The present era is marked by profound changes in the governance of academic institutions. Economic and social issues require universities to manage results for maximum effectiveness and efficiency [1]. As part of the logic of accountability, these new modes of governance are not without consequences for the evaluation of university institutions. Indeed, to guide their reform efforts, educational systems rely on evaluation mechanisms [2]. Teacher assessment is conceived as a lever capable of enhancing the quality of higher education, a process inherent in its development and evolution. In this sense, "to support reforms in the field of evaluation, there must be a coherent framework, with sufficient capacities to conduct and interpret evaluations at all levels of the educational system" (loose translation) [2(p.4)]. However, it is part of a movement of radical transformation of higher education under the effect of a logic of exacerbated competition analysed in Europe as well as in North and South America, which risks deviating the approach from a pedagogical logic to a marketing logic [3].
Moroccan universities are beginning to realise that teacher assessment results in the development of a teacher’s self-analysis capacities for the purpose of improving the relevance and quality of their teaching [4]. In its report concerning the reform of higher education, the CSEFRS (Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, de la formation et la recherche scientifique) highlighted the importance of assessment in higher education and the involvement of students in the teachers’ assessment by drawing on the experience of many countries, particularly European [5]. However, the implementation of teacher assessment processes leads to changes in the administrative practices and the possibility of creating tensions among professors, the first actors targeted by teacher assessment. Therefore, the results of the assessment will have consequences on teachers’ feeling of competence, their professional autonomy and promotion in their career. It is in this context that what the professors think of these processes becomes a scientific concern. Particularly, we were interested in professors’ attitudes towards the usefulness and implementation of a teaching assessment process, their views regarding a possible evaluation of their professional practices, their opinions regarding the parties deemed qualified to carry out this evaluation, the perceived limitations of such assessments and their suggestions to improve them. Of particular interest is professors’ beliefs about teacher assessment, as negative beliefs could lead to disengagement and failure to implement it. We hope these insights will help build a more comprehensive picture of professors’ perception of teacher assessment.
Historical Overview Of Teacher Assessment
Teacher assessment emerged in the United States in the very early years of the twentieth century. Several authors recalled the decisive influence of Frederick Winslow Taylor, who published, in 1911, a book entitled Principles of Scientific Management [6]. For Taylor, the management of the school system must be not only political, but also rational and efficient. Taylor's work reoriented teacher assessment towards new horizons. In their view, teacher assessment is related not only to student academic achievement, but also to other aspects, such as intentions, goals and implementation processes. The late 1950s saw the first significant initiatives in teacher assessment in the United States. Teacher assessment experienced an unprecedented boom resulting from the desire of Americans to improve their curriculum and following massive investments from the federal government. The field of teacher assessment has grown in most industrialised countries since the 1990s [7–8]. In developing countries, the implementation of teacher assessment was also the object of research as it started to be more common, raising some challenges [9]. Socioeconomic factors and the trends of decentralisation which go hand in hand with school autonomy and responsibility are leading school authorities to increasingly recognise the importance of teacher assessment [10]. Teacher assessment has emerged as one of the panaceas in the development of a new mode of governance. The fact that an educated population is seen as a strategic economic resource increases the expectations of educational systems and institutions. Finally, the increase in the number of students and the need for expensive equipment requires a better cost-benefit ratio [11]. All in all, these factors have contributed to the development of a multitude of models in teacher assessment.
Conceptions Of Teacher Assessment
From a theoretical point of view, two conceptions of teacher assessment can be noted, lying within two paradigms: formalism and naturalism. We will identify the definitional dimensions of teacher assessment, then, we will discuss the conceptions of teacher assessment through these two paradigms.
Definitions of Teacher Assessment
Teacher assessment can be defined in various ways and from various perspectives, and authors have struggled to find common definitional dimensions. For Stumpf and Garessus [12], teacher assessment is a process that consists of gathering a body of information, comparing this set of information with a set of criteria using an appropriate approach, and assigning meaning to the results of this comparison in order to be able to base and validate a decision that is consistent with the function targeted by the assessment. Generally speaking, teacher assessment is a collection of information from which a value judgement is made as to the quality of teaching. Founded judgement of the value of the object being evaluated integrates clearly stated indicators and criteria that lead to actions to be taken and decisions related to this judgement [8, 12].
Formalist-Inspired Assessment Designs
This design suggests that teacher assessment is seen as a structured process, mainly using standardised procedures and quantitative methods. The assessor makes explicit judgements based on pre-established and known criteria. The accuracy, reliability and credibility of the assessment can be verified independently of the participation of stakeholders in the field. Taylor, Stake and Stufflebeam [cited in 13] created formalist models that have strongly influenced programme evaluation practices. In this type of model, the emphasis is on collecting relevant information to ensure the right decisions.
Naturalist-Inspired Assessment Designs
Naturalistic assessment is presented as an alternative to the conventional methodology found in formalistic assessment. Nadeau [13] defined naturalistic assessment as life episodes documented by natural language that best represent what people feel, what they know, and their interests, beliefs, perceptions and understanding. In naturalistic models, the processes of assessment in its formalistic sense focus on the activities of the programme rather than on its intentions. More sensitive to the values of participants, the structure used to collect and analyse information adapts to the flow of operations. Naturalistic assessment essentially consists of a series of observations directed towards discovery and verification, favouring successive reorientations and additional discoveries in relation to the phenomenon under study.
Teaching Assessment Practices
The scientific literature shows that teaching assessment practices are varied. This means that assessors must choose between the internal evaluative approach or the external evaluative approach. According to the Higher Education Council of Québec, Canada, there are "choices to be made between external and internal evaluation, one complementing the other; nevertheless, institutional assessment is first and foremost a self-assessment process carried out internally by the actors concerned" [14 (p. 51)]. Internal assessment is usually combined with self-assessment, which is widely recommended. There are two reasons for this preference. On the one hand, this approach promotes the mobilisation and commitment of community stakeholders, given its positive effects on self-actualisation, autonomy and professional responsibility, which is increasingly desired in the educational environment. On the other hand, it encourages the development of a reflective practice and a critical look at the processes and results targeted by the institution in connection with its educational mission.
Teacher assessment processes must, as we have said, be based on information deemed relevant for verifying the effectiveness of training programmes, the development of research activities, the method of management, and so on. Thus, and given the many elements that come into play in the teaching processes and the different contexts in which teaching activities take place, teacher assessment approaches cannot be designed in the same way. To this end, each higher education institution adopts its own teacher assessment processes to define the quality of its educational mission, according to its needs, values and context. Although each assessment process is a unique case responding to the specific needs of each institution, several experts and organisations in the field agree to specify the main data to be collected so that an informed judgement can be made. The CREPUQ teaching evaluation policy suggested collecting four types of qualitative and quantitative data [15]:
(a) descriptive, clear and relevant information on the structure and functioning of the program; (b) data which identifies characteristics and trends in admissions and graduation rates, in the development of teaching and support staff, as well as in the physical and financial resources allocated to the program; (c) data collected from all the groups concerned to identify their perceptions of the various dimensions of the program, and (d) comparative data which allows the program to be placed in relation to similar training offered elsewhere (p. 19).
With reference to these elements, the CREPUQ strongly recommended that an evaluation process be based on criteria on which a judgement can be made [15]. Indeed, the use of performance criteria is part of teacher assessment practices:
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The criterion "establishing the link between the objectives pursued by the training programs and the socio-economic and socio-educational needs”.
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Examining educational strategies and activities.
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Verifying the adequacy of faculty resources and other resources.
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Making "a judgment on the degree of performance of the students and on their educational and professional development".
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Evaluating "the quality of faculty management that promotes the achievement of training objectives".
In short, teacher assessment is a continuous and concerted approach based on information methodically collected from all the actors involved in teaching activities to make a judgement on the quality of teaching through the elements it comprises. With this in mind, stakeholders will be able to learn how teaching activities have achieved the objectives of the educational mission and to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their teaching practices. Such teacher assessment, conducted by students, will be of interest in this present study. We present our teacher assessment procedures below.
Teacher Assessment by Students
Teacher assessment by students is an administrative and pedagogical process promoted by many higher education institutions in order to increase teaching quality. This approach originated from North American higher education institutions towards the end of the 1960s. At the beginning of the millennium European countries began establishing processes and practices of teacher assessment following the Bologna process [16]. The current trend in Europe, particularly in the French-speaking world, is to generalise the procedure of teacher assessment by students [17]. On the African continent, this approach has not strongly developed into administrative and higher education practices compared to in the occidental world, for organisational, socioeconomic and socio-cultural reasons. Private Moroccan universities have implemented systematic teacher assessment approaches for a few years[1]. Teacher assessment by students can be defined as the collection of students' opinions about the quality of the courses they have attended, in order to allow for a judgement leading to regulations of these courses. Among all the methods for evaluating courses, the Teacher Assessment by Students [TAS] is considered the most valid [18].
The results of teacher assessments are used in two forms. In the first, they are used for administrative purposes in order to evaluate the quality of a professor’s teaching (for recruitment, promotion, career, etc.). In the second, assessment is orientated towards improving the teaching practices of university professors and towards their continuing professional development [12, 19–20]. The success of implementing teacher assessment processes relies on four cornerstone principles: (1) confidentiality of the results, (2) implication of the teacher in the assessment process; (3) adaptation to the pedagogic context; and, (4) reflexivity oriented around practical analysis. Specialists in the field are in general agreement about the dimensions in which teacher assessment is applied, in the following themes: (1) pertinence of the objectives; (2) course structure; (3) inter-student interaction quality; (4) teacher-student relations; (5) learning quality; (5) note that we have expectations of things; and, (6) clarity of assessment modalities and expectations [21, 32].
Professors’ Perceptions of Teacher Assessment
The authors define perception as a mental phenomenon that relates to conceptual elements, mental images and associations. It is a circumstantial construct, developed individually in a particular context that may be relatively new as a result of prescribed changes. Research findings highlight the importance of professors’ perceptions of adopting change-innovations [18, 22–23]. It is from their individual and subjective perception that a person decides whether or not to engage in a process of change. The subjective dimension of innovation refers to the relationship that the individual establishes with the envisaged change.
In this context, perceptions refer to the opinions, personalities and disposition of teachers to engage in a teaching evaluation process. These perceptions influence the teacher's representation of their role, status and responsibilities. In other words, the more teachers have positive perceptions of the relevance of the evaluation of teaching, the more they adopt attitudes and dispositions to engage in a process of evaluating the university mission. More recently, Deroz and Verpoorten directly link the use of the TAS to teachers' beliefs and perceptions [18]. Thus, these authors emphasise that teachers make use of TAS results only to the extent that they have confidence in this form of assessment. In general, the research results consulted show that teachers perceive the usefulness of teaching evaluation as positive, and that it contributes to improving the outcome of the educational mission:
Students are the only witnesses of the teaching; they are the only ones who can indicate whether the teacher's presentations are clear, whether the teacher’s feedback helps them to progress, whether the teacher’s strategies can promote student understanding [loose translation] [24]
On the other hand, for some professors, the information collected from the students makes it difficult to obtain real insight into the quality of the course being taught [16, 21, 25]. Professors believed that student evaluations are unreliable, since they are not qualified to identify good teaching and the questionnaires are not valid instruments for assessing the quality of teaching [17, 26–27]. In the same sense, Endrizzi points out that these attitudes stem from entrenched beliefs that, among other things, assessments are biased and that students are not competent assessors: “teacher assessment by students is not necessarily positively received by all teachers, some building their resistance around the principle of academic freedom and the non-recognition of a competent assessor status in the person of the student" [26(p.23)].
The professors surveyed stressed the importance of collecting as much information as possible from all stakeholders in the field (e.g., students, professors, lecturers, etc.), and having their consent for the entire evaluation process [24, 28]. On the issue of ethics, researchers reported that teachers are opposed to the use of evaluation for promotional purposes [27, 29]. There is also the issue of high-profile university rankings which negatively affect faculty adherence to the principle of teacher assessment [14]. Our literature review revealed the four dimensions considered to be most important for the purposes of our study: (1) the usefulness of the teacher assessment; (2) the method of evaluation; (3) the sources of information; and, finally, (4) access to the content of the evaluation, and its use. These dimensions are retained in order to capture professors’ perceptions regarding the implementation of a higher education evaluation process in Morocco.
[1] Data on the quality of implementation and final results regarding success are not available to us.