Principals’ sensemaking and enactment of teacher evaluation

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look across six first-year principals to investigate their engagement with and sensemaking of specific messages of instructional leadership around teacher evaluation. Design/methodology/approach – This research project, a cross-case study, was carried out using in-depth qualitative observations and interviews of six first-year principals over one school year. Sensemaking theory was used to analyze both how and the mechanisms through which principals understood their roles as teacher evaluators. Findings – The results demonstrate that first, principals received a variety of messages about how to conduct teacher evaluations, and second, that connections to specific individuals influenced their associations to specific messages they received about instructional leadership and how they enacted teacher evaluation practices on their campuses. Research limitations/implications – This is an in-depth qualitative analysis, and therefore is not generalizable to all first-year principals, school districts, or principal preparation programs. However, it adds to the field’s understanding of the meso level of policy implementation, highlighting the process of individuals’ sensemaking and the importance of their informal connections in the associations they make to messages about instructional leadership. Practical implications – This research adds to the field of principal preparation and induction as it highlights what is important for first-year principals as they build their professional identities. Further, it highlights the variability in principals’ understanding and enactment of teacher evaluation policies, an important feature as this practice is coming to the fore both in current practice and research. Originality/value – This study adds to an understanding of institutional theory by looking at the interaction between the organizational levels, and further explicates individual actors’ agency within a socio-organizational context. The findings also add to a dearth of empirical studies on the routine of teacher evaluation from the principal perspective.

Conceptualizing Equity in the Implementation of California Education Finance Reform

“…Scholars have frequently drawn upon sensemaking theory to examine education policy implementation, particularly in the areas of instructional reform (e.g., Allen and Penuel 2015;Coburn 2001Coburn , 2006Spillane 2000), evaluation (e.g., Halverson et al 2004;Ingle et al 2011;Rigby 2015), and data use (e.g., Bertrand and Marsh 2015;Cho and Wayman 2014;Farrell and Marsh 2016;Park and Datnow 2017;Spillane 2012). Collectively, this literature indicates that educators' policy responses are largely driven by their prior knowledge, beliefs, and values, often resulting in implementation variation.…”

Making sense while steering through the fog: Principals’ metaphors within a national reform implementation

“…Principals expressed the opinion that they should not only comply with policy instructions, but also use their vision as leaders of unique educational settings. In this context, the metaphors school principals used while struggling to facilitate an accord with local conditions revealed their need to serve as performing actors, when implementing reform demands (Rigby, 2015;Werts & Brewer, 2015). Finding a way through the stormy sea of conflicting demands of reform implementation, school principals played active roles in negotiating between government regulations and local capacities.…”

“…This leadership-challenge positions principals at the very center of education reforms (Gawlik, 2015;Volante, 2012), which in fact calls for a much needed analysis of principals' internal processes when adapting reform demands to local conditions (Brezicha, Bergmark, & Mitra, 2015;Koyama, 2014). However, while a few studies have addressed the role of principals as influencing teachers' sense-making (e.g., Coburn, 2016), only limited research has focused on the sense-making of the principals themselves within the context of reform implementation (Jennings, 2010;Rigby, 2015;Thomson & Hall, 2011).…”

An Exploration Into Leadership Practice in Madrasah Aliyahs (Islamic-Based Senior High Schools) in Indonesia

“…Positive relationships between leadership and employees allow for powerful and transparent interaction, which helps to avoid conflict. Teachers, for instance, will not feel assessed by the school principal during teacher evaluations because they realize that the future advantages to their career development can be achieved.The empiric research looked at the assessment of educators and how school principals ensure teachers ' confidence [47]. In this studies, the principals did not fully monitor or assess the efficiency of educators in the classroom.…”