Accountability policies through standardized testing are widespread in diverse educational systems. Based on an ethnographic research study, we sought to understand how a learning assessment policy, used for over three decades in primary and lower secondary education, is lived and interpreted in daily school life in Chile. This article analyzes…

Capturing and measuring instructional patterns by using standardized observation manuals has become increasingly popular in classroom research. While researchers argue that a common vocabulary of teaching is necessary for the field of classroom research to move forward, instructional features vary across classrooms and contexts, which poses…

School self-evaluation based on multiple data sources has been used to evaluate the quality of education at schools. This study aims to reveal the state of the education process, health, safety, relations and communication, and participation in management at school. The study is conducted with a case study design, in a public secondary school. The…

The proliferation of standardized testing and administrative statistics in compulsory education is embedded in the rise to prominence of quantified accountability as a mechanism of education governance. Numbers work by stripping away the contexts of their production and the granular and ambiguous detail of the phenomena they claim to represent.…

This paper evaluates experiences of quality culture as actualized by academic and administrative leaders in a nonprofit, private Bangladeshi university, ensuing the recent implementation of a state-stipulated national quality framework. Based on the data derived from ten interviews integrated with the Quality Assurance Framework document…

This paper examines the effects of learning opportunities on the attainment of different proficiency levels in general pedagogical knowledge among student teachers to provide insights into their learning processes and the effectiveness of teacher preparation. The authors used a subsample of the EMW study with two time points, comprising the data…

Valid cross-country comparisons of student learning and pivotal factors contributing to it, such as teaching quality, offer the possibility to learn from outstandingly effective educational systems across the world and to improve learning in classrooms by providing policy relevant information. Yet, it often remains unclear whether the instruments…

At an international level, teachers' work is increasingly circumscribed and regulated. Notions of accountability have shifted from primarily inputs to primary outcomes, and investment in strengthening teacher performance evaluation has expanded. At the same time, investment in enhancing the quality of teacher education programs is contested in…

The mechanisms of academic distinction of the best students, such as the Honours Boards of Excellence and Value, emerge in Portuguese state schools as important institutional management strategies for promoting the school image and attracting the best students. This is what the authors propose to discuss, and that they identify as being a new form…

Using longitudinal data from the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era, I applied regression techniques and found a positive association between school failure to reach "adequate yearly progress" in mathematics and subsequent changes in the quality of middle grades mathematics instruction in districts where district leaders adopted robust…

This paper presents the results of a European study investigating the extent to which the Dynamic Approach to School Improvement (DASI) can help schools situated in socially disadvantaged areas to improve their effectiveness. At the beginning of the school year 2015-2016, a sample of 72 primary schools in four European countries (Cyprus, England,…

The policy of performance standards aims for quality improvement in schools by stimulating teachers to plan and organize their teaching according to competence-based performance standards (competence-based teaching) and to use performance data feedback from national standard-based assessments for evidence-based teaching development. The research…

In many countries, students are asked about their perceptions of teaching in order to make decisions about the further development of teaching practices on the basis of this feedback. The stability of this measurement of teaching quality is a prerequisite for the ability to generalize the results to other teaching situations. The present study…

This paper explores the impact of external accountability on four mechanisms of network-internal quality control and the properties of (mandated) inter-organizational networks. An explorative case study approach examines the external accountability of a newly established educational network (MAT) and how schools and the Trust are held accountable…

School self-evaluation (SSE), as an important leverage for quality assurance, often relies on surveys among staff members to collect information on the schools' functioning. The extent to which respondents cognitively process items as developers intended them determines the cognitive validity of SSE results. However, it is unclear what problems…