The purpose of this study is to describe and understand teachers' perception of the relationship between teacher evaluation and school organization. Using case study method in Sae-Bit Secondary School, this study investigated teachers' responses to th...
The purpose of this study is to describe and understand teachers' perception of the relationship between teacher evaluation and school organization. Using case study method in Sae-Bit Secondary School, this study investigated teachers' responses to the newly introduced teacher evaluation system and their perception of school organization.
Teacher perceived that the new teacher evaluation system(NTES) was founded on 'the Principles of Corporate Management'. A premise of NTES is competition among teacahers and core elements of it are fair competition, rational evaluation, congruence between performances and rewards, and positive output of a teacher evaluation system. But in practice, it was not the case. Teachers said that NTES resulted in unfair and restricted competition, subjective and biased evaluation, incongruence between performances and rewards, and negative output.
What was most desirable was, they thought, working without evaluation. Next choice was evaluation with principle of harmony and autonomy. They believed that it should be the opportunities of encouragement, development and self-reflection, guarantee their autonomy and participation and put an emphasis on their teamwork.
Teachers' perceptions of NTES showed that there were two conflicting streams in teachers' images of school organization. One was a tendency to independence and the other was interdependence.
Teachers preferred loose coupling which was characterized by avoidance of close control and evaluation as well as respect for autonomy and individuality. Also, they tended to work isolated, which resulted from uncertainty of work life.
In spite of independence in work, teachers were strongly aware of interdependence among the participants of school organization. They perceived that there were communal relations like family among them because they had to live together for lifetime. As a principle of the community they emphasize 'equalization' of rewards or performances.
The quality of teachers' performances were strictly controlled by norm of 'equalization', for all loose coupling among them in work.
Excellent performance was considered as an obstacle to their norm of 'living together' and to be blamed. All kinds of rewards were considered to be equalized for a long term. Seniority was interpreted as compensation for rewards which had not been paid sufficiently in earlier stage of teachers' career.
It was found that neither community nor loose coupling was fully realized entity. It was mixture of desire and reality. Since teachers didn't have enough resources to get autonomy, participation and upward communication, so there was competition and conflict to obtain the scarce resources among not only individuals but also groups. In this regards neither community nor loose coupling has yet fully realized. But their desire or ideal itself is a part of school organization and a motive of organizational behavior.
A dilemma existed between the stream of individualism which emphasized autonomy as well as individuality and that of community which conformed to group norms. Emphasis on individualism may result from the belief that a school is 'a place of education'. On the contrary, stress on community may come from the belief that a school is 'a place of teachers' living'. In school, teachers don't work with students all day. They spend much time with other participants.
Because, interacting with them, they can satisfy their social needs, peer teachers mean a lot to them. In this respect they pursue interdependence.
This dilemma might represent the duality of teachers' way of thinking. It, however, represents fundamental dilemma which an organization has. Just as there is an unavoidable dilemma between organizational purposes and individual needs, there also exist teachers' images of school organization which contains two conflicting elements; individualism and community. In this study the image is named 'individualistic community'.
Individualistic community emphasized performances based on the individuality and autonomy. Therefore, close control and evaluation of performances are avoided. Exchanges of experiences and ideas related to the jobs among teachers do not happen frequently. Teachers' negative attitudes to observation and evaluation of their isolated work are based on the faith that teachers will do at the minimum level even if they are left to themselves. Although isolated, they believed that educational output was the result of their joint efforts. Natural harmony with each teacher's individual effort and uniqueness resulted in educational outcome. Faith and harmony are also values that are considered to be very important in community.