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Subject: Comparative Education

Course: MAED-TE
Date of Submission: March 15, 2020

Unit V: EDUCATION ACCOUNTABILITY AND AUTHORITY

Introduction
Accountability is a loaded term within the school improvement and reform movements of several
countries, including the United States.
Efforts to introduce educational standards, to enact school choice, and to require more rigorous
forms of teacher preparation are attributable largely to the popular impression that teachers and
schools should become more answerable to their publics.
Public scrutiny of schools and teachers might negatively affect the education system.
A major challenge to the increasing public awareness to teachers and school’s accountability is
the doing so in a way that maintain teacher's authority.
Hazards of Accountability
Hazards regarding accountability's use as a tool for education reform:
* When viewed as a mechanism, the concept of accountability tends to instrumentalize the
performance of teachers in order to pave the way for more systematic observations and
judgments regarding their work.
* The tendency of the accountability movement to require routinized assessment further tends to
stipulate that these judgments of schools and teachers should be administered by entities strictly
outside the schools themselves
* Accountability must be more than a simple rule of practice. Instead, like a social norm,
accountability should logically extend to all of society's members.
Accountability and Democratic Theory:
Responsibility as Authority
Education benefits from widespread participation such as teachers, parents and children.
Democracy is premised on a system of both rights and responsibilities.
Accountability provides the basis for a relationship between society and its members, between
those who govern and whose who consent to be governed.
There are seven forms of stakeholder accountability:
1) Political accountability
2) Professional accountability
3) Financial accountability
4) Managerial accountability
5) Contractual accountability
6) Legal Accountability
7) parents and students are accountable to society through their personal responsibility.

Philosophical Insights on Accountability

What Teachers Do:
The successful teacher makes the most of observed strengths in students and classes, seizes
opportunities that arise in daily instruction, and recognizes and responds to problem and
challenges.

The Roll of Society in United Kingdom's Education

Teachers and parents are highly active in the education of the youth in the United Kingdom.
Teachers reach out to parents outside of school day time frames and often follow up individually
with students on their own time. The importance of teaching and schools is reflected in the
United Kingdom by dedication and hard work.

Teachers Authority In United Kingdom

Teacher authority is given only through the interpretation of curriculum and parent support.
Teachers often feel as though they are limited on their educational creativity, but also see the
need for common curriculum and structure in the education system. Teaching means being
emotionally invested in the development of the students as they progress intellectually,
emotionally, and in maturity.
Education Reform in United Kingdom
The formal assessments are very similar to those in the US. Standardized testing is used to gauge
the development of a student and then used to guide the direction of the education for areas of
weakness (teaching to the test for lack of a better term). Success is measured in progress from
previous tests and compared to other students in similar testing dichotomies. Teachers are to
preside over the classroom and implement common curriculum in a process very similar to the
US. The goals for the UK are to start preparing students for a global economy.
The plan to assist in that development consists of more in class student driven technology use,
and multicultural instructions and exposure.

Teaching Tasks
Differentiated instruction is an attempt to ensure that all students at some point in as many
lessons as possible are exposed to e teaching and learning style that best meets their needs. The
irony is that each student has different needs and is therefore going to experience times when the
teacher’s methods are not effective, or conducive to, their learning style. The debate process that
was recently used in class was a great way to show how some students do well in a public
speaking environment, while others prefer to do the behind the scenes work. One is not right and
the other wrong, or one better than the other, they are just different.

Importance of Teaching and Schools Reflected in Germany

Most schools concentrated on general education components and diminished their vocational
learning endeavors because institutional recognition depended on
The foreshadowed continuing tensions in the unified Germany and elsewhere about the relative
status of academic educational aims versus applied learning.
FGR government officials recognize the central role that education shapes the German culture.
German educational system is characterized by significant variations among the Lander in terms
of the instructional calendar, age-grade assignments, basic policies, and school structures,
especially at the secondary level.

Evidence of Teachers Authority

Teachers in the former Federal Republic Germany (FRG) exercise considerable latitude in
shaping the lessons they deliver in the classroom Suggests a form of teacher authority that
contrasts sharply with the sometimes less democratically sensitive and more coercive forms of
authority exercised by teachers in the former GDR Teachers stressing students' productive
potential, injected practicality and knowledge application Teachers in the West traditionally have
had a prominent role in advising parents on matters of student placement within one of the
various educational tracks or emphases that the system features

Teachers Lack of Authority

Because of the educational reform’s teachers lack of enthusiasm to perform their duties and had
little role in shaping.
A balance between authority and accountability is paramount Withdraw from their work and
burnt out Under reunification paradoxically has left teachers feeling more powerless.
Teachers in the New Lander had little time to replace the authority they once had as custodians
of the state Lost authority with a new genre of authority based on professional expertise Teachers
were distressed by what the state does to them and what they cannot do to students and parents
anymore

What Does Teaching Mean?

Facilitate the students learning Importance to be partnered with the parents, families, and the
communities
* Importance of technological innovations so students are able to compete in the global economy
around the world.
Teaching students to problem solve, think critically, and communicate effectively Sensitivity of
multiculturalism

Formal Assessment in Germany's School

Polytechnical educational included substantial emphasis on science that tended to increase as
students moved to higher grades.
Third of a student of seventh-grade level have typical instructional week to be devoted with math
and science.
Teachers had a prominent role in monitoring students’ activities progress toward outcomes.

Tasks Informally Judged in Germany's School

Significant overlaps in the curriculum that each of these schools offer and finding qualified staff
to cover all the resulting needs has been difficult.
Issue of specialization and particular from Land to Land has made the personnel issues harder to
resolve as well as teacher preparation a demanding undertaking.

Intended Results and Strategies

Highlighting opportunity and the other sensitivity to differing abilities and interests and
epitomizes the equality versus ability tension that both East and West Germany have sought to
resolve.
Aligning the education systems of the former East and West German states has been a matter of
assimilation.

Roles in Planning and Carrying out Strategies

Teachers from the former GDR continue to adjust to West German structures, institutional and
classroom practices, and its curricular.
• New pattern of educator responsibility and obligation has arisen.
Avoid processing the implications of their past and present circumstances and having new
authority available to them.
Comparison:

Demographic Attributes

ENGLAND GERMANY

Attribute: England's regions and peoples are Attribute: The Rhine River is significant to
distinct because of geographic features and Germany's economic activity in terms of
the impact on the course of civilization there. shipping and certain industrial activity. But its
Scotland, for instance, was remote and economy significance is not coincidental, and
inhospitable for Romans exploring what we the Rhine has had additional effects on
now call the British Isles, Scotland and some culture, settlement patterns, and so forth.
other outlying regions retained this identity as
hostile after the monarchy was established in
England. And even alter hinterlands came
under the crown’s reach, significant latitude
was granted to local populations in steering
public affairs.
Response: Once breaching the Alps. Romans
Response: Culture and its institutions have
exploring Germany progressed north
taken alternate courses in each of the member following the Rhine. Early civilization was
"nations" of the United Kingdom Ireland, therefore concentrated in the Rhine region,
Scotland, and Wales-although substantial and that pattern continued into the Christian
similarity also exist era Catholicism continues to dominate in
Germany's south and along the Rhine,
whereas Protestantism flourishes in the north

Educational Implication: The most highly

populated areas in Germany are along the
Educational Implication: The various school
Rhine River, accounting for a substantial
systems within the United Kingdom are portion of Germany 82 million citizens Large
typified by this blend of mutual difference parts of the country are sparsely settled, and
and similarity. Wales, for instance, has the maintaining a level of instruction that is
same architecture of Local Education comparable to that of the German city
Authorities-thought is much smaller because presents challenges in Germany as in any
of the region's relatively sparse population. country.

Comparison:

Sociopolitical Factors and Educational Implications

ENGLAND GERMANY

Factor: In spite of its identity as a Factor: In the wake of World War I, the
progressive democracy, England has retained Treaty of Versailles induced enormous war
strong links to its aristocratic past-the British reparations on the Germans. The
monarchy being an overt symbol of the unrealistically high penalties contributed to a
continuing appeal and power of that past. But near complete loss of confidence in the
other means by which elitism is preserved are German economy and hyperinflation so
more covert pronounce that during the early 1920s, a U.S
dollar was worth several trillion marks

Response: Adolf Hitler rose to power by

Response: English "public schools" launched appealing effectively to the Germans
in the mid-19th century, were actually set up collective sense of resentment.
as privately endowed schools that were
instituted as a charity of sorts providing
education for poorer members of English
society. The wealthier members of English
society, meanwhile, normally were educated
by private arrangements with tutors.
Educational Implication: Hitler's
propaganda machine had many outlets.
Educational Implication: The emergence Among them wore the schools, which became
and growth of a middle class during the one of Hitler's most important mouthpieces
industrial Revolution brought concurrent (Wegner, 2002). In the contemporary period,
demand for a form of secondary school that the German school system reflects safeguards
might exclude the working classes. The against manipulation such as their relative
public schools were reformed to provide an decentralization at the Land level
alternative that would exclude the poor for
whom those schools had been created

Comparison:

Geophysical Realities

ENGLAND GERMANY

Locality: England is part of an island nation- Locality: precedents for German national
an attribute that has influenced the country's identity date at least to Charlemagne, first
history., politics, and development for Holy Roman emperor of the German Nations,
millennia This national trait has helped shape crowned 800 AD but Germany was a shifting
policies and behaviors that, while by no patchwork of principalities until the early
means isolationist of withdrawn remain 20th century. Nationalism culminated during
cautious and protective. The issue of the Nazi regime, at which time education was
European Integration is complicated to centrally controlled.
navigate on account of this in part.

Response: The United Kingdom, although a Response: Following World War II, Allied
supportive and engaged member of the forces oversaw the creation of 16 Lander-II in
European Union (EU). Has opted out of tool the West and five in the East. These Lander
partition in the structures of monetary union, (provinces of states) were devised partially
for instance. with older historical identity in mind, and
considerable power was vested in each of the
Lander in order to subdue nationalism and
enable Allied oversight and management.

Educational Implication: Education is a Educational Implication: The locus of

topic of special interest in EU nations because governance in Germany’s education system
of issues such as transferability and remains at the Land level. Because of
recognition of credentials among EU differences in political sensibilities, tradition,
members. Like Germany and the other and other regional influences, the German
members of the EU, the United Kingdom’s educational system is characterized by
citizens and government are trying to significant variation among the Lander in
reconcile the competing interest of retaining terms of instructional calendar, age-grade
 national autonomy while reaping the fullest assignments, basic policies, and school
possible benefit from the economic structures, especially at the secondary level.
participation and security in the EU. To what
extent should schools pursue their traditional
roles of building and reflecting national
identity? In what ways should schools support
and reinforce a sense of citizenship within a
collective European society? The United
Kingdom’s position epitomizes this sense of
ambiguity, providing a case in point of how a
balance might be achieved in negotiating this
dual identity.

Conclusion
Teachers in Germany and England alike conveyed little enthusiasm for many of the
circumstances that came to define their work in the wake of educational reforms-circumstances
that they had little role in shaping. A balance between authority and accountability is paramount.
What is at stake if no such balance exists? Teachers, likely, will withdraw from their work by
burning out or by cynically accepting the narrowed and deprofessionalized world offered to
them.
England's ERA suggests, authentic accountability connotes a commitment to fulfill obligations
even when nobody is watching. It should not connote compliance with procedures that one
fulfills merely because someone is watching.