ABSTRACT
The performance appraisal of teachers has become an important issue in many countries of the world in recent years. It serves a number of different purposes which may be broadly characterized as formative and summative and which are frequently in conflict.
This review concentrates on experiences in the USA and Britain. In the USA staff appraisal largely grew out of competence-based programmes of initial training; but it is now applied widely to all teachers in service and is sometimes used to identify candidates for ‘merit pay’. In Britain, appraisal has largely been focused upon career development, as opposed to tenure or pay, and derives from practice in industry and commerce.
Extensive research into teacher effectiveness and competency-based teaching has failed to reveal consistent patterns of effective teacher behaviour, and the validity of most staff appraisal schemes remains to be demonstrated.
The methods that are most commonly used in staff appraisal, often in combination, are: assessment of pupil performance, assessing teacher knowledge, observation of teacher performance, and appraisal interviews. Each of these methods is critically discussed. The first three are widely used in the USA but only the fourth is commonly employed in Britain.
