The current set of debates within national education systems includes significant discussion and enactment of school accountability mechanisms. While there is considerable variation among countries, the internationalization of test-based accountability is a significant and recent phenomenon. That broader pattern of accountability has a history that overlaps with both the history of testing and the broader relationship between schools and the nation and society in which they are embedded. Yet with a few exceptions, the discussion of the history of school accountability exists primarily in reference to individual nations.
A comparative and international history of school accountability can explore the relationships among individual national histories of accountability policy and discourse and broader questions of international trends and patterns. This is both a question of longer-term historical patterns and contemporary debates within the field of comparative education over the extent of broad international patterns of school change.
Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA) announces a call for papers for a special issue exploring the comparative and international history of school accountability and testing. The editors of the special issue seek manuscripts that address this history either at the national or at the international level. At the scale of individual societies, what have been important factors in that history? When examined comparatively, what has shaped international patterns and international variation? What repertoires of testing and accountability systems have been available for individual societies and national or local education systems? How have the limits of acceptable practices changed over the decades and centuries? How has the development of school accountability systems changed the relationship between formal schooling and broader cultures?
About the Journal: Celebrating its 20th year, EPAA is a peer-reviewed, open-access, international, multilingual, and multidisciplinary journal designed for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and development analysts concerned with education policies. EPAA/AAPE accepts unpublished original manuscripts in English, Spanish and Portuguese without restriction as to conceptual and methodological perspectives, time or place.
Submission Information: All manuscripts should be submitted electronically through the EPAA website and follow the Journal’s submission guidelines: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/. We will not consider manuscripts submitted for publication or published elsewhere.
Deadline: January 27th, 2014
Publication date: October 6th, 2014
Early submissions are encouraged.
Guest Editors:
Sherman Dorn, University of South Florida, dorn@usf.edu
Christian Ydesen, Aalborg University, cy@learning.aau.dk