“It didn’t make me a better teacher”: inservice teacher constructions of dilemmas in high-stakes teacher evaluation

ABSTRACT

This article explores how inservice teachers articulate and challenge notions of effective teaching as part of an environment of high-stakes teacher evaluation (HSTE) in Tennessee. Drawing on data from public forum speeches at school board meetings, policy documents, and interviews, we used thematic discourse analysis to investigate how teacher effectiveness is discursively constructed by teachers. Findings demonstrate how participants drew upon competing definitions of effective teaching to build a discursive case for potential areas for improvement regarding the observation of teaching as part of HSTE policies. Because measures of teacher performance are an issue of much debate in the United States, teachers’ descriptions of the relationships between teaching evaluations, observations, professional development, and student learning are critical to understanding how to develop effective procedures for observation and evaluation. Implications for developing evaluation informed by teachers’ experiences are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher evaluation
• evaluation policy
• thematic discourse analysis
• discursive psychology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Amber N. Warren is an assistant professor in Professional Specialized Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. In her research, she primarily uses discourse and conversation analysis methods to explore teacher preparation for working with multilingual learners, interaction in online education contexts, and the intersection of teacher practice and education policy.

Natalia A. Ward is an assistant professor in the Clemmer College of Education at East Tennessee State University. Her research focuses on effective pedagogical practices for diverse learners and education policy enactment in local contexts.

ORCID

Amber N. Warren http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6454-2368

Natalia A. Ward http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0355-9278