Managing Teacher Performance and Its Appraisal: Dilemmas of School Principals

Abstract

Utilizing a grounded theory approach to understand the issues surrounding teachers’ performance appraisal, the researchers investigate the principals’ understanding of the Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) and also explore the problems and flaws in its implementation. A purposive sampling procedure was used to select six school principals from three education regions in KwaZulu-Natal for the study. The results of the data analysis indicate that the implementation of the IQMS at schools has not been smooth. There has been a lot of hostility, negativity and resistance from the teachers that were appraised. The challenges that the principals were faced with, emanated from the lack of coordination, lack of trust, lack of clarity of roles and poor training. It is recommended that trust and better understanding be built between principals and teachers through information-sharing seminars and workshops, and regular feedback from the education officials. Key words: appraisal, implementation, IQMS, peer group, performance measurement, professional development, salary increase.