| Resumen: |
School Autonomy With Accountability policies (SAWA) have been adopted in Brazil during the 1990s through forms of decentralization, school autonomy and the use of large-scale assessments for accountability purposes. In the state of Minas Gerais, the administrative, managerial and highstake nature of these reforms are acknowledged to have shaped school practices and identities, and to have been received with resistance by teachers. However, studies on the way policy mechanisms and contextual factors shape and mediate these outcomes are limited. With this thesis I analyze the enactment (Ball et al, 2012) of these policies by analyzing how principals and school leadership mediate accountability regimes, specifically looking at the interdependence between their adopted practices, contextual factors and the effects of these on teacher's reception and implementation. In order to do so, I have adopted an interpretative/constructivist framework to analyze staff's internal discourses, practices and dynamics. The study has been conducted in four different schools in the city of Belo Horizonte, through semistructured interviews and participatory observations in school sites, and has been guided by a realist evaluation (cf. Pawson and Tilley, 2004) methodological approach. The combination of accountability mechanisms with internal and external school factors have resulted in a nuanced and complex scenario, by which 1) school leaders adopt different direct and indirect practices to align to the accountability reform, which are shaped by their understanding, sense-making and pressures perceived, 2) leadership practices and behaviors are framed according to and contingent to the school institutional and professional context in which they are embedded and 3) principals shape and sustain teacher's reception of the reform through indirect mechanisms of change, but their effectiveness is supported/limited by several conditions and individual factors - such as gender, teacher's working conditions and students' socio-economic status. |
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