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BULXXX10.1177/0192636520911197NASSP BulletinDandalt and Brutus
Article
NASSP Bulletin
Teacher Performance
2020, Vol. 104(1) 20–33
© 2020 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/0192636520911197
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192636520911197
Policy Case Analysis journals.sagepub.com/home/bul
Abstract
This article uses an analysis of the language used in the Teacher Performance Appraisal
Technical Requirements Manual in Ontario to highlight some procedural issues.
Arguably, the existence of flaws in the teacher evaluation system is not only limited to
evaluation practices but is also embedded in evaluation regulations. Furthermore, the
article provides a novel example of how a study of teacher evaluation systems can go
beyond teachers’ perspectives of evaluation practices and can also consider teacher
evaluation regulations as a source of empirical inquiry and a form of knowledge.
Keywords
performance appraisal, Ontario, teachers
1
Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Corresponding Author:
Ed Dandalt, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, 1450 Guy Street, Montreal, Québec
H3G 1M8, Canada.
Email: [email protected]
Dandalt and Brutus 21
not believe that the feedback provided during or after the appraisal process is relevant
to their work (Meinert, 2015).
In consideration of such findings, some scholars (e.g., Cohens & Jenkins, 2010)
have called for organizations to stop the practice of transactional performance apprais-
als on the assumption that, in most organizations, they do more harm than good. These
scholars suggest that transactional and traditional performance appraisals should be
replaced with alternative talent management models such as coaching and feedback
(Cohens & Jenkins, 2010; Trost, 2017). This antitransactional view of performance
appraisals is also shared by many corporate organizations who believe that transac-
tional appraisals such as annual reviews are old fashioned and constitute one of the
antecedents of management distrust and workplace conflicts (Cappelli & Tavis, 2016).
However, while corporate organizations in Canada and other industrialized coun-
tries are shifting their appraisal culture from accountability to personnel development,
it appears that governments in those countries are doing the contrary when it comes to
issues of school staffing. But compared with Canada, the overemphasis on account-
ability is more pronounced in the educational reforms proposed by governments in
certain industrialized countries such as the United States (e.g., teacher merit pay, based
on student test scores). Still, provincial governments across Canada want school dis-
tricts to implement a traditional and transactional teacher performance evaluation
model centered on accountability while also acknowledging the necessity of such an
appraisal model to improve teachers’ professional development. Arguably, in intro-
ducing the TPA, the government of Ontario shares the same personnel development
view with today’s corporate approach while at the same time maintaining the old-
fashioned accountability appraisal culture in local school districts.
performance evaluations. In the past years, school boards in Ontario have sought to
evaluate teachers to ensure that students receive the benefit of a public school system
staffed by teachers who are carrying their instructional tasks satisfactorily (Larsen,
2009). Yet, since enacting the TPA, controversies have emerged around the implemen-
tation of this evaluation policy in provincial schools. A survey study by Larsen (2009)
on the intended and unintended effects of the implementation of the TPA, for example,
reveals that only 20% of teachers felt that the evaluation process was fair. Most of
those surveyed felt that the implementation of the TPA has not enhanced their profes-
sional development. Teachers complained that it was too time consuming to prepare
for an evaluation and that the appraisal process was frustrating. Concerns were raised
about the accuracy of the professional judgment of principals in rating teachers’ work
quality during classroom observations. As a result, Larsen (2009) concluded her study
by arguing that some significant limitations exist in the implementation of the TPA.
In the same vein, research conducted by Maharaj (2014) shows that the TPA is not
implemented fairly and is entangled by some challenges. A consideration of the above
rationale suggests that our case study is relevant and could potentially inform policy
makers (teacher unions, school boards, government, and other stakeholders) about
flaws in the TPA manual, thus, proving an argument for the need to increment this
evaluation regulation. Taking into account the above literature review, this case study
aims to address the question of whether the language of TPA presents significant
limitations.
Method
Findings of the above research (Larsen, 2009; Maharaj, 2014) on the implementation
of the TPA informed our decision to use Modernizing Accountability in the Public
Service (MAPS) for textual analytical framework. MAPS was introduced by the fed-
eral government in 2002 to address issues of unfairness in performance evaluation,
promotion, and staffing in the public sector. Although not intended for school staffing,
the five principles of MAPS provide a typology of fairness that we applied to analyze
the content of the TPA manual in depth.
Of the five principles used, the first principle argues that the roles and responsibilities
of those involved in the evaluation process should be clarified. The second principle sug-
gests that the expectations that public sector workers must achieve for promotion should
be clearly defined before proceeding with a performance evaluation. The third principle
argues that a balance should be found between the performance expectations that those
under evaluation must achieve and their capacities to meet those expectations. Applied
to the teaching occupation, it implies that teachers should not be tasked to achieve goals
that are not adequate with the limited resources that they have access to.
The fourth principle underlined in MAPS pertains to making credible reporting of
public sector workers’ achievement. It suggests that, after the completion of an evalu-
ation, those who are evaluated should be provided with credible and timely feedback
about what has been achieved. The fifth principle is a discursive extension of the
fourth principle and suggests that the outcome of the evaluation should underline the
Dandalt and Brutus 25
objectives that have not been achieved. In addition to applying those principles to
interpret the content of the TPA manual, we used a summative approach to identify and
compare underlying patterns in key texts. To identify those textual patterns in the TPA,
we employed the following five analytical steps:
ideal type of legal-rational authority that characterizes the leadership habitus of mod-
ern organizations. According to Weber, legal-rational authority is a form of authority
whose legitimacy is bounded to established organizational and formal rules. Yet, judg-
ing by the language of the TPA, it appears that this bureaucratization of evaluation
provides principals with much say over the outcome of the evaluation. The rating
procedure is chiefly based on principals’ subjective interpretation of the quality of
teacher work. As mentioned in the manual, “The principal uses his or her professional
judgment in weighing the evidence and deciding on the rating of overall performance”
(Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 35).
The use of principals’ professional judgment may not represent a major problem
but the lack of rules in the TPA to monitor this subjective procedure may lead to the
occurrence of arbitrary ratings. Some policy makers may argue that arbitrary evalua-
tions are less likely to occur because principals undergo rigorous training before being
assigned to manage a school. But this does not mean that such training absolutely
immunes them from making wrong and biased decisions. This thesis could be true
given that it has been credited by Larsen’s (2009) findings on the implementation of
TPA. Her findings suggest that teachers have doubts about the accuracy of the profes-
sional judgment of principals during classroom observations.
However, there are also some studies (Grissom & Loeb, 2017; Jacob & Lefgren,
2008; Taylor & Tyler, 2012) that suggest that using personal judgement when rating
teachers is not always a predictor of unfair outcomes. The result of Jacob and Lefgren’s
(2008) research on teacher evaluation at a midsize U.S. school district, for example,
shows that principals generally identified teachers who produced the largest and small-
est standardized achievement gains despite using their professional judgment. Findings
of Taylor and Tyler’s (2012) study of mid-career math teachers in the Cincinnati Public
Schools reveal that subjective evaluation by principals can spur teachers’ professional
growth. Grissom and Loeb’s (2017) study findings suggest that principals’ subjective
evaluation of teacher effectiveness in low- and high-stakes environments is quite posi-
tive. However, considering that these studies on principalship are mostly U.S. based,
we cannot speculate at this stage that principals’ professional judgment is a predictor
of accurate evaluation in Ontario.
2010). Simply put, the TPA supports a participatory and democratic evaluation mecha-
nism. It conceives teachers both as evaluation subjects and contributors to the manage-
ment of the evaluation process.
However, despite this policy emphasis on teacher professional development, the
research conducted by Maharaj (2014) on this matter suggests that Ontarian teachers
believe that evaluations do not enhance their professional growth. This is not for the
first time that researchers have questioned the effectiveness of an evaluation system on
teacher professional growth. Some researchers in the developed world (Darling-
Hammond, 2017); Jensen, 2010; Taylor & Tyler, 2012) have also raised the same ques-
tion by arguing that the ubiquity of teacher performance evaluation in schools does not
always improve professional practices.
Darling-Hammond (2015) ascribes this shortcoming to the lack of resources to sus-
tain the appraisal system. School jurisdictions in the United States have often focused
on designing instruments for rating teachers without developing the structural ele-
ments needed to support an effective appraisal system. A survey study conducted by
Jensen (2010) on Australian teachers indicates that 61% of respondents stated that
teacher evaluations do not improve their practice. About 63% of respondents stated
that the evaluations were largely completed to fulfill administrative requirements and
that they were not provided with the necessary resources to improve their
professionalism.
Akin to the point raised by Darling-Hammond (2015) and other education research-
ers, our analysis of the content of TPA reveals that aside from mentioning the post-
evaluation professional development programs that teachers should undertake to
improve their practice (i.e., Annual Learning Plan, Improvement Plan, Enrichment
Plan), this regulation has fallen short of outlining the resources that Ontarian teachers
require to enhance their teaching quality. With that in mind, there is some dissonance
between the policy objectives and the means to achieve those objectives.
Furthermore, the TPA does not explicitly define the notion of professionalism in
detailed and measurable meanings. As a result, it may be confusing for teachers in
Ontario to monitor their professional growth. It may also be confusing for principals
to know what can be counted as effective professional knowledge. This lack of clarity
in meanings represents a limitation considering that some researchers such as Bates
et al. (2011) have argued that professionalism is a vague concept on which there is
little consensus. It is contingently constructed, not always evidence-based, and not
very explicit. Cohen and Goldhaber (2016) note that even when the meaning of profes-
sionalism is explicitly stated, classroom observations will always be susceptible to
subjectivity. This contingency is also pointed out by Tschannen-Moran (2009) who
noted in her work that there are elements of professionalization that go beyond the
school workplace. Where certainty about practice does not exist, educators will con-
tinually seek to discover the most responsible course of action.
Moreover, the emphasis of TPA on professional development suggests that the goal
of the government and teacher unions is about building communities of learning.
Other employment policies such as the New Teacher Induction Program, Teacher
Learning and Leadership Program, and the Ontario Leadership Framework make the
28 NASSP Bulletin 104(1)
same emphasis. The Teacher Learning and Leadership Program, for instance, was
developed by the Ministry of Education and the Ontario Leadership Framework to
support teachers undertaking self-directed professional development and to help them
share their instructional leadership practices with their peers. The emphasis put on
professional development is not only peculiar to the TPA, evaluation policies in other
provinces have also adopted the same tone (e.g. The Teacher Growth, Supervision and
Evaluation Policy of Alberta). But compared with Ontario, not all provinces have har-
monized their teacher evaluation system. All in all, the principle of clarifying perfor-
mance expectations is not fully encapsulated in the language of TPA.
among teachers of color were tied to the subjective nature of classroom observations
and principals’ unconscious bias.
In addition to the above limitations, the TPA does not cover contractual teachers
and continuing education teachers (see Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010). Thus, it
could be argued that the teacher evaluation system in Ontario is not fully harmonized.
Permanent teachers may be the only teaching workforce who have access to standard-
ized evaluation procedures. For the sake of organizational justice, appraisal guidelines
dealing with contingent teachers should also be included in the TPA. Doing so will
ensure that the staffing system related to performance appraisals is equal to everyone.
Some policy makers may disagree with our argument for incremental TPA changes
and argue that the Ontario Regulation 274/12 provides some guidelines to evaluate
contractual teachers. The Ontario Regulation 274/12 was enacted by the provincial
government in September 2012 under the Education Act to promote a consistent,
transparent, and fair hiring process for contractual teachers. But compared with the
TPA, the procedures of that employment legislation on teacher performance evalua-
tion are underdeveloped. All things being equal, the above review result infers that the
language of TPA on the principle of credible reporting is limited.
Conclusion
In response to the main research question of this article, the above review findings
suggest that the TPA contains some flaws. Thus, the ubiquity of flaws in the Ontario
teacher performance evaluation system is not only limited to appraisal practices but is
also embedded in evaluation regulations or policies. But these findings cannot be gen-
eralized because they do not represent the perspective of teachers about TPA. For that
reason, it would be necessary for researchers to explore the perception of teachers of
TPA. Doing so is important considering that most studies on teacher performance
evaluation focus on measuring or exploring the attitudes of teachers towards the evalu-
ators (e.g., principals) rating their performance rather than on the policies regulating
the process of performance appraisals per se. The perceptions of teachers as related to
evaluation regulations need to be explored because research shows that teachers are
the most affected by the outcomes of performance appraisals. This call for a new
approach in examining the quality of teacher performance evaluation system is not
only directed to Canadian researchers but also to education scholars in other industri-
alized countries.
Dandalt and Brutus 31
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
ORCID iD
Ed Dandalt https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0522-6426
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Author Biographies
Ed Dandalt is a research fellow at the John Molson School of Business, Concordia University,
Canada. He completed his PhD from McGill University. His research centers on the intersection
of technology and the organization of work, and employment relations in education.
Stephane Brutus is the Royal Bank of Canada Chair at the John Molson School of Business.
His research centers on performance appraisal, feedback, employee selection, and managerial
development.