'Dominant' View of Teacher Evaluation and Appraisal: an international perspective

This paper argues that in order to develop a more informed understanding and debate about the reasons for the current demands by governments of all political persuasions for more stringent forms of teacher evaluation and appraisal, it is first necessary to have a comprehensive historical understanding of how teacher evaluation came about in the first place. Drawing upon portrayals of the USA, the UK and Australia, it is argued that there are sobering lessons to be learned from past attempts to exert social control over teachers through evaluation and appraisal schemes. Behind attempts to reassert social control over teachers lies a mainstream ideology that is based upon technocratic rationality, impoverished epistemologi‐cal assumptions about the nature of teaching and restricted and authoritarian view of pedagogy.