ABSTRACT

Cultures of performative accountability in education have been on the rise globally since the 1980s. Accordingly, teachers have increasingly been encouraged to understand their work in relation to particular forms of ‘evidence’. All evidence, however, is not regarded as equal, and sources of evidence privileged within cultures of performative accountability are typically narrowly rendered, apparently ‘objective’, externally generated and largely quantified in form. Recent research from the United States, Australia and England has suggested that such cultures may be re-shaping teacher practice and identity. Performative accountability, however, is not the only form of accountability, and this paper explores the tensions between performative and ‘intelligent’ accountability in teachers’ work and lives, reporting on research investigating Australian teachers’ understanding of and engagement with data and research as well as evidence of their work more broadly. The paper contributes to the literature on the datafication of teaching and debates regarding the nature and role of evidence in teaching work. Ultimately, we argue that spaces for rich understandings of evidence, present but not dominant in contemporary education policy, must be protected and extended in order for the current focus on evidence to generatively – and intelligently – reflect and shape teachers’ work.

摘要

自1980年代以来，教育中的绩效问责文化在全球范围内呈上升趋势。因此，越来越多的教师被鼓励去理解他们与特定形式的“证据”有关的工作。然而，并非所有证据都是平等的，在执行问责文化中享有特权的证据来源通常狭义地呈现，显然是“客观的”，外部产生并在形式上被大量量化。美国，澳大利亚和英国的最新研究表明，这种文化可能正在重塑教师的实践和身份认同。然而，表演责任制并不是问责制的唯一形式，本文探讨了教师工作和生活中表演责任制与“智能”责任制之间的紧张关系，报告研究报告，以调查澳大利亚教师对数据和研究的理解和参与以及更广泛的工作证据。本文为有关教学数据化的文献做出了贡献，并就证据在教学工作中的性质和作用展开了辩论。归根结底，我们认为，必须保护和扩展在当代教育政策中不存在但仍占主导地位的对证据的丰富理解，以使当前对证据的关注能够生成和智能地反映和塑造教师的工作。