Chapter 11 Revisiting self in the midst of NCATE and other accountability demands

Abstract

Through the use of narrative inquiry, this self-study focuses on my teacher education practices. A flashback in time probes the influence of four simultaneous accountability reviews – a national accreditation review, a regional accreditation review, a university system review, and local campus review – on my personal experiences and identity within academia. The recollection provides a public view of private practice, explores the hidden curriculum of accountability, reveals cover stories personally and collectively lived, and illuminates how my knowledge of accountability became heightened. Through drawing on multiple forms of evidence, I reconstruct a series of changes I lived that had to do with human subjects’ reviews, course syllabi requirements, student assignments, grading procedures, and personal productivity. The self-inquiry lays bare individual and institutional compromises that were made to achieve acceptable measures of success as determined by external agencies. Reflections on what occurred in the aftermath of the reviews are also included. Most of all, hard lessons learned amid multiple accountability agendas are brought forward for discussion and analysis, not only by me, but by the national and international teacher education communities whose memberships face similar demands for performativity, the European equivalent of accountability. The accumulation of self-studies such as mine will help to show the incipit nature of the accountability phenomenon and its pernicious impact on teacher educator's work and personal images of teaching. Research such as this will demonstrate how desperately productive change is needed in the fields of teaching and teacher education.

Citation

Craig, C.J. (2010), "Chapter 11 Revisiting self in the midst of NCATE and other accountability demands", Erickson, L.B. and Wentworth, N. (Ed.) Tensions in Teacher Preparation: Accountability, Assessment, and Accreditation (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 183-198. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3687(2010)0000012014