The Regime of Self-Evaluation: Self-Conception for Teachers and Schools

Abstract

Self-evaluation in inspection policy has become a global phenomenon. The idea is that it increases levels of teacher and school autonomy, wherein both schools and teachers have more ownership and responsibility over their work. In turn, such a process has allowed for greater accountability, which is then said to provide high quality education and, therefore, greater competitive advantage amongst knowledge-based economies. In both England and Ireland, self-evaluation has become a demanding procedure that is meant to complement external inspections of schools and teachers. In this article, I will argue that self-evaluation, whilst having the potential to become a worthwhile endeavour, does not live up to its name. In the first instance, the criteria used for self-evaluation are not internally generated but externally imposed. Thus, I would like to discuss the extent to which visions of 'good' or 'bad' education developed by inspecting bodies influence the way in which teachers and schools assess themselves. Furthermore, I will raise questions as to what appropriate criteria for teaching might look like. In doing so, I shall try to show that what is now current is a debased form of self-evaluation that is not only detrimental to the self-perception of teachers, but inadequate to what any coherent notion of the 'self' might be. In light of work by the philosopher Charles Taylor in particular, I will argue that the self is not something that can be examined in the way that is imagined in these inspection systems but is rather something dynamic and unfixed, constituted within a wider community of practice and, therefore, not amenable to evaluation in quite the way that is supposed.

The DEIS programme as a policy aimed at combating educational disadvantage: fit for purpose?

“…Scholars have described this approach as policy as data (Lewis and Holloway 2019;Ozga 2009) and as a mode of governance (Ball 2015). Despite the extensive body of research on the damaging effects of NPM on schools and the teaching profession generally, (Braun and Maguire 2020;Groundwater-Smith and Sachs 2002;Skerritt 2020;Sugrue 2018), this is the accountability agenda adopted by the Irish inspectorate under the guise of school self-evaluation, which it manifestly is not (Brady 2016).…”

La evaluación de tutores académicos universitarios: una revisión del estado de la investigación desde instituciones mexicanas

“…Destacamos cuatro, desde los resultados de la presente investigación: 1. La importancia de la participación de los implicados (tutores) en las evaluaciones (Brady, 2016;Ibarra & Rodríguez, 2014;Tyunnikov, 2016); 2. Transparentar los procesos y resultados del diseño técnico de los instrumentos utilizados (Benton & Cashin, 2012;Reyes et al, 2017); 3.…”

Patterns and paths towards privatisation in Ireland

“…As Brown et al (2018) point out, Ireland's 'PISA shock' in 2010 required school self-evaluations to focus on literacy, numeracy or an aspect of teaching and learning (Brown et al 2018). School self-evaluation however, as Brady (2016) points out, is specifically focused on the rhetoric of greater school autonomy, and as we have argued elsewhere, often the rhetoric of autonomy is very much thatrhetorical and mythical (Skerritt 2019e;Salokangas and Ainscow 2017). As Verger and Parcerisa (2019, 146) highlight about current education reform packages, school autonomy and accountability tend to be conceived as inseparable.…”