Framing Accountability in Teacher Education: The U.S. Case and Its Implications

• In Event: 25.026 - Assessment and Accountability in Teacher Education Systems: Four Nations, Four Cases

Abstract

Problem and Educational Significance
Over the last 30 years, there has been a policy turn in teacher education, which involves increasing policy and political intervention into teacher education as part of the shift to a global knowledge society (Author, 2005; Beauchamp & Clarke, 2016; Mehta, 2013). In the U.S., unprecedented attention to teacher quality has been coupled with “world-class” teaching standards and outcomes-based accountability (Earley, Imig & Michelli, 2011; Taubman, 2009). Increasingly teacher education programs are being held accountable for their graduates’ effectiveness, determined through assessments linking evidence regarding teachers and teacher preparation programs with students’ achievement and other desired outcomes such as teacher retention and employer and graduates’ satisfaction (Author, 2016).

Objectives, Perspectives, and Modes of Inquiry
This paper adopts a policy studies approach that is broadly cultural-historial in that it is context sensitive but also cognizant of the extraordinariliy complex U.S. context wherein new accountability schemes are superimposed onto already existing ones (Romzek, 2000). In addition each of the 50 U.S. states has its own regulatory policies regarding teacher preparation and licensure that criss-cross with federal reporting policies (Wilson & Youngs, 2005), national and state accreditation regulations (Emihovich et. al., 2011), and increasingly, critiques from think tanks, philanthropies, and education reform advocacy organizations (Hess & McShane, 2014; Wilson, 2014; Zeichner & Sandoval, 2015). Given this complex context, the paper concentrates on four broadly-known and widely-implemented accountability initiatives. The paper applies perspectives from policy theory (Akiba & LeTendre, 2009; Honig, 2006) and frame theory (Entman, 1993; Gamson, 1988; Goffman, 1974) to selected policy documents and tools that capture each initiative.

Analysis/Results and Contributions
Analysis revealed that although all four initiatives targeted accountability, they varied considerably in terms of: (1) horizontal and vertical dimensions; (2) roles and relationships; and (3) diagnostic and prognostic frames. Some were developed by new professional organizations or advocacy organizations, while others were expansions or reinventions of the powers of long-time policy actors. Although the initiatives had connections to global education reforms, they featured different permutations of federal, state, and institutional mandates and enforcements. For each initiative, the paper identifies diagnostic frames (varying constructions of what caused the teacher education accountability problem in the U.S. and what kind of problem it actually is) and prognostic frames (proposed solutions to the diagnosed problem) (Gamson, 1992; Snow & Benford, 1988). Across the initiatives, diagnostic frames ranged from lack of sophisticated data systems, to lack of transparency in the consumer marketplace, to lack of professional uniformity. Prognostic frames varied in terms of operating assumptions about the policy mechanisms that actually have the capacity to improve teacher education accountability and thus teacher quality. In addition the paper shows that the initiatives are/were contested on diverse grounds by those both internal and external to the teacher education community. Finally although all the initiatives aimed generally to promote equity, the paper demonstrates that most operated from a narrow sense of equity as equal or same access to teachers without addressing the larger historical systems of inequality that produce educational inequity.

Author

• Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College