The Loss of Teacher Appraisal in New Zealand: A Theory-of-action Perspective

Abstract

The requirement for teachers to be appraised annually was recently removed from the New Zealand education system. In response to claims that appraisal was burdensome, created too much workload and had too little impact, it was removed and replaced by a process called a professional growth cycle. In this chapter, I first introduce the former appraisal system and its key features. I then examine the shift to the new process using a theory-of-action approach to describe both the former and current systems. The theory-of-action approach draws attention to the constraints driving the practice of policy makers for both systems and allows a critique of the move to abandon rather than improve appraisal in ways consistent with double-loop learning in a system that learns. While the new system is still recent and the consequences of it are uncertain, I argue that much of what the new system emphasizes could have been applied to improving the pre-existing appraisal process. There was potential, I suggest, to retain an accountability mechanism in appraisal alongside moves to increase trust and reduce burden. Furthermore, such integration of accountability alongside improvement purposes is particularly important in systems seeking to address issues of educational inequity.