![]() ![]() On the one hand, we show how standardized literacy testing fails to recognize students’ actual potential, in terms of the diverse and varied plurilingual and cultural meaning-making resources that many students now bring to literacy, beyond using Standard Australian English alone (and as a monolingual speaker would use SAE as an isolated language system). Through a critique of current literacy assessment practices in Australia relying on standardized testing to achieve such accountability using National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy and Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education as examples, we argue that the resulting dominant account of literacy is both reductive and deficient. The rise of neoliberalism in education-and its related focus on standards, accountability, and efficiency-has seen literacy positioned as the “core business” of contemporary education systems and, accordingly, a construct that must be rendered readily measurable, benchmarked, and accounted for. This paper furthers the understanding of literacy being developed through this Special Issue by bringing a pluralistic, complex account of literacy into conversation with assessment. The consequence is an eviscerated form of schooling that may jeopardize students’ long-term academic and social development. We argue that engagement with such data processes under these conditions leads to not only their demoralization but also the devaluing of teachers’ work, and ultimately, what we claim to be the very ‘disappearance’ of the teacher – the expunging of relational, educative interactions that enable genuine student engagement and learning. ![]() We reveal granular details about how teachers’ engagement with reified forms of student evaluation data under broader neoliberal policy conditions influenced their personal and professional identity as teachers. Drawing upon Kemmis et al.’s (2014) notion of educational practice as characterized by specific ‘sayings,’ ‘doings’ and ‘relatings,’ under particular ‘cultural-discursive,’ ‘material-economic’ and ‘socio-political’ conditions, we analyze teachers’ work practices in two public schools in south-east Queensland. ![]() In this article, we highlight the specificity of teachers’ practices in an era of increased attention to reified measures of data as evidence of student learning. Consequently, there was a deep sense of embodied concern and apprehension in regard to teaching as a career and disillusionment in relation to education more broadly and this was exacerbated by concerns that those making decisions about education were unaware of the actual work of teachers, with deeply problematic effects upon the future workforce and profession more broadly: I think education is heading in the wrong direction because the people in the ivory tower, the education ministers for the portfolio, are delusional they're not in the right place. This is made more salient given the often negative public and media narratives about teachers (Baroutsis, 2016 Mockler, 2013Mockler,, 2020, including as a result of broader data-driven logics or pressures (Hardy, 2014), conditions of marketization (Connell, 2013) as well as the complex tensions of the expansion of parental choice in schooling (Hogan, 2021). There is a deeply affective nature to these sayings as the professional experience of teaching in schools coalesce around the personal and social practices of teachers in their homes and in their community. I really can't think of one reason why anyone should no use My School Design. I highly recommend this company for your website design needs. I haven't used it that much yet but so far what I have done has been very easy to do after using their training. They have great help with the videos and explanations on how to use the Builder. The Builder was a bit intimidating to me at first but the more I use it the more I see that it is not that hard to use at all. She followed my instructions perfectly and our website looks just like I had pictured in my mind. I can't think of a time when she didn't answer me right away when I had questions. I was concerned with the fact that I am in the US and she is in the UK. First of all, Cat is so great to work with and very knowledgeable about every aspect of design and all of the other aspects of launching a website. I cannot say enough good things about My School Design and Cat the person who was my web developer. ![]()
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