THE PARADOX OF PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT AND COLLABORATIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT

1
THE PARADOX OF PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT AND
COLLABORATIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT

• 1. Background and context
• Management and governance of schools in S.A.
  based largely on SASA (1996) and at least 16
  other legislative Acts - must be obeyed or taken
  into account by all subject to them.
  Implementation founded in bureaucratic authority
  which relies on hierarchy, rules, regulations and
  mandates.
• Presently Education Amendment Act (SA,2007)
  subject to scrutiny. Scathing criticism by
  teachers Union in Department looking for
  scapegoats for inadequate performance of
  system-everyone except bureaucrats who preside
  over system

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• Main purpose of this research to investigate how
  teachers experienced and viewed performance
  management mandates, and their concomitant
  collaborative efforts.
• The inherent paradox of multiple mandates
• Mandates are rules governing actions of
  individuals, and are intended to produce
  compliance (Hoyle Wallace, 2005). Clause in new
  education act indicates principal must implement
  various education policies issued by Minister or
  relevant departments. Also principal can be
  charged under Incapacity Code and Procedure for
  Poor Work Performance, if school performs poorly.

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• Furthermore Batho Pele (people first)
  Principles advocates collaboration, cooperation
  and consultation of citizens about quality of
  service they receive. No problem in setting these
  principles of working together but performance
  measurement coupled to it inspires competition
  and spontaneous need for communities of practice
  (Lave Wenger, 1998) to form, disappears.
• When teams are mandated without facilitative
  processes partnerships are administratively
  imposed and contrived collaboration (Fullan
  Hargreaves, 1992) is cultivated.
• Mandates such as SASA and its amendments command
  public schools to implement policies of th
  Government of the day.

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• Such dominant practices run contrary to
  co-operative and collaborative approaches
  advocated by Bill of Rights (SA,1993) and people
  first principles.
• Potential new futures, such as collaborative
  approaches, create tension with their opposite,
  in this instance, competition (Morgan, 1997).
• I argue that these mandates are a response the
  assumed relationship between teacher performance
  and student achievement
• An unfortunate response to weak examination
  results is more legislation in an attempt to
  repair that which is regarded as being wrong.

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• Using mandates to control collaboration
• In the article I argue that mandates are
  implementation-oriented and teachers are forced
  to work together to implement them. Thus besides
  the two contradictory poles of collaboration one
  can also speak of a third type namely mandated
  collaboration.
• Organizations drive legislative mandates via
  formal authority, control of decision-making
  processes, control of knowledge and information,
  control of boundaries, ability to cope with
  uncertainty, control of counter organizations and
  self protection. I use the IQMS system that
  attempts to control teacher performance as an
  example of the dysfunctional consequences of
  mandates.

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• The IQMS system, it is argued was designed in
  heaven but needs to be implemented on earth.
• In the article I use the IQMS mandate to argue
  that this act to rule and control the
  performance of another (Morgan, 1997) sets up a
  process of resistance or counter-control that
  undermines the initial attempt at control.
• Mandates and the work performance of teachers
• A variant of Kurt Lewins theory of social
  equilibrium (Elrod Tippett, 2002) is used to
  indicate that forces that drive and hinder change
  are both socially and psychologically dynamic in
  nature and change continuously even if rates of
  change are minimal.

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The influence of mandatory change on work
performance of teachers
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• Mandated PM of teachers contributes to contrived
  collaboration. Criteria pre-decided by external
  designer with no consultation with those to be
  evaluated a feeling of dissonance within
  individual may occur.
• Nature of evaluation and fact that teacher may
  have something to lose (promotion, salary
  increase, recognition) if do not meet
  expectations may cause false relationship to
  prevail whereby feeling of dissonance within
  teacher manifests in form of contrived
  collaboration.
• Attempted to measure dual nature of collaboration
  by firstly probing perceptions of teachers
  regarding importance of collaboration and
  secondly how they see these collaborative efforts
  being implemented in their schools.

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• The design of the enquiry
• Dependent variables were perceptions of teachers
  as to importance of collaboration in their
  schools and the competence of their schools at
  implementing these collaborative efforts.
• Importance of collaboration similar to supporting
  that, which you would be inclined to say about it
  and represents ideal or espoused perceptions.
• Perceptions of how competently your school
  implements collaboration represents that what
  actually occurs in everyday school life and it
  is the real situation.
• Also various bio-and demographic variables were
  investigated as a function of importance and
  competence.

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• The research group
• Four districts in Gauteng Province were used.
• To obtain proportionate number of teachers from
  various districts 8 schools from district A, 6
  schools from district B, 12 schools from district
  C and 4 schools from district D were randomly
  selected.
• As 50 of independent schools in Gauteng fall in
  the four districts I included 15 independent and
  15 public schools in sample in Johannesburg area.
• Of 300 questionnaires 225 were returned of which
  220 were useable.
• Gender, ratios of educators to school management
  and primary to secondary schools were
  representative of Gauteng population.

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• Findings
• Section B of questionnaire used a six-point
  Likert scale to evoke perceptions on importance
  of collaborative relationships
• In your opinion, how important is it that a
  school
• Uses standards collaboratively designed by
  teachers to measure their performance?
• Then in Section C the same questions were posed
  but with the header In your opinion how
  competent is your school at
• Further 48 questions attempted to evoke
  perceptions of importance and competence of
  collaborative efforts.

12
Mean scores of competence versus importance of
collaboration
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• Two diagonal lines are best fit lines. Circles
  represent respondents with C/I gt 1 who perceived
  schools to be more competent (real situation) at
  implementing collaborative aspects than it was
  important to do so (ideal situation or espoused
  theory). Top diagonal best fit line shows this.
  Correlation coefficient r 0.89 indicating
  importance and competence are highly correlated
  and R2 0.805. Thus 80.5 of variance in
  competence scores can be accounted for by
  variation in importance scores.
• Congruence between importance and competence and
  respondents believe that their schools do what
  they say they do regarding collaborative
  efforts. Respondents less likely to use contrived
  collaboration.

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• S\tars represent respondents with C/I lt 1 who
  perceived schools to be les competent (real
  situation) at implementing collaborative aspects
  than it was important to do so (ideal situation
  or espoused theory). Bottom diagonal best fit
  line shows this. Correlation coefficient r 0.37
  indicating importance and competence are poorly
  correlated and R2 0.141. Thus 14.1 of variance
  in competence scores can be accounted for by
  variation in importance scores.
• Congruence not present between importance and
  competence and respondents believe that their
  schools do not do what they say they do
  regarding collaborative efforts.
• Majority of respondents fall here and with little
  congruence present respondents likely to
  experience feelings of dissonance.

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• I argue that contrived collaboration can be seen
  as an escape mechanism resulting from
  dissonance felt.
• Mandates are unlikely to cause climate in which
  teachers and evaluators of teaching performance
  can bring discrepancies to surface where they can
  be openly confronted.
• Graph represents all respondents in research and
  further examination needed to see which of
  independent groups differ statistically and
  substantially significantly from one another
  regarding importance and competence.
• Factor analysis reduced questions in Section B to
  one factor named the importance of collaboration
  in schools with Cronbach a 0.926.

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• Same procedure for questions in Section C in
  questionnaire resulted in one factor that was
  named the competence of collaboration in schools
  with Cronbach a 0.920.
• Two independent groups tested via t-tests and
  three or more groups using ANOVA and post hoc
  test of Scheffé and Dunette T3.
• Substantive significance was tested via eta
  squared and interaction effects using
  significance of F values. Only some of more
  important findings shown in Table 1 in next slide.

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Mean scores, effect size and interaction effects
of independent groups for importance and
competence
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• Gender
• Female respondents regard identified aspects of
  collaboration as more important than males do.
• Also regard schools as more competent at
  implementing those aspects of collaboration than
  males do.
• Effect size small but practical significance
  could be males are more competitive in nature and
  hence less likely to work co-operatively than
  female teachers are likely to.
• Lack of interaction shown by parallel lines of
  importance and competence in graph in next slide.

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Graph showing lack of interaction between males
and females wrt importance and competence
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• Image of school in community
• Teachers who believe image of their schools in
  community is excellent have S.S. higher mean
  score than teachers who believe image to be
  average to poor. Substantive significance is
  small but value of a good school image goes hand
  in hand with competent teachers. Interaction
  effect is shown next slide.
• Note non-parallel lines.

21
Graph showing interaction between school image
and importance and competence of collaboration
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• Levels of discipline in the school
• Respondents with perceptions that their schools
  have excellent levels of discipline have a S.S.
  higher mean score regarding competence in aspects
  of collaboration than do those withy perceptions
  of good and average to poor discipline levels.
• The effect size is regarded as being medium to
  large with the practical significance that
  perceived levels of discipline has important
  implications for the measurement of teacher
  collaboration.
• Poor teaching can easily be ascribed to poor
  discipline levels in the school external locus
  of control and could use contrived collaboration.
• Interaction effect was significant (p0.000).

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Interaction graph of school discipline and
importance and competence
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• Implications of research for management of the
  school
• S.A. has had a democratic Constitution since 1994
  yet democratic management appears not to have
  reached level of public schools.
• Detailed bureaucratic procedures and excessive
  post-levels so ingrained in various departments
  that flow of information to schools is
  obstructed.
• More effective linkages with schools needed and
  collaboration to model people first principles
  to schools are needed.
• School principals should accept fact of life that
  they are implementers of policy and do not need
  to follow pattern of mandates demonstrated to
  them.

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• Should allow an open discussion on aspects of
  P.M. Where teachers work collaboratively , use
  their talents co-operatively and are free to
  speak their minds about differing opinions.
• Such approaches at least have chance that
  contrived collaboration will become less.
• Discuss changes that mandated P.M. will bring
  about ensuring teachers have good understanding
  of realities of change processes.
• Teachers respond differently to change and
  dialogue allows paradoxical influences to surface
  where teachers can work together in a
  participative way to solve complex problems

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• The authority and hierarchy present in
  bureaucratic systems are not congruent with core
  values of collaboration.
• The more traditional female values of nurturing,
  networking, trust, optimism, patience and
  compassion would seem to be more compatible with
  authentic collaboration.
• Excellent levels of school discipline, image of
  the school and good teacher attendance are all
  related to one another as they all seem to
  augment collaborative efforts and are associated
  with good student academic achievement.
• It also appears that weak discipline, mediocre
  teacher attendance and poor school image
  increases contrived collaboration among teachers.