Coming to Understand the Wicked Problem of Teacher Evaluation

• In Event: Intents, Enactors, and Outcomes of Educational Supervision

Abstract

This chapter portrays the practice of teacher evaluation, identifying its past and current influences. Enduring influences include its purposes, the classroom visit, the instrument, the generic teacher, the conference, and the law. Those influences emerging with the national educational reform agenda include state oversight, metrics mania, multiple measures, and the infrastructure. The author argues that these emerging influences tend to be cosmetic rather than lead to substantive changes. Both influences complicate our understanding of the practice of teacher evaluation and encourage us to neglect teaching and its improvement.

Author

• Helen M. Hazi, West Virginia University