Mind Over Measure: Exploring School Leaders’ Perceptions and Implementation of Teacher Evaluation and Their Connections to Teacher Efficacy
Open AccessPrior research demonstrates that school leaders can help develop teacher efficacy by creating positive school climates, providing opportunities for mentoring and purposeful feedback, and providing meaningful professional learning (Bressman, Winters, & Efron, 2017; Fry, 2009; Ross & Bruce, 2007). Yet despite significant prior research on school leaders’ perceptions and implementation of teacher evaluation (Derrington & Campbell, 2017; Derrington & Campbell, 2018; Rigby, 2014; Ruffini, Makkonen, Tejwani, & Diaz, 2014), there is limited research that explores the connections between school leaders’ teacher evaluation practices and teacher efficacy. This study fills this gap by exploring school leaders’ evaluation practices and the connections that both school leaders and teachers make between school leaders’ evaluation practices and teacher efficacy. The findings from this study suggest that school leaders use a balance of informal and formal practices to evaluate teachers. Specifically, school leaders use a district mandated tool to support informal evaluations alongside a variety of other practices. School leaders perceive feedback, a form of verbal persuasion, as the main practice that impacts teachers’ efficacy beliefs and school leaders’ values influenced how they provided feedback and carried out evaluations. Findings also suggest that teachers connect feedback and a positive school climate with their own feelings of efficacy. Teachers shared both negative and positive experiences that shaped their efficacy beliefs and reflected on how relationships and clear feedback influenced their efficacy beliefs. Based on the results of this study, school leaders might raise their awareness around the contributors of teacher efficacy by being mindful of their school environment and evaluation practices that might contribute to teacher efficacy. District leaders might support school leaders by encouraging evaluation practices that satisfy district requirements and also contribute to teachers’ efficacy beliefs. Finally, institutions of higher education might design coursework that allows aspiring school leaders to be mindful of how evaluation and efficacy are connected.
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