Teachers' Performance Appraisal in Kenya in light of Plato's Idealism.
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Date
2025-05
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Kenyatta University
Abstract
The prime goal of a country’s system of education is quality education, which is attained among other ways through teachers’ appraisal. Appraising teachers appropriately makes them work optimally and efficiently. This study purposed to evaluate the teachers’ appraisal process in Kenya, as envisaged in the Teachers Performance Appraisal and Development (TPAD) tool with reference to Platonic Idealism. The TPAD’s mode of appraisal entails a teacher’s self-appraisal and appraisal by the school head against set targets. As the teacher and their appraisers undertake the appraisal exercise, they are expected to determine the scores to be awarded against the set targets based on the available evidence, hence employing reasoning. The TPAD guidelines act as a set of questions while the marks act as the answers, hence falling within the nexus of Socratic pedagogy. Subsequently, this study sought to evaluate the appraisal process in light of the tenets underpinning Socratic pedagogy. The study was guided by three objectives namely to: explicate Socratic pedagogy as manifested in Plato’s conception of education, analyse the TPAD tool of evaluating teachers’ teaching standards in Kenyan secondary schools and propose a philosophical framework that would enhance it. The study was guided by Plato’s theory of forms which gives prominence to reason in seeking to explain the nature of reality. The theory was relevant to this study because the Teacher’s Performance Appraisal as contextualized in the TPAD tool requires the teacher to reason when undertaking the appraisal process. The study employed both the Analytical and Critical methods of Philosophy in interrogating secondary sources which included among others: government documents such as Teachers Service Commission (TSC) Code of Regulation for Teachers, TSC’s TPAD Annual Evaluation Reports, the TPAD tool, and research findings of related studies on TPAD. The Analytic method of Philosophy entails breaking down a concept into more simple parts, so that its logical structure is displayed in order to achieve clarity and understanding. It enabled the researcher to understand the whole process of appraisal by examining its rationale, components and challenges while enabling the researcher to propose a philosophical paradigm to enhance the performance appraisal process. The critical method of Philosophy entails subjecting principles, policies and premises to positive criticism and evaluation in order to attain truth and clarity. The study found out that the TPAD teaching standards defined a teacher’s job in Kenya using the Kenya Professional Teaching Standards (KePTS) and that the TPAD rating scale measured the epistemic qualities of teacher’s professional knowledge. Additionally, the six tenets of Socratic Pedagogy (participatory, dialectical, conversational, inquisitive, rational and practical tenets) constitute the soul of the TPAD appraisal process and a philosophical framework which stood to fix errors riddling it hence strengthening it. Therefore, the study recommended that the TPAD online system be reconfigured so that the appraisal process could be in tandem with the soul of the appraisal process.
Description
A Research Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of The Requirements For The Award of The Degree of Master Of Education (Philosophy of Education) In The School of Education And Lifelong Learning of Kenyatta University, May 2025.
superviours
1-Francis Murira
2-Edward Andafu