The Impact of Stakeholder Involvement in Evaluation System Design: Lessons from the Zimbabwe Education Sector Experiences

Abstract

The design of a performance evaluation system should ideally be inclusive and participatory to enhance stakeholders’ buy-in, acceptance and ownership of the system, whilst at the same time, ensure relevance and sustainability of the process.  This paper examines the design process of the teacher evaluation system in one education district of Zimbabwe. The study intended to establish the extent of teacher involvement in the design of the evaluation system and to determine the relationship between the design process and effectiveness of the evaluation system. The study used the convergent mixed method design. A quantitative sample of 292 teachers and a qualitative sample of 12 educators, namely teachers, heads of departments and school heads drawn from 10 secondary schools participated in the study. Quantitative data were analysed using SPSS version 26 and descriptive and inferential statistics were conducted. Atlas ti. 8 was used to analyse the qualitative data. The study established that the design process was exclusive and non-participatory, which led to lack of ownership and buy-in by the teachers. Based on these findings, it was concluded that the design process was faulty and negatively impacted the effectiveness of the teacher performance evaluation system. The study recommends that policy formulation should be inclusive and pilot tested to allow input of the users before full scale implementation.

Received: 14 October 2020 / Accepted: 29 March 2021 / Published: 10 May 2021