Page 59 - EDUCON 2022 Book of Abstracts

ultimately argues why teacher evaluation policies and practices that
are expressly inclusive of learners’ voices are warranted.
Methodology: The study, rooted in the analytical philosophy of
education tradition, will rely on conceptual analysis and critical policy
analysis as its research methods. The proposed paper will analyse the
constitutive meanings of the concepts: (i) inclusion and exclusion; (ii)
testimonial injustice &; (iii) childism. This will result in the crafting of
the study’s analytical lens which will be used to analyse key policy
documents and instruments that regulate and guide the evaluation of
teachers in Namibia to reveal the extent to which learners’ voices are
included or excluded.
Findings: The preliminary findings suggest that even though learners
spend more time with teachers than any other stakeholders, their
voices are excluded from teacher evaluation practices. The study also
found that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the exclusion of
learners’ voices in teacher evaluations to be counterproductive, as
current evaluation practices fail to capture the full picture of teachers’
pedagogical practices and therefore incapable of providing meaningful
feedback on how such practices can be improved.
Recommendations: Preliminarily, the paper recommends that the
Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture take deliberate steps to
harmonise its position on the inclusion of learners ‘voices in
educational discourse, particularly in teacher evaluations to rid its
policy documents of the contradictions that normalise the exclusion of
learners’ voices from platforms that they can make credible
contributions to, platforms that can be improved by their inclusion.
Keywords: teacher evaluation, analytical philosophy, inclusion,
policy

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