Full metadata
Title
Teacher evaluation systems: how teachers and teacher quality are (re)defined by market-based discourses
Description
Teacher evaluation policies have recently shifted in the United States. For the first time in history, many states, districts, and administrators are now required to evaluate teachers by methods that are up to 50% based on their "value-added," as demonstrated at the classroom-level by growth on student achievement data over time. Other related instruments and methods, such as classroom observations and rubrics, have also become common practices in teacher evaluation systems. Such methods are consistent with the neoliberal discourse that has dominated the social and political sphere for the past three decades. Employing a discourse analytic approach that called upon a governmentality framework, the author used a complementary approach to understand how contemporary teacher evaluation polices, practices, and instruments work to discursively (re)define teachers and teacher quality in terms of their market value.
For the first part of the analysis, the author collected and analyzed documents and field notes related to the teacher evaluation system at one urban middle school. The analysis included official policy documents, official White House speeches and press releases, evaluation system promotional materials, evaluator training materials, and the like. For the second part of the analysis, she interviewed teachers and their evaluators at the local middle school in order to understand how the participants had embodied the market-based discourse to define themselves as teachers and qualify their practice, quality, and worth accordingly.
The findings of the study suggest that teacher evaluation policies, practices, and instruments make possible a variety of techniques, such as numericization, hierarchical surveillance, normalizing judgments, and audit, in order to first make teachers objects of knowledge and then act upon that knowledge to manage teachers' conduct. The author also found that teachers and their evaluators have taken up this discourse in order to think about and act upon themselves as responsibilized subjects. Ultimately, the author argues that while much of the attention related to teacher evaluations has focused on the instruments used to measure the construct of teacher quality, that teacher evaluation instruments work in a mutually constitutive ways to discursively shape the construct of teacher quality.
For the first part of the analysis, the author collected and analyzed documents and field notes related to the teacher evaluation system at one urban middle school. The analysis included official policy documents, official White House speeches and press releases, evaluation system promotional materials, evaluator training materials, and the like. For the second part of the analysis, she interviewed teachers and their evaluators at the local middle school in order to understand how the participants had embodied the market-based discourse to define themselves as teachers and qualify their practice, quality, and worth accordingly.
The findings of the study suggest that teacher evaluation policies, practices, and instruments make possible a variety of techniques, such as numericization, hierarchical surveillance, normalizing judgments, and audit, in order to first make teachers objects of knowledge and then act upon that knowledge to manage teachers' conduct. The author also found that teachers and their evaluators have taken up this discourse in order to think about and act upon themselves as responsibilized subjects. Ultimately, the author argues that while much of the attention related to teacher evaluations has focused on the instruments used to measure the construct of teacher quality, that teacher evaluation instruments work in a mutually constitutive ways to discursively shape the construct of teacher quality.
Date Created
2014
Contributors
- Holloway-Libell, Jessica (Author)
- Amrein-Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor)
- Anderson, Kate T. (Thesis advisor)
- Berliner, David C. (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Topical Subject
- Education Policy
- Education Policy
- Market-based Discourse
- Neoliberalism
- Teacher evaluation
- value-added models
- Teachers--Rating of--United States--Evaluation.
- Teachers
- Effective teaching--United States--Evaluation.
- Effective teaching
- Educational accountability--United States--Evaluation.
- Educational accountability
Resource Type
Extent
xi, 188 p. : col. ill
Language
Copyright Statement
In Copyright
Primary Member of
Peer-reviewed
No
Open Access
No
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.27446
Statement of Responsibility
by Jessica Holloway-Libell
Description Source
Viewed on June 22, 2015
Level of coding
full
Note
Partial requirement for: Ph. D., Arizona State University, 2014
Note type
thesis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-176)
Note type
bibliography
Field of study: Educational leadership and policy studies
System Created
- 2015-02-01 07:04:35
System Modified
- 2021-08-30 01:31:27
- 2 years 7 months ago
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