Sustainable school self-evaluation: enactments and perceptions of balancing accountability and improvement goals

This paper examines staff’s enactment and perceptions of a continuous independent school self-evaluation (SSE) process implemented at a semi-private school network for the past decade. In light of research arguing SSE was perceived and used primarily as a self-inspection or self-regulation tool emphasizing accountability goals; this case suggests the promise of engaging in SSE that the staff perceives as positive and aimed towards their school’s improvement. Findings reported in this work are based on analyzing Concept Structuring Analysis Task (ConSAT) interviews in which participants created their own concept maps, and participant observation of a two-year-long SSE process. This paper identifies three organizational mechanisms that facilitated a sustainable improvement-oriented SSE: the role of the evaluator, pooling resources through network structure, and the way the network uses evaluation data. These findings yield implications for (a) research on the enactment of sustainable SSE and (b) implementation of SSE that balances accountability and improvement goals.