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1 – 10 of over 3000By recognizing high-stakes testing as a key constraint to teacher agency, this paper aims to provide a close analysis of one teacher’s testing narrative to illustrate how emerging…
Abstract
Purpose
By recognizing high-stakes testing as a key constraint to teacher agency, this paper aims to provide a close analysis of one teacher’s testing narrative to illustrate how emerging positioning is relative to high-stakes testing shapes perception of pedagogical agency.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were generated through a series of semi-structured interviews with an early career fourth-grade teacher, Ms Moore, in a school facing pressure to raise test scores. Using theoretical lenses of narrative positioning and a linguistic anthropological centering of constraint and emergence, 67 narratives of accountability were analyzed, with particular focus on how Ms Moore positioned herself relative to other actors involved in high-stakes testing and the consequent rights and duties these positions afforded.
Findings
In narrating the constraints of high-stakes testing, Ms Moore positioned herself relative to three groups involved in high-stakes testing: “purposefully tricky” test creators, “disjointed” administrators and “worried” students. The rights and duties associated with three positions varied with respect to two dimensions – proximity and hierarchy – in turn providing her distinct resources for responding to the pedagogical constraints of high-stakes testing.
Practical implications
Teachers might use positioning analysis as a tool to locate possibilities for agency amidst high-stakes testing, both by exploring the resources afforded by their positioning and by considering how alternative positions might afford different resources.
Originality/value
These findings suggest that high-stakes testing serves as a dynamic and perhaps malleable constraint to teacher agency. Teacher positioning, particularly relative to hierarchy and proximity, provides possible resource for responding to such constraints.
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This qualitative study examined urban school personnel’s opinions, perceptions, and strategies in implementing the following: (a) locally mandated Zero Tolerance Discipline…
Abstract
This qualitative study examined urban school personnel’s opinions, perceptions, and strategies in implementing the following: (a) locally mandated Zero Tolerance Discipline Policies, (b) nationally mandated standardized high-stakes testing laws, and (c) how the two combined can be counterproductive to one another. Three themes emerged from the research. The first and predominate theme that emerged and discussed was “perspectives that described the potential impact standardized high-stakes assessments have on African American male students that violate the Zero Tolerance Discipline Policy.” The research and its recommendations are valuable to policymakers, education advocates, stakeholders, superintendents, boards of education, administrators, teachers, and parents.
Stephanie van Hover, David Hicks and Elizabeth Washington
This qualitative case study explores how one secondary world history teacher, teaching in a high-stakes testing context in a district pushing teachers to utilize differentiated…
Abstract
This qualitative case study explores how one secondary world history teacher, teaching in a high-stakes testing context in a district pushing teachers to utilize differentiated instruction, makes sense of this pedagogical approach. We examine teacher sense-making within a conceptual framework of policy realization and ambitious teaching and learning. The teacher made no claims to being an expert on differentiation; yet, the findings indicated that she did possess an understanding of differentiation congruent with the literature and, whether she recognized it or not, used many strategies suggested by Tomlinson and other experts on differentiation. Her thinking about differentiation also appeared to be shaped by relational and contextual issues. Stated differently, the Virginia Standards of Learning exams and the pressure from administration for high pass rates appeared to shape how the teacher thought about her students, her content, her instruction and, ultimately, her approach to differentiation.
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Elizabeth Anne Yeager and Stephanie van Hover
This paper examines how a beginning teacher in Virginia and a beginning teacher in Florida make sense of the high-stakes tests in their state. By examining beginning teachers in…
Abstract
This paper examines how a beginning teacher in Virginia and a beginning teacher in Florida make sense of the high-stakes tests in their state. By examining beginning teachers in two states where the tests are so very different, we gain important insight into whether there are similarities and differences across states and how the nature of the test affects the teaching and learning of history. We first offer insight into the context of accountability in Virginia and Florida and then discuss what ambitious teaching and learning look like in these states as informed by the literature. Then, we turn to our research methods, findings, and implications for the field of social studies.
Stephanie van Hover, David Hicks, Elizabeth Washington and Melissa Lisanti
This study examined and traced the relationship between, and the influence of, the official standards documents of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the related day-to-day lesson…
Abstract
This study examined and traced the relationship between, and the influence of, the official standards documents of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the related day-to-day lesson planning and implementation of a pair of co-teachers. Using a case study methodology alongside a conventional content analysis we traced the processes of how these policy texts (the Standards of Learning [SOLs] for World History) were connected to and activated within the daily routines of these teachers who taught struggling students in a high-stakes testing context. The findings illustrated how the policy texts and discursive practices emerging from the State’s SOLs constituted a level of pedagogical governance that saw these teachers organize instruction clearly designed to support student recall on the end of year multiple choice test. Our work recognized the power of policy texts as they interact with teachers. The significance of unpacking policy documents in order to examine issues of power, symmetry and potential areas of negotiation in the planning and implementation of instruction for teacher educators is discussed.
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Using a South African district of education as a case study, the purpose of this paper is to explore how high-stake assessments informed by marketisation and managerialism have…
Abstract
Purpose
Using a South African district of education as a case study, the purpose of this paper is to explore how high-stake assessments informed by marketisation and managerialism have been embedded in the South African education system.
Design/methodology/approach
This papers draws on data that were collected through a mixed method approach in the secondary schools of the uMgungundlovu District, which is in Kwazulu-Natal province (KZN) in the eastern part of South Africa. This paper emerged from multiple sources of data, that is, from documents, interviews, questionnaires, and observation as well as secondary sources.
Findings
The paper demonstrates how the pincer movement of markets and managerialism have used high-stake testing as a mechanism of performativity. It illustrates how test scores are published in newspapers to provide consumers with information that is needed for full participation in the marketised education system.
Practical implications
The insights from this paper have profound implications for school managers and policy makers. While high-stake tests are logically consistent and theoretically defensible, overdependence on them portends the replacement of traditional values of schools by the market value of the education.
Originality/value
The study contributes profound insights into how the high-stake testing serves the purpose of social control and subjugation mechanisms for students, schools, and teachers by the state and the invisible arm of the markets. The problem with the use of high-stakes testing as performativity mechanisms is not just that they hinders learning and teaching, but it changes the work of schools and teachers who are at the chalkface of education system.
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Margo A. Mastropieri, Thomas E. Scruggs, Janet Graetz and Nicole Conners
This chapter reports on the results from several extended qualitative investigations of co-teaching in science and social studies content area classes, on both elementary and…
Abstract
This chapter reports on the results from several extended qualitative investigations of co-teaching in science and social studies content area classes, on both elementary and secondary levels. In these investigations, co-teaching partners were studied and interviewed over several years, with the view of uncovering attitudes and procedures closely associated with successful collaborative partnerships. In some cases, these investigations took place in the context of implementation of research-based instructional strategies. Analysis of data from these investigations revealed that there was considerable variability in the way co-teaching practices were implemented, the attitudes toward co-teaching expressed by teachers, and the success of the co-teaching partnerships. It was thought that several variables, including content expertise, concerns for high-stakes testing, and the personal compatibility of co-teachers played an important role in the success of the co-teaching relationship.
This chapter addresses the accountability standards expressed in the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the legislative history of this federal statute on education. The…
Abstract
This chapter addresses the accountability standards expressed in the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the legislative history of this federal statute on education. The author states that the Act recognized that many students are “left behind” and some “way behind” and analyses how this Act will reduce the academic deficit for those students left behind? This review makes it clear that the fiscal equity movement never got off the ground or close to becoming a major part to the legislation. Legal challenges to NCLB is extensively reviewed which raises the question as the amount of support for this legislation. The chapter closes with the note that NCLB is an under-funded mandate placing the fiscal responsibility on the budget-strapped states.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (2001) has led to widespread use of high-stakes assessment in determining graduation options for all students, including those with…
Abstract
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (2001) has led to widespread use of high-stakes assessment in determining graduation options for all students, including those with disabilities. In this chapter, we examine graduation trends in the state of Florida before and after the implementation of a high-stakes test used as a means to meet NCLB requirements and further examine specific trends in rates of graduation with a standard diploma attained by students with disabilities. As trends for students with disabilities reveal a reduction in standard diploma attainment, we discuss research related to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) provisions for individualized education program (IEP) and transition planning for students with disabilities that are designed to improve students’ graduation and post-school outcomes. We discuss ways in which schools might improve student graduation rates within the context of both NCLB and IDEA. Specifically, we report findings from a study conducted in a school district in Florida that demonstrates a positive relationship between student perceptions of school's efforts to facilitate student involvement in planning (as outlined by IDEA requirements) and the likelihood of graduation with a standard diploma (based on “passing” a high-stakes test) for students both with and without disabilities. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.
Tiffany DeJaynes, Tabatha Cortes and Israt Hoque
This paper aims to examine a school-based Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project on educational inequity and high stakes testing.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine a school-based Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project on educational inequity and high stakes testing.
Design/methodology/approach
A former high school teacher (currently a university professor) and two former students (currently research assistants and university students) take up a youth studies framework to collaboratively resee multimodal artifacts from a tenth-grade course in qualitative research.
Findings
Findings illustrate the power of finding allies in peers and educators; the transformative power of deep participation; and the longitudinal nature of social change and action. Thus, this research demonstrates that when students are positioned as researchers, experts and knowledge producers, they can collaborate with one another, teachers and administrators to confront social inequities within their schools and beyond.
Originality/value
This study has value for applying critical, youth-centered pedagogies in secondary English language arts classrooms and schools.
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