Investigating Elementary Teachers' Perceptions About and Experiences with Ontario's Teacher Performance Appraisal System

• Main Author: Miller, Thomas James
• Other Authors: Lapkin, Sharon
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: administration; elementary; 0514
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/19155

Performance appraisals have far reaching consequences on people. If evaluators in any way discriminate against employees, these individuals can suffer devastating and potentially debilitating consequences. This thesis investigates elementary teachers’ perceptions of and experiences with Ontario’s Teacher Performance Appraisal system (TPA), used to appraise teachers in Ontario from 2001 until 2007. I used quantitative data obtained from a sample of 132 teachers to investigate their perceptions of TPA with respect to four dimensions of organizational justice; outcome fairness, procedural fairness, informational fairness, and interpersonal fairness. Using oppression and critical theories as the theoretical framework, my analyses of my data allowed me to compare mainstream and minoritized teachers’ perceptions of their experiences with TPA. I also conducted follow-up interviews with three mainstream and three minoritized teachers. Analyses of my data enabled me to investigate how each group experienced TPA in terms of the four dimensions of organizational fairness. Analyses of the quantitative data revealed that minoritized teachers perceived their experiences less favourably than mainstream teachers. In addition, from my analyses of the qualitative data, I found that minoritized teachers tended to experience mistreatment, including manifestations of racism and homophobia from the administrators who conducted their TPA. The implications of this study call on administrators to disrupt the cycle of oppression by thinking about the biases, prejudices and stereotypical attitudes they bring intentionally or unintentionally to appraising teachers.