Identifying the Tacit Knowledge of High School English Language Teachers of Objective Evaluation Methods: A Phenomenological Study

Learning, and enriching teachers' experiences improve the intellectual capital of the school organization. Continuous improvement of knowledge, along with increased awareness of up-to-date knowledge, helps the teacher in the evaluation process. The aim of this study is to analyze the tacit knowledge of high school English language teachers of objective evaluation methods that its method is interpretive phenomenology. The research population includes selected high school English language teachers of Shahriyar city in the academic year 2018-2019. The number of high school English language teachers in this year were 75 persons (48 female and 27 male). This study is based on the purposeful sampling of selecting the desirable cases and until saturation eighteen teachers (7 males and 11 females) were selected in which we would continue sampling to reach cases which no new information would be obtained. Therefore, the cases were selected who had sufficient experience in the field of objective evaluation. In this study, school attendance classes and direct observation of teachers 'performance and procedures were abandoned due to teachers' reluctance and obstruction of school principals, and only their explicit expression was sufficient through interviews with teachers. The data were collected from teachers through semi-structured interviews and were analyzed by content analysis method. The validity and reliability of the instrument were verified using reliability, portability, verifiability and reliability. Analysis of the data obtained from the interview showed that a significant amount of teachers' tacit evaluation knowledge is formed by objective evaluation and these teachers have great confidence in this type of evaluation and related tests. The results of the analysis of the interviews show that most of the teachers participating in this study think objective evaluation is more important than other types of evaluation and consider it is necessary to do it in the classroom. They have significant empirical and academic knowledge of objective evaluation methods. According to the opinion of these teachers, students are more accustomed to this type of evaluation method and accept and pay attention to this type of evaluation. One of the disadvantages of this type of evaluation is the timing of the tests and their correction by the teacher. The tacit knowledge of the participants in the three areas recognized for this knowledge, which includes individual tacit knowledge, interpersonal and organizational knowledge is noteworthy. The biggest problem for teachers with tacit knowledge is that they do not share it with their colleagues which leads to a lack of expansion of their tacit knowledge. The teachers need to keep up to date and keep up with personal information and continuous learning principles. curriculum planners should evaluate teachers' knowledge in terms of formal and tacit knowledge. This research studied both of tacit knowledge and objective evaluation, both of which are important. So far no research has been done on the combination of them. A few of studies in the field of tacit knowledge and evaluation have been performed by the method of phenomenology (interpretation). In order to use this method, the present study extracted pure information from the mental world of teachers.