Public school accountability,workplace culture,and teacher morale

Educational scholars claim that teacher morale has suffered from accountability pressures and constrained professionalism, but exactly what is most diminished by these pressures remains unclear. Drawing on recent theoretical work on public school organizational culture, we hypothesize that accountability pressures hurt teacher morale and increase the risk of turnover by undermining the professional culture of the school and by diminishing teacher cooperation and trust. We find support for this hypothesis in a national sample of teachers in 2011–12, and a follow-up survey from 2012–13. The analyses test whether a collective pedagogical teacher culture, comprised of professional culture and teacher collaboration, buffers the impact of these pressures that diminish teacher morale. Counter to past research, we find that a strong collective pedagogical teacher culture does not buffer teachers from the ill effects of negative workplace conditions in the form of accountability pressures. We also find that accountability pressures in the form of district dismissals are associated with a higher likelihood of teachers leaving their school, and this relationship is not mitigated by strong professional culture. We conclude that accountability pressures partly undermine goals of improving performance and equity in public schools by sowing seeds of teacher dissatisfaction and contributing to teacher turnover, thus thwarting student achievement in struggling schools.     

美国师德问责体系的结构、特点及启示——基于德克萨斯州的经验

美国德克萨斯州历来重视教育工作者的职业道德建设，建立了一系列教育工作者违规行为问责机制，形成了较为完善的师德问责体系。美国德克萨斯州的师德问责体系具有独特的结构与特征。颁布《教育工作者伦理规范》，使问责有法可依；设立专门机构，使问责主体明确；细化教师违规行为，使问责有据可凭；强调证据证词，使问责合理科学；重视结果多样，使问责责罚分明。这些对于促进我国师德问责的规范化、制度化发展有着积极的借鉴意义。     

问责-避责关系新解：基于“行动-制度-环境”框架

问责与避责间的关系是责任政治研究的重要议题,其中,问责导致避责的机制亟待探究。以X县早稻生产政策过程为例,基于“行动-制度-环境”的分析框架,探讨上级问责与基层避责之间的关系机制。研究发现：基层干部避责行为是上级问责制度与基层社会环境共同作用的结果,是作为责任者的基层干部面对上级问责压力和农民抗拒压力的理性选择。为贯彻落实非粮化整治政策,上级通过责任分配、责任考核和督查问责制度,给基层干部施加了巨大的早稻生产责任压力。而农民在长期的生产历史过程中已经形成了以中稻种植模式为主导的、较为稳定的生产秩序,拒不执行早稻生产政策。承受双重压力的基层干部只能采取责任兜底的属地化机制、利益交换的市场化机制和联合避责的科层化机制来规避上级问责风险。作为行动者的基层干部运用自由裁量权,通过隐匿信息、集体负债等方式,在一定程度上改变了既有的制度-环境,再造了基层治理结构。     

公共服务供给机制创新:北欧的改革实践与启示

提供公共服务是政府的主要任务。供应与生产的区分,说明政府不可能也没必要包揽所有的公共服务。北欧各国按照事权财权匹配和公共服务效率原则,通过建立和完善府际责任分担、公共财政保障、公私伙伴合作、公众参与提供、服务质量监督等机制,从而有效地满足了公共服务需求。他们的成功实践启示我们:公共服务制度的建立和完善,必须合理划分各级政府公共服务责任,建立以公共服务为导向的公共财政支出体系,充分发挥社会和民间力量在提供公共服务方面的作用。     

Measures of accountability and delegated discretion in activation work: lessons from the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service

Activation work – the complex task of motivating, compelling and assisting marginalized citizens into labour market participation – pinpoints critical issues of discretion and accountability in the welfare state. Investigating accountability measures aimed at ensuring qualified discretionary judgements is therefore important. In this article, I discuss the reformed Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service and the accountability measures aimed at discretionary judgements of frontline workers. The conclusion is that, because activation tasks in the Norwegian frontline service imply professional discretion more than administrative discretion, structural measures aimed at restricting the discretionary space of frontline workers seem to have only limited impact. This is because the knowledge necessary to perform means – end judgements is insufficient. Rather, there seems to be a need for epistemic measures aimed at improving the knowledge base for professional discretionary reasoning.     

Open Data on a Closed Shop? Assessing the potential of transparency initiatives with a focus on efforts to strengthen capacity development support

Despite strong political commitment, actual gains in improving accountability in development co‐operation have been limited. Main reasons for this include the low level of transparency and high number of actors, as well as the limitations of the self‐reported and input‐oriented OECD reporting system. Efforts through the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and related transparency initiatives are ill‐equipped to change this given their decision to adhere to the same system. This article uses the specific area of support to capacity development to illustrate this. While further disaggregation of reporting on technical co‐operation could respond to a transparency gap, overcoming the accountability gap requires moving beyond promoting ‘supply‐side’ reform and re‐engaging in efforts to promote collective action.     

Ethical uneasiness and the need for open-ended reflexivity: the case of research into older people with a wish to die

This article focuses on research ethics in highly intimate research with possible impact on life and death. In order to stimulate an open-ended dialogue about research ethics, we reflect on four ethical challenges that came up during our research into older people with a wish to die. Drawing on our experiences, we discuss (1) the possibly confirming influence of our research on the death wish (moral experience of whether or not to disregard responsibility); (2) the suggested duty to intervene (moral experience of whether or not to compromise the person’s autonomy); (3) the researcher’s authority and power over the data (moral experience of threatening a person’s self-narrative) and (4) the dilemma of intimacy (moral experience of encountering the tragic). For guidance in addressing these challenges, we draw upon work on research ethics from phenomenological and care ethics scholars, as well as from those writing about relational ethics in health research. We suggest that being open about ethical uneasiness is important, because in most cases of a grey area, there are only open-ended answers needing an enquiring mind, rather than clear and fixed guidelines. Acknowledgement of ethical uneasiness and open-ended reflexivity are indispensable to constitute a morally good research practice.     

Governing police practice: limits of the new accountability

The advent of public-sector managerialism has brought with it a new principle of police accountability in Western democracies such as Australia and Britain. The new accountability gives emphasis to managerial rather than legal or public-interest standards, favours external oversight combined with self-regulation rather than centralized control, and promotes risk management rather than rule enforcement. This article makes use of the experience of an Australian police force to show that the new accountability has not been successful in holding police accountable, while elements of the old accountability have re-emerged to dominate public debates. It is argued that in the area of police governance, the neo-liberal state does not necessarily pursue a coherent strategy of 'acting at a distance' (cf. Miller and Rose 1990), partly because of the inability of accountability technologies to deliver substantially the promised policy outcomes and partly because of the sensitivity of its political arm to the public's moral outrage against corruption (cf. Garland 1996).     

Working artefacts: ethnomethods of the prototype

This paper follows recent science studies in theorizing information technologies as socio-material configurations, aligned into more and less durable forms. The study of how new technologies emerge shifts, on this view, from a focus on invention to an interest in ongoing practices of assembly, demonstration, and performance. This view is developed in relation to the case of the 'prototype', an exploratory technology designed to effect alignment between the multiple interests and working practices of technology research and development, and sites of technologies-in-use. In so far as it is successful, the prototype works as an exemplary artefact that is at once intelligibly familiar to the actors involved, and recognizably new.     

Ethical Futures and Public-Private Partnerships: Peering Far Down the Track

This article employs an institutional perspective in formulating predictions about the ethical futures of privatization partnerships. Although this paper focuses on ethical concerns in the U.S. public sector, it incorporates a multinational dimension in (a) comparing the meaning of privatization among societies and (b) probing privatization financing in the global economy. Five assumptions that flow from institutional reasoning are made explicit as supports for subsequent predictions. The institutional logic shifts privatization conversation away from conventional debate about competition and efficiency toward centralizing forces in both sectors in response to globalization. In that regard, this study identifies the systemic erosion of (local) community integrity as the key privatization problem of the future.