In recent decades, performance-based accountability (PBA) has become an increasingly popular policy instrument to ensure educational actors are responsive to and assume responsibility for achieving centrally defined learning goals. Nonetheless, studies report mixed results with regard to the impact of PBA on schools’ internal affairs and instructional practices. With the aim of contributing to the understanding of the social mechanisms and processes that induce particular school responses, this paper reports on a study that examines how Norwegian principals perceive, interpret, and translate accountability demands. The analysis is guided by the policy enactment perspective and the sociological concept of “reactivity”, and relies on 23 in-depth interviews with primary school principals in nine urban municipalities in Norway. The findings highlight three distinct response patterns in how principals perceive, interpret, and translate PBA demands: alignment, balancing multiple purposes, and symbolic responses. The study simultaneously shows how different manifestations of two social mechanisms form important explanatory factors to understand principals’ varying responses, while it is highlighted how the mechanisms are more likely to operate under particular conditions, which relate both to principals’ trajectories and views on education, and to school-specific characteristics and the local accountability regime. The study contributes to the accountability literature by showing how, even in the relative absence of material consequences and low levels of marketization, standardized testing and PBA can drive behavioral change, by reframing norms of good educational practice and by affecting how educators make sense of core aspects of their work.

中文翻译：

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应对绩效期望：更深入地了解校长对问责要求的反应的变化

近几十年来，基于绩效的问责制 (PBA) 已成为一种日益流行的政策工具，以确保教育参与者对实现集中定义的学习目标做出响应并承担责任。尽管如此，研究报告关于 PBA 对学校内部事务和教学实践的影响的结果喜忧参半。为了有助于理解引起特定学校反应的社会机制和过程，本文报告了一项研究，该研究调查了挪威校长如何看待、解释和转化问责制要求。该分析以政策制定视角和“反应性”的社会学概念为指导，并依赖于对挪威九个城市的小学校长的 23 次深度访谈。调查结果突出了校长如何看待、解释和转化 PBA 要求的三种不同的反应模式：对齐、平衡多种目的和象征性反应。该研究同时展示了两种社会机制的不同表现如何形成重要的解释因素，以了解校长的不同反应，同时强调了这些机制如何在特定条件下更可能运作，这既与校长的发展轨迹有关，又与对教育的看法有关，以及学校的具体特点和地方问责制度。该研究通过展示即使在相对没有实质性后果和低市场化水平的情况下，标准化测试和 PBA 也可以推动行为改变，从而为问责制文献做出贡献，