Teacher evaluation – A resource for teaching quality or a burden? An analysis using TALIS 2018 data

Recent international studies on teacher evaluation have shown two findings: Evaluations carried out by principals contribute to self-reported teaching quality, but they have less desirable effects on the motivational dispositions of the evaluated teachers. Conversely, teacher evaluation by fellow teachers shows positive effects on the motivational dispositions of the evaluated teachers. Therefore, the effects of teacher evaluations are controversial and the relevance of evaluation for optimizing the self-reported teaching quality is unclear. This controversy is addressed in this population-descriptive study that models the positive and negative effects of principal-led and teacher-led teacher evaluation using TALIS 2018 data (n = 103098). The results show that principal-led teacher evaluation may contribute to clarifying instructions, but teacher-led teacher evaluation predicts cognitive activation. The negative effects are marginal for both evaluation variants. However, the effects observed in structural equation models are small. These findings are discussed in terms of the German education system, which does not conduct teacher evaluations but has quality deficits. The international perspective partly shows the fruitfulness of teacher evaluation, which could be connected to the German evaluation standards in order to achieve a scaling of the effects.