Building an explanatory framework for co-workers’ responses to teacher underperformance

Underperforming teachers can have a profound negative impact on their students, principals and co-workers, and the educational quality in their schools. Since little is known about how and why co-workers respond to teacher underperformance, this study aims to build an explanatory framework for different types of co-workers’ responses. The results of our survey study indicate that co-workers’ responses can partly be explained by how they consider their responsibility and authority to respond, as well as the use of responding. These considerations are, in turn, influenced by different underperformance, underperformer, co-worker, leadership and team characteristics. We discuss how co-workers’ responses to teacher underperformance can be facilitated.