The complexity of teaching work and the challenges of evaluating it

I chose this evidence because it covers the tensions that have arisen in the implementation of educational reforms globally. The author begins by analyzing the epistemological complexity and process evaluations and grounds it in the impact of educational reforms on teachers. Like Lozano's study, this one focuses on the impact of reforms on teachers, as they have been the main target, the ones who are blamed and held responsible for educational success. In particular, it mentions the educational (or labor) reform published in 2013, which is also referred to in Lozano's text.

"The discourse circulating in recent days treats all teachers equally: they are discredited and blamed for all the ills of education and society, as if education were the sole cause of the crises we are experiencing. On the contrary, the response is to praise the work of teachers in the abstract, without making any distinction. Neither of these approaches helps us to examine the actual conditions and performance of teachers as public education workers." (Rockwell, 2018, p. 18)

Rockwell (2018) analyzes the impact of educational reforms on fourth and fifth grade teachers. He begins by discussing why reforms do not respond to the nature of schools, as they attempt to measure and implement effectiveness and quality, which are industrial terms. The way education is evaluated cannot be linear because it does not respond to a cause-and-effect model:

“Changes in young learners are not the sole result of the actions of education workers on duty. It is not possible to count how many ‘nuts’ the teacher managed to put in place and tighten during a school year.” (Rockwell, 2018, p. 8)

How can students learn easily

How teaching work affects the process of learning

Another reason why education should not respond to production processes is that teaching is not a process that lends itself to competition. The knowledge produced is not distributed among participants in such a way that those who arrive first receive more, but rather it is multiplied by them, since the total can be appropriated by each one without taking anything away from the others. Collaboration ensures greater production and gain for everyone equally; the more everyone learns, the more each individual learns. Therefore, education is an essentially collective process (Rockwell, 2018).

Rockwell quotes Spanish researcher Antonio Viñao (2002), who points out that there is a common transnational rhetoric in reforms, all of which point to the failure of previous reforms and the need to adapt education to current changes.

There are reforms manifested in vague discourses that hide the real objectives, such as sacrificing equity for quality education. Viñao indicates that “there is a tendency to legislate with the expectation of achieving total changes in the short term, rather than consolidating gradual changes” (Rockwell, 2018, p. 6).

After discussing how educational reforms globally are implemented based on a logic that does not respond to learning, Rockwell studies how reforms in Mexico have influenced primary school teachers. To do this, he uses a qualitative methodology with the aim of understanding how teaching work is carried out without repeating the logic of oversight that the laws follow.

Rockwell (2018) explains how, despite seeing some progress in schools with the implementation of educational reforms, many of the changes are not implemented in a positive way because teachers are not trained for this, do not receive the necessary support, or the reform does not respond to the specific needs of the social, cultural, and economic context of schools in Mexico.

The standardization tests and how they are implemented through teachers

In an attempt to quantify and standardize education, ENLACE tests were implemented. However, rather than raising educational standards, these tests increase the pressure on students and teachers to pass multiple-choice exams, and many succumb to this pressure, resorting to teaching students how to answer exams rather than teaching them how to learn.

The feeling left by this situation is one of exhaustion by and from the reforms: “These are not propitious times to try again to start from scratch, with a repeated discourse that now we have the solution to all the ills of education” (Rockwell, 2018, p. 11). Not only are the reforms poorly designed, but they are also not given enough time for education workers to understand and implement them.

Based on the analysis of research from different parts of the world dealing with educational reforms and qualitative study based on observations and dialogue. Rockwell (2018) attempts to find an answer to the evaluation of educational quality in Mexico. He concludes that “the complex and heterogeneous conditions of teaching work in all Latin American countries must be taken into account before adopting partial interventions towards a new teaching professionalism” (Rockwell, 2018, p. 23).

On the other hand, the text by Lozano and Levinson (2018) focuses on secondary school teachers and their lack of motivation. The authors argue that teachers' job dissatisfaction is due to macrosocial conditions that affect teachers' daily lives in different ways. Standardized assessments show numbers that do not represent the complex reality of secondary school teachers. The data appear decontextualized, and it is on the basis of this data that reforms are created to improve the quality of education in the country.

Lozano and Levinson (2018) investigate the reality of teachers and observe a period of crisis characterized by the frustration of not being what their imagination had led them to believe. Teachers lose autonomy by complying with rigorously planned activities to achieve predetermined results. Meanwhile, “the school becomes an institution in crisis where the relationship with the student focuses on achieving good standardized results” (Lozano, Bradley, & Levinson, 2018, p. 8).

Both studies discuss standardized tests and how they are not only poor tools for evaluating teacher performance but also a stress factor that can negatively impact the quality of teaching. Rockwell (2018) mentions that multiple quantitative studies have shown that the results of knowledge tests administered to students do not always correlate with teaching quality as measured by other means (D'Agostino & Powers, 2009, cited by Rockwell, 2018, p. 22). There are also studies that show that evaluation by teacher trainers who accompany new teachers during their initial training or at the beginning of their work may be a better predictor of their future performance as teachers than the results of student knowledge tests (Rockwell, 2018, p. 24).

Pedagogy centered on the student

Another way in which the two studies are related is in the research methodology they employ, as both use qualitative instruments to counterbalance the quantitative nature of standardized assessments and exams. Both readings attempt to highlight characteristics of education and teachers that cannot be measured by comprehensive exams and to focus on the positive aspects. Lozano and Levinson (2018) mention that “Mexicanos primero, 10, Televisa, and TV Azteca, radio stations, and newspapers are responsible for disparaging the work of teachers in basic education, as they emphasize the negative aspects” (p. 16).

Furthermore, according to Lozano and Levinson (2018), several studies show that teachers work for recognition, and this is no longer happening. Therefore, the two studies cited in this paper are highly relevant in providing a different image of teachers and giving them what they need to realize their potential, rather than just increasing standardized test scores.

Despite the famous “comprehensive training” and pedagogy centered on the student, which is touted in some reform documents, teachers are urged to focus on “the content” of the subjects so that students do well on standardized tests. (Lozano, Bradley, & Levinson, 2018, p. 24).

This alludes to Rockwell's (2018) study, which proposes that not everyone can be evaluated equally and mentions that, in general, “these evaluation systems allocate more human and financial resources to evaluation than to educating and training teachers” (Rockwell, 2018, p. 25). This leads to questions about the possibility of finding fair measures of teacher performance and the extent to which the systems used—based on universal standardized tests—achieve the goal of improving the quality of education.

Finally, schools have been in crisis for several years, which the current reform aims to resolve by impacting teacher practice and training while leaving other actors and factors intact (Lozano, Bradley, & Levinson, 2018).

Would you like to analyze how these tensions are also reflected in your school or educational organization?

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References

Lozano, A. J., Bradley, A., & Levinson. (2018). El docente de secundaria ante las reformas educativas en Mexico.Costa Rica: Actualidades Investigativas en educación .

Rockwell, E. (2018). La complejidad del trabajo docente y los retos de su evaluación: resultados internacionales y procesos nacionales de reforma educativa. Ciudad de Mexico: Cuadernos de Educación.