Call for Papers: Global Perspectives on High-Stakes Teacher Accountability Policies

2016-08-22
             

 Call for Papers: Global Perspectives on High-Stakes Teacher Accountability Policies


            Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA/AAPE) announces an open call for papers for a special issue exploring global perspectives on high-stakes teacher accountability policies. Touted as ‘front-line workers’ (OECD, 2014), teachers have become increasingly subjected to mechanisms for quantifying and incentivizing their performance and worth (Ball, 2015). There is a need for documenting and understanding the background and nature of high-stakes teacher accountability policies in a broad range of territories, as well as more general analyses on the globalization of accountability in education and the role of major transnational agencies like the OECD and the World Bank in this terrain.

            Particularly in the USA and England, value-added models (VAMs), designed to statistically measure school and teacher effects on student learning over time, have been incorporated into market-based evaluation frameworks (AERA, 2015). While most countries have heeded caution with VAMs specifically, many have embraced high-stakes teacher accountability policies, often predicated on the same market-based logic that undergirds VAM-use (OECD, 2014; Sahlberg, 2011). Moreover, major transnational agencies (e.g., OECD, UNESCO, the World Bank) have during the last 10-15 years been engaged in the development of statistical indicators and the quantification of teacher performance to an unprecedented degree (Sellar & Lingard, 2013; Verger & Curran, 2014). The adoption of a performance-oriented Education 2030 Framework for Action under the UN Sustainable Development Goals is likely to further promote this line of thinking in development contexts (World Bank, 2015). Specifically, this issue seeks critical, global and comparative perspectives on high-stakes teacher accountability policies to address the following broadly defined questions:

  • What are the historical, political, and/or social backgrounds for such policies in different contexts?
  • How have such policies developed and been enacted over time, and to what effect?
  • How do teacher accountability policies merge with market-based education reform? 
  • Which policy actors are engaged in the formation of such policies, and how does this relate to the thickening of the global educational policy field?

Research papers using interdisciplinary or mixed media (images/audio/video clips) formats are highly encouraged.

 

About the Journal: Celebrating its 24th year, EPAA/AAPE is a peer-reviewed, open-access, international, multilingual, and multidisciplinary journal designed for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and development analysts concerned with education policies. EPAA/AAPE accepts unpublished original manuscripts in English, Spanish and Portuguese without restriction as to conceptual and methodological perspectives, time or place.

 

Submission Information: Interested contributors are invited to submit 500-word abstracts aligned with the special issue themes for review, via direct email to the guest editors, by October 10, 2016. All manuscripts should be submitted electronically through the EPAA website and follow the Journal’s submission guidelines: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/. We will not consider manuscripts submitted for publication or published elsewhere.

 

Abstract Submission Deadline: October 10, 2016

Final Manuscripts Deadline: January 10, 2017

Peer Reviews Completed: March 1, 2017

Revised Manuscripts Deadline: April 10, 2017

Publication Date: May 2017

Early submissions are encouraged.


Guest Editors: Dr. Jessica Holloway, Kansas State University, USA (jhollow@ksu.edu); Tore Bernt Sørensen, University of Bristol, UK (t.b.sorensen@bristol.ac.uk); Dr. Antoni Verger, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain (antoni.verger@uab.cat)

 

References

 

AERA [American Educational Research Association]. (2015). AERA Statement on Use of Value-Added Models (VAM) for the Evaluation of Educators and Educator Preparation Programs. Educational Researcher, 44(8), 448–452, DOI: 10.3102/0013189X15618385

Ball, S. J. (2015). Education, governance and the tyranny of numbers. Journal of education policy, 30(3), 299-301.

OECD. (2014). TALIS 2013 Results: An international perspective on teaching and learning. Retrieved from http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/talis-2013-results_9789264196261-en

Sahlberg, P. (2011). Fourth Way of Finland. Journal of Educational Change, 12(2), 173–185.

Sellar, S., & Lingard, B. (2013). The OECD and global governance in education. Journal of Education Policy, 28(5), 710-725.

Verger, A., & Curran, M. (2014). New public management as a global education policy: its adoption and re-contextualization in a Southern European setting. Critical Studies in Education, 55(3), 253-271.

World Bank. (2015). The Rise of Results-Based Financing in Education. Retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/Brief/Education/RBF_ResultsBasedFinancing_v9_web.pdf