Teacher accountability and education restructuring: an exploration of teachers’ work identities in an urban school for poor in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT Teachers’ work in India is impacted by the ongoing restructuring of school education that incorporates simultaneous attempts at reform and regulation. Child-friendly assessment policy instituted by the local bureaucracy leads to intensification of teachers’ administrative roles, drawing their attention away from critical pedagogic ones. Limitations in policy interpretation are found to be in response to the official discourse of efficiency that manifests in performative measures of accountability inconsistent with the intended reforms. In this ethnographic case study in an urban middle school for poor, teachers’ attempts to comply with instruments of accountability while adapting to changing pedagogic relations with their students and achieve coherence in their identities are examined. The paper draws attention to the contrasts between models of good teaching held by teachers, vis-à-vis the official discourse. It argues for a reworking of the existing model of accountability towards incorporating a cultural-political conception of pedagogy.