ABSTRACT
Introduction Self-evaluation of the kind that is initiated and conducted within schools by teachers seems to have emerged from two distinct historical contexts: the curriculum development movement in the early and mid-1970s, and increased pressure for public accountability subsequent to the Tyndale affair. In relation to the first, the apparent lack of success of many curriculum projects to ‘take’ in the schools generated such axioms as that of the Humanities Curriculum Project which declared: “no curriculum development within teacher development”. Thereafter some of the ideas and methods associated with the experimental and evaluation stages in national curriculum development projects were recognised as offering possibilities to individual schools and teachers seeking professional development and curriculum change in their particular situation. It is significant that many of those who have promoted the notion of school self-evaluation have also been prominently associated with national projects: Marten Shipman, John Elliott, Barry MacDonald and Helen Simons, for example. Although Lawrence Stenhouse rarely refers to self-evaluation, preferring the notion of the ‘teacher researcher’, many of the principles underlying his conception are similar to ‘self-evaluation’ insofar as they share a purpose directed towards teacher and curriculum development.
