Eureka! Institutional Repository

The present work aims at researching and studying the primary school teachers’ views in order to explore the prevailing evaluation culture in the school where they work. Other goals of the thesis are to explore whether school principals tend to be transformative, as well as to estimate the degree of collectivity, communication and satisfaction of the teachers themselves. A questionnaire was distributed to a sample of 232 primary education teachers nationwide. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire’s structure and content was checked beforehand. Then, the demographics of the sample (sex, age, years of service, working position) were analysed as well as the answers given to the questions posed. Teachers seem to be positive about the necessity of evaluation, especially school evaluation, this suggesting the need to increase the autonomy of school units in order to eliminate fear of control or punishment. Leadership also plays an important role since the principals are the ones who stutter between the central administration of the Ministry and the management of the school unit, a very large distance creating a big gap. The prevailing culture in the school is also essential and has considerable impact on the teachers’ views in relation to evaluation. Finally, transformational leadership seems to be a force for change as far as this culture is concerned. With a scope to achieve the best possible results for the students, who are the main clients of the educational services, all teachers must be actively involved, and adequately trained so as to be able to adapt to the situations they face. A basic prerequisite for all this is constant updating and effective feedback on their work with a view to improving the quality of education.