On The Primary And Secondary School Teacher Evaluation From Teachers’ Perceptions

Teacher evaluation plays a key role in the promotion of teacher professional development and educational quality. Not only treated as the evaluation objects, teachers are also the persons who have subject personality. Therefore, teacher evaluation with teacher-oriented idea mainly depends on teachers’ perceptions in order to check whether it both attains to the function of assessment & evaluation and the improvement of teacher development in the end. What’s more, as the most direct stakeholders of teacher assessment, teachers’ attitudes and perspectives on teacher evaluation policy have great influence and value on the policy formulation and implementation. Therefore, teachers’voice needs to be concerned by the policy makers and researchers of teacher evaluation.Since entering 21 century, some foreign researchers have paid attention to teachers’ perceptions on teacher evaluation, and have achieved a large number of empirical investigations. By contrast, it is lack of studies on the topic of "Teacher evaluation from teachers’ perceptions" in Chinese mainland, which has been mentioned by the relevant literatures and reflected in the process of policy formulation and implementation of teacher evaluation in China. Therefore, this study mainly explores the front-line teachers’ attitudes and views on teacher evaluation by both questionnaire and interview on a bottom-up research path.This study is mainly around the theme of "teacher evaluation from the perspectives of primary and secondary school teachers ", and it follows the research path of "historical review& summary - practice investigation& analysis-theoretical framework construction - policy recommendations". The details are as follows:first of all, it looks back on the development of teacher evaluation practice at home and abroad, introduces the main research theories and evaluation models, and reviews the characteristics of them. Then, it makes an empirical study on the state of primary and secondary school teacher evaluation, and analyzes the reasons behind its potential problems. Next, according to the results of the empirical investigation and the fourth generation evaluation theory, etc, it constructs the theoretical framework for the teacher evaluation of primary and secondary school from teachers’ perspectives. Finally, it puts forwards the requirements and strategies to improve China’s primary and secondary school teacher evaluation policy from three layers, namely, the national policy, the implementation of school and the teacher’s own development.The main conlusions of this study are as follows:First of all, based on the empirical investigation materials, this study learned about the frontline teachers’perceptions on the status quo of primary and secondary school teacher evaluation. The survey finds that a very small part of the teachers express their satisfaction to their school teacher evaluation, in contrast, the majority mainly reflect the potential problems of the current teacher assessment, including (i) it is the loss of teachers’ basic rights in teacher evaluation, such as teachers’ right to know and the right of speech, etc.(ii)teachers’perceptions are not valued. It mainly refers to teacher’s feedback on the evaluation, etc. (iii) Teachers’rational demands are ignored with both material demands and spiritual enjoys, respected and loved; (iv) teachers’ professional development is trapped; (v)it is hard to arouse teachers’ initiative of self-promotion, etc.What’s more, it also finds that there are various influence factors of teacher assessment, such as the school location and culture, the principal and teacher’s personal factors, etc. Moreover, school culture and the principal are considered as the crucial ones. According to the findings mentioned above, the conclusions drawn through the investigation are as follows:(ⅰ) Teachers’ basic rights are lack of institutional guarantee; (ii)There is no enough humanistic care for teachers from the current teacher assessment system;(iii)Teachers lack self-awareness and autonomy for development.Second, based on the above, this study presents the specific strategies for teacher evaluation both from the aspects of theory and practice. On the level of theory, it suggests to build the theoretical analysis framework from teachers’perceptions, detailed in the elements of Equality& Empowerment, Response& Feedback, Care& Appreciation, as well as Negotiation& Cooperation, etc, which mainly refer to the empowerment of basic rights for teachers to participate in the evaluation, to the satisfaction of teachers’reasonable needs (basic needs and growth needs), to the mutual consultation and cooperation of rater-ratee in the construction of teacher evaluation mechanism, and to the respond for teachers’demands, as well as the feedback of the evaluation results to the teacher. Specifically, this study focuses more on the evaluator, evaluation content, assessment form and method, etc. to introduce the idea of Evaluation Community, the assessment model named as Concentric Circles, and use of teacher performance evaluation.Third, on the level of practice, it raises the improvement requiements and strategies of teacher evaluation for teachers. This study considers it should meet the conditions, namely, to establish a correct evaluation guide, to ensure the fairness of the evaluation, and to update the concept of teacher evaluation for the establishment of reasonable teacher evaluation from teachers’perspectives. Then, this study puts forward specific suggestions for policy improvement based on the theoretical analysis framework of teacher evaluation from teachers’perspectives. From the macro level, it needs to revise and improve the national policy of teach evaluation of primary and secondary school, such as Teacher’s Law, teachers’ professional title assessment policy and teacher performance pay policy, etc; In the school’s specific implementation level, it needs to improve the teacher evaluation index system development and the choice of evaluator and evaluation form, etc. Besides, it needs to create school cultural atmosphere to improve teacher evaluation, such as strengthening the construction of school teacher evaluation system and the principal-centered management team and school community culture. Finally, it also needs to improve teachers’self-perspectives and initiatives to participate in teacher evaluation by teacher’s self-assessment and action research, etc.