Approaching teacher self-assessment practice

Abstract

Teachers' reflection of their own performance is a crucial component to improve teaching skills. This reflection is effectively facilitated by deploying self-assessment methods. These methods can be initiated by the teacher them selves or by a higher instance, like faculty or even government. There are many ways to perform self-assessment, several of which are described in this report. A clear categorization can be made of self-assessment methods by how defined and standardized the assessment criteria are. Examples of methods with standardized criteria are self-evaluation questionnaires and the use of course experience questionnaires. These methods of well defined criteria provide opportunity to the teachers to compare, correlate and analyze the assessment results systematically over time, and can also be used as performance indicators of the teaching. Examples of self-assessments methods with no standardization or loosely defined criteria are peer-evaluation and teaching portfolio. These methods can often be more relevant as they cater to the personal differences of the teachers, providing more freedom to reflect and gain new insights.