Ensemble Educators, Administrators, and Evaluation: Support, Survival, and Navigating Change in a High-Stakes Environment

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Music Teacher Evaluation: What Have We Learned and Where Are We Going?

Abstract

Based on findings that teacher quality is a major determinant of student growth, policy makers have concluded that teacher evaluation should be a major facet of school improvement (Croninger, Valli, and Chambliss, 2012; Gabriel & Woulfin, 2017). Typically, these evaluation systems developed and targeted for public schools have been designed for English and math, and have been imposed upon music educators without contextualizing the material or adapting the benchmarks for success (Brophy and Colwell, 2012). The evaluation implementation has the potential to destroy teachers’ motivations and change their pedagogy and process without situating and contextualizing the specific classroom setting. If evaluators do not understand what learning and assessment processes look like in a middle or high school ensemble setting, they might evaluate with criteria specific to a social studies or chemistry class. Without critically reflecting on how these evaluations affect pedagogy and process, educators may fall into compliant routines to reach a particular benchmark, instead of imagining alternative ways to engage with their students.
The idea of the complying through evaluation processes may feel akin to being watched or surveyed. It is this watchfulness from an authority that may keep teachers and evaluators “in check.” Employing a framework of Foucault’s (1977) Panopticon, this study examined how middle and high school ensemble directors and administrators negotiate, understand, and articulate their experiences and roles within the current teacher evaluation systems. A phenomenological interview approach was used to solicit the participants’ voices, allowing their personal and shared narratives to describe their lived experiences with teacher evaluation. Participants were mid-career secondary school ensemble directors and administrators who evaluated music. There is little information on how in-service music teachers—specifically ensemble directors in their mid career—locate themselves in their practice (Dust, 2006; Pellegrino, 2009). Mid-career educators who have an established professional identity (Coulter & Lester, 2011) may find imbalance in light of the new policies as they manage the contemporary evaluation systems.
Data collection included one-on-one interviews and document review of the contemporary evaluation systems, and were analyzed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith & Osborn, 2003). Data analysis uncovered that teachers became chameleons in the classroom, changing strategies under the watchful eye of their evaluators. Teachers and administrators negotiated and compromised their performer/conductor and educator selves, and their leader and educator selves, respectively. Participants found points of tension and disequilibrium in their self-perception and how others perceived them (poloses) in their daily teaching activities.
Analysis of the data suggests that these teaching and identity changes are inauthentic, as educators try on roles within a more static and safe position as a means of compliance, survival, and docility rather than reflecting on what works for them and their students, evolving and progressing as an educator. This study found that the evaluative tool, when poorly implemented in an ensemble setting, is faulted and lacks content validity. These findings may inform the ways reflections can help educators to gain a sense of power to act as agents for themselves and their students, pushing against the norming of the evaluative systems.

Author

• Cara Bernard