Trusting Schools and Teachers

Trusting Schools and Teachers: Developing Educational Professionalism Through Self-Evaluation emerged from a series of studies undertaken with teachers at various stages of their careers exploring the impact of a range of evaluation systems on their personal and professional development. The book begins with a comparative analysis of the rise of school and teacher evaluation, charting the trend's conceptual and political influences, and highlights how the concept of self-evaluation has come, for a variety of reasons, to play a surprisingly large role in the emerging approaches to school and teacher evaluation. This is illustrated by a detailed analysis of the emerging system of whole-school evaluation in Ireland. Research indicates that while self-evaluation looms large in the system's theoretical framework, in fact, there is strong evidence that neither schools nor teachers have the expertise required to systematically self-evaluate. This book identifies methodologies designed to empower schools and teachers to become genuinely self-evaluating through the development of research skills in the context of online communities of practice.