School governance under competitive policy environments: logics of action and emerging tensions in local education markets

• In Event: Governing education through performance data and accountability instruments: Enactment dynamics and regulatory effects

Proposal

Education systems’ governance is experiencing important transformations in recent decades. Global education reforms are promoting the adoption of groundbreaking policy instruments based on a combination of higher levels of parental school choice, broader levels of school autonomy and external forms of school accountability based on external and standardized tests. Under this governance model, schools are more prone to involve themselves in competitive dynamics and experience higher levels of external pressure. However, when dealing with competitive interdependence, schools perceive such pressures in disparate ways and respond with divergent strategies, practices and logics of action. To better understand this phenomenon, we present and discuss the results of a case study developed in the metropolitan area of Madrid, Spain. The study adopts a mixed method approach that analyzes data from an original survey combined with qualitative semi-structured interviews with principals and teachers. Based on the results of the survey, we build an innovative index to classify the sampled schools in the hierarchy of the local educational market. Additionally, we analyze the responses and the logics of action of different schools with semi-structured interviews. The results suggest that in the context of Madrid, schools articulate a variegated repertoire of logics of action that are mediated by their position in the local educational market and the external pressure perceived by school actors. According to the different logics of action identified, schools respond to accountability mandates and enact school autonomy with different approaches. Nonetheless, these logics of action are not always consistent but often imply emerging dilemmas and tensions.

Authors

• Marcel Pagès, University of Girona

• Gerard Ferrer-Esteban, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

• Antoni Verger, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona