Public Administration Dilemmas: An Analysis of Teachers’ Perceptions of the Effects of Performance Evaluation in Post-Colonial South Africa

The adoption of the principles of New Public Management by many governments across the world was invariably accompanied by the implementation of performance evaluation. It is generally accepted that performance evaluation optimizes the performance of workers. As part of a broader investigation which employed a mixed methods approach, the study used data from six interviews with high school principals and 100 survey questionnaires with purposively selected high school teachers in uMgungundlovu District of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In the analysis of this data, the paper demonstrates that beyond the obvious benefits of performance evaluation such as improvement in performance, there are also unintended consequences such as a narrow focus on measured output, teacher burnout, and falsification of information in order to maximize credit or to avoid punishment. This study illustrates the understandings of high school educators in uMgungundlovu District of the effects of performance evaluation. The findings have important implications for public administration and scholars alike.     

Discretion and Autonomy: Public Administrators’ Dilemmas in the Implementation of National Curriculum Statements

This study contributes to an understanding of teachers, as street-level bureaucrats in South Africa, and their relative discretion and autonomy in the implementation of public policies. We adopted a mixed-method approach that included in-depth interviews (5), observation (65 days), survey (26), and detailed fieldnotes (25 pages). Our findings demonstrate that teachers exercise discretion and autonomy in areas such as ignoring assessment protocols, following school rules and procedures, rescheduling concepts to be taught, and giving little attention to certain policy requirements. These results offer insights for the exercise of discretion and autonomy by teachers and other street-level bureaucrats.