The Institute of Development Studies and Partner Organisations
Browse

Accountability and Trust: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

journal contribution
posted on 2024-10-04, 13:46 authored by Melanie Ehren, Andrew Paterson, Jacqueline Baxter
Trust and accountability are often positioned as opposites, the argument being that accountability is based on distrust and correction of identified deficiencies. Yet, trust is also important in order for accountability to lead to improvement; only when teachers and principals are open about the quality of their teaching and their school can there be a meaningful discussion about change. How can we overcome this dilemma? This paper will address the inextricable interaction between trust and accountability, presenting examples from a study in South Africa of how external control in a setting of distrust can undermine agency and improvement, and how high levels of trust can promote more effective accountability relationships. Our study provides relevant insights into why some education systems are unable to generate, evaluate and scale innovations in learning when a lack of trust and capacity leads to strong opposition to external accountability, and when strong bureaucratic accountability creates further inefficiencies in pressurizing educators across the education system to report and monitor on various aspects of education where these efforts do not actually improve the quality of teaching in the classroom or provide information on good practices.

RLOs

History

Publisher

Springer

Citation

Ehren, M., Paterson, A. & Baxter, J. Accountability and trust: Two sides of the same coin?. J Educ Change 21, 183–213 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-019-09352-4

IDS Item Types

Article

Copyright holder

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Identifier Ag

ES/P005888/1

Usage metrics

    Impact Initiative - Education

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC