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Abstract
The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain a better understanding of tenured teachers’ perspectives about teacher evaluation processes, and to examine school principals’ approaches to evaluating tenured teachers’ performance. The researcher sought to discover if being granted tenure influences teachers’ perspectives about the teacher evaluation process. This qualitative research was mainly framed within the research design rendering a phenomenological study and situated in the context of the state of Georgia. The research relied on several data collection methods, including interviews, documents/legislations, and memo-writing. Eight teachers and three school principals were recruited to participate in semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis and the constant comparative method. The findings from teachers’ interviews were summarized in five major themes: (1) Granted with tenure might affect teachers’ perspectives about the purpose of the teacher evaluation process; (2) Teachers have become more comfortable being evaluated over the years not because of tenure but because of building their self-efficacy; (3) Although teachers might not attend professional development informed by their evaluation, these professional developments affected their evaluation process throughout their career; (4) Teachers preferred to be evaluated by school principals with teaching experiences, content knowledge, and enough training to perform the evaluation process regardless of their tenure status; and (5) Although teachers found the current evaluation system to be an effective tool to figure out teachers’ strengths and weaknesses, the evaluation process alone was not enough to support probationary teachers and keep tenured teachers’ enthusiasm for improvement if the evaluation process mainly focused on accountability. The findings from school principals’ interviews were summarized in two major themes: (1) School principals follow the state’s legislation when evaluating teacher’s performance; and (2) School principals acknowledge the teacher’s years of experience when providing feedback and support. The findings of this study contribute to the literature when examining teacher tenure and teacher evaluation from the perspectives of teachers and school principals and provide information that could be used to assist policymakers in revising teacher evaluation practices for tenured teachers.