The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between perceptions of teacher evaluation for professional development and teaching professionalism among elementary school teachers in Seoul and to analyze the correlation and effect relation o...
The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between perceptions of teacher evaluation for professional development and teaching professionalism among elementary school teachers in Seoul and to analyze the correlation and effect relation of them. It is intended to provide the useful material to execute the teacher evaluation for professional development and to improve the teaching professionalism, depending on the result of this study. This study sets the following research questions to accomplish the above goals.
First, how about the recognition of elementary school teachers regarding the teacher evaluation for professional development, depending on the personal characteristics?
Second, what kind of recognition do the elementary school teachers have regarding the level of teaching professionalism according to the personal characteristics?
Third, what kinds of relations exist between perception of teacher evaluation for professional development and recognition level of teaching professionalism?
Fourth, how will the recognition of the teacher evaluation for professional development affect the teaching professionalism of elementary school teachers?
The quantitative method is used to resolve the questions. The general findings of this study can be summarized as follows.
First, most of the teachers took a dismal view of the teacher evaluation for professional development, especially its evaluation methods. If teachers look at it in a negative way, it won't produce intended effects. So teachers should be helped to see the teacher evaluation for professional development more favorably, and the methods of the evaluation should be improved.
Second, the elementary teachers had a high opinion on the teaching professionalism of teachers. Among the subfactors of teaching professionalism, teachers' sense of mission as servers was prized the most, followed by professional knowledge/knowhow, academic guidance and professional autonomy. It could be interpreted that the majority of the teachers set a high value on their own teaching professionalism and had confidence about their ethics, service-ship, professional knowledge and knowhow. Elementary teachers should be urged to have a sense of mission so that they could take pride in themselves and keep trying to enhance their own professionalism.
Third, there was a very weak correlation between the subfactors of the teacher evaluation for professional development and those of teaching professionalism, which denoted that the evaluation failed to provide incentive for teachers to direct their energy into boosting their professionalism. Accordingly, how to step up the improvement of teacher professionalism should be studied in diverse ways instead of merely viewing the teacher evaluation for professional development as the only solution to bolster teacher professionalism and restore people's confidence in public education.
Fourth, the teacher evaluation for professional development had a significant impact on the teaching professionalism in general except for the evaluation methods. Among the subareas of that evaluation, understanding of the evaluation exerted the largest influence on the teaching professionalism, and those who had a better understanding of the evaluation had a higher opinion on their own teaching professionalism. And those who viewed the purpose of the evaluation more unfavorably set a higher value on their own teaching professionalism. Therefore the kind of climate that could encourage teachers to pay attention to the evaluation, to have a full understanding of the evaluation and to feel sympathy toward the purpose of the evaluation should be created.