Transforming Teacher Evaluation Into an External Goal-Setting Practice and Empowering Nation Branding: A Conversational, Motivational School-Based Practice

Introduction

Being in times of undergoing education reform, the educational system of Cyprus seems to be seeking ways to shift teacher evaluation from a practice that stagnates teacher motivation to a practice that would arise, develop, and sustain teacher motivation towards teacher effectiveness. Teacher effectiveness would, then, be reflected in teaching practices, which have the power to generate outputs, namely student learning outcomes, and improve the quality of the provided education. The decline of teacher motivation, being emergent from the existing evaluation scheme, releases implications about the weaknesses of the scheme. Yet qualitative research on secondary school teachers’ motivation has found that teacher inspection for evaluation constitutes an intrinsic motivator, which suggests that the power that energises teachers to invest commitment into their job is internal, i.e. inside the teacher self (Konstantinides-Vladimirou, 2013; 2015). Intrinsic motivation is ‘the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for a separable consequence’ and ‘exists within individuals’ (Ryan and Deci, 2000, p. 54).

The research on teacher motivation had collected data from 56 research participants (six headteachers, 12 teachers and 38 students) within the context of secondary education in Cyprus. The headteachers and teachers provided data verbally by means of semi-structured interviewing, and students voiced their perspectives via discussion in focus groups. Conceptualising over the internal motivation nature of teacher evaluation, this chapter initiates a goal-setting perspective in a teacher evaluation process, which (perspective) is being examined in qualitative research on teacher evaluation, being also conducted in the context of secondary education in Cyprus (Konstantinides, 2021).

A synthesis of part of the content of the two studies, i.e. the study on teacher motivation and teacher evaluation, allows high expectations that being embedded in school-based teacher evaluation practices, goal setting can move teachers towards transforming teacher evaluation from an internal motivator to an external motivational practice. Such a transformation has the impetus to enhance teacher effectiveness and student learning, to develop schools as professional learning communities, and to achieve a culture paradigm shift that would empower nation branding. Being examined in this chapter, this transformation impetus creates a model of a goal-setting teacher evaluation practice (Diagram 3).

The aim of the chapter, therefore, is to explore how beneficial a transformation of teacher evaluation into an external goal-setting practice can be. To achieve the aim of the chapter, the objectives of the study have been set as strategic steps that signpost the structure of the chapter:

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  To discuss the demotivation nature of the existing teacher evaluation system, and set the background scene at a national level.

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  To create a research question that would investigate the motivational dynamics of ‘goal setting’.

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  To construct a hypothesis over how a goal-setting perspective can transform teacher evaluation into an external motivational practice.

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  To test the goal-setting hypothesis via a qualitative research experiment.

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  To extract the conclusions and recommendations of the study through a discussion that indicates the empowerment effects of a goal-setting school-based teacher evaluation practice on teacher effectiveness, and ultimately on nation branding.