on single-context case studies, which makes it difficult to understand the impact of policy factors and professional contexts in teachers’ decisions and autonomy. To address this challenge, we review recent investigations (2017-2020) on the topic and compare their findings in different teachers' regulatory contexts. The review includes 101 articles from the SCOPUS and Web of Science databases. We find that evidence on the impact of PBA on teachers’ perceptions and beliefs are variegated, and that the implications of PBA on teachers’ autonomy does not only depend on the level of accountability stakes, but on teachers’ professional regulation.

A Taxonomy of Subjective Control: Teachers‘ Narrative Accounts of a Teacher Evaluation System

“…Teachers’ discretionary judgments about the best interest of one or more students might clash with the expectation that they display the practices associated with ratings of Effective or Highly Effective on a Danielson domain. One middle school English teacher described these concerns about the evaluation process as “a dog and pony show” where they had to say the things that “gets me a checkmark on that rubric.” Another veteran special education teacher summed it up by noting, “When you give someone any kind of rubric, it boxes you in.” Thus, in the same way standardized testing and accountability policies have resulted in educators narrowing the curriculum in order to teach to the test (Parcerisa et al, 2022), we found that several of the teachers we interviewed responded to evaluation policies by going against their professional judgment and instead teaching to the rubric. Pressley et al (2018) also documented this tendency, especially when administrators only infrequently visit to observe classroom practices.…”

Cuasimercados, rendición de cuentas e innovación: analizando el caso de las Escuelas Libres en Inglaterra desde la perspectiva de los docentes

“…This relates to the first assumption of this study: Free Schools should be 'freer' to innovate compared to Academies. Secondly, autonomy in quasi-market reforms generally refers to the school-management level and not to teachers individual autonomy, which is mainly derived from the first one (Greany, 2016;Parcerisa et al, 2022). Therefore, teachers' experiences and enactment of school approaches or even their degree of decision-making power within the classroom are determined by school-level decisions about innovation and accountability.…”

“…Similarly, Greany and Waterhouse (2016) found some pedagogical innovations as project-based learning, but scarce innovations at the curriculum level in Academies and Free Schools. It is important to stress that quasi-market reforms do not advance teachers' autonomy to make decisions about their professional boundaries and frames, considered professional autonomy, nor for them to make decisions that influence school-level practices on teaching and learning, defined as collegial autonomy (Parcerisa et al, 2022). Rather, teachers derive individual autonomy from these reforms, as the school management may have limited capacity to influence their practices (Parcerisa et al, 2022), yet school instructional approach or curriculum decisions occur at the leadership level.…”

“…It is important to stress that quasi-market reforms do not advance teachers' autonomy to make decisions about their professional boundaries and frames, considered professional autonomy, nor for them to make decisions that influence school-level practices on teaching and learning, defined as collegial autonomy (Parcerisa et al, 2022). Rather, teachers derive individual autonomy from these reforms, as the school management may have limited capacity to influence their practices (Parcerisa et al, 2022), yet school instructional approach or curriculum decisions occur at the leadership level. To illustrate this, in one of the few studies about innovations in Free Schools, Wiborg et al (2018) concluded that innovative teaching and curriculum practices were relatively small due to PBA constraints on teachers' autonomy, while at the school management level a wide variety of innovations did seem to exist.…”

“…The second group of findings relates to teachers' autonomy and the extent to which they see themselves developing innovation. As discussed, school autonomy conferred in reforms as the A&FS policy is different from teachers' professional or collegial autonomy, yet it does not limit teachers' individual autonomy within the classroom (Parcerisa et al, 2022). Teachers agreed that they felt more freedom and autonomy in their current Free Schools, particularly when compared to Academies run by a chain.…”