Three forms of accountability

Accountability was seen by many participants as a dutiful report of attainment to one’s political masters. As this principal from a USA (East) school describes it, it is concerned primarily with evaluating the quality of students’ work.

Once a month at grade level meetings, teachers bring examples of student work and we discuss them. We developed a protocol that they use. Some of those meetings are done very well: teachers ask one another very good questions. It is wonderful to see a team of teachers who can look at student work and can ask good questions of other teachers, without ‘attacking’ the teacher, but in a helpful way … asking them to think about the assignment that they’d given, for instance. Teachers have good conversations about student work, both within and across grade levels.

At one school in Norway accountability to parents is effected by inviting them in to observe classroom practice. This helps to foster a dialogue about the nature of the educational experience the school was offering and parents were encouraged to evaluate the project work which students and teachers had been working on.

In a Greek school accountability is described in terms of responsibility for actions taken that teachers owe to one another. This requires a form of evaluation in which a critical look at the quality of cooperation “acts as a compass for the formation of strategies and future steps with the purpose of the improvement of learning”.

Outsidedness aims at understanding not by identification (they are like us) but by the recognition of differences – we are different from them and they are different from us; by exploring these differences we will understand ourselves better. (Czarniawska, B. (1997) Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 62.)

The narrative

The fifth principle was a later addition, proposed by the US (East) group who reminded us that accountability is a significant driver of school improvement and integral to the day to day work of teachers. Leadership for learning practice involves a shared sense of accountability in which:

• a systematic approach to self-evaluation is embedded at classroom, school and community levels

• there is a focus on evidence and its congruence with the core values of the school

• a shared approach to internal accountability is a precondition of accountability to external agencies

• national policies are recast in accordance with the school’s core values

• the school chooses how to tell its own story taking account of political realities

• there is a continuing focus on sustainability, succession and leaving a legacy

As can be seen from the three examples, accountability is seen very differently in differing contexts and can take many forms. In all cases, however, it takes the form of internal accountability – to colleagues (as in Greece), to parents (as in Norway) and to students (as in the USA (East)). All are important expressions of this fifth principle – shared, embedded and with a focus on the core values of the school.