ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that contemporary educational, social, economic and political conditions are making the assessment and evaluation of teachers and of teacher competence a crucial issue for all those interested in the fate of state provided education. One of the most promising developments in contemporary sociology of education has been the re-discovery of heuristic power of historically located inquiry. Such inquiry, the virtues of which were well known to the founding fathers of sociology and which were proclaimed in a later period by writers such as C. Wright Mills, has many advantages. The paradox of locating the teacher's position in working class schooling in the twentieth century is the paradox of apparent freedom. In the discourse of the teachers themselves and in much of the literature which focuses upon such teachers can be found a strong celebration of autonomy; of the absence of close control and surveillance and even of the absence of very specific criteria for assessing teacher competence.
