interpretative phenomenological analysis exploring teacher experiences of educator evaluation in Massachusetts

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20269157

Public education reforms that attempt to more accurately determine the impact of individual teachers on student learning outcomes have resulted in recent changes to educator evaluation systems. In Massachusetts, teachers are evaluated according to their performance on the standards of effective teaching and their progress on student learning and professional practice goals. Using the Concerns-Based Adoption Model framework, this study explored teacher experiences with educator evaluation to understand how teachers have been impacted by externally imposed regulations related to their practice. The data, which consisted primarily of semi-structured interviews, was analyzed using an interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings reveal that teachers appreciate having a structured system of evaluation; however, they are not aware how to utilize the results from standardized tests to appropriately revise curriculum and instruction to improve their own performance ratings. Additionally, educators experiences with evaluation depend largely on their relationship with their evaluator and the ways in which evaluation procedures have been implemented in districts and schools. A lack of consistency in implementation policies and varying evaluator expectations, therefore, indicate that educator performance ratings reported to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education are unreliable.