Managing “challenging” teachers

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways in which elementary school principals in Israel deal with teachers who are “challenging” in their behaviour, that is those who are perceived as under‐performing. This is an important and under‐researched area of educational management.Design/methodology/approachInterviews were carried out with 40 elementary school principals, every fourth school being sampled in the northern district of Haifa. They were asked to recall a particularly difficult teacher and their shortcomings and then asked about the measures they took, in chronological order, to solve the problem.FindingsThe findings indicated that the principals preferred supportive measures or making changes to the organization rather than confronting the teachers. More than half the principals had started by ignoring the difficulties. In the end most did discuss the situation with the teacher and that sometimes involved direct criticism. In half of the cases the teacher left the school by the end of the year.Research implications/limitationsThe research findings are limited as they only relate to the views of the principals, leading to the possibility of researcher empathy with the principals. Further research might investigate the teachers perspective.Practical implicationsFrom a practical point‐of‐view, the current findings indicate that elementary school principals need to be better equipped with knowledge, managerial skills and sources of assistance to solve personnel difficulties.Originality/valueThis paper adds to the limited literature on the subject of under‐performing teachers and reveals the resulting personnel difficulties faced by principals.

Principals’ informal methods for appraising poor-performing teachers

“…Formidable ethical, practical and methodological barriers face researchers and practitioners who wish to explore this phenomenon. Very few comprehensive empirical studies have been carried out (Bridges 1986(Bridges , 1992Wragg et al 2000;Yariv 2004;Yariv and Coleman 2005). Several reasons are suggested: First (and most obviously): workers and their employers will do their utmost to hide shortcomings.…”

The visibility and invisibility of performance management in schools

“…Mather and Seifert () represent many of the themes of this paradigm, situating performance management within New Public Management, modern‐day Taylorism ‘designed to gain control over craft workers through the separation of task conception and its execution’ (p. 28). Such an approach, proceeding from a labour process theory framework (see Braverman, ), relies on gaining the consent of teachers through perpetuating the ‘propaganda’ that better teacher performance leads to better ‘service provision’ adding legitimacy ‘to the ‘weeding out’ of poor performers’, those ‘challenging’ teachers that senior leaders are often unwilling to tackle (Yariv & Coleman, ). From this perspective, rather than acting as a means of driving forward quality, it becomes a ‘millstone’ (Forrester, ), a means of surveillance and control that de‐professionalises the workforce.…”

Deterioration in Teachers' Performance: Causes and Some Remedies

“…Yariv and Coleman (2005) describe a case of a principal who initiated cooperation between a talented teacher and her failing colleague, first by asking them to teach the same subject matter. Then, in order not to decrease the weak teacher's confidence (who suffered severe health problems) and to create a common working system, she encouraged them to attend out-of-school courses.…”