Instrumentation

Abstract

The instrumental repertoires of performance-based accountability policies, composed of tools such as projects, plans, contracts, indicators, and accountability reports, are similar in the two case studies. In this chapter, we focus on the (non)usages of key tools such as indicators and contracts at the school level. In theoretical terms, we investigate the processes of instrumentation of the policy, that is to say, the problems created by the choice and uses of tools to materialize the policy. More specifically, we observe the manner in which these tools are embedded in variable micro-regulatory apparatuses, considered as the combined result of an institutional and a pragmatic construction. The analysis of the (non)usages of tools shows, on the one hand, that the articulations between tools expected by supervisory authorities are extremely variable, depending on national and local contexts, and, on the other hand, that their expected effects in terms of change, improvement, and “self-regulation” of teachers’ pedagogical practices also differ dramatically between the French and the Quebec situations. On the French side, we refer to a contingent administrative bricolage in lycées, a concern of principals and little (or not at all) affecting teachers’ practices. The appropriation of the instrumental repertoire is more consistent in Quebec schools, allowing for the simultaneous emergence of a process of semantic institutionalization of a managerial rationality and the enactment—with variations among schools—of tools to manage and monitor teachers’ pedagogical practices. We conclude on the organizational and institutional effects of these ongoing instrumental reconfigurations.