Responsibility as a Critical Stance: Has the Accountability Movement Diluted Responsibility?

• In Event: Roundtable Session 60
  In Roundtable Session: Disability and Accountability in Schools

Abstract

In this era of high accountability for students and their teachers, we are faced with solving one issue only to have others arise, often unintended. One problem that has emerged out of accountability trends is that of responsibility. Policy makers as well as educationists agree that one purpose of education is to foster responsibility in our students, yet approaches that are believed to encourage responsibility, e.g. for learning, for thinking, for completing work, in students may also foster unintentional attitudes about themselves and their relation to self, community and world. This paper examines 3 distinct types of responsibility as they may play out in classroom and impact students as engaged citizens who can make meaning of this world.

Authors

• Rosalie M. Romano, Western Washington University

• Molly Noelle Lawrence, Western Washington University