The evolution of accountability

Webb, P. Taylor

doi:10.1080/02680939.2011.587539

Cited by 31 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(47 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This position has been outlined in some detail by Rose (1999) in his account of neo-liberal governance and the self-capitalizing and self-responsibilising individual. Webb (2011) argues that at the broader societal level we are transiting from what Foucault called a 'disciplinary society' towards what Deleuze described as 'control societies', with the latter evident in the reality of ongoing incessant measurement and assessment. These numbers also provide a way for the state to manage risk, an aspect of what Thrift (2005) sees as late capitalism becoming a project of knowing itself, with data being central to this self-knowledge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

See 1 more Smart Citation

‘Catalyst data’: perverse systemic effects of audit and accountability in Australian schooling

Lingard

Sellar

2013

Journal of Education Policy

186

109

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper examines the perverse effects of the new accountability regime central to the Labor government's national reform agenda in schooling. The focus is on National Assessment Program -Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results that now act as 'catalyst data' and are pivotal to school and system accountability. We offer a case study, with two embedded units of analysis, in which NAPLAN has become high stakes testing for systems. The first involves the relationships between the federal government and three States (Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland) in negotiating performance targets on NAPLAN for reward payments in respect of a national agreement to improve literacy and numeracy. We show how Victoria used 2009 data as baseline, set ambitious targets and failed to meet them, while Queensland set much less ambitious targets, met them and was rewarded. New South Wales created targets that combined literacy and numeracy scores, obfuscating the evidence, and met their targets. The second focuses specifically on Queensland and the ramifications of the poor performance of the State on the 2008 NAPLAN. This resulted in a review commissioned by the Premier, a Report on how to improve performance, and the introduction of Teaching and Learning Audits and State-wide targets for improvement on NAPLAN. This unit of analysis focuses on the perverse effects of this highly politicized agenda. This paper shows how States seek to protect their 'reputational capital' and as such, 'game' the system. The data for the analysis draw upon interviews with relevant senior policy-makers and on analysis of relevant documents and media coverage.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Ranson 2003Ranson , 2012Ravitch 2010;Suspitsyna 2010;Webb 2011) to the philosophical (e.g. Biesta 2004;Harvey 2010) and the more normative and policy pragmatic (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Catalyst data’: perverse systemic effects of audit and accountability in Australian schooling

Lingard

Sellar

2013

Journal of Education Policy

186

109

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…La SEP puede ser comprendida como un dispositivo neoliberal en tanto transfiere los riesgos sociales, políticos y económicos del mejoramiento escolar desde los gobiernos a los sostenedores y a las escuelas, quienes operan como agentes individuales responsables de sus resultados (Webb, 2011). Este dispositivo, utilizando los resultados de la medición del SIMCE como principal indicador del logro educacional, vincula consecuencias que van desde mayor supervisión hasta el cierre de establecimientos.…”

Section: Planteamiento Del Problemaunclassified

“…El trabajo docente empieza a perder sentido, y los profesores tienden a orientarse a ser evaluados positivamente y a responder a la presión y vigilancia de las que son parte (Day, 2002;Webb, 2011). De esta forma, la literatura internacional ha buscado llamar la atención sobre las políticas de accountability, que podrían estar generando una transformación de la cultura escolar, no necesariamente más favorable para el trabajo educativo, en tanto conllevaría una pérdida de sentido.…”

Section: Planteamiento Del Problemaunclassified

Transformaciones en la cultura escolar en el marco de la implementación de políticas de accountability en Chile: Un estudio etnográfico en dos escuelas clasificadas en recuperación

et al. 2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Goldstein 2004;Graham and Neu 2004;Au 2007;Suspitsyna 2010;Koyama 2011;Ozga et al 2011a;Webb 2011;Dahler-Larsen 2012;Lingard and Sellar 2013). This scholarly genre questions the benign nature of numerical data and performance measurement, and approaches data production on education, instead, as a means to restructure education systems and reformulate the purpose of education, so as to modify state-society relations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Elastic numbers: national examinations data as a technology of government

Piattoeva

2014

Journal of Education Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article is motivated by interest in the deployment of massive numerical information produced by national examinations in the practices of control and steering. It examines how data generated in the compulsory school graduation examination in the Russian Federation connect together different actors within the education system and beyond, and the nature of the relationships so formed. These questions take as their unit of analysis the relations and relationships created and/or re-ordered through numbers, and they unmask who utilizes the numerical data, and for what purpose. The article brings together two major arguments in the existing literature on quantification, and develops them further into a coherent research framework which is then applied to capture and interpret the circulation and application of the examinations data. The first argument suggests that governance by numbers, characteristic of contemporary regulation practices, relies on and promotes the parallel existence of soft and hard regimes of regulation. The second addresses the increasingly public nature of social statistics, that is, its circulation on both official and popular levels. The article illustrates that it is by means of analysing the overlappings and interdependencies between the soft and hard regimes, and the two levels of data entry, that we can best understand how numbers exercise power and how they become rooted and gain more power in the process.

show abstract

The evolution of accountability

Cited by 31 publications

References 44 publications

‘Catalyst data’: perverse systemic effects of audit and accountability in Australian schooling

‘Catalyst data’: perverse systemic effects of audit and accountability in Australian schooling

Transformaciones en la cultura escolar en el marco de la implementación de políticas de accountability en Chile: Un estudio etnográfico en dos escuelas clasificadas en recuperación

Elastic numbers: national examinations data as a technology of government

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About