Abstract:

In response to the emerging need to develop teachers as professionals who evaluate their own work, the evaluation as well as the self-evaluation models have been developed. The models consist of performance indicators that are likely to help educational practitioners to evaluate their own teaching, and thus raise the level of their professional functioning. These evaluation and self-evaluation models focused on the effective use of teaching aids and ICT in education, which are one of ten models developed within the research project ‘Evaluation of teacher’s competences’ supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract No. APVV-14-0446, were consequently conducted to pilot survey. The aim of this contribution is to discus the results of the pilot survey aimed to test whether the evaluation as well as the self-evaluation models were comprehensible and appropriate, and that the indicators were well defined, clearly understood and presented in a consistent manner. The pilot survey also explored the degree of agreement within teacher self-evaluation and head teacher (other independent person) evaluation of the identical teacher. In order to evaluate agreement between the teacher evaluation and self-evaluation were used a weighted kappa coefficient directly comparing the response values. Landis and Koch categories of agreement were used to describe levels of the agreement. Data of the pilot survey were collected from 42 public schools in Slovakia. Using the Landis and Koch scale to interpret results, weighted kappas showed substantial agreement (0.61-0.80) between teacher evaluation and self-evaluation for the whole research group. On the other hand, moderate agreement (0.41-0.60) were shown between teacher evaluation and self-evaluation in research groups of teachers selected according to their teaching practice length and school subjects specification. The use of simultaneous teacher evaluation and self-evaluation is a way to identify the strong aspects of teachers' practice, as well as their weaknesses which may need to be changed or improved. Teachers should take initiatives and responsibility to evaluate their own teaching and make improvements over time. It is important to understand that evaluating the teaching of a particular teacher does not mean she/he is a bad teacher, in fact, it means quite the opposite.

Acknowledgement:
This study was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract No. APVV-14-0446.

Keywords:

Teacher evaluation, Teacher self-evaluation, Performance indicators, Pilot survey, Teaching aids, ICT.