Making sense of evidence-based governance reforms: an exploratory analysis of teachers coping with the Austrian performance standard policy

ABSTRACT

During recent years many European countries have modernized the governance of their education systems according to an ‘evidence-based model’ which, e.g., materialized in new school inspections and comparative performance assessment. Qualitative case study data of six primary and secondary schools is used to explore in-school processes of sensemaking and constructing consequences of the Austrian performance standard policy (which is taken as an exemplar for evidence-based reforms). Teachers’ understandings and actions are compared with the normative claims underlying this policy. Results show that only two of the five processes claimed to be effective for school improvement through performance standards are found in the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The analysis in this paper will concentrate on teacher and school leader data. Student and parent data is used in a few instances to complement the professionals’ perspectives.

2. For the secondary school case studies, two ‘Neue Mittelschulen’ (NMS) and an academic secondary school (Allgemeinbildende Höhere Schule; AHS) were chosen to represent the bipartite Austrian secondary system. After four years of primary schooling (6– 10 years), two types of secondary schools cater for Austrian students: the Neue Mittelschule (NMS) represents the ‘practical’ and less prestigious track of the Austrian secondary education system and caters for students of 10 to 14 years. The Allgemeinbildende Höhere Schulen (AHS) represents the academic (‘Gymnasium’) track of the secondary system and caters for students from 10 to 18 years. In times of declining student numbers, there is often a fierce competition for students which is biassed toward the more prestigious academic secondary schools. For distinction, we will call them ‘secondary school’ and ‘academic secondary school’ in this paper.

3. For the references to data see Appendix 1.

4. School improvement (as opposed to classroom development) is here defined as whole-school development which goes beyond changes in individual classroom teaching.

5. It is a peculiarity of the Austrian standard concept is that the results of the standard testing, which takes place in May, are usually reported back in December. As a result, in the vast majority of schools, namely in all primary and secondary schools (and partly also in academic secondary schools), the students of the tested classes have already left the school at the time of data feedback.