4.4 The SMT experiences of monitoring teaching and learning
4.4.1 Experiences of monitoring teaching
Spillane (2005) and Lambert (2013) asserts that the role of a school principal or individual HODs is not to single-handedly lead schools to great heights. Instead, SMTs as instructional leaders are expected to interact with other teachers in their attempt to achieve the set goals including monitoring. Therefore, it was vital to firstly determine whether or not they monitored teaching as well as how they interacted with colleagues, teachers in particular, in such endeavours. Participants were asked to comment about their experiences of working with stakeholders during the monitoring of teaching and learning. The dominant view was appreciative of the teachers’ participation and cooperation. The participants claimed that they were working jointly and collaboratively with the teachers. For instance, Mrs Thwala’s comments were specifically about teacher support of the monitoring process:
I get good support from the teachers...The support is very good. My teachers are very supportive.
She went further to explain about the working relationship and trust they had developed with the teachers. Where the teachers could not cope with the work challenges she said that she went all out to assist. This is how Mrs Thwala put it:
I told them you don’t keep quiet when you can’t cope. Talk and we’ll see what to do. I even help in Grade three with the handwriting, eh?
This was clearly an indication of the importance of instructional leadership in practice on the part of the principal. Hallinger and Hack (1999) posit that learning-centred leaders do influence teaching and learning through their own teaching or through modelling good practice. Mrs Thwala appeared to be actively interacting with the teachers and the learners in
Page | 62 daily classroom activities. However, her response sounded as if the cooperation of the teachers was obtained more when the monitoring activity was directed at the extent of learning, and not as a measure of teaching. In short, it seemed like the teachers’ cooperation was conditional to the target of monitoring; if it was directed at the learners, cooperation was high as compared to when the focus was on monitoring teaching. Hence, Mrs Thwala’s emphasis appeared to be directed at monitoring the work of the learners which was easily obtainable from exercise books and indirectly monitoring teaching. As a result, her observation of weaknesses in the learners’ work led to her developing some opinions on the teachers’ lack of attention to learners’ handwriting. Apparently, through monitoring the learners’ work, teaching gaps were identified. Commenting on the same subject, Ms Ntuli also suggested that teachers had no problem with the learner exercise books being checked:
I randomly check the learners’ work books to monitor the amount of work given to the learners. I randomly choose one or two classes and from there I select five names of learners. I check looking at the dates; when the work was written compared to when it was marked.
This strategy is in harmony with the views of Davis and Davis (2012) who argue that in order to determine the levels of teaching and learning, the SMT may have to randomly select a few learner exercise books from each class to check the frequency of written work given and the feedback written to learners. In the process of regularly monitoring the learners’ written work the quality of teaching and learning can be enhanced. Further, the SMT could regularly conduct this exercise continuously throughout the year.
When it was time to directly check teachers’ records, it was a different ball game altogether.
Teachers had their way out. Apparently, the teachers turned the exercise into a paper filling process in order to honour the due dates and appease the HODs:
When they know that nobody is going to check, they don’t record. That’s why you find that most of the time when I am checking teachers’ portfolio, you find that there is a lot of missing lesson plans. It is because they have not submitted. They have forgotten to submit during the course of the month. They will only remember when it’s a day before submission date. That’s when they start doing the lesson plans, trying to fill in all those lesson plans that have not been covered (Mr Zwane).
Such comments made me wonder about the effects of such teachers attitudes on the effectiveness of teaching. That is, whether or not the teachers’ lesson plans were done after lessons had long been presented. Should it happen that plans were done after teaching had
Page | 63 been done, the quality of such teaching would be put into question. Other participants echoed positive sentiments about their experiences of interacting with teachers on task. However, the comments seemed to be introductory remarks which preceded the main concerns – teachers’
detest for the whole exercise of being monitored. Although teachers through their unions were supportive of the idea of monitoring teaching and learning, but they did not appear keen on standing at the receiving end of its implementation. Mr Kubheka remarked:
Teachers are cooperative just because they have no alternative. If ever they had a way out I doubt if they would give you the learners’ written work. They cooperate because there is no other way. They have to because the principal has requested that these be submitted to the office.
Although the submission dates were allegedly jointly decided by the teachers and the SMT members as a measure of compliance with DoE requirements but, more often than not, the teachers did not honour these dates. Even then, the SMT members went out of their way to cover for such teachers by actually trivialising the teachers behaviours of not honouring the deadlines; the HODs make feeble claims that late submission came as a result of the teachers
‘forgetting’ as other participants said. Actually, teachers detested being monitored and indirectly, objected to teaching activities being subjected to the SMT members’ scrutiny.
..To be monitored is something people (referring to teachers) are very afraid of.
Frankly, they don’t like it. When it’s time for submissions they complain. If you say I want all the files. They go: Oh, next week (suggesting the postponement of the submission date). But finally they do submit (Mrs Miya).
These responses suggest that teachers did not willingly subject themselves to the SMT members’ processes of monitoring teaching and learning because of they believed in their efficacies. Instead, they cooperated because they were obliged by policies and other collective agreements of the Department of Education. Apparently, the teachers regarded themselves as experts in the subjects they taught and as a result, they abhorred being monitored. When the participants were asked to comment about the challenges they encountered in the process of obtaining evidence of teaching and learning from teachers, they mentioned the difficulties of having to go through teacher attitudes in order to obtain the required submissions. In this regard, Ms Ntuli commented:
Everybody thinks they are good teachers. No one thinks they aren’t. Everybody thinks they know.
Page | 64 This comment was referring to the attitudes of the teachers. In addition to being despised by teachers, the SMT members’ monitoring of teaching and learning was blamed for causing tensions between them and the teachers. Mr Kubheka expressed his frustration:
The exercise itself sours the relationship because teachers do not welcome their HOD or their principal for that matter, coming to monitor what they are doing in class.
Monitoring sours relationship between SMT and teachers.
The negative impacts on SMT-teacher relations associated with monitoring of teaching were implied. When the participants were asked whether they would rather choose not to ‘sour relationships’ with teachers and abandon the exercise of monitoring teaching and learning, participants responded:
Whether the educators welcome it or they don’t welcome it but at the end of the day it has to be done (Mr Kubheka).
Ms Ntuli echoed similar sentiments in favour of going ahead with monitoring:
I’ll do it (referring to monitoring of teaching and learning) for the sake of the principal or because I don’t want to hurt my principal.
With these comments coming from SMT members, is evident that monitoring of teaching was conducted in an atmosphere where SMTs could not guarantee commitment of teachers to the process. Experiences of monitoring teaching suggest that this exercise appeals for decisiveness on the part of the SMT, particularly the principal, in order to be in compliance with the requirements of Department of Education (2011). The comments made by Ms Ntuli give the impression that the determination of the principal, Mr Kubheka to abide by policies appeared to be the driving force behind proceeding with monitoring. Ms Ntuli implied the existence of mutual support for monitoring of teaching between the principal and the SMT.
Somehow, her comments did not convince me that she believed in the process of monitoring teaching as a management exercise; rather it seemed to be merely for purposes of compliance with policies. The SMT also carried a burden of finding ways to make teachers honour the due dates and submit required documents timely as proof of having done their job of teaching learners. In the process, it appears that the SMT members sometimes relaxed terms of monitoring teaching, arguably, for fear of ‘brewing conflict’. When participants were asked about what they did to monitor teaching and learning in spite of possibly invoking tensions.
Ms Ntuli responded by saying that:
Sometimes I end up unable to solve that issue but sometimes I talk about it. However I bit around the bush and avoid getting too serious about the issue because some
Page | 65 people (teachers) get easily offended. ...Because we are human beings we sometimes relax the rules.
It is obvious from the comments made that effective monitoring of teaching is partly affected by teacher attitudes towards the implementation of the very monitoring procedures they might have discussed at the beginning of each year. In spite of the claim made by the participants that the teachers were cooperative, their basis for this assertion was, arguably, based on the submission of required documents which invariably were ultimately received after numerous postponements. None of the participants mentioned random checking of the teachers’ files as they did with the learner exercise books. Instead, with the teachers, submission dates were easily rescheduled to accommodate those teachers who were not ready to submit as agreed. The SMT members’ experiences did not suggest that teachers fully supported the SMT monitoring of teaching activities. Frankly, the teachers detested being subjected to actual monitoring procedures. When monitoring teaching, the SMTs had to carefully work around the attitudes of teachers in order to avoid straining relations as alleged by some participants. In fact, monitoring by the participants appeared to be at the mercy of the teachers who yielded to the monitoring processes in order to merely fulfil the Department of Education expectations.