Teacher Learning in an Era of High-Stakes Accountability: Productive Tension and Critical Professional Practice

By Jamy Stillman. Teachers College Record, 2011

137 citations recorded by the source corpus.

With the installation of No Child Left Behind, teachers, particularly those who serve marginalized students, have increasingly been told what and how to teach. Previous research demonstrates that teachers can act as mediators between policy and practice, even within coercive environments such as those generated by high-stakes accountability systems. Yet we know little about how teachers who have been specially prepared to serve marginalized populations respond to accountability demands within tightly controlled contexts, such as those commonly found in “underperforming” schools. This study draws on social learning and activity theories to examine the specific factors that support equity-minded teachers to navigate accountability-driven language arts reforms, the specific barriers that might hinder teachers from serving marginalized students—particularly English Learners—in an era of accountability, and how particular contextual factors mediate teachers’ responses to accountability pressures. The study was conducted in three different “underperforming” schools in California, predominately comprised of Spanish-speaking English Learners. Three upper-elementary teachers, who earned their bilingual (Spanish/English) teaching credentials and Master's degrees from three different equity-focused teacher preparation programs. The research design is qualitative case study. Data collection took place between September 2003 and December 2004 and consisted of teacher interviews, classroom observations, principal interviews, and focus group interviews. Using the constant comparative method, data analysis was ongoing. Initial coding identified patterns in teachers’ technical, normative, and political responses to accountability-related pressures in the area of language arts. Further analyses illuminated variations in teachers’ responses and emphasized how contextual factors, especially local leadership, mediated teacher learning and agency in the context of school change. Specifically, when principals provided teachers with opportunities to grapple with reforms they found objectionable and to apply innovations to their classroom practice, a “productive tension” led the teachers towards important professional learning and instructional improvement. Findings underscore the importance of balanced leadership in an era of high- stakes accountability, particularly as it relates to teacher professionalism, learning, and agency.

Subfields: Education, Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/955d0d5cf8327ccbc8d987a0bf3de4ca060b61f1

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Citations in the corpus

Getting Inside Rehearsals (2016, background): “Conducting rehearsals with TEs with different areas of expertise may be one way for creating these connections (Stillman, 2011).”
Operationalizing Culturally Responsive Instruction: Preliminary Findings of CRIOP Research (2016, background): “Stillman (2011) found that school leadership was particularly important in mediating such external factors; when teachers were given the autonomy to resist objectionable reforms and to be innovative, there were positive results in instruction and teacher professionalism.”
A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Instructional Coaching for Teachers of Diverse Learners (2014, result): “Similar to findings by Teemant et al. (2011), teachers struggled to initially grow and then sustain consistency with Contextualization and Challenging Activities.”
Student Teaching’s Contribution to Preservice Teacher Development (2013, background): “…policies on teachers and students (e.g., Cohen & Hill, 2001; Hargreaves, Earl, Moore, & Manning, 2001; Spillane, 2002), especially in urban and/or high-needs schools (e.g., Gutiérrez, 2006a; Jennings, 2005; Stillman, 2011), likely also affects PSTs when they enter schools for student teaching.”