School Autonomy and Educational Innovation in Times of Accountability: The Case of Catalonia

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

Proposal

Over the last decade, School Autonomy with Accountability (SAWA) policies have been adopted in many contexts, despite the lack of conclusive evidence of their benefits. These policies tend to be understood and implemented inseparably from each other, as a way of stimulating innovation, strengthening instruction and teaching methods, and improving student performance (De Grauwe, 2005). Although the premise that SAWA policies will enable schools to become more innovative has been increasingly embraced, evidence on whether and how innovation may be promoted by means of these policies is still scarce.

In Catalonia, the adoption of SAWA policies experienced a turning point with the passing of the Catalan Education Law (2009) and a series of decrees that establish external evaluation mechanisms and promote a school leadership style focused on results. However, there is not enough evidence on how these new instruments are being implemented at the school level and with what results. In this regard, drawing on a policy enactment approach and a focus on policy instruments, we aim to explore the ways in which teachers and school leaders interpret SAWA policies and translate them into concrete educational practices.

Methodologically, we follow a sequential mixed methods approach (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2006) that includes, in the first place, the application of a survey in 70 schools to explore the perceptions and experiences that school actors have regarding SAWA policies (e.g., the experienced autonomy; the pressure exerted by accountability instruments) (Levatino, 2021). Second, drawing on survey data and administrative information on standardized test performance and school SES composition, we selected 28 schools to conduct in-depth interviews with school leaders and teachers to analyse the ways in which SAWA is enacted.

Regarding school autonomy, we find that schools have a wide margin of pedagogical autonomy, while the autonomy in the field of management is rather limited. The fact that the level of managerial autonomy is lower than that of pedagogical autonomy could explain why the current regulatory framework places more emphasis on promoting managerial autonomy. Preliminary results also indicate that pedagogical autonomy is associated with cooperation dynamics among teachers. Regarding accountability, even though there are no substantive rewards or punishments in place, teachers perceive great pressure to obtain good results in standardized tests. In turn, this pressure is associated with an intensification of practices to reduce and align the curriculum with core learning standards, especially when such pressure comes from the management team. These preliminary results may have implications for the design of the Catalan SAWA system to the extent that they show how a low-stakes accountability policy can put pressure on teachers’ work and foster undesired practices such as narrowing the curriculum or teaching to the test, usually found in high-stakes accountability contexts. This finding confirms that there may be an inherent tension between the promotion of school autonomy and innovation on the one hand, and performance-based forms of accountability on the other.

Authors

• Edgar Quilabert, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Antoni Verger, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Gerard Ferrer-Esteban, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

• Mauro C Moschetti, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona