Elementary Teachers' Narrative of the Implementation of the Descriptive Evaluation: A Qualitative Research

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the viewpoints of elementary teachers on the descriptive evaluation project in elementary schools. Accordingly, a phenomenological qualitative research method was applied. The participants of the study were 32 teachers from Sabzevar city in the academic year of 2016-2017. They were selected by objective sampling method. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analyzed by Strauss and Corbin method in three stages of open, axial and selective coding. Out of 127 conceptual codes of the research findings, the student-centric codes (Students becoming comfort-loving,  stress being reduced, literacy being reduced, real capability not recognized, confusion, reduced academic motivation, Reduced constructive competition, high population), teachers-related axes (being time-consuming, personalization, no chance for  students’ self-comparison, enhancing chances for teachers with low level of motivation, the involvement of managers in evaluation) and parents (also focused on their lack of consent and awareness) could be traced. The results of the study showed that the descriptive evaluation plan has weaknesses that can be expressed in terms of the effects they have on students, teachers and parents.