The Narration of Conflicting Accountabilities in the Era of High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 5-2018 The Narration of Conflicting Accountabilities in the Era of High- Stakes Teacher Evaluation James Christopher Head The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2631 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THE NARRATION OF CONFLICTING ACCOUNTABILITIES IN THE ERA OF HIGH-STAKES TEACHER EVALAUTION by James Christopher Head A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2018 © 2018 JAMES CHRISTOPHER HEAD All Rights Reserved ii The Narration of Conflicting Accountabilities in the Era of High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation by James Christopher Head This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Psychology in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________ ___________________________________________ Date Joshua W. Clegg Chair of Examining Committee ________________ ___________________________________________ Date Richard Bodnar Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Joshua W. Clegg Deborah Tolman Jason Van Ora Colette Daiute Michelle Fine THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT The Narration of Conflicting Accountabilities in the Era of High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation by James Christopher Head Advisor: Joshua W. Clegg The U.S. Government’s Race to the Top program inspired a wave of education reforms across the nation aimed at holding teachers individually accountable for their students’ “growth” on test scores. These individualized programs implemented new forms of audit technologies aimed at orienting teachers’ priorities toward the calculations produced by students, rather than towards students’ holistic growth and well-being. In so doing, these programs signify an ideological rupture for teachers in that their long-shared sense of interpersonal accountability is institutionally re-directed – and reinforced with consequences – toward calculative accountability. In this dissertation, I investigated teachers’ experiential navigation of the introduction of one such individualized consequential accountability policy in New York City. Taking a multi-contextual approach, I conducted four distinct narrative analyses that (a) examined prevalent patterns in teachers’ experiential accounts, (b) situated their narration in the context of mediatized narrative constructions, (c) attended to their voicing of ideological dilemmas, and (d) focused on the life history of one exemplary teacher. In the foundational study of this dissertation, I found that the enactment of the new policies engendered assaultive iv social organizational processes in schools, which facilitated teachers’ sense that they were engaged in the violation of their relational morality. In a complementary voice-based analysis, I found that this violation was not merely an affront to their ideological position, but also an embodied assault that struck at the core of their being. The teachers frequently narrated ways that this assault compelled them to leave their jobs, and accordingly, most of the teachers in this study made their exit. Moreover, while the teachers navigated institutional conditions that facilitated the violation of their sense of relational morality, teachers’ expression of that value- stance was absent in the most prominent news media outlets of their time. Such an omission is congruent with the historic pattern in which non-educators have dominated the discursive construction of the policy paradigms that coordinated the lives of teachers. In my final analysis, I found that that the assault, domination, and moral injuries that were common throughout the teachers’ narratives were vivified in the contours of one teachers’ life history, which illuminated dynamic resonances between her more contemporary narration of policy enactment and previous traumatic experiences. Collectively, these complementary analyses illuminate how the enactment of individualized consequential accountability is a multi-layered process entangled in embodied, moral, interpersonal, existential, sociopolitical, and sociohistorical spheres of meaning-construction. Accordingly, this research expands upon dominant contemporary conceptions of education reform by illuminating the psychological consequences of teachers navigating individualized consequential accountability policies. Moreover, this dissertation also provides a potential model for narrative researchers pursuing multi-contextual investigative approaches grounded in the meaning-making processes of those who are the subjects of policy. Key words: Multi-Contextual Narrative Analysis, Individualized Consequential Accountability, Relational Morality, Ideological Rupture, Mediated Institutional Assault v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation exists because people have cared. I owe these carers a great deal of gratitude and I am thankful that they have accompanied me throughout this journey. First, I want to express my heartfelt appreciation for my advisor and mentor, Joshua W. Clegg, whose decency, wisdom, and clarity have provided the foundation for my doctoral studies. I must also thank Deborah Tolman for her lovingly demanding presence in my life and for making sure that I will never write a sentence without thinking of the word JUSTIFY. I also want to thank Jason Van Ora for being inspiringly supportive and helping me stay connected to a psychology focused on people’s lives. I am also greatly appreciative of Colette Daiute who has helped me better understand and explore narratives and narration in context. I owe a great deal of gratitude to Michelle Fine whose brilliance and power shine through in every rapid email, written remark, and witty retort. I must also thank Susan Saegert. Without her care and generosity, I would not have been able to complete my doctoral studies. Beyond those at the Graduate Center, I want to thank the other teachers who have cared for me along the way: Dottie Bledsoe, Judy Allen, Robert Wilson, Mark Kunkel, Eric Dodson, Chris Aanstoos, and Krystal Perkins. I also want to thank Gerald Markowitz, who I have had the great pleasure of teaching alongside for the past four years. I want to express my appreciation for Karyna Pryiomka, who has been an incredible research partner and intellectual ally. I also want to thank my partner, Maria, who has somehow kept me from floating off into the ether or slipping away into darkness. Lastly, I want to thank the teachers who shared their hearts with me and helped me see, hear, and feel the depth of their struggle to care in forbidding contexts. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................v LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION AND AIMS ..............................................................................1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 2 AIMS................................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 2 -THE CONTROL OF TEACHERS' WORK, THE INTRODUCTION OF CONSEQUENTIAL ACCOUNTABILITY, AND THE IMPOSISION OF IDEOLOGIAL RUPTURE .........................................................................................................................15 Contolling Teachers' Work ............................................................................................... 16 Transforming Accountability ................................................................................ 25 Policyscpaing for the Era of Accountability ......................................................... 28 The Era of Accountability ..................................................................................... 31 Individualized Consequential Accountability in NYC ......................................... 33 Individualized Consequential Accountability and Ideological Rupture ............... 36 Conclusion: Contextualizing the Research Program ............................................ 42 CHAPTER 3 - METHODOLOGICAL OVERVIEW ...................................................................45 Constructing a Multi-Contextual Narrative Approach ..................................................... 47 Accountability Reform as a Multi-Contextual Problem ................................................... 52 Methodological Roadmap ................................................................................................. 54 Phase 1: Initiating and Developing Teacher Study ............................................... 54 Phase 2: Interviewing and Expanding Teacher Study .......................................... 56 Phase 3: Analyzing Data and Expanding Research Program ............................... 57 vii Phase 4: Developing