Date Approved

3-1-2016

Embargo Period

3-1-2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ed.D. Educational Leadership

Department

Educational Services and Leadership

College

College of Education

Advisor

Johnson, Ane Turner

Committee Member 1

Kerrigan, Monica

Committee Member 2

Abraham, Stephanie

Keywords

critical discourse analysis, principals, teacher evaluation

Subject(s)

Teachers--Rating of--New Jersey; School principals

Disciplines

Elementary and Middle and Secondary Education Administration

Abstract

In recent years, education in the United States has been framed within a context of crisis where American students have been perceived as unable to compete with their international peers in an increasingly competitive global environment. Some responses to this perceived crisis included reforms, which changed teacher evaluation policies. In New Jersey, the Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey (TeachNJ) Act mandated that districts use a state-approved model for evaluations, the most popular of which was the Danielson Framework for Teaching (FFT). The FFT has become an integral part of teacher evaluation reform, and this study examined this changing discourse through Fairclough’s (2010) theory of the technologisation of discourse. As the instructional leaders of their buildings, principals played a key role in the discursive change process; therefore, this study also explored how principals functioned as social agents in enacting the discourse of change. The findings suggest that the Danielson Group’s website represented the elements of technologisation, providing a strategy for change that supported and positively appraised neoliberal values such as objectivity and quantification. It also demonstrated that a principal’s enactment of the discourse was unique to his past experiences and values, dialectically related to both his role as a social agent in the change and his appraisals of the reforms.

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