The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Accountability and Datafication in Education: Global Perspectives

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Accountability has gained a great deal of centrality in the global education policy arena. The form of accountability that is currently spreading more intensively in education focuses on student performance assessed through large-scale standardized evaluations, and involves some level of consequences for teachers, principals and/or schools. This form of accountability, usually known as performance-based or test-based accountability, is oriented toward making schools more responsive to families and educational authorities, and to the delivery of better academic outcomes. As part of the global trend of accountability, external evaluations are becoming increasingly relevant data sources in framing educational policies at the national level, and in configuring instructional and organizational strategies at the school level.

The centrality of accountability instruments in the governance of education globally is striking for, at least, two main reasons. First, countries from very different regions of the world and with very different administrative traditions and levels of economic development embrace and conceive accountability instruments as an effective way to monitor school actors’ behavior and enhance the performance of their educational systems. And secondly, countries appear to be adopting accountability policies, usually conditioned by national test results, despite there being weak and inconclusive evidence on the benefits produced by these policies. Empirical research in this area has reached very different and even contradictory conclusions on the effects of test-based accountability policies on improving instruction and student learning outcomes, and addressing education inequalities. Furthermore, according to how accountability systems are designed and enacted they might generate unexpected results, side effects and even undesired behaviors at the school level that challenge the breadth of the curriculum and undermine educational inclusion.

This panel explores the dynamics through which accountability instruments have been adopted in multiple educational settings (South Africa, India, Chile, US and Shanghai) and analyses the effects these policies are generating in the everyday life of schools. Specifically, the papers included in this panel will analyze how teachers, principals and other school actors enact accountability policies and respond to emerging performative pressures at the school level, as well as how variables of a regulatory and contextual nature (including socio-economic factors or the level of societal trust in the educational system) mediate the way accountability policies are being enacted, and what are the implications of this in terms of educational quality and equity.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Globalization and Education

Chair

• Karen Mundy, Toronto University

Individual Presentations

• Trust and accountability to improve learning outcomes in South African primary education - Melanie Ehren, University College London; Jacqueline Baxter, Open University; Andrew Paterson, JET Education Services

• A Throw of DISE? The Hit and Miss of India’s Education Information Management System - Radhika Gorur, Deakin University; Joyeeta Dey, Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters in global education policy and international development

• Accountability, Democracy and a Problem with Fundamentalism: High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation in the USA - Jessica Holloway, Deakin University

• Asking Teachers In A-List Education Systems “What Works?”: Shanghai Teachers’ Perceptions of Performance Pay - Priya Goel La Londe, University of Hong Kong

• Schools, Markets and New Governance Instruments: The variegated enactments of Test-Based Accountability in Chilean Education - Antoni Verger, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Antonina Levatino, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Lluís Parcerisa, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Discussant

• William Smith, University of Edinburgh