Developing a Tool for Reflective Analysis of Teacher Education Accountability Policies

• In Event: 81.033 - MTCC Roundtable Session 38
  In Roundtable Session: 81.033-6 - Analyzing Teacher Education Accountability Policies: Multiple Voices and Different Contexts

Abstract

Purposes and Theoretical Framework
This paper will present preliminary results on the development of a tool (reflective interview protocol) for actors to analyze TE accountability policies and initiatives. We explore this tool in Chile and Singapore, as two instrumental cases for analyzing TE policies (Mills, Durepos, & Wiebe, 2010; Stake, 2003). The Chilean case is an example of an external, indirect, and multi-actor regulatory system in TE, whereas the Singapore case is one of centralized provision of TE and a regulatory system directly geared toward programs’ improvement.
As in other papers of this symposium, this one is based on critical understandings of policy (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012) and the author’s (2018) framework for analyzing accountability policies. Assuming that teacher educators and policy makers are critical analyzers of policy, the development of the reflective tool is informed by the tradition of protocols use in teacher professional development (McDonald, Mohr, Dichter, & McDonald, 2013), and the concepts of “reflective practitioner” (Schön, 1983) and “theory of action” (Argyris & Shön, 1996; Schön & McDonald, 1998).
 
Methodology and Data Sources
General principles of protocols (e.g. clear structure, participation norms, and clarifying and probing questions) guided the tool design, and specifically the assumptions and structure of the “Do what you mean to do” protocol (McDonald et al., 2013). The protocol follows the structure of: 1) gathering participants’ contextual information; 2) explaining the concept of theory of action and presenting an artifact (graphic organizer) to facilitate analysis and reflection; 3) analyzing particular policy initiatives using the artifact. We conducted 20 individual interviews with five policy makers and five teacher educators from Singapore and Chile. These actors commonly have different roles in policy construction and implementation. We analyzed the interviews using authors’ framework (2018) and content analysis.

Preliminary Results
Preliminarily, we have found that the graphic organizer and protocol facilitated participants’ processes of analyzing policies in relation to the framework (Authors, 2018). The tool provided an opportunity for clearly stating the problem, theory of action and consequences that actors perceive relevant in the policy. The graphic organizer was flexibly used by policy makers, who proposed changes in it during the interview, according their analytical argument. It also helped participants’ assessment of their analysis and adjustment to explanations as the interview proceeded. A few teacher educators presented difficulties in identifying policies’ theories of action. The tool allows actors to analyze TE policies, regardless of different positions they held and different contexts.

Significance
The tool developed in this project could promote reflection on TE policies by actors in countries with different perspectives on accountability and diverse educational structures. It promotes policy actors agency as active subjects on the analysis on policies that regulate their work, moving from the traditional conception of them as objects of researchers’ analysis. This would help understand in more depth the processes of policy reinterpretation in TE.

Authors

• Maria Beatriz Fernandez Cofre, Universidad de Chile

• Ivan Salinas, Universidad de Chile

• Jina Ro, Sungkyunkwan University