Teachers Performance Appraisal and Development and Instructional Competence

Abstract

The quality of teaching shapes the future of students and prepares them to be a responsible citizen. Therefore, all efforts to improve the quality of education are dependent on the instructional competence of teachers and their capacity to undertake the various important roles and functions. These endorses the need for teachers to embrace concrete mechanisms of enhancing their instructional competences to constantly innovate and adapt to dynamic student needs for their Competency-based mastery. In this regard interrelation of instructional competency with teachers’ performance appraisal and development is of interest because of its relevance and vitality in endorsing a pedagogical culture which resonates with education quality despite the teacher’s negative perception. However, there is a dearth of literature explaining whether the two major approaches to teacher evaluation namely value-added measures and standards-based evaluations affect their instructional competence providing a gap for the current review. From the review value-added measures and standards-based evaluations significantly affects instructional competence despite their various limitations. Value added measures can enhance the instructional competence of the teacher courtesy of the synergy amongst collaborative learning communities can assess the evidence of student learning based on the test scores for effective teaching.The headteachers within the policy frameworks should cooperate with the teachers in determination of standards which should be realistic, viable and reliable in addressing instructional competence. However, performance appraisal, might have catastrophic consequences if it is carried out without clear objectives.