The Commodification of Instructional Improvement in an Age of High-Stakes Accountability

• In Event: 25.064 - Thinking About the Field: Supervision Scholars Think About Its Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Objectives

Teachers work in a high-stakes climate of accountability. State policies have been busy attempting to identify the ineffective teacher and those to reward (Author, 2016). One aspect of this policy climate that has been neglected as well as unexamined has been instructional improvement. This paper examines the Danielson Framework for Teaching for its assumptions about teaching and its improvement.

Theoretical Framework

The researcher uses writings: from the sociology of the professions to identify why and how commodification occurs (e.g., Abbott, 2000; Bauman, 2007; Ritzer, 2014)); from business on the power and appeal of marketing claims (e.g., Thompson, 2004); and from supervision on its purposes and difficulty of instructional improvement (e.g., Garman, 1982; Nolan & Francis).

Mode of inquiry

This research builds on earlier research, identifying claims about teaching and teacher quality (Author, 2010) and uses a critical lens. Critical qualitative research “uncovers, examines, and critiques, the social, cultural, and psychological assumptions that structure and limit our ways of thinking and being in the world” (Merriam, 2002, p.9). Its goal is to help us understand and free ourselves from these limits. The researcher started with the assumption that the material examined is not neutral in its portrayal of instructional improvement.

Data sources

The Framework for Teaching is the most widely known teacher evaluation system. While an early version of the Framework is free, the infrastructure of improvement is an add-on, fee-based service. Danielson (2016) and supporting material (e.g., webpages, books, articles, reports and videos) are analyzed to identify and illustrate marketing claims about instructional improvement.

Results

One example is “What teachers need:” Feedback is provided so that teachers know when their work “falls short” and “how to bring their work up to standard and correct their errors.” New teachers need “pats on the back” so that they know they are appreciated and that their performance is on track.” In contrast, mature teachers are “more self-reliant in assessing practice and charting a course toward improvement.” This is an over-simplification of (and the only statement about) the needs of different teachers. Text from Danielson’s material is used to illustrate each claim.

Scholarly significance.

The Framework is one of many available tools of instructional improvement. Others include: the Library of Practice, videos of 18,000 classrooms and Digital Promise, a database of research from academic journals. Some tier is free but others are for fee. These three foreshadow the future of a commodified instructional improvement made simple by technology and accessible by the internet.

This research critically portrays vendor beliefs about instructional improvement. Vendors can either encourage teachers and supervisors to think about teaching as complex and in its context, or as generic. Vendors can teach us to think that teaching and its improvement are complicated and contested, or easy and simple. This research portrays their power and seduction and raises questions about whether scholars in the field of supervision should reclaim instructional improvement and be a voice of critique in the current accountability movement

Author

• Helen M. Hazi, West Virginia University