Evidence of teaching practice in an age of accountability: when what can be counted isn’t all that counts

ABSTRACT

Cultures of performative accountability in education have been on the rise globally since the 1980s. Accordingly, teachers have increasingly been encouraged to understand their work in relation to particular forms of ‘evidence’. All evidence, however, is not regarded as equal, and sources of evidence privileged within cultures of performative accountability are typically narrowly rendered, apparently ‘objective’, externally generated and largely quantified in form. Recent research from the United States, Australia and England has suggested that such cultures may be re-shaping teacher practice and identity. Performative accountability, however, is not the only form of accountability, and this paper explores the tensions between performative and ‘intelligent’ accountability in teachers’ work and lives, reporting on research investigating Australian teachers’ understanding of and engagement with data and research as well as evidence of their work more broadly. The paper contributes to the literature on the datafication of teaching and debates regarding the nature and role of evidence in teaching work. Ultimately, we argue that spaces for rich understandings of evidence, present but not dominant in contemporary education policy, must be protected and extended in order for the current focus on evidence to generatively – and intelligently – reflect and shape teachers’ work.

KEYWORDS:

• Evidence
• datafication
• teachers
• accountability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. NAPLAN is the national standardised testing program in Australia. All school students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sit for NAPLAN tests in May each year, and the results are disseminated to schools, parents and the general public via the Commonwealth Government’s MySchool website.

2. The Higher School Certificate Results Analysis Package (RAP) is provided by the NSW Education Standards Authority to all schools to enable analysis of students’ HSC results each year.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a University of Sydney SOAR Fellowship 2018-2019.

Notes on contributors

Nicole Mockler

Nicole Mockler is an Associate Professor in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on education policy and politics, particularly as they relate to teachers’ work.

Meghan Stacey

Meghan Stacey is a lecturer in the sociology of education and education policy in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales. A former high school teacher, she takes a particular interest in education policy, teachers, and the operation of dis/advantage within systems of schooling.