ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the particular policy and political conditions within which processes of accountability have unfolded in recent times in schooling. Such conditions have been crucial for fostering more standardized accountability processes in curriculum, teaching and testing. The chapter provides a brief overview of the various ways in which policy has been theorized more briefly, including under more neoliberal and managerial conditions, and how this is manifest in relation to increased accountabilities. It concludes with an account of the political and policy context in the state of Queensland, Australia, as an example of the effects of these more managerial, neoliberal accountability logics, and how these conditions set up the circumstances for potentially more homogenized educational practices, which are elaborated further in subsequent chapters.
