Enacting Teacher Evaluation Reform: The Role of Resistance in Processes of Policy Realization

• In Event: Valid, Reliable, Fair, and Efficient? Evaluating Teachers and Teaching

Abstract

This paper presentation focuses on instances of resistance in the data from a larger comparative case study of teachers' responses to teacher evaluation reform. Findings indicate that current conceptualizations of resistance in the literature oversimplify teachers' responses to policy. A better way to think about resistance might also incorporate the ideas of strategic and ethical resistance. The latter is the focus of this presentation, as it reflected a deliberate attempt by participants to reconcile policy narratives with their own principled understandings of their practice. This kind of resistance also had the potential to be generative (shifted policy meanings) and productive (produced unexpected benefits) and it reflected an effort to maintain control over oneself and one's work.

Author

• Angela Leigh Masters, CUSD #3