Chapter 10 - Criteria for language teacher evaluation

Summary

This chapter examines the thorny issue of the criteria against which language teachers are evaluated. It draws on some early research on the concept of teacher effectiveness – a construct that has been questioned in recent years. We will see that – far from the supervisor's opinion being paramount – many critieria are now involved in language teacher education.

Evaluation entails “the necessary existence and use of a criterion or standard to which the ‘something’ being evaluated may be compared to determine relative worth” (Daresh, 2001:281). But evaluating language teachers is not as straightforward as appraising a used car or an antique chest. The main difficulty lies in determining the standards against which teachers' work will be compared. In fact the criteria “by which quality teaching is assessed may not be made fully clear to the teacher via an observation schedule or specific criteria for judging competent teaching” (Murdoch 1998, Conflicting Discourses section, paragraph 3). Supervisors must answer the fundamental question of what specific criteria will be used in language teacher evaluation. As McGreal (1988) notes, “an essential element of any effective evaluation system is a clear, visible, and appropriate set of evaluation criteria” (p. 13). This chapter discusses the various criteria that can be used in evaluating language teachers' performance.

The following procedures have been recommended by Geddes and Marks (1997:211) for evaluating programs and teachers. First, supervisors should examine evaluation research and reassess the program's existing evaluation model.