A Study On Teaching Evaluation Policy In Public Higher Education Institutions In Madagascar

Teaching and its ongoing evaluation are and always have been a delicate subject in the field of education,regardless of levels.Since the 21st century,placing quality as foremost has become a core interest of global institutional leaders;having effective,productive,and qualified teaching staff is a central route to attain quality teaching-based preservation and improvement.On the other hand,evaluation has been a commonplace tool in keeping that teaching and teaching staff abreast and fresh in their teaching service or profession.Talking about public higher education in Madagascar is a very delicate topic,especially teacher,teaching,and teaching evaluation in public higher education institutions.Over the past years,precisely after 2010,the education reform inception,teaching in the public sector has increasingly lost balance provincially and regionally.After successive crises that Madagascar has passed through,the quality of higher education has,as a result,gradually affected,just as the quality of inspection in higher education has continued to deteriorate.The realistic reports of the conducted evaluation are not optimal.Most of the annual evaluation results mainly focus on what public higher education institutions lack regarding infrastructure,financial support,student enrollment rates,teacher or human resource shortage,etc.,rather than unveiling what it lacks regarding teaching/pedagogy and teacher.This thesis aims to investigate practices relating to the teaching evaluation policy in Madagascar’s public higher education institutions,including the criteria and processes,improvement measures,impacts and challenges of the evaluation procedures,and teachers’perceptions of the current of teaching evaluation policy,looking into its functional aspects.At the same time,putting forward recommendations could assist in policy readjustment.To investigate these questions,a qualitative approach using interview questionnaires via various social networking sites was adopted to collect data.Inclusively,to make sense while undertaking this thematical research,and to fulfill the initial objectives.It has,thus,interrogated seventeen participants,which coded as respondents(Rp_（1）or Rp_{（2,8,13...,）in case of similar responses}to protect their identity with confidentiality as promised.These sampling populations have been purposively chosen as they have good understandings and experiences of what is happening throughout their teaching profession,and with the motives to acquire suitable outcomes and understanding of the situation.Given the teaching evaluation process,self-evaluation and peers’evaluation are the common methods for evaluating teaching in the country’s public higher education institutions.Self-evaluation is a form-filling evaluation based on multiple criteria,as follows:teaching quality approach and structure;knowledge and consideration of student characteristics;teaching staff adequacy;methods of transmitting knowledge or teaching delivery adequacy;course content and course material;balance between educational,scientific,and administrative activities,among others.On the other hand,evaluation by peers:teaching hour completion（or hourly volume）,attendance checking,punctuality,（and sometimes behavior）are primarily considered as the most important criteria.These are checked through the traditional method,i.e.,notebook-based checking.The findings of this study indicated that different interviewees have different statements and perceptions of the subject.The evaluation committee side positively insists on the consistency of the policy,while on another side,participants stated differently.It is found that there is a massive derail between the living policy and what is practiced.The current practice of teaching evaluation lacks attention from many aspects,such as firm objectives,accuracy,authenticity,transparency,fairness,equality,devotion,commitment,and willingness from contributors—especially the budget to achieve a prolific execution.Despite the teaching performance being imperatively included in the evaluation for promotion,an overall consensus on that fact remains elusive.Due to such factors,each teaching personnel does what seems fair for their teaching skills development by conducting their own evaluation.Once more analyzed that the policy equals all teaching staff,regardless of hierarchy or position,and specifies various criteria to assess.In comparison,the process is stricter for contractual teachers and newly recruited teachers on a permanent basis and less strict for the case of other teaching staff.The results also uncovered that the tendency to conduct a periodic or systematic evaluation of teaching/pedagogy has not yet been strictly implemented within the culture of the public institutions in the country.We have analyzed that the teaching evaluation practices and their results are not used or related to teachers’academic promotion and professional development,nor do they provide feedback.The research identified a range of challenges within teaching evaluation undertaking,for example,the lack of budget and precision on what matters.Lack of awareness,sensitization,and explicit explanation about the guideline.Lack of collaboration and exchange between leaders and teaching personnel in order to bring perfection to the evaluation policy.More importantly,the insufficiency of training to direct the evaluation contributors.In the evaluation process,there are,to some extent,issues of commitment,transparency,seriousness,and objectivity.Due to these facts,the teaching evaluation activity in public higher education institutions in Madagascar became fluctuated or even frozen.The significance and value of why（goals）organize the teaching evaluation activities have somehow been forgotten.Multidimensional reflection combines with the restructuring of a robust concept to improve the current teaching evaluation policy by drawing on other higher education institutions’practical experience,explicitly considering Madagascar’s contextual capacity.In particular,grasp the opportunities that the country’s Government is seeking various measures to enhance public higher education institutions:proposing to make the teaching evaluation activity a priority,putting emphasis on the feedback for teaching improvement,and forging it into the annual academic culture—lastly,implement student evaluation of teaching in the teaching evaluation policy to collect data for teaching development purposes.Teaching evaluation practices should reflect and be dependent on the teaching evaluation purposes:teaching improvement or administrative decision-making.We all agree that teaching evaluation accomplishment varies from country to country,though one institution has a great and committed pedagogue/teacher.However,teaching evaluation ought to be mandatory from all aspects to ensure teaching quality.