Attitudes of core French teachers in Newfoundland and Labrador to the teacher evaluation process: implications for change

Symonds, Maxwell Joseph (1993) Attitudes of core French teachers in Newfoundland and Labrador to the teacher evaluation process: implications for change. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This thesis deals with the attitudes of core French teachers in Newfoundland and Labrador to the teacher evaluation process. It was partially initiated in response to an apparent problem that many core French teachers were having with the current teacher evaluation process in the province. -- The instrument at the centre of this thesis is a questionnaire that was distributed to core French teachers in the province. The questionnaire covered eight major components of the teacher evaluation process: purposes, criteria, sources, pre-conference, post-conference, evaluators, characteristics of the evaluators, and organizational context. This questionnaire was designed as a means to elicit not only current practices for these components from the perspective of core French teachers, but also preferred practices. -- The analysis of the results of the questionnaire included the frequency of responses and the mean response for each item. In addition, the data for the entire population was cross-tabulated with the following independent variables: gender, years of teaching, type of school, and community population. -- The findings revealed differences between present and preferred practices. Core French teachers wanted, for example, more process criteria, such as presentation behaviours and school-related behaviours, to be used in judging their teaching effectiveness. The findings also revealed some anomalies in the evaluation practices for core French teachers in the province. One such anomaly was that elementary school teachers indicated that the daily plan book/lesson plans was a source of data presently practised, in addition to the sources identified in common with the general population. -- From a comparison of these findings with the current literature on teacher evaluation, some differences, similarities, and patterns were drawn. For instance, the summative purposes were not as predominant in present practices as indicated in the literature and the respondents expressed a desire for more sources of data, such as self- evaluation, which was consistent with the literature. -- Based on the foregoing comparison, recommendations and suggestions for improvement were made. One recommendation involved the need for in-service to further educate both core French teachers and evaluators about the merits of peer evaluation and parent input as sources of data.

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