ABSTRACT
This chapter explore evaluation in education. It characterizes the education sector at the systems level and describes the teaching profession. The chapter presents an example of a successful evaluation exercise. It concludes how understanding and acknowledgement of the characteristics of the teaching profession can promote the successful use of evaluative knowledge in general and the application of experience from successful schools in particular. The chapter presents examples of this interesting disciplinary research from the organization and management literature and from literature on the education sector. It examines this literature to improve our understanding of the characteristics of the teaching profession and of schools. The chapter determines between four characteristics of educational evaluation: Objects, Settings, Approaches, and Evaluators. Teachers and teaching organizations are not necessarily hesitant about or opposed to change. However, they will often be sceptical to outside changes regardless of the number of evaluations supporting the changes.
