Title: Teacher evaluation—accountability and improving teaching practices
Abstract: Since the turn of the century, teacher evaluation 1 has been put forward as an important strategy to serve both accountability and school improvement purposes, particularly in countries such as England and the USA, as well as elsewhere.Out of 28 countries surveyed in the OECD Review on Evaluation and Assessment Frameworks for Improving School Outcomes (2013), 22 reported having national-or state-level policy frameworks for teacher evaluation.In the six remaining countries, practices to provide feedback on teachers' work are designed and implemented locally. Some historical perspectivesThe evaluation of teachers' work has a long history.Many countries have a long tradition of teachers being assessed by superiors-school leaders/administrators (i.e. head teachers/ principals) or regional supervisors/superintendents (or school board members in a few countries).The approaches used depended on the mandate and varied according to the professional expertise of the evaluators.In the 1980s and 1990s, school improvement approaches promoted strategies that focused on teachers' self-evaluation or evaluation by peers instead of by superiors.This kind of assessment was undertaken by the professionals themselves and tailored to specific needs for professional development and improvement of individual instructional practices.Strategies such as action research (Altrichter et al.