Teacher Evaluation: Rationale, Issues and General Principles

This paper presents a review of recent literature in the field of teacher evaluation or appraisal. It considers the problems commonly associated with more traditional methods of teacher evaluation and synthesises these with the author’s own professional experience as an international school Principal, to offer a six-point summary of the main criticisms. Based on the inverse of these criticisms, the paper then proposes six general principles for an improved, evidence-based approach to teacher evaluation.