LEGAL AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE IQMS
3.14 Effectiveness of teachers
Similarly, there has been a greater concern than previously with the ‘effectiveness’ of teachers and teaching. Attempts to make teachers and teaching more effective may include and again not limited to:
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3.14.1 Statutory
- Raising the profile and value of teaching as a profession, via, inter-alia, publicity campaigns, incentives packages, the creation and development of professional associations;
- Requiring teachers to be qualified, i.e. trained to minimum standards (in some countries, such as those in the European Union, making teaching a graduate or even post-graduate profession);
- Ensuring that initial teacher training is done by accredited institutions and includes substantial school-based placement;
- Ensuring that all teachers have access to further professional training and development throughout their careers;
- Providing professional support and advisory services at a local level;
- Using external inspectors to assess the performance of individual teachers against national norms;
- Using standardized pupil outcome data to assess the quality of instruction;
- Establishing in-school appraisal systems;
- Providing paid time for team work and development;
- Enhancing remuneration and promotion prospects for ‘leading’ or ‘advanced skills’
teachers; and
- Instituting performance-related pay for all teachers.
The legislation governing education in South Africa do not include many of the above statutes or recommendations but should certainly be considered for inclusion in future legislation and guidelines for use in professional development programmes. The use of external inspectors to assess the performance of individual teachers against national norms, for example, could prove useful in the moderation of scores achieved by teachers and ensure that the system is being applied consistently at all schools.
By establishing in-school appraisal systems that is, going beyond the minimum requirements of the existing appraisal system, a better insight into the teaching skills of individual teachers will be gained and those areas identified as requiring development would be acted upon.
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3.14.2 Non-Statutory
- Basing programs of high-quality continuing professional development around the common theme of effectiveness and improvement;
- Involving teachers inter alia in task groups and working parties on the curriculum;
- Involving teacher unions in the development and dissemination of good practice;
- Respecting teachers as agents of change and giving them a stronger sense of autonomy about, and responsibility for, the learning of all of their pupils;
- Encouraging teachers to participate in professional partnership activities, such as clustering, peer observation and/or mentoring; and
- Promoting a culture of self-evaluation and the use of research to support practice.
All of the above are included in the intentions of IQMS and the extent to which they are being implemented forms part of the empirical study.
3.14.3 Attitude to evaluation (Micropolitics)
There is often resistance to institutional change, which includes teacher appraisal because of what is referred to as micropolitics which can be described as the interplay between power, conflict and cooperation within an organisation. This is strongly aligned to the concept of organisational culture which was presented earlier.
The literature contains several definitions of micropolitics, most focussing on the strategic use of power in organisations to achieve preferred outcomes. Smylie and Brownlee-Conyers (1991), quote Hoyle’s distinction between micropolitics and administration/management illustrated as follows:
Table 15: Micropolitics versus Management
Micropolitics tends to focus on: ManagementI;s concerned with:
Individual and group self-interests organisational goals
Power and influence among individuals and groups the structure of authority in organisations
Informal strategies exercised at the individual and group levels formal procedures exercised at the organisational level.
(Source :Adapted from Hoyle)
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Micropolitics “concerns itself with hidden agendas, with the implicit rather than the explicit, and with those activities that occur among individuals and groups outside rather than inside the formal structures of an organisation.” (Hoyle )
Using this definition, it may be said that individuals and groups might be forced to undermine formal procedures and processes to satisfy their self-interests even where formal operating procedures exist, but exist without measures to prevent their being used to suit the agendas of the special interest groups or individuals. Other factors could possibly be related to the difference between the school as a workplace within the public sector, and an organisation within the private sector in which bureaucratic processes may rightly or wrongly be expected to be more effective. This is in view of the fact that supervisors and managers in the private sector are at least perceived by the workforce to possess a higher degree of knowledge by virtue of education or experience. This is not necessarily the case in education, particularly in the case of a school, where individual teachers may in fact be more experienced as classroom practitioners than the principal or their immediate supervisor, and they may also have superior formal educational qualifications.
Blase (1993) describes micropolitics in the following terms:
“Micropolitics refers to the use of formal and informal power by individuals and groups to achieve their goals in organisations. In large part, political actions result from perceived differences between individuals and groups, coupled with the motivation to use power to influence and/or to protect. Although such actions are consciously motivated, any action, consciously or unconsciously motivated may have political “significance” in a given situation. Both co-operative and conflictive actions and processes are part of the realm of micropolitics.”
Thus, there could be teachers who may experience the negative feelings expressed by Blase, and schools that might be negatively affected by an organisational climate that is not conducive to teamwork and collaboration. So as to avoid these negative consequences, extensive thought and preparation is required prior to a teacher appraisal system being devised, adopted and implemented, to ensure that it addresses the questions of bias and possible discriminatory treatment of certain individuals in schools. This proved to be particularly true in the South African scenario when it was devised, adopted and developed as discussed in Chapter Two.
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3.14.4 Teacher collegiality and appraisal
Many contributors to the literature refer to the “isolation” of teachers in “egg cell” classrooms as inhibiting their growth as professionals, forcing them to depend on their own resources for the resolution of curricular, instructional and management problems which arise during the planning and conduct of instruction. Hargreaves (1991) citing the work of other researchers, indicates that if collegiality is seen as promoting professional growth and internally generated school improvement strategies, it can also be seen as a way of securing effective implementation of externally introduced changes, specifically, the implementation of centralised curriculum reform. This has implications for the implementation of the Curriculum Statements in South Africa, since the success depends to a large extent on the co-operative work of faculty groups within the school. Teachers are required to be responsible for implementing nationally defined curriculum statements, which practically forces them to develop collegial relationships and networks at the school level. Shulman (1989), quoted by Hargreaves states:
“Teacher collegiality and collaboration are not merely important for the improvement of morale and teacher satisfaction....but are absolutely necessary if we wish teaching to be of the highest order. Collegiality and collaboration are also needed to ensure that teachers benefit from their experiences, and continue to grow during their careers”.
Referring to the involvement of teachers in the exercise of leadership at school level, Shulman also comments:
“Schools are asked to become like our best corporations, employing modern methods of management to decentralise authority, to make important decisions at the [point where street-level bureaucrats reside. Leadership is not monopolised by administrators, but is shared with teachers”.
Hargreaves distinguishes between “collaborative cultures” and “contrived collegiality” as illustrated in the following table:
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Table 16: Collaborative cultures and contrived collegiality
Collaborative cultures are Contrived collegiality is Spontaneous - they emerge primarily from the teachers themselves
as a social group. Although they may be facilitated by administrative arrangements, they evolve from, and are sustained by the teaching community itself.
Administratively regulated: contrived collegiality does not evolve spontaneously from the initiative of teachers, but is an administrative imposition that requires teachers to meet and work together.
Voluntary - they arise not from administrative constraint or compulsion but from a perceived value among teachers that derives from experience, inclination, or non-coercive persuasion that working together is both enjoyable and productive.
Compulsory: contrived collegiality makes working together a matter of compulsion, as in mandatory peer coaching, team teaching, and collaborative planning arrangements. In contrived collegiality, there is little discretion afforded to individuality or solitude. Compulsion may be direct, or it may be indirect in terms of associated promises of promotion and veiled threats of withdrawal or support for teachers’ other favoured projects, for example.
Development orientated - teachers work together primarily to develop initiatives of their own, or to work on externally supported or mandated initiatives to which they themselves have a commitment. In collaborative cultures, teachers most often establish the tasks and purposes for working together, rather than meet to implement the purposes of others.
Implementation oriented: under conditions of contrived collegiality, teachers are required or “persuaded” to work together to implement the mandates of others - most directly those of the principal, or indirectly those of the school board, the state or the nation. Such mandates may take the form of a national curriculum, accelerated learning programs, or co-operative learning strategies.
Collegial co-operation is closely tied to administrative co-option.
(Source: Adapted from Hargreaves 1991)
3.14.5 Solidarity and Collegiality
Traditional summative evaluation models are not always structured to support dynamic, regenerative school environments. Evaluation procedures that focus on compliance with strictly controlled sets of behaviours do not encourage teacher involvement in their self-development or in the development of collaborative school cultures. New systems that include evaluation as a genuine part of teachers’
everyday practice, with the required supports for regular reflection, are naturally taking root, as hierarchical controlling structures give way to environments that sustain collegial interactions (Sclan, 1994).
An evaluation system, that is perceived by administrators and teachers as being effective, equitable and humane, provides the platform for the ideal of a collaborative culture might be presented as being the ideal. Alternatively, an evaluation system seen to be unfair, inequitable, and affected by the political intrigues of those possessing power, would be unlikely, in view of the foregoing literature, to be accompanied by a voluntary, collaborative culture.
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Mullins (1966) concisely explains this by stating that the appraisal process is valuable to teachers in that “… it improves the quality of working life by increasing mutual understanding between managers and their staff”
Trethowan (1991) endorses this view stating that:
“… appraisal is a relationship; it is a method of managing and of being managed. … Appraisal means being in and around the teacher’s work to catch the teacher doing something right. It means being available for advice and support when things go wrong. It means that someone, in addition to the teacher is directly, personally and continuously responsible for the teacher’s performance.”
Murdock (2000) argues that: …” it is vital for a progressive system of evaluation to build on collaborative relations whereby the supervisor actively makes efforts to understand the teacher’s frame of reference on classroom events and engages in continuing dialogue with teachers”.
Appraisal creates an opportunity for the appraiser and appraisee to develop a critical friend relationship, moving into coaching and mentoring. Cosh (1999) offers a model she calls “pair mentoring” where two teachers work together, observing each other’s lessons, sharing areas of mutual interest, and planning future strategies together. McGregor (1992) contends that the concepts of collegiality and collaboration are widely emphasized in educational literature, but commonly conflated.
This brings us to the perception of the efficiency factor which is important if teacher appraisal is to achieve its intended objectives.