Competence as a measure of "fitness to practice" and its evaluation through mechanisms of personal performance review, has led to the introduction of systems in a number of professions which link appraisal to the maintenance of professional registration (variously referred to as re-validation, re-certification, re-accreditation, etc.).…

Since the 1980s, state schools in England have been required to ensure transparency and accountability through the use of indicators and templates derived from the private sector and, more recently, globally circulating discourses of "good governance" (an appeal to professional standards, technical expertise, and performance evaluation…

Recently, critical policy scholars have used the concepts of enactment, context and performativity as an analytic toolkit to illuminate the complex processes of the policy cycle, in particular, the ways in which a multitude of official education reform policies are taken up, challenged and/or resisted by actors in local, situation-specific…

This paper examines teacher accountability and authority in early childhood policy. It reports on data from a study that investigated the influences affecting early childhood teacher decision-making at the preschool level in Victoria, Australia. Using a question raised by Ball "Where are the teachers in all this [policy]?" provided a…

In this paper, teachers' enactment of assessment policy within demands for accountability and consistency of teacher judgements is considered. Evidence is drawn from a qualitative study involving 50 middle school teachers from Queensland, Australia, who participated in online social moderation meetings with teachers located in dispersed areas…

This paper examines the global policy convergence toward high-stakes testing in schools and the use of test results to "steer at a distance", particularly as it applies to policy-makers' promise to improve teacher quality. Using Deleuze's three syntheses of time in the context of the Australian policy blueprint Quality…

With the abolition of the General Teaching Council for England in the 2011 Education Act, this article considers the future of teacher discipline in England. It provides a critique of the changes to the regulation of teacher misconduct and incompetence that draws on a Foucauldian framework, especially concerning the issue of public displays of…

In this article, a deconstructive "survol" of the term "standards" suggests that the concept contributes to an "outside-in" professionalism masquerading as "inside-out" professionalism. In examining a case of "standards" in action, the authors point out the inadequacy of "standards" as…

This article examines education accountability as a mechanism of coercive neoliberal urban governance in the USA. Drawing on Gramscian theory of the "integral state" as the dialectical synthesis of coercion, consent, and resistance, the author argues that as the crisis gives the state less room to win consent, it intensifies coercion as…

This paper examines the perverse effects of the new accountability regime central to the Labor government's national reform agenda in schooling. The focus is on National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results that now act as "catalyst data" and are pivotal to school and system accountability. We offer a case…

In this article, we experiment with the idea of combining path dependency, convergence and contingency in explaining Finnish distinctiveness in education policy and politics since the early 1990s. The focus of this article is on quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) in comprehensive schooling. We elaborate on and contextualise the Finnish QAE…

In this paper, we undertake a particular policy critique and analysis of the gender achievement gap discourse in Ontario and Canada, and situate it within the context of what has been termed "the governance turn" in educational policy with its focus on policy as numbers and its multi-scalar manifestations. We show how this "gap…

Italy is well known for its difficulty in introducing any educational evaluation system. This paper explores the dynamics which occurred in Italy in 2010-2011, within the context of the umpteenth national pilot of school and staff evaluation. Our research object is an unfinished project, observed in its development. We get close to the struggles…

The predominant focus in this paper is on issues of school context and, in particular, on the dimensions of context at a large English comprehensive school that enable it to thrive within the current demands of the contemporary audit culture. Featuring interview data gathered from a number of senior educators, the paper draws on Braun et al's…

Three decades of neo-liberal education in western countries, particularly English-speaking countries, have not served most children well. The evidence is mounting that the neo-liberal experiment has been a failure on many grounds, not least because of its deprofessionalizing effect on teachers. The disciplinary effects of neo-liberal policy…