High-Stakes Standardized Testing and Teachers' Work in the United States and Canada: Teacher Experience and Resistance

• In Event: Neoliberalism in Education: Teacher Experiences and Responses

Abstract

Objectives
This paper uses a Vygotskian approach to analyze select findings of a mixed method study on teachers’ work and high stakes standardized testing in Canada and the US. Specifically, this paper will take up the ways in which teachers are experiencing and resisting so-called accountability-driven education reform, reforms understood here as part of a broad neoliberal agenda in US and, to a lesser degree Canadian, education. The objectives of the paper are three fold. First, the paper seeks to deepen our understanding of the impact of increased standardized testing (understood as activity and interaction) on teacher practices which specifically attend and are attuned to practices of equity-oriented education. Second, the paper seeks to explore the impact generally, of increased standardized testing on teachers’ work as this relates to the issues raised by participants. Third, this piece seeks to examine, using a constructivist lens, the way teachers navigate and resist test-oriented teaching and learning in light of these considerations.

Perspectives:
This paper uses a constructivist Vygotskian approach, and specifically an activity theory (AT) lens, to understand resistance-oriented pedagogy and teacher practice, based on teacher experiences of high-stakes standardized testing and other so-called accountability measures in education.

Methods and Data Sources:
The findings emerge from a multi-year (2011–2014) mixed-method study conducted in the US and Canada. Qualitative findings emerge from interviews with 101 teachers in Los Angeles and Toronto, and from surveys emailed to 100,000+ teachers in New York, Illinois, California and Ontario, Canada. The survey instrument was developed after analysis of early qualitative interviews. In additionally, the paper provides and engages a review of relevant literature on teachers’ work and standardized testing, teachers’ work and equity-oriented education, and Vygotskian AT approaches to analysing pedagogy and teachers’ professional lives.

Findings:
Results of this mixed method study suggest teachers’ work is changing significantly as a result of the increased use of standardized testing in the US and Canada. Although teachers experience these changes differently, themes emerge in the interview and survey data which suggest some common experiences including: curricular and pedagogical contraction, an increased gap between professional learning (in service and preservice) and the demands of teaching in the accountability driven classroom, and a widespread feeling that standardized testing fails to support student learning for all. Results correlate increased standardized testing with decreased attention to equity in terms of content breadth and depth, curriculum development, assessment/evaluation, extra-curricular activities, and one-on-one/small group teaching and support of students. Finally, results suggest that a small number of teachers are actively and passively resisting standardized testing and its effects in the classroom.

Significance:
This presentation will present data from surveys sent to 100,000 plus teachers in two countries on high stakes testing teachers’ work. The survey was developed with input from the Elementary Teachers of Toronto and United Teachers Los Angeles. This is the largest comparative study of its kind, and will deepen current knowledge of the impact of HST on equity-oriented education in particular and teachers’ work and professional lives in general.

Author

• Arlo Kempf, University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education