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Journal of Educational Change

, Volume 11, Issue 4, pp 307–322 | Cite as

On the geography of accountability: Comparative analysis of teachers’ experiences across seven European countries

  • Jörg Müller
  • Fernando Hernández
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Different forms of accountability are part of educational restructuring across Europe. This article will focus on the different national configurations of accountability from teachers’ point of view. A comparative perspective will enlarge on commonalities and differences between teachers’ experiences in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, England, Sweden, Finland, and Greece. The results obtained demonstrate, on the one hand, that educational policy regarding state-initiated standardization and accountability measures vary highly within the EU. On the other hand, it emerged that the oft-cited discussion between a beneficial professional versus a simplistic performance-oriented form of accountability misses the general disbelief of teachers towards all forms of accountability. Although their work has been increasingly rendered visible over the recent past, teachers pinpointed the mismatch between monitored needs and available resources to effectively transform their educational practice.

Keywords

Accountability European welfare restructuring Professionalism Teachers’ experiences 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on a presentation given at 1st ISA Forum of Sociology, Barcelona September 5–8, 2008. The authors want to acknowledge the work of all Profknow Consortium Members on which this article is based (see http://www.profknow.net/fs-consortium.html). The paper also greatly profited from the comments provided by the anonymous reviewers.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Center for the Study of Change in Culture and EducationUniversity of BarcelonaBarcelonaSpain

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