The Leadership of Teaching and Learning: Implications for Teacher Evaluation

This article reports on a series of empirical studies that investigated the extent to which teacher evaluation policies and procedures promote teachers' inquiry into the relationship between their teaching and their students' learning. Four possible explanations for the weak focus on student learning in teacher evaluation are discussed. They relate to the alignment between school evaluation practice and a national policy which gives minimal emphasis to student outcomes, to the lack of an inquiry stance, to the compliance-driven approach taken to teacher evaluation, and to the overemphasis on norms of professional collegiality. We argue for an alternative approach to teacher evaluation that promotes teachers' capacity to inquire into and strengthen the relationship between their teaching and their students' learning in order to achieve the key purpose of evaluation-to improve teaching and learning.