Underperforming teachers: the impact on co-workers and their responses

Abstract

Research indicates that underperforming teachers have a profound impact on students and on principals who struggle to deal with the underperformance. However, the impact on, and responses of, other teachers (i.e., coworkers) is rarely studied, in spite of the importance of teacher collaboration in contemporary education. Therefore, we interviewed co-workers about incidents of teacher underperformance, using the Critical Incident Technique. Our respondents reported various types of underperformance, including student-related and team-related underperformance, as well as task underperformance and counterproductive work behaviours. Dependent on the specific incident, co-workers were more directly or indirectly affected by the underperformance. They expressed frustrations, concerns and feelings of injustice, not only about the underperformance itself, but also about a lack of response by the school principal. Moreover, we found that co-worker responses depended on how they perceived the necessity, appropriateness and utility of responding, as well as their responsibility to respond. This was influenced by characteristics of the underperformance, underperformer and co-worker, principals' responses and team factors. Implications for educational research, policy and practice are discussed.

Factors affecting classroom teachers' job performance: A qualitative-dominant analysis with Q-sorting

“…Also, teachers' perceptions of the support level by the principal were significantly related to their sense of commitment to school and profession (Bogler & Somech, 2004). Leadership styles adopted by school principals (Korkmaz, 2005), their interactions/exchange with teachers (Cerit, 2012), their positive personality traits (Van Den Ouweland et al, 2019), their competence to evaluate teachers (Painter, 2000), and their approaches to the profession (Polatcan & Cansoy, 2019) affect teacher performance. The Q results indicated that the constructive and supportive behaviors of school principals had positive effects on their performance.…”

“…Drawing on prior research, this research set out to explore the factors influencing job performance of Turkish classroom teachers working at public schools by taking an account of job performance as a variable construct. associated with motivation (Anastasiou & Papakonstantinou, 2014;Ertürk & Aydın, 2017), job satisfaction (Arifin, 2015), communication (Boset et al, 2017;Visveswaran& Ones, 2000), organizational climate (Şenel & Buluç, 2016), managerial processes (Polatcan & Cansoy, 2019;Van Den Ouweland, Vanhoof, & Van Den Bossche, 2019), professional and general qualifications (Caena, 2014;Lev, Tatar, & Koslowsky, 2018;Rizvi, 2013;Skourdoumbis & Gale, 2013), and student characteristics (Dicke, Elling, Schmeck, &Leutner, 2015;Rytivaara, 2012;Sebastian, Herman, & Reinke, 2019).…”