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Beneath the surface of accountability: Answerability, responsibility and capacity-building in recent education reforms in Norway

Journal of Educational Change volume 14, pages 113–138 (2013)Cite this article

Accountability: The quality or state of being accountable; especially: an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions <public officials lacking accountability – Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2011).

Abstract

Recent educational reforms in Norway include national tests and monitoring mechanisms to see if key outcomes are being achieved. At the same time, Norway has not established the follow-up mechanisms like high-stakes incentives and rewards that are characteristic of accountability policies in some other countries. As a consequence, one could argue that Norway has only moved “half-way” toward accountability. In contrast, this paper suggests that these developments in Norwegian policies demonstrate the difficulties of navigating the tensions between promoting two key aspects of accountability—answerability for the achievement of short-term goals and responsibility for the fulfillment of broader purposes—and the challenges of building capacity for both. Exploring developments in the Norwegian context highlights what it may take to develop policies that address both answerability and responsibility and reveals some of the cultural, geographic, political, and economic realities that make it difficult to do so.

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Notes

  1. This paradox underlies issues of central importance to both national governments and international relationships. For example, it was the focus of arguments in the Nuremberg trials over the responsibilities of Nazi officials and fuels contemporary debates about the responsibilities of government and military personnel for war crimes and violations of human rights that may have been ordered, sanctioned, or accepted by their superiors (Gregory 2003).

  2. Further illustrating the link between capacity, answerability and responsibility, people are not expected to be answerable or responsible if they have been coerced or if they do not have the competence to act responsibly (due to illness, inability to comprehend; lack of relevant understanding etc.) (see for example, Watson 2001).

  3. These classifications were based on available data from the PISA and TIMMS tests at the time of the launch of the study in 2009. Norway and the United States are characterized as “lower performing” (as opposed to “low performing”) because their results are generally average or somewhat below average.

  4. Theories of action are the beliefs and assumptions, often implicit and unarticulated, that lead people and groups to act in certain ways (Argyris and Schön 1978; Schön and McDonald 1998; Weiss 1995). The larger research study focuses primarily on the “espoused theories” in the policy documents and in the descriptions obtained in interviews with policymakers and administrators, though it also draws on evaluations which reflect what is happening in practice (for a related approach, see Janssens and de Wolf 2009).

  5. In order to maintain confidentiality the job titles and specific responsibilities of the interviewees are not described.

  6. Concerning Student Assessment, School self-evaluation and the National Quality Assessment System in 1995–1996; Toward Richer Goals: Concerning the Comprehensive School,Equal Opportunity in Education and a National Strategy for Assessment and Quality Development in Compulsory and Upper Secondary Education in 1998–1999.

  7. In an analysis of different approaches to school restructuring in the 1990 s in Scandinavia, Klette (2002) characterizes the Norwegian and Danish approaches as a “this you have to deliver” strategy. She contrasts this approach with a “this you have to achieve” approach more characteristic of Sweden and Finland during the same time period.

  8. While “shocking” to many, the PISA results had been foreshadowed by the relatively poor performance of Norwegian students on the first administration of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study.

  9. This basic skills emphasis constituted a particularly significant change in the early years: up until 1997, six year olds did not even attend compulsory public school, much less focus on basic skills.

  10. In addition to this, there is also an Apprentice Survey and an Instructor Survey. These are not discussed further here because vocational education and training (VET) based at companies are not a part of this study.

  11. The Directorate of Education was itself a product of the “agentification” and de-evolution of government functions, and was designed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the central government’s work in education.

  12. Note that the Tylsyn focuses on whether local education authorities have systems in place to determine the extent to which schools are in compliance; it does not assess whether schools actually are in compliance.

  13. Despite the focus on over-all results and the prohibition on using information from the national tests for rankings, the well-established right to public information in Norway means that newspapers can still get the data on the performance of individual schools, and it is not illegal for them to produce their own rankings using this information. As a consequence, newspapers and other news media often publish school results on the same day that the Directorate releases the information on performance at the municipal and county level. Denmark, which has a similar right to public information, addressed this issue by specifically exempting the school testing data from the right to public information.

  14. While these policies describe what is happening in Norway overall, there are exceptions. For example, the municipality of Oslo, which continues to have a more conservative government, has also made a significant commitment to and investment in using tests to improve performance. That commitment includes the development and implementation of a wide range of tests in many different subjects and grade levels; the publication of school-by-school results; and the use of the results to inform decision-making by Oslo school administrators.

  15. Previously, qualified graduates of teacher training could teach at any level from years 1–10.

  16. This was a translation provided by an interviewee who was reading from the report in Norwegian. The report also concluded that the Directorate did not have sufficient oversight over the administration of the tests and that the poor quality of many of the tests and a high boycott rate at the upper secondary level meant the results from the 2005 tests should not have been made public.

  17. It should be noted that this is not a random sample of municipalities; the Tylsyn focused on municipalities where some problems were suspected.

  18. In some ways, this shift in focus for Norwegian educational administrators appears to move in the opposite direction from shifts underway in the United States where many district administrators accustomed to monitoring and control are now asked to take on support roles for schools (Honig 2008; Honig et al. 2010).

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    Thomas Hatch

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Hatch, T. Beneath the surface of accountability: Answerability, responsibility and capacity-building in recent education reforms in Norway. J Educ Change 14, 113–138 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-012-9206-1

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Keywords

  • Accountability
  • Capacity
  • Educational policy
  • School improvement