Enacting Teacher Evaluation Reform: The Role of Teachers' Interpretations and Translations in Processes of Policy Realization

• In Event: Roundtable Session 52
  In Roundtable Session: Lives of Teachers: Teacher Image, Knowledge, and Quality

Abstract

This qualitative case study examined the role that teachers play in processes of policy realization and the subsequent impact that these processes have on teachers lives. More specifically, drawing on Ball, Maguire, & Braun's (2012) policy enactment framework, this study looked at the way that teachers' interpretations and translations impacted the enactment of teacher evaluation reform in their respective schools. While the policies in question did not appear to have their intended impacts, the lived experience of this reform was quite complex. Teachers resistance contributed these policies unintended effects; however, this resistance was not just erosive but also generative. The choices teachers' made around policy interpretive and translational resistance helped them re-inscribe the meanings of this reform.

Author

• Angela Leigh Masters, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign