Teaching in the age of accountability: restrained by school culture?

Abstract

In this paper, we explore how ‘teaching communication’ in the classroom is connected to school culture. In the age of accountability, the outcome focus force to the forefront, a ‘blame game’ which either blames students’ achievements on the teachers and teacher education, or the students and their socio-economic background. We argue that to succeed with teaching and learning is dependent on the school culture more than the single teacher or the students’ backgrounds. School culture is understood as attitudes, communication, student focus and engagement. Teaching communication in this paper is studied as teachers’ and students’ talk about subject matter in whole-class teaching. We explore how different school cultures give students different opportunities to experience meaning from teaching communication. The perspective on meaning is derived from Bildung-centred didactics. By using qualitative comparative case method in Norwegian Lower Secondary schools, we find three different types of ‘teaching communication’ typical for different school cultures: ‘Dialogic teaching communication’, ‘storytelling teaching communication’ and ‘reproducing teaching communication’. The school culture with the ‘dialogic’ variant is characterized by trust and reciprocity, making students’ experiencing meaning a possibility.

Keywords:

• Classroom research
• Bildung
• didactic theory and practice
• student participation
• school culture

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway as part of the project ‘Learning Regions’, and by the University of Agder.

Notes on contributors

Turid Skarre Aasebø

Turid Skarre Aasebø is an associate professor at the Department of Education, the University of Agder, Service Box 422, NO-4604 Kristiansand, Norway; e-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests focus on classroom research and student cultures, particularly construction of gender identities and how classroom cultures form the conditions for learning and meaning construction.

Jorunn H. Midtsundstad

Jorunn H. Midtsundstad is an associate professor at the Department of Education, the University of Agder, Service Box 422, NO-4604 Kristiansand, Norway; e-mail: [email protected]. Her interests centre on general didactics and school organizations. She is a Postdoctoral researcher in the project: ‘A general didactic theory for school development’. How school organisations can relate to their local environment to increases their possibilities for ‘teaching communication’.

Ilmi Willbergh

Ilmi Willbergh is an associate professor at the Department of Education, the University of Agder, Service Box 422, NO-4604 Kristiansand, Norway; e-mail: [email protected]. Her interests centre on general didactics and classroom research. She is editor (with Stefanie A. Hillen and Tanja Sturm) of Challenges facing contemporary didactics: Diversity of students and the role of new media in teaching and learning (Münster: Waxmann, 2011).