Teachers' perceptions of a learner-centered teacher evaluation system

Promoting success for all students is the driving force to develop and implement sound teacher evaluation systems. As Stronge suggests, "the two most frequently cited purposes of personnel evaluation are accountability and performance improvement" (1997, p. 3). As a result, "researchers are conceiving of teacher evaluation as a mechanism for improving teaching and learning" (Danielson and McGreal, 2000). On the other hand, others affirm that "the trend in teacher evaluation is toward more self-evaluation and expanding one's teaching repertoire" (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1999, p. 8). However, teachers' voices relative to emerging teacher evaluation trends are missing. Thus, this study explored teachers' perceptions about the support for professional development available to them, the perceived potential benefits of a learner-centered teacher evaluation system to enhance their professional growth, and pitfalls. Only elementary school teachers participated in the study. The researcher analyzed teachers' written responses to open-ended questions, and generated categories by emerging themes to determine teachers' perceptions. Findings of the study suggest that teachers receive support from both campus level and central office level. Teachers also believe that a learner-centered teacher evaluation fosters walk-through observations, opportunities for professional growth, feedback, learner-centered dialogue, a holistic perspective, and teacher self-evaluation. On the other hand, findings suggest that teachers question the labels for each level of performance, and are concerned that the system might be somewhat subjective. Finally, suggestions are made to conduct additional studies to further illuminate teachers' voices associated with teacher evaluation and development at other school levels, and to expand our understanding of emerging teacher evaluation formats which aim at student success. © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.