Teachers, testing, tensions and compliance
A study of how teachers of English experience the requirement to prepare their students for National Curriculum testing
Dr Patrick Yarker
PhD thesis, University of East Anglia
The system of high-stakes testing which currently endures at Key Stage 2, and the pervasive effects of what has been called ‘performativity’ or ‘hyper-accountability’ across state education as a whole, powerfully constrain teachers. Evidence of the ways the external testing-system coerced some teachers into acting against certain core-beliefs compatible with a Learning Without Limits approach may be found in Patrick Yarker’s unpublished PhD thesis: Teachers, testing, tensions and compliance. How do teachers of English at Key Stage 3 experience the requirement to prepare their students for National Curriculum testing? It is available via the University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, UK. An article based on some aspects of this research can be found here:
‘A Kind of Twilight: how do teachers of English at Key Stage 3 respond to the requirement to prepare their students for SATs?’ Forum, 48(3), pp. 247-255.
http://www.wwwords.co.uk/forum/content/pdfs/48/issue48_3.asp