Search results

To provide an overview of the various ways in which performance management is being implemented in England's primary schools.

A combination of documentary analysis, participant observation and audio‐taped interviews with primary school headteachers, deputy headteachers, teachers and school governors.

Information is provided on the following aspects of performance management in primary schools: the meaning and purposes of performance management in primary schools; education and training for performance management; formulation and content of performance management objectives; measuring the performance of heads and teachers; the effects of performance management on teachers' professional development; and perceptions concerning the appropriateness and reality of performance related pay.

Owing to the relatively small number of research participants, the findings might not be entirely representative of the opinions and experiences of primary school headteachers, teachers and governors throughout England as a whole. The value of introducing performance management into primary schools remains an area for further research.

A useful paper both for managers who are reviewing the operational effectiveness of performance management within their own schools, as well as for organisations that are considering the introduction of performance management into their school system.

This paper might be of particular value to national governments and smaller organisations that wish to consider how to evaluate the effectiveness of the various options before introducing a system of performance management into their whole primary school network.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a dialectical framework for the examination of performance management in schools.

The paper is based upon a qualitative study of ten headteachers that involved in-depth semi-structured interviews.

The findings identified four dialectical tensions that underpin performance management in schools: the responsibility to teachers and the responsibility to pupils; external accountability and professional autonomy; discipline of teachers and support of teachers; fixed processes and improvisational practices.

This paper provides a means of examining the performance management of teachers from an alternative perspective, one that embraces tensions and contradictions and gives headteachers a richer understanding of how teachers are evaluated and judged.

This paper moves beyond the traditional perspective of performance management in schools as a means of subjugation and control and offers an original dialectical framework within which to examine the phenomenon.

This chapter looks critically at the changed language of education due to the adoption in the last two or three decades of a ‘business model’ for improving education. It briefly traces the history of these changes which have rarely been brought to the attention of the public.

This chapter delves more deeply beneath this language in order to explore the unacknowledged philosophical assumptions – referring to Wittgenstein’s aim which was to help people to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to the recognition of it being patent nonsense.

This points out how, given the managerial language, this distorts our understanding of what it means to educate – there is an inappropriate ‘logic of action’.

The ethical dimension to educational leadership gets distorted or ignored. There is a need therefore to examine more carefully what is meant by an ‘educational practice’ – otherwise leadership coursed might be good at teaching ‘effectiveness’ in teaching to the test, but have little to do with education.

Since the turn of the new millennia, governments have increasingly moved away from professional models of educational decision-making and turned toward a neoliberal production model in which markets and test scores drive educational decisions. In this “brave new world,” teachers have become “human capital,” and principals, the managers of their productivity rather than leaders of learning. As a result of this changing dynamic, teachers have increasingly turned to teacher unions or federations, and away from local school jurisdictions and governments to protect their salaries, working conditions and professionalism. Principals, in turn, have found themselves in a no-win situation – caught between top-down demands from big governments and local school districts for teacher compliance, and big unions' insistence on fair treatment for all teachers. This chapter, therefore, intends to explore this increasingly fragile role of principals in three international settings, in our rapidly changing world.

The purpose of this paper is to examine dilemmas encountered by kindergarten head teachers with the further aim of developing their capability to recognise and resolve “leadership dilemmas”.

Action research was used to conduct a three‐phase study involving 16 kindergarten head teachers and six system managers (within the Auckland region). A reconnaissance phase investigated the nature of perceived dilemmas and typical responses. In the second phase, an intervention that provided participants with both the theory and practice skills was implemented. A third phase of research evaluated the extent to which change had occurred.

The reconnaissance phase findings (pre‐learning questionnaire) confirm the incidence of dilemmas in kindergarten settings. The data show that, while leaders could identify issues that signalled the presence of dilemmas, they were unable to articulate leadership dilemmas clearly or confront them successfully. A professional development intervention was evaluated using a post‐learning questionnaire. There is evidence that these leaders were better able to recognise and articulate the leadership dilemmas they encountered in performance management settings. The findings show that participants are able to analyse their responses to these dilemmas by relating these to the theory base and indicating where they believe there is need for further learning. In summary, the intervention did change participants' practice but the study is limited by its inability to gauge internalisation of learning and study its implementation. For this to occur another cycle of action research is required.

The paper is original in that it studies the practices of leaders in relation to resolving dilemmas which arise when leaders manage the performance of staff. If leaders have an understanding of the theory and skills they need to address these tension‐laden problems, they could positively influence the quality of teaching and learning through leadership practices.

Strategic planning, in the form of school improvement planning, has become the dominant approach to school management in English schools. This has evolved from earlier forms of strategic planning and has significant inherent weaknesses that undermine the extent to which school improvement planning can contribute to the effective management of schools. The development of school improvement planning is examined in this article and its weaknesses analysed. Implied models of school management and leadership, the legacy of school effectiveness and improvement research and the role of the school principal are considered. Based on this analysis, an alternative approach to planning in schools and to school organisation and a more flexible approach to school organisation and leadership is proposed that is grounded in a shorter planning time scale and the development of structures that facilitate involvement, cooperation and collaboration.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of mentoring as a workplace process. The mentees are post-graduate student teachers hosted in placement schools. The research aims to explore the experiences of key participants in a policy context where the role and scale of school-based teacher training is expanding rapidly.

This is an interpretative case study of mentoring practices assigned to a secondary level initial teacher training partnership, with the mentors being subject teachers working in school departments which host post-graduate student teachers. The case study was investigated over two years and included focus groups, interviews, questionnaires and content analysis. Participants were student teachers, their mentors and both school-based and university-based tutors.

Positive experiences of mentoring are not universal. Mentoring interacts with the required processes of monitoring and reporting and in some cases the power structures associated with these processes conflict with the less performative aspects. However, when mentors are offered evidence of student teachers’ perceptions and theoretical constructs of mentoring as practice they can start to recognise that it can be enhanced.

The quality of mentoring in initial teacher education will take on even greater significance in jurisdictions, such as England, where the role of workplace learning is strengthened as a result of changes of government policy.

The outcomes of this study will be relevant to policy makers, school-based mentors and system leaders for teacher education – whether school or university based.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of a professional development (PD) model for educator growth and learning that is embedded into the school context in Qatar. Because the success of a PD program in practice cannot be judged against its theoretical underpinnings, the paper goes on to examine the perceptions of instructional coaches on the effectiveness of the PD model.

Through the use of a qualitative, constant comparative approach, data were collected from 19 instructional coaches through open-ended surveys followed by focus group interviews. The instructional coaches provided information about the strengths of the PD program, the challenges they faced in their day-to-day implementation of the program, and their suggestions for the improvement of the program’s implementation and outcomes.

The instructional coaches reported several strengths, which were compatible with the literature on effective PD. However, the challenges they faced were deeply rooted within the inherent structure of the program, in addition to external challenges at both the school and Ministry of Education levels. Thus, a general consensus on the way that the program should be implemented was reached.

The study revealed the complexity inherent in transferring research-based principles and theory into practice. It indicated that the components of PD programs interact within complex social settings.

The purpose of this study was to review and make changes to the performance management process in place for teachers in a school for autistic children with learning disabilities. The performance management process consisted of line managers setting targets for their staff and points were given for targets met. Targets were related to improving outcomes for the children in the school. Teacher engagement in the performance management process was measured by the number of teachers reporting their points monthly and the number of points earned monthly.

The PDC (Austin, 2000) was conducted to determine changes to the process to improve teacher engagement with the performance management system. These changes to the performance management process consisted of an antecedent and information intervention (flowchart implemented summarising performance management process), equipment and processes interventions (change to graphing requirement, set rolling targets implemented) and consequence interventions (teachers set rolling targets to meet with their line manager regularly and to report on targets met monthly).

The number of teachers completing and submitting monthly summary forms increased following the changes made to the performance management process. The average number of points received increased significantly during the intervention. The intervention implemented following the use of the PDC led to increased teacher engagement in the performance management process and thus potentially improved the outcomes for the children within the school.

The PDC is a fairly simple tool to use to identify solutions to problems in the workplace. The procedure used herein is replicable across many settings and different workplace issues.

The article aims to provide an insight into the perspectives and possibilities of implementing the performance‐related pay in the Estonian general educational schools. It also aims to test two propositions regarding factors that influence school performance and teachers' and school managers' opinions about performance management.

A total of 298 school managers and 2,165 teachers from general educational schools in Estonia participated in the study. The factor, regression and correlation analysis, independent samples t‐test and one‐way ANOVA analysis were used to study claims related to school management and performance and educational processes.

The results of the analysis show that besides teachers' activities and effectiveness factors, various school management factors play an important role in the shaping of the school performance and the opinions towards the implementation of performance appraisal and performance‐related pay.

The main limitation to the research is that it is difficult to measure the schools' outcome. Second, the study was mainly quantitative, with only a few open questions and thus, the respondents were neither able to give full answers nor provide explanations. Therefore, further case studies are needed to obtain a more precise overview.

Although performance‐related pay is seen as an important management tool for increasing schools' outcome, there is no clear overview as to how the school managers and teachers in Estonia look at the issue and which factors should be considered in implementing performance‐related pay.