Abstract
PurposeThe voice of school principals represents the principals' thoughts and experiences because of their as teachers' evaluator. It provides principals' perception on making sense the teacher evaluation. In qualitative research, voice can provide the truth and meaning of principals' experience in teachers evaluation. Their voices in the qualitative interviews are recorded and transcribed into words (Jackson and Mazzei, 2009 and Charteris and Smardon, 2018). By listening to the voices of principals in five provinces in Indonesia, this study, a qualitative research, intends to explore the principals' sensemaking in teacher evaluation.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted a qualitative approach, as it was principally concerned with capturing participants' direct experiences in their natural setting as both the teachers' evaluator and school leader (Patton, 2002). The qualitative interview and content analysis were used in this study. The qualitative interview is a type of conversation used to explore informants' experiences and interpretations; in this study, the headmaster (Mishler, 1986; Spradley, 1979 in Hatch, 2002). Researchers used the interviews to uncover the structure of meaning used by principals in making sense the policies that determine teacher evaluations and that are used to carry out evaluations within principal's local authority. The implicit structure can be discovered from direct observation, and the qualitative interviews can bring this meaning to the surface (Hatch, 2002). Therefore, by applying the qualitative interviews, it is expected that information or “unique” interpretations from the principal can be obtained (Stake, 2010). Content analysis is a research technique for making valid conclusions from oral texts into a research context. This analysis can provide new insights, improve researchers' understanding of certain phenomena, or inform other practical actions through the use of verbal data collected in the form of answers to open interview questions (Krippendorff, 2004).FindingsThere are three important findings relating to principals' sensemaking of teachers' evaluation; they are teachers' length of service, principals' perceptions of teacher evaluations and consistency in teacher performance improvement. The principals' perception greatly influences their beliefs and sensemaking of teacher evaluation. In essence, teacher evaluation has not been used to identify high-quality teachers. Principals focus more on the improvement of teachers' welfare than teacher actual performance.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research should explore principals' attitude toward the stakeholders when student achievement is not in line with the consistent increase in teachers' performance ratings. And, it is also necessary to investigate the policy makers response to see the consistent improvement in teacher's evaluation is not in line with student achievement. Finally, how to eliminate the culture of joint responsibility without causing frictions in the school environment.Originality/valueThe authors hereby declare that this submission is their own work, and to the best of their knowledge, it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material that have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma any other publishers.
Highlights
The key issue of teacher evaluation was about the belief, perceptions, sensemaking and challenges of principals as the evaluator (Kraft and Gilmour, 2016; Reid, 2017; Dodson, 2017; Shaked, 2018)
They were 50–60 years old, and most of them (60%) held a master’s degree in education. They were asked to complete a consent form and briefed about the research purposes and benefits. These principals were purposively recruited for the following criteria: (1) they had served as school principals for more than ten years; (2) they had sufficient training in educational management and teacher evaluation; and (3) they had experiences in managing fully- and under-resourced government-owned schools under the supervision of the Ministry of Education and Culture
At first, there are three codes/categories constructed in this study, i.e. (1) demographic factors that influence the evaluation, (2) principals’ perceptions of teacher evaluations and (3) consistency in teacher performance improvement
Summary
The key issue of teacher evaluation was about the belief, perceptions, sensemaking and challenges of principals as the evaluator (Kraft and Gilmour, 2016; Reid, 2017; Dodson, 2017; Shaked, 2018). It was perceived that principals played a more tolerant role when evaluating teachers They paid more attention to such frequent observable aspect as teachers’ attendance instead of evaluating their instruction (Darling-Hammond et al, 1983; Hallinger et al, 2014; Wise et al, 1985, in Reid, 2017; Derrington and Campbell, 2018). This is typically because principals are concerned about their teachers’ future employment (Reid, 2017)
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