Rights, duties and spaces of agency amidst high-stakes testing

Purpose By recognizing high-stakes testing as a key constraint to teacher agency, this paper aims to provide a close analysis of one teacher’s testing narrative to illustrate how emerging positioning is relative to high-stakes testing shapes perception of pedagogical agency. Design/methodology/approach Data were generated through a series of semi-structured interviews with an early career fourth-grade teacher, Ms Moore, in a school facing pressure to raise test scores. Using theoretical lenses of narrative positioning and a linguistic anthropological centering of constraint and emergence, 67 narratives of accountability were analyzed, with particular focus on how Ms Moore positioned herself relative to other actors involved in high-stakes testing and the consequent rights and duties these positions afforded. Findings In narrating the constraints of high-stakes testing, Ms Moore positioned herself relative to three groups involved in high-stakes testing: “purposefully tricky” test creators, “disjointed” administrators and “worried” students. The rights and duties associated with three positions varied with respect to two dimensions – proximity and hierarchy – in turn providing her distinct resources for responding to the pedagogical constraints of high-stakes testing. Practical implications Teachers might use positioning analysis as a tool to locate possibilities for agency amidst high-stakes testing, both by exploring the resources afforded by their positioning and by considering how alternative positions might afford different resources. Originality/value These findings suggest that high-stakes testing serves as a dynamic and perhaps malleable constraint to teacher agency. Teacher positioning, particularly relative to hierarchy and proximity, provides possible resource for responding to such constraints.