ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relationship between standardized testing and “instruction”, the latter term synonymous with teacher effectiveness and Teacher Quality. It outlines how the term “instruction” as opposed to pedagogy is reductive in nature and is evident of the take-up of US education policy language and particular “positivist” forms of research, particularly in regards to curriculum and how students learn. The chapter discusses how the teacher’s classroom role is configured differently now with an emphasis on developing students’ skills and competencies so as to better align with the uncertainties connected to the prevailing job market. Teachers currently operate ‘within a context of conditional trust’. A contemporary tension in school education is the attenuated approach taken to curriculum theorizing and pedagogy which over time ‘has been reduced to questions about instructional content and classroom delivery’. Skills and competencies, as with standards and outcomes, are about what students should learn at school and leave school with.
