A Test of Significance of Process on Effectiveness of Teacher Evaluation in Kwekwe Schools of Zimbabwe

Abstract

Zimbabwe adopted Results Based Management (RBM) in order to evaluate the performance of its workers. For the process to be ‘significant’ and meet the basic attribute of utility, evaluation information should be focused towards predetermined uses. The objective of this study was to assess the significance of the teacher performance evaluation process and examine the relationship between the significance and the effectiveness of the evaluation system of Kwekwe district in Zimbabwe. The study was situated in the pragmatic worldview and underpinned by the Readiness Assessment, Design, Process, Significance (RADPS) conceptual framework. It adopted the convergent mixed method design and the concurrent sampling design. Simple random and purposive sampling techniques were used to select 292 teachers and 12 educators for the quantitative and qualitative research strands respectively. SPSS version 26 was used to analyse the quantitative data and qualitative data were analysed using Atlas ti. 8. Findings show that the evaluation process in the Kwekwe district has no meaningful consequences or implications on effectiveness of the evaluation system. RBM has failed to fulfil both the professional and accountability functions. The inferential statistics proved that the significance of an evaluation process is statistically significant in predicting and influencing the effectiveness of an evaluation system and in the case of Kwekwe district, the evaluation process negatively impacted on the effectiveness of evaluation of teachers. The study findings imply that an evaluation process should be carefully planned and implemented for professional and accountability functions of teachers to be effective.