ABSTRACT

Every teacher’s classroom practice is embedded in a system of overlapping contexts that interact with their day-to-day decisions. In this paper, I focus on sociocultural context and how it interacts with teachers’ subjective responses to accountability instruments. Drawing on interviews with secondary school teachers in Finland and Singapore – education systems with contrasting but comparably effective approaches to teacher accountability – I find that one way in which sociocultural context interacts with teachers’ experiences of accountability instruments is by influencing the mental models of motivation that shape their responses to these instruments. This finding is relevant to two contentious areas in education policy. First, it suggests that teacher accountability policy is a socioculturally embedded matter, implying a need for caution rather than recommending specific forms of accountability across the board. Second, it adds to the growing body of evidence demonstrating that ‘best practices’ from high-performing education systems are contingent on implementation contexts.

摘要

每位教师的课堂实践都嵌入在与他们的日常决策相互作用的重叠上下文系统中。在本文中，我关注社会文化背景以及它如何与教师对问责工具的主观反应相互作用。通过对芬兰和新加坡中学教师的采访——教育系统采用不同但相当有效的教师问责方法——我发现社会文化背景与教师对问责工具的体验相互作用的一种方式是影响动机的心理模型，塑造他们对这些工具的反应。这一发现与教育政策中两个有争议的领域有关。首先，它表明教师问责政策是一个社会文化嵌入的问题，暗示需要谨慎，而不是建议全面实施特定形式的问责制。其次，它增加了越来越多的证据表明，来自高绩效教育系统的“最佳实践”取决于实施环境。