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Article
This Is My New Normal’: Teachers’ Accounts of Evaluation Policy at Local School Board Meetings
Journal of Education Policy (2017)
  • Amber N Warren, University of Nevada, Reno
  • Natalia A. Ward, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Abstract
In this study, we seek to illuminate teachers’ constructions of US teacher evaluation policies through close analysis of the way teachers in one district describe these policies. We conducted a thematic discursive analysis of 60 teachers’ speeches, recorded during local school board meetings in a Tennessee school district. Using discursive psychology as a lens, analysis focuses on the teachers’ constructions of teacher accountability policies and their own positioning within the policies. We also attend to the linguistic resources teachers used in justifying their decision to speak during the meetings. Findings showed that while drawing upon repertoires of human capital and one-size-fits-all education, the teachers’ patterned participation involved the contestation of status quo practices of teacher evaluation and effectiveness by contrasting them with imagined possibilities of what evaluation could be instead. Implications for developing teacher evaluation are discussed.
Keywords
  • teacher evaluation,
  • evaluation policy,
  • discursive psychology
Publication Date
October 15, 2017
DOI
10.1080/02680939.2017.1390164
Citation Information
Amber N Warren and Natalia A. Ward. "This Is My New Normal’: Teachers’ Accounts of Evaluation Policy at Local School Board Meetings" Journal of Education Policy Vol. 33 Iss. 6 (2017) p. 840 - 860 ISSN: 0268-0939
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/natalia-ward/50/