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Schools which are named, shamed and blamed by the media: school accountability in Norway

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Abstract

Since Norway introduced tests and other types of measurements the press, with a negative bias, has placed the spotlight on those schools which performed badly in attainment measurements. The press reconstructs from public sources “league tables” of aggregated student achievements but at present the official position opposes the public ranking of schools. This article discusses the consequences within schools of such negative media coverage and the responses within badly performing schools that have been named, shamed and blamed in prominent headlines. This media spotlight brings into play a complex emotional process which may spur schools into improvement mechanisms or provoke a hostile reaction, or result in panic measures.

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Notes

  1. Ministry of Education 1996.

  2. Ole Briseid.

  3. This was so despite the fact that Norway had in 1995 the lowest score in Science topics in the 4th grade of all European countries, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, TIMSS.

  4. PISA is an acronym of Programme for International Student Assessment

  5. From the CEO of the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, the executive agency for the Ministry

  6. School performance (value added) indicators supplement the existing information about school quality and results. The indicators control for differences in family background. They are useful in identifying schools with good practices, and they make it possible to identify school-level decisions that enhance student achievement. School performance indicators are developed for compulsory schools and upper secondary schools in Norway.

  7. http://skoleporten.utdanningsdirektoratet.no/default.aspx

  8. https://lextra.oslo.kommune.no/ude/kvalitetsportalen?

  9. “Previously principals would be congratulated if they received extra funding through political contacts. Now we get criticised.”(Principal Johannes Øvereng in Aftenposten 23.12.2002).

  10. http://www.utdanningsetaten.oslo.kommune.no/tall_fakta/arsmelding/

  11. The reasoning goes like this: When the teacher selects a high degree of effort and high intensity, the student selects low intensity. When the teacher selects a low degree of effort and low intensity, the student selects low intensity. No matter what the teacher chooses, the student chooses low learning intensity. Equally, the teacher chooses a low degree of effort no matter what the student chooses.

  12. No interaction between the school’s agents is pre-destined to converge towards the equilibrium of comfort (see Elstad 2006, 2008a for a more detailed explanation). There are also other plausible strategy combinations: (I) the student chooses low learning intensity and the teacher chooses high academic ambitions, (II) the student chooses high learning intensity and the teacher chooses low academic ambitions and (III) the student chooses high intensity and the teacher chooses high academic ambitions.

  13. Guilt is triggered by a negative belief about one’s efforts, when one realizes that one has not done enough to meet a social or moral norm. Shame cognition occurs as a result of the emotional experience of guilt.

  14. A fine grained mapping of teacher emotions is found in Leithwood 2007.

  15. I use small letters related to the arrows in Fig. 2 to discern different mental mechanisms.

  16. We are not in a position to isolate the effects of improved teaching practice with students from possible other improvement efforts, for example students’ familiarity with the test format, and increased opportunity to practice test-taking.

  17. Most students shift school in the autumn term of year 8.

  18. https://lextra.oslo.kommune.no/ude/kvalitetsportalen?

  19. Leo Tolstoy, cited in Elmore 2005.

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Acknowledgement

The study was granted by The Research Council of Norway (The research project was called ‘Achieving School Accountability in Practice’). This article builds on interviews done by Mona Andersen, Monica Dellemyr, Mette Eckhoff, Ingrid Ronneberg, and the author. The author was supervisor for these students and express gratitude to them. I am also in debt to the principals, teachers and superintendents in the study.

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  1. Department of Teacher Education and School Development, P.O. Box 1099, Blindern, 0317, Oslo, Norway

    Eyvind Elstad

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  1. Eyvind Elstad
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Correspondence to Eyvind Elstad.

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Elstad, E. Schools which are named, shamed and blamed by the media: school accountability in Norway. Educ Asse Eval Acc 21, 173–189 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-009-9076-0

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