Comparative Education (2nd edt.)

Chapter 5Education Accountability

and AuthorityCynthia MartinJamila KaninyaBrandon Howe

Chapman UniversityEDUU607

Education Accountability and Authority

IntroductionAccountability is a loaded term within the school improvement and reform movements of several countries, including the US. Efforts to introduce educational standards, to enact school choice, and to require more rigorous forms of teacher preparation are attributable largely to the popular impression that teachers and schools should become more answerable to their publics.

Public scrutiny of schools and teachers might negatively affect the education system.

A major challenge to the increasing public awareness to teachers and schools accountability is the doing so in a way that maintain teacher’s authority.(pg 167)

Hazards of Accountability

Hazards regarding accountability’s use as a tool for education reform:

When viewed as a mechanism, the concept of accountability tends to instrumentalize the performance of teachers in order to pave the way for more systematic observations and judgments regarding their work.

The tendency of the accountability movement to require routinized assessment further tends to stipulate that these judgments of schools and teachers should be administered by entities strictly outside the schools themselves.

Accountability must be more than a simple rule of practice. Instead, like a social norm, accountability should logically extend to all of society’s members. (pg 168)

Accountability and Democratic Theory:Responsibility as Authority

Education benefits from widespread participation such as teachers,

parents and children.

Democracy is premised on a system of both rights and responsibilities.

Accountability provides the basis for a relationship between society and its members, between those who govern and whose who consent to be governed.

There are seven forms of stakeholder accountability :1) Political accountability. 2) Professional accountability. 3) Financial

accountability. 4) Managerial accountability. 5) Contractual accountability. 6) Legal Accountability. 7) parents and students are accountable to society through their personal responsibility. (pg 170-171).

Philosophical Insights on Accountability

What Teachers Do:

The successful teacher makes the most of observed strengths in students and classes, seizes opportunities that arise in daily instruction, and recognizes and responds to problem and challenges. (pg 169)

A Rationale for Focus on England and GermanyEngland Germany

The Roll of Society in United Kingdom’s Education

Teachers and parents are highly active in the education of the youth in the UK. Teachers reach out to parents outside of school day time frames and often follow up individually with students on their own time. The importance of teaching and schools is reflected in the UK by dedication and hard work.

Teacher’s Authority in United Kingdom

Teacher authority is given only through the interpretation of curriculum and parent support. Teachers often feel as though they are limited on their educational creativity, but also see the need for common curriculum and structure in the education system. Teaching means being emotionally invested in the development of the students as they progress intellectually, emotionally, and in maturity.

Education Reformin United Kingdom

The formal assessments are very similar to those in the US. Standardized testing is used to gauge the development of a student and then used to guide the direction of the education for areas of weakness (teaching to the test for lack of a better term). Success is measured in progress from previous tests and compared to other students in similar testing dichotomies. Teachers are to preside over the classroom and implement common curriculum in a process very similar to the US. The goals for the UK are to start preparing students for a global economy. The plan to assist in that development consists of more in class student driven technology use, and multicultural instructions and exposure.

Teaching Tasks Differentiated instruction is an attempt to insure that

all students at some point in as many lessons as possible are exposed to e teaching and learning style that best meets their needs. The irony is that each student has different needs and is therefore going to experience times when the teachers methods are not effective, or conducive to, their learning style. The debate process that was recently used in class was a great way to show how some students do well in a public speaking environment, while others prefer to do the behind the scenes work. One is not right and the other wrong, or one better than the other, they are just different.

Importance of Teaching and Schools Reflected in Germany

Most schools concentrated on general education components and diminished their vocational learning endeavors because institutional recognition depended on it.

The foreshadowed continuing tensions in the unified Germany and elsewhere about the relative status of academic educational aims versus applied learning.

FGR government officials recognize the central role that education shapes the German culture.

German educational system is characterized by significant variations among the Lander in terms of the instructional calendar, age-grade assignments, basic policies, and school structures, especially at the secondary level.

Evidence of Teacher’s Authority Teachers in the former Federal Republic Germany (FRG)

exercise considerable latitude in shaping the lessons they deliver in the classroom

Suggests a form of teacher authority that contrasts sharply with the sometimes less democratically sensitive and more coercive forms of authority exercised by teachers in the former GDR

Teacher’s stressing students’ productive potential, injected practicality and knowledge application

Teachers in the West traditionally have had a prominent role in advising parents on matters of student placement within one of the various educational tracks or emphases that the system features

Teacher’s Lack of Authority Because of the educational reforms teachers lack of

enthusiasm to perform their duties and had little role in shaping.

A balance between authority and accountability is paramount

Withdraw from their work and burnt out Under reunification paradoxically has left teachers feeling

more powerless. Teachers in the New Lander had little time to replace the

authority they once had as custodians of the state Lost authority with a new genre of authority based on

professional expertise Teachers were distressed by what the state does to them

and what they cannot do to students and parents anymore

What Does Teaching Mean?

Facilitate the students learning Importance to be partnered with the

parents, families, and the communities Importance of technological innovations

so students are able to compete in the global economy around the world.

Teaching students to problem solve, think critically, and communicate effectively

Sensitivity of multiculturalism

Formal Assessment in Germany’s School

Polytechnical educational included substantial emphasis on science that tended to increase as students moved to higher grades.

Third of a student’s of seventh-grade level have typical instructional week to be devoted with math and science.

Teachers had a prominent role in monitoring students activities progress toward outcomes.

Tasks Informally Judged in Germany’s School

Significant overlaps in the curriculum that each of these schools offer and finding qualified staff to cover all the resulting needs has been difficult.

Issue of specialization and particular from Land to Land has made the personnel issues harder to resolve as well as teacher preparation a demanding undertaking.

Intended Results and Strategies

Highlighting opportunity and the other sensitivity to differing abilities and interests and epitomizes the equality versus ability tension that both East and West Germany have sought to resolve.

Aligning the education systems of the former East and West German states has been a matter of assimilation.

Roles in Planning and Carrying out Strategies

Teachers from the former GDR continue to adjust to West German structures, institutional and classroom practices, and its curricular.

New pattern of educator responsibility and obligation has arisen.

Avoid processing the implications of their past and present circumstances and having new authority available to them.

Comparison: Demographic AttributesENGLAND

Attribute: England’s regions and peoples are distinct because of geographic features and their impact on the course of civilization there. Scotland, for instance, was remote and inhospitable for Romans exploring what we now call the British Isles, Scotland, and some other outlying regions, retained this identity as hostile after the monarchy was established in England. And even after hinterlands came under the crown’s reach, significant latitude was granted to local populations in steering public affairs.

Response: Culture and its institutions have taken alternate courses in each of the member “nations” of the United Kingdom-England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales-although substantial similarity also exist.

Educational Implication: The various school systems within the United Kingdom are typified by this blend of mutual difference and similarity. Wales, for instance, has the same architecture of Local Education Authorities-though it is much smaller because of the region’s relatively sparse population. (pg 177).

GERMANYAttribute: The Rhine River is significant to

Germany’s economic activity in terms of shipping and certain industrial activity. But its economic significance is not coincidental, and the Rhine has had additional effects on culture, settlement patterns, and so forth.

Response: Once breaching the Alps, Romans exploring Germany progressed north following the Rhine. Early civilization was therefore concentrated in the Rhine region, and that pattern continued into the Christian era. Catholicism continues to dominate in Germany’s south and along the Rhine, whereas Protestantism flourishes in the north.

Educational Implication: The most highly populated areas in Germany are along the Rhine River, accounting for a substantial portion of Germany’s 82 million citizens. Large parts of the country are sparsely settled, and maintaining a level of instruction that is comparable to that of the German city presents challenges in Germany as in any country (pg 177).

Comparison: Sociopolitical Factors and Educational Implications

ENGLANDFactor: In spite of its identity as a progressive

democracy, England has retained strong links to its aristocratic past-the British monarchy being an overt symbol of the continuing appeal and power of that past. But other means by which elitism is preserved are more covert.

Response: English “public schools” launched in the mid-19th century, were actually set up as privately endowed schools that were instituted as a charity of sorts providing education for poorer members of English society. The wealthier members of English society, meanwhile, normally were educated by private arrangements with tutors.

Educational Implication: The emergence and growth of a middle class during the Industrial Revolution brought concurrent demand for a form of secondary school that might exclude the working classes. The public schools were reformed to provide an alternative that would exclude the poor for whom those schools had been created (pg 186).

GERMANYFactor: In the wake of World War I, the Treaty

of Versailles induced enormous war reparations on the Germans. The unrealistically high penalties contributed to a near complete loss of confidence in the German economy and hyperinflation so pronounce that during the early 1920s, a U.S. dollar was worth several trillion marks.

Response: Adolf Hitler rose to power by appealing effectively to the Germans’ collective sense of resentment.

Educational Implication: Hitler’s propaganda machine had many outlets. Among them were the schools, which became one of Hitler’s most important mouthpieces (Wegner, 2002). In the contemporary period, the German school system reflects safeguards against manipulation such as their relative decentralization at the Land level (pg 186).

Comparison: Geophysical Realities

ENGLANDLocality: England is part of an island nation-an

attribute that has influenced the country’s history., politics, and development for millennia. This national trait has helped shape policies and behaviors that, while by no means isolationist of with-drawn, remain cautious and protective. The issue of European integration is complicated to navigate on account of this in part.

Response: The United Kingdom, although a supportive and engaged member of the European Union (EU), has opted out of full participation in the structures of monetary union, for instance.

Educational Implication: Education is a topic of special interest in EU nations because of issues such as transferability and recognition of credentials among EU members. Like Germany and the other members of the EU, the United Kingdom’s citizens and government are trying to reconcile the competing interest of retaining national autonomy while reaping the fullest possible benefit from the economic participation and security in the EU. To what extent should schools pursue their traditional roles of building and reflecting national identity? In what ways should schools support and reinforce a sense of citizenship within a collective European society? The United Kingdom’s position epitomizes this sense of ambiguity, providing a case in point of how a balance might be achieved in negotiating this dual identity. (pg 199).

GERMANYLocality: precedents for German national identity

date at least to Charlemagne, first Holy Roman emperor of the German Nations, crowned 800 A.D. but Germany was a shifting patchwork of principalities until the early 20th century. Nationalism culminated during the Nazi regime, at which time education was centrally controlled.

Response: Following World War II, Allied forces oversaw the creation of 16 Lander- II in the West and five in the East. These Lander (provinces of states) were devised partially with older historical identity in mind, and considerable power was vested in each of the Lander in order to subdue nationalism and enable Allied oversight and management.

Educational Implication: The locus of governance in Germany’s education system remains at the Land level. Because of differences in political sensibilities, tradition, and other regional influences, the German educational system is characterized by significant variation among the Lander in terms of the instructional calendar, age-grade assignments, basic policies, and school structures, especially at the secondary level. (pd 199).

Conclusion Teachers in Germany and England alike conveyed little enthusiasm for many of the circumstances that came to define their work in the wake of educational reforms-circumstances that they had little role in shaping. A balance between authority and accountability is paramount. What is at stake if no such balance exist? Teachers, likely, will withdraw from their work by burning out or by cynically accepting the narrowed and deprofessionalized world offered to them.

England’s ERA suggests, authentic accountability connotes a commitment to fulfill obligations even when nobody is watching. It should not connote compliance with procedures that one fulfills merely because someone is watching. (pg 203).

Sustaining Reflection Think of examples in your own country in which steps are taken to

ensure that all participants have the same educational experience and treatment. Think of examples of differentiated instruction. What are the implications of these contrasting circumstances in terms of teacher roles and accountability?

List several determinate and indeterminate teaching tasks you have observed recently.

A British office circulated a statement that read, “Parents know best the needs of their children-certainly better than most educational theorists or administrators, better even than our mostly excellent teachers. What can you conclude about the vision of authority behind this statement? Think of some arguments that you could raise to question and refute the claim. (pg 203)

ReferencesKubow, P. K., & Fossum, P. R. (2007). Comparative Education Exploring Issues in

International Context (second ed., pp. 167-203). UpperSaddle River New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.

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