The Process of Redesigning a Faculty Evaluation Scheme: Building a Culture of Trust, Self-Efficacy and Autonomy in Participative Decision-Making

This paper recounts how the entire process of redesigning a faculty evaluation scheme spawned intrinsically motivated faculty especially among those who were directly and indirectly involved in the change process. The program theory is supported by Haeffner’s (2011) fourth theory of motivation. The purpose of the seven-month project was to redesign the existing faculty evaluation system with high acceptability among those who are affected by the change. A study group with cross-sectional membership from the various ranks of the academics comprised the nucleus of the project. Sequential group dynamics characterized with meaningful sessions of brainstorming and consensus-building resulted in substantial outputs -- the working papers on faculty evaluation philosophy, principles and standards of performance with corresponding indicators. The University core values and requirements for good teaching supported with appropriate literature and studies provided the points of reference for the outputs especially during the intellectual stimulation. Series of university-wide consultative meetings after four months led to the thorough design that produced the tools on student assessment of teacher performance, faculty observation, and faculty non-classroom rating forms. Results of the factor analysis and other validation processes established the high psychometric values of the tools. Descriptive research design using survey of opinions, critical incident techniques, and document analysis established that the whole process of redesigning the faculty evaluation scheme was regarded as a big leap in participative decisionmaking that generated an enhanced culture of trust, self-efficacy and autonomy especially among those who were affected by the systems change.

 

Keywords: Faculty evaluation, trust, self-efficacy, autonomy, participative decision-making