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Showing papers in "Journal of Education Policy in 2017"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that the development of new capacities, new skills of classroom management, of pedagogy, bring along with it the intensification of a power relation, and argue that it is virtually impossible to separate out, as Foucault points out, capability from control.
Abstract: This paper deploys some concepts from the work of Michel Foucault to problematise the mundane and quotidian practices of policy translation as these occur in the everyday of schools. In doing that, we suggest that these practices are complicit in the formation of and constitution of teacher subjects, and their subjection to the morality of policy and of educational reform. These practices are some ways in which teachers work on themselves and others, and make themselves subjects of policy. We conceive of the processes of translation, its practices and techniques as a form of ethics, the constitution of a contemporary and contingent version of professionalism through the arts of self-conduct. In all of this, it is virtually impossible to separate out, as Foucault points out, capability from control. We argue that the development of new capacities, new skills of classroom management, of pedagogy, bring along with it the intensification of a power relation. We are primarily concerned with Foucault’s ...

98 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that the lack of clarity is perpetuated by a series of contradictions and dilemmas underpinning the progressive debate in education, which have not been adequately confronted and argue that we need to confront these issues in efforts to extend conceptual clarity in what it is we are seeking to achieve, which in turn can better equip us to provide the empirical and conceptual information necessary to effectively engage policy-making to remedy inequalities in education.
Abstract: The article builds on prior arguments that research on issues of social justice in education has often lacked constructive engagement with education policy-making, and that this can be partly attributed to a lack of clarity about what a socially just education system might look like. Extending this analysis, this article argues that this lack of clarity is perpetuated by a series of contradictions and dilemmas underpinning ‘progressive’ debate in education, which have not been adequately confronted. At the heart are dilemmas about what constitutes a socially just negotiation of the binarised hierarchy of knowledge that characterises education in the UK, Australia and elsewhere. Three exemplar cases presented from contemporary education curriculum policy in England and Australia are used to illustrate these dilemmas. We then extend this argument to a series of other philosophical dilemmas which haunt education and create tensions or contradictions for those concerned with social justice. It is maintained that we need to confront these dilemmas in efforts to extend conceptual clarity in what it is we are seeking to achieve, which in turn can better equip us to provide the empirical and conceptual information necessary to effectively engage policy-making to remediate inequalities in education.

80 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, media portrayals of Australia's performance on the Program for the International Student Assessment (PISA), 2000-2014, were analysed using "framing theory" and three frames were identified: counts and comparisons; criticisms; and contexts.
Abstract: This paper empirically documents media portrayals of Australia’s performance on the Program for the International Student Assessment (PISA), 2000–2014. We analyse newspaper articles from two national and eight metropolitan newspapers. This analysis demonstrates increased media coverage of PISA over the period in question. Our research data were analysed using ‘framing theory’, documenting how the media frames stories about Australia’s performance on PISA. Three frames were identified: counts and comparisons; criticisms; and contexts. Most of the media coverage (41%) was concerned with the first frame, counts and comparisons, which analysed PISA data to provide ‘evidence’ that was then used to comparatively position Australia against other countries, reference societies, which do better, with particular emphasis on Finland and also Shanghai after the 2009 PISA. The other two frames dealt with criticisms and contextual issues. This paper only focuses on the first frame. The analysis demonstrates the ways in which media coverage of Australia’s PISA performance has had policy impact.

79 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a mixed-methods study in Shanghai examines micro-neoliberalism in China's education system, i.e., privatization and marketization at individual, family, and institutional levels, with focus on blurring boundaries between public schooling and private supplementary tutoring.
Abstract: With its shift to a market economy gathering speed from the 1990s, the Chinese Government embarked on an agenda that brought neoliberal forces into almost all sectors including education. The policies underpinned China’s spectacular economic growth, but in education have had consequences that arguably are problematic.Drawing on a mixed-methods study in Shanghai, this paper examines ‘micro-neoliberalism’ in China’s education system, i.e. privatization and marketization at the individual, family, and institutional levels, with focus on blurring boundaries between public schooling and private supplementary tutoring. Some dimensions of these processes resulted from deliberate macro-level policies to decentralize control of schooling, raise performance, and empower private education. Other dimensions arose from the market behavior of individuals, families, and institutions that countered government efforts to steer parental choice of schools and to reduce disparities between schools. Education policies...

78 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore segregation by examining catchment areas for a range of public high schools in a specific middle-class urban area, focusing on socio-demographic characteristics, including levels of income, country of birth and religion affiliation.
Abstract: Market theory positions the consumer as a rational choice actor, making informed schooling choices on the basis of ‘hard’ evidence of relative school effectiveness. Yet there are concerns that parents simply choose schools based on socio-demographic characteristics, thus leading to greater social segregation and undercutting the potential of choice to drive quality improvements. In this paper, we explore segregation by examining catchment areas for a range of public high schools in a specific middle-class urban area. We focus on socio-demographic characteristics, including levels of income, country of birth and religion affiliation, in order to explore residential segregation according to public high school catchment areas. Our data suggest distinct residential segregation between catchment areas for each public school within our data-set, particularly for the schools deemed to be popular and rejected, that may pose risks for broader equity concerns. We argue that, in contrast to market theory, ev...

77 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that PISA for Schools discursively positions participating schools as somehow being commensurable with successful schooling systems, eliding any sense that certain cultural and historical factors (or "out of school" factors) are inexorably linked to student performance.
Abstract: This paper explores Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Schools, a local variant of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD’s) influential PISA that not only assesses an individual school’s performance in reading, mathematics and science against international schooling systems, but also promotes 17 identical examples of ‘best practice’ from ‘world class’ schooling systems (eg Shanghai-China, Singapore) Informed by 33 semi-structured interviews with actors across the PISA for Schools policy cycle, and supplemented by the analysis of relevant documents, the paper provides an account of how these concrete examples of best practice are represented in the report received by participating schools Drawing upon thinking around processes of commensuration and the notion of ‘governing by examples’, the paper argues that PISA for Schools discursively positions participating schools as somehow being commensurable with successful schooling systems, eliding any sense that certain cultural and historical factors – or ‘out of school’ factors – are inexorably linked to student performance Beyond encouraging the problematic school-level borrowing of policies and practices from contextually distinct schooling systems, I argue that this positions the OECD as both the global expert on education policy and now, with PISA for Schools, the local expert on ‘what works’

71 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider questions of "employability", a notion foregrounded in the Green and White Papers on the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), and first question government imperatives.
Abstract: This article considers questions of ‘employability’, a notion foregrounded in the Green and White Papers on the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The paper first questions government imperatives...

63 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the different manifestations of education privatization on the light of Cultural Political Economy (CPE) to understand why and how education privatization unfolds in a broad variety of settings.
Abstract: Over the last two decades, education privatization has become a widespread phenomenon, affecting most education systems and giving place to a consistent increase in private school enrolment globally. However, far from being a monolithic phenomenon, privatization advances through a variety of context-sensitive policy processes that translate into multiple policy outcomes. This paper aims at understanding why and how education privatization unfolds in a broad variety of settings and, to this purpose, examines the different manifestations of education privatization on the light of Cultural Political Economy (CPE). The conceptual and analytical tools provided by CPE prove to be particularly well suited to explore such a multi-faceted and multi-scalar phenomenon. CPE has helped us to capture the intersect and tension between different drivers (global and local, material and ideational) of education privatization through the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection and retention. On the basis of ...

62 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that surveillance within schools has become a simulation in Baudrillard's terms, using models and codes such as the Teachers’ Standards and the Schools Inspection Handbook as predictors of future outcomes, simulating practice as a means of managing risk.
Abstract: Just as surveillance in general has become more sophisticated, penetrative and ubiquitous, so has the surveillance of teachers. Enacted through an assemblage of strategies such as learning walks, parental networks, student voice and management information systems, the surveillance of teachers has proliferated as a means of managing the risks of school life, driven forward by neoliberal notions of quality and competition. However, where once the surveillance of teachers was panoptic, a means of detecting the truth of teaching behind fabrications, this article argues that surveillance within schools has become a simulation in Baudrillard’s terms, using models and codes such as the Teachers’ Standards and the Schools Inspection Handbook as predictors of future outcomes, simulating practice as a means of managing risk. And if surveillance in schools has become a simulation, then so perhaps has teaching itself, moving beyond a preoccupation with an essentialist truth of teaching to the hyperreality of ...

60 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Adrian Simpson1
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that standardised effect size is open to researcher manipulations which violate the assumptions required for legitimately comparing and combining studies in all but the most restricted circumstances, and public policy and resources are in danger of being misdirected.
Abstract: Increased attention on ‘what works’ in education has led to an emphasis on developing policy from evidence based on comparing and combining a particular statistical summary of intervention studies: the standardised effect size. It is assumed that this statistical summary provides an estimate of the educational impact of interventions and combining these through meta-analyses and meta-meta-analyses results in more precise estimates of this impact which can then be ranked. From these, it is claimed, educational policy decisions can be driven. This paper will demonstrate that these assumptions are false: standardised effect size is open to researcher manipulations which violate the assumptions required for legitimately comparing and combining studies in all but the most restricted circumstances. League tables of types of intervention, which governments point to as an evidence base for effective practice may, instead, be hierarchies of openness to research design manipulations. The paper concludes tha...

50 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A historical tension between a more general and a more specific focus in post-compulsory education is made visible in some educational systems by the division into more academic and more vocational education as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A historical tension between a more general and a more specific focus in post-compulsory education is made visible in some educational systems by the division into more academic and more vocational ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use the Outline of China's National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020) as an illustrative case study to trace the evolution of education policy-making in China.
Abstract: Policy network approach has become a broadly accepted and frequently adopted practice in modern state governance, especially in the public sector. The study utilises a broadly defined policy network conceptual frame and categories of reference to trace the evolution of education policy-making in China. The study uses The Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010–2020) as an illustrative case study. This study argues that China’s education policy-making has changed, and the three most prominent changes are the transition from a Party-dominant practice to one primarily driven by the central government, the enhanced role of higher education institutions and scholars as ‘professional interest group’ in the Chinese context and the increasing participation of non-governmental actors in the policy-making process. Essentially exploratory in nature, this study hopes to contribute to the understanding of China’s education policy-making and broader educa...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed five separate OECD reviews of evaluation and assessment practices with Norway and Sweden as cases, and showed different ways in which a specific international educational re-evaluation re...
Abstract: By analysing five separate OECD reviews of evaluation and assessment practices with Norway and Sweden as cases, our study illustrates different ways in which a specific international educational re...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the way technologies of research performance management, specifically, work to produce academics (and academic managers) as particular kinds of neoliberal subject, and the result is a process of systemic violence.
Abstract: What happens when neoliberalism as a structural and structuring force is taken up within institutions of higher education, and works upon academics in higher education individually? Employing a critical authoethnographic approach, this paper explores the way technologies of research performance management, specifically, work to produce academics (and academic managers) as particular kinds of neoliberal subject. The struggle to make oneself visible is seen to occur under the gaze of academic normativity – the norms of academic practice that include both locally negotiated practices and the performative demands of auditing and metrics that characterise the neoliberal university. The paper indicates how the dual process of being worked upon and working upon ourselves can produce personally harmful effects. The result is a process of systemic violence. This paper invites higher education workers and policy-makers to think higher education otherwise and to reconsider our personal and collective complic...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore how school admission processes are organized and implemented within a market-based educational system with a high-stakes testing regime where schools are pushed to use selection practices.
Abstract: This is an exploratory study about pupil selection. Admission regulations are central to understanding issues of school mix, segregation and educational justice. In Chile, student selection has been intensively discussed but scarcely studied. Using a questionnaire for headteachers (N = 581), we explore how school admission processes are organised and implemented within a market-based educational system with a high-stakes testing regime where schools are pushed to use selection practices. Despite the existence of a national (although weak) legal prohibition at the time the survey was conducted, half of the headteachers state that they use some mechanism to select students (play sessions, student testing, or interviews with parents) even when they do not face demand pressures. Exploratory data suggest higher levels of selectivity in subsidised private schools. Regression analysis shows a strong association between ‘selectivity’ and homogeneous academic intake and social composition. Presumably, the ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A review of initial teacher training, led by a primary school head teacher, Sir Andrew Carter, was published in early 2015 as discussed by the authors, which was more nuanced than might have been anticipated, although a number of profound tensions emerge from a closer analytical reading.
Abstract: The commitment to establish a ‘school-led’ system of teacher education in England, announced by the Coalition Government in 2011 and relentlessly pursued thereafter, represented a radical departure from previous kinds of initial teacher education partnership. While it is entirely consistent with a neoliberal agenda, with its strong regulatory framework and appeal to market mechanisms, it is also underpinned by a particular conception of teaching as a craft – ‘best learnt as an apprentice observing a master craftsman or woman’. In 2014, the government established a Review of Initial Teacher Training, led by a primary school head teacher, Sir Andrew Carter. This signalled the recognition of teacher education as a ‘policy problem’, adopting Cochran-Smith’s term. The ensuing report, published in early 2015, was more nuanced than might have been anticipated, although a number of profound tensions emerge from a closer analytical reading; four of these tensions are similar to those previously defined by ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that there is no single globalisation of education systems, but rather multiple globalisations of each system taken in its individual context, and propose three explanatory factors to account for these vernacular globalisation processes, that is, for individual policy trajectories in each national context.
Abstract: The article argues that there is no single globalisation of education systems, but rather multiple globalisations of each system taken in its individual context. We propose three explanatory factors to account for these vernacular globalisation processes, that is, for individual policy trajectories in each national context: path dependence on earlier policy choices and institutions, education policy-making through bricolage, and finally the translation by national actors of international-level ideas or tools as a function of the debate, institutions or national power dynamics in question. The research design is based on the study of a most-likely case: accountability policy in two school systems – France and Quebec – which show strong variations. Document analyses and semi-structured interviews were conducted in both cases. In the two countries, distinct vernacular globalisations are at work leading to different neo-statist accountability policies. In Quebec, the reinforcement of state power throu...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors explored the relationship between behaviour change policy, enduring philosophical and political scepticism about the viability of the rational, autonomous subject of liberal and neoliberal governance, and the contemporary cultural privileging of its vulnerable, anxious and stressed counterpart.
Abstract: Apocalyptic crisis discourses of mental health problems and psycho-emotional dysfunction are integral to behaviour change agendas across seemingly different policy arenas. Bringing these agendas together opens up new theoretical and empirical lines of enquiry about the symbioses and contradictions surrounding the human subjects they target. The paper explores the relationship between behaviour change policy, enduring philosophical and political scepticism about the viability of the rational, autonomous subject of liberal and neoliberal governance, and the contemporary cultural privileging of its vulnerable, anxious and stressed counterpart. Weber’s accounts of authority illuminate dangers arising from an ad hoc, shifting, unaccountable state-sponsored intervention market that targets the vulnerable subject, proselytised by new types of ‘therapeutic entrepreneurs’. Using an education-based example of statutory legislation for counter-terrorism in schools and universities, the Prevent strategy, the ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examine the relationship between TFA and charters through the lens of TFA corps members placed in charter schools, and explore two types of schools described by interviewees, namely, "shit shows" and "like-minded schools".
Abstract: Over the past three decades, two neoliberal educational reform efforts have emerged in tandem – the charter school movement and Teach For America (TFA). This paper critically examines the relationship between these entities through the lens of TFA corps members placed in charter schools, and explores two types of schools described by interviewees, namely, ‘shit shows,’ and ‘like-minded schools.’ Grounded in corps members’ teaching experiences, this paper argues that even at its best, the close partnership between TFA and charters can create a mutually reinforcing educational subculture that is isolated from broader educational discourses and practices. At its worst, this partnership can result in the ill-advised ‘propping up’ of under-funded, mismanaged, ill-equipped charters that might otherwise struggle to find adequate staffing and, consequently, close. This paper suggests that these two tendencies – toward corps members’ insularity and poor placement – have the potential to conflict with the c...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examine the ways in which different articulations of "the public" are brought to bear in contemporary debates surrounding school funding and reveal three broad themes of debate in the report and related media coverage: primacy of "procedural politics" (i.e. the political imperatives and processes associated with public policy negotiations in the Australian federation); changing relations between what is consider...
Abstract: School funding is a principal site of policy reform and contestation in the context of broad global shifts towards private- and market-based funding models. These shifts are transforming not only how schools are funded but also the meanings and practices of public education: that is, shifts in what is ‘public’ about schooling. In this paper, we examine the ways in which different articulations of ‘the public’ are brought to bear in contemporary debates surrounding school funding. Taking the Australian Review of Funding for Schooling (the Gonski Report) as our case, we analyse the policy report and its subsequent media coverage to consider what meanings are made concerning the ‘publicness’ of schooling. Our analysis reveals three broad themes of debate in the report and related media coverage: (1) the primacy of ‘procedural politics’ (i.e. the political imperatives and processes associated with public policy negotiations in the Australian federation); (2) changing relations between what is consider...

Journal ArticleDOI
Rille Raaper1
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors apply a Foucauldian theory and Faircloughian methodology to assess policy in two European universities with different political, historical and social backgrounds: the University of Glasgow and Tallinn University.
Abstract: This article explores assessment policy in two European universities with different political, historical and social backgrounds: the University of Glasgow and Tallinn University. The University of Glasgow is a well-established Russell Group university in the UK; Tallinn University is a relatively new university in post-Soviet Estonia, shaped by very recent neoliberalisation processes. By applying a Foucauldian theorisation and Faircloughian methodology, this article approaches assessment policy as not only relating to institutional contexts but also national and global policy environments. The article argues that the assessment policy in Glasgow relates to globally dominant neoliberal discourses of accountability and excellence. These discourses have turned assessment into a complex technology of government that manages educational processes as well as academic and student subjectivities. While Tallinn University is shaped by neoliberalism at strategic levels, the policy documents in Tallinn stil...

Journal ArticleDOI
Linda Rönnberg1
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the movements of some Swedish former education policy-makers that are currently active as commercial edu-business actors with the ambition to expand in the Global Education Indu...
Abstract: This study explores the movements of some Swedish former education policy-makers that are currently active as commercial edu-business actors with the ambition to expand in the Global Education Indu ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The notion of vulnerability has come and gone as a policy concern over the past 60 years but its pre-1995 criteria have expanded hugely, both under Labor governments between 1998 and 2010 and their...
Abstract: The notion of vulnerability has come and gone as a policy concern over the past 60 years but its pre-1995 criteria have expanded hugely, both under Labor governments between 1998 and 2010 and their...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the midst of the debate surrounding the question of whether Australia's National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test is high-stakes, it is evident that children's own account...
Abstract: In the midst of the debate surrounding the question of whether Australia’s National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test is high-stakes, it is evident that children’s own account...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors unpacked the neoliberal concept of "educational quality" in the course of Russian education modernisation reform from 1991 to 2013, arguing that despite the nominally proclaimed shift towards a quality assurance model of educational governance, the representation of educational stakeh...
Abstract: Employing the analytical framework of a discourse-driven social change, this paper unpacks the neoliberal concept of ‘educational quality’ in the course of Russian education modernisation reform from 1991 to 2013. Since the early 1990s, the global neoliberal discourse has served as the backbone for post-Soviet educational ideology. Alongside other major reform initiatives, the ‘quality revolution,’ proclaimed by the Russian Government in the early 1990s, signified a rhetoric shift away from the Soviet-era quality control towards a neoliberal quality assurance paradigm. Through fine-grained textual analysis of policy documents and political statements by key educational stakeholders, the analysis unpacks the discursive underbelly of the new quality paradigm, in an attempt to determine whether a paradigmatic transformation has taken place. The paper argues that despite the nominally proclaimed shift towards a quality assurance model of educational governance, the representation of educational stakeh...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss how a new system of school and teacher assessment in Catalonia is transforming the conceptions, practices and identity of head teachers, especially younger ones, and discuss the importance of refusal and resistance to this process and the need to reconsider basic educational and social questions.
Abstract: The aim of this article is to elucidate how a new system of school and teacher assessment in Catalonia is transforming the conceptions, practices and identity of head teachers, especially younger ones. It begins by considering the impact of global neoliberal policies on educational practices, highlighting their Foucauldian productive nature. It then examines the educational context of Catalonia during the last 30 years, emphasising the changing role of head teachers and the impact of neoliberal governance. This is followed by an account and analysis of in-depth interviews with four head teachers, focusing especially on how the head teacher’s objectives, practices and identities are being transformed, or produced, as a result of the new neoliberal ‘assessment regime’. It ends with a discussion on the importance of refusal and resistance to this process and the need to reconsider basic educational and social questions.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the enactment of the policy initiative to promote critical thinking in Singapore schools from the perspectives of educators in Singapore is examined, and it is argued that teachers in Singapore are not passive recipients or mere implementers of top-down policy decisions.
Abstract: This article examines the enactment of the policy initiative to promote critical thinking in Singapore schools from the perspectives of educators in Singapore. It is argued that teachers in Singapore are not passive recipients or mere implementers of top-down policy decisions. Rather, they enact the policy initiative by making sense of, negotiating, influencing and capitalising on their unique conditions to achieve their goals and juggle multiple demands. Three research findings are discussed in this article. First, the teachers mediate the policy process through their interpretations of critical thinking and cognisance of the socio-cultural challenges they face. Secondly, they recontextualise the policy initiative by adopting a skills-focused conception of critical thinking in the form of the infusion cum discipline-specific approach. Thirdly, they apply correlative thinking by combining didactic teaching with active student participation in their dual desire to foster critical thinking and prepa...

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: In the last few decades, education systems worldwide have undergone numerous transformational reforms, following the spirit of New Public Management and affected by governmental spending cuts, decentralization, marketization and increased local and global competition as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Contemporary education differs from education in previous eras for many reasons—among them the fact that we live in a globalized world that is more complex and internationally involved than ever before (Bauman, 2000; Beck, 2000; Giddens, 1991). In line with expanding globalization in almost every sphere of life, in the last few decades education systems worldwide have undergone numerous transformational reforms, following the spirit of New Public Management and affected by governmental spending cuts, decentralization, marketization and increased local and global competition (Ball, 2012; Vinokur, 2010). These changes are not limited to any specific location or stage of education; parallel processes take place in developed and developing countries, in schools and universities, and in central and peripheral locations.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors explored teachers' resistance against pedagogic reform in South Korea, which was instituted in the form of an in-service teacher certification, and found that teachers were engaged in various forms of low-profile resistance, which culminated to impact on the fate of the certification.
Abstract: This paper explores teachers’ resistance against pedagogic reform in South Korea, which was instituted in the form of an in-service teacher certification. Ideas for the reform, Teaching English in English (TEE), were borrowed from ‘native-English-speaking countries’ and implemented without systematic localization, therefore, it was not surprising that teachers resisted it, although hidden from the reform managers to avoid disciplinary action. The paper starts with a description of the educational context in South Korea, which has fashioned teachers’ practices of resistance. The conceptualization of resistance follows, drawing on studies from varied disciplines, including Foucault’s work on resistance ‘of conduct’ (counter-conducts) and Scott’s ‘invisible’ resistance. Findings from a case study of the TEE certification are then discussed. Teachers were engaged in various forms of low-profile resistance, which culminated to impact on the fate of the certification. The paper highlights the potential ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper used Atlas.ti to analyze 5897 daily reflections written during a yearlong, field-based, initial certification course of Teach For America (TFA) Corps members learning to teach during a districtwide testing cheating scandal.
Abstract: Neoliberal discourses defining and measuring ‘student achievement’ and ‘teacher success’ through myopic high-stakes testing-driven criteria for ‘accountability,’ can perpetuate the very inequities these reforms purport to address. Nested within a five-year inquiry using grounded theory to investigate experiences of Teach For America (TFA) Corps members learning to teach during a district-wide testing cheating scandal, the researchers used Atlas.ti, to analyze 5897 daily reflections written during a yearlong, field-based, initial certification course. Iterative phases of constant comparative analysis utilized a multi-rater/multi-stage/multi-year analysis. This manuscript focuses on the dominant theme of ‘Student Growth and Achievement,’ as defined, conceptualized, and experienced by 38 TFA novice teachers and the co-occurrences of this theme with other dominant themes within this data-set. Findings indicate circumscribed understandings of student growth and achievement which shaped teacher and stud...