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Tennessee Teacher Evaluation Policies Under Race To The Top: A Discursive Investigation, Rachael Elisabeth Gabriel

Doctoral Dissertations

Teacher effectiveness has been a rallying cry for education reform over the last decade. The push for policies that aim to increase teacher effectiveness, fire ineffective teachers and recruit or retain effective teachers unite educational stakeholders; yet, specific, operational definitions of effectiveness remain elusive and divisive. It is easy to say that teacher effectiveness is the single most important factor in student achievement, but difficult to say what it means to be effective. In this study I take up a Critical Discursive Psychology (Wetherell, 1998) approach to the text of the current Framework for Teacher Evaluation and Professional Growth in …