Change, Changing, and Being Changed: A study of self in the throes of multiple accountability demands

Abstract

Using the narrative inquiry research method, this self-study of my teacher education practices examines the influence of four simultaneous accountability reviews – a national accreditation review, a regional accreditation review, a university system review, and local campus review – on my personal experiences and identity within academia. The inquiry offers a public view of private practice, explores the hidden curriculum of the accountability phenomenon, reveals cover stories individually and collectively lived, and illuminates how my knowledge of accountability increased. Drawing on evidence excerpted from journal entries, work samples, historical documents and meeting notes, I reconstruct a series of changes concerning human subjects reviews, course syllabi requirements, student assignments, grading procedures and personal productivity. The self inquiry reveals individual and institutional compromises that were made to achieve acceptable measures of success as determined by external agencies. Most of all, hard lessons learned amid multiple accountability agendas are brought to the forefront for discussion and analysis. The accumulation of self-studies such as this helps to show the nature of the accountability phenomenon and its pernicious impact on teacher educators' work and personal images of teaching. Such studies demonstrate how desperately productive change is needed in the fields of teaching and teacher education.

Keywords:

• self-study
• accountability
• performativity
• narrative inquiry
• identity
• higher education