Deterioration in Teachers' Performance: Causes and Some Remedies

Abstract

Why do teachers become poor performers? In semi-structured interviews, forty elementary school principals in Israel described the personal story of one poor-performing staff member. Half of the problematic teachers were veteran teachers who faced a marked internal and external shift in mid-career. The seeds of their problems were probably planted early in their lives. Others faced a current personal crisis which impaired their performance. Poor performance was found not to correlate with any principal or teacher background variable. Neither was it connected directly with specific professional stages of a teacher’s career. The discussion provides a theoretical framework and some remedies.