ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of approaches to seeking answers to the question: 'How well is this practice performing in its role as a teaching and learning practice?' Structural issues include the recruitment of teaching practices and teachers, curriculum and assessment procedures, and any documentation relevant to how the teaching programme is established. The level of evaluation is higher than for structural evaluation, as good implementation should lead to better outcomes, but it is still descriptive and does not guarantee good outcomes. Outcome evaluation focuses on measuring achievement of the intended result of the education programme. The less congruence there is between curriculum design implementation and assessment, the further summative assessment results are from outcome evaluation. The chapter focuses on the evaluation of practice-based teaching, because that is the likely interest of clinical supervisors. True outcome evaluation is not easily addressed at the level of practice-based teaching. An evaluation question might require information that is not available from existing sources.
