Teacher evaluation is integral to maintaining a standard educational system. It helps stakeholders in the educational sector to track the performance of teachers and rate the overall quality of knowledge impartation. 

When it comes to teacher evaluation, there is no one-size-fits-all method, which means that different communities implement the evaluation methods that they consider ideal. Teachers and other stakeholders need to get familiar with teacher evaluation parameters in their community. 

What is Teacher Evaluation?

Teacher evaluation is a well-defined and systematic process that is used to access a teacher’s performance in the classroom. During teacher evaluation, the instructor’s pedagogic behaviors are assessed using a set of standardized criteria that is determined by the evaluation team. 

At the end of the evaluation exercise, the assessment team provides constructive feedback on the teacher’s performance and highlights areas needing improvement. A teacher evaluation process is one of the best opportunities for learning and self-improvement; hence, there is little or nothing to fear.

Even though teacher evaluation exercises are flexible, they typically revolve around several key performance indicators. Thus, during teacher evaluation, the assessment team may ask questions bothering on the student’s classroom performance, curriculum & learning outcomes, classroom records, and teaching methods. 

Benefits of Teacher Evaluation 

You may wonder why communities prioritize teacher evaluation. The most obvious reason is that assessing your teaching workforce regularly, allows you to track performance levels in your educational sector. This means that you’re better equipped to identify and solve institutional challenges.

However, this is not all that there is to the benefits of teacher evaluation. Let’s look at a few other benefits of teacher evaluation:

1. Teacher evaluation improves knowledge impartation by boosting teacher quality. It identifies and addresses key challenges with teaching on a one-on-one basis which helps the teacher become better at the craft.
2. It helps stakeholders to identify and reward exceptional teaching talents for excellent service delivery.
3. Conducting teacher evaluations at regular intervals allow you to spot gaps in teaching and learning methods which may be responsible for poor classroom performance among students. 
4. It plays a vital role in the identification of loopholes in the educational curriculum. 
5. A well-grounded teacher evaluation exercise is an awesome opportunity for self-assessment. Teachers can reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and work on improving themselves. 
6. It provides useful and productive feedback that contributes to the growth and development of the teacher. 
7. It provides useful insights for data-driven decisions making in the educational sector. 

Who Can Evaluate a Teacher? 

Teacher Evaluation by Student 

This is a common method of assessing a teacher’s classroom performance. By asking students to provide feedback on the teacher’s classroom behavior and teaching methods, you can gather useful information and meaningful insights for decision making. 

As you already know, students have firsthand experiences of the teacher’s behaviors; especially in the classroom. Students are the end-users(consumers) of the services teachers provide and this means that they can provide rich data and feedback on how they perceive a teacher’s classroom performance. 

There are different ways to organize a teacher evaluation exercise by students. For example, you can create and administer a Formplus online feedback survey that allows students to anonymously air honest opinions about their teachers. Collecting data anonymously encourages students to share their thoughts without fear of victimization. 

Pros

• It allows you to gather first-hand information from the primary end-users (students). 
• Teacher evaluation by the student is one of the most effective ways to determine the suitability of teaching methods. 

Cons

• This type of evaluation can be highly subjective. A student’s personal preferences may cloud his or her sense of judgment. 
• Students may find it difficult to weigh a teacher’s performance against the provided evaluation criteria. 

Teacher Evaluation by Teacher

This is a type of peer-peer evaluation that allows instructors to assess and provide feedback on their colleagues. This method of teacher evaluation helps you to gather information about the work ethics of the instructor, and his or her behavior outside the classroom.

Asking teachers to review one another’s performance is a great way to build team spirit and it is widely considered as one of the most objective methods of teacher evaluation. Teachers can provide valid feedback on the workplace attitudes, behaviors, skills, and competencies of their colleagues since they work closely with them. 

You can map out a timeline for teacher evaluation by teacher for your school. It is easy to get this type of teacher evaluation done using a Formplus peer evaluation form that lists questions in line with the assessment criteria provided by the educational board in your district. 

Pros

1. Teacher evaluation by teacher helps you improve the team spirit in your school.
2. It is a means of collecting valid data that provides insights into workplace performance. 

Con

1. Workplace toxicity can lead to biased feedback during teacher evaluation. 

Teacher Evaluation by Management

This type of teacher evaluation is carried out by the educational advisory board in a school that typically consists of the staff supervisor, headteacher, and the human resources personnel. It is also an appraisal that influences the career progression of the teacher. 

One of the most common ways to carry out this type of assessment is to schedule a one-on-one meeting for the employee (teacher) with the appraisal team. During this interview-like meeting, the assessment team can review the teacher’s performance viz a viz the evaluation parameters. 

You can also create an interview evaluation form with Formplus and use the teams and collaboration feature to coordinate responses from different members of your teacher evaluation team. Formplus allows you to update form data in Google sheets as you go so that every stakeholder can monitor the transparency of the evaluation process. 

Pros

• It allows for an objective view of the employee’s performance.
• Teacher evaluation by management helps the team to develop realistic career advancement projections for each member of the workforce. 

Cons

• In a toxic working environment, some members of the assessment team may capitalize on the evaluation to settle scorecards with perceived enemies. 
• It can result in biased feedback and assessment. 

How to Conduct a Teacher Evaluation With Formplus 

Before we go ahead to show you how you can conduct objective teacher assessments using Formplus forms, let’s go through some things you must have at the back of your mind as you prepare for this exercise. 

• Decide on the type of teacher evaluation you want to carry out. You need to decide on who would conduct the assessment; that is, whether it would be done by the students, co-teachers, or the management team.
• Define the parameters for the evaluation. This means that you should spell out the different criteria you would use for the assessment.
• Get everyone on board by filling them in on the teacher evaluation criteria. If possible, call a meeting and brief stakeholders to ensure transparency.
• Share the results of the assessment with the teacher highlighting strong performance points and other areas needing improvement. 

Now, let’s look at how to create a teacher evaluation form with Formplus. Formplus is an easy-to-use tool that allows you to create and administer forms and surveys for different purposes including teacher evaluation. Follow these easy steps to create your own Formplus teacher evaluation form:

• The first thing you have to do is create your Formplus account via www.formpl.us. Having a Formplus account gives you access to our drag-and-drop form builder as well as over 30 form fields for seamless data collection.
• After creating your Formplus account, use the sign-in options to access your dashboard. On your dashboard, you can create new forms, manage existing forms, and edit templates. Since we are showing you how to build the teacher evaluation form from scratch, you will click on the “create new form” button on your dashboard.

• Now, you have access to the form builder. You can start adding preferred fields to create your form. On the left corner of the builder, you would see different form field options like text fields, payment fields, and number fields. 

• Remember that we said the form builder has a drag-and-drop feature? Well, this is where it comes in. Add fields to your form by dragging them from the form fields section into your form. You can edit form fields by clicking on the small pencil icon beside each field. This would take you to the edit panel where you can add questions and options to each field. 

• After adding the fields and editing them, click on the Save button to save the changes you’ve made. You’d automatically move to the form customization section where you can tweak the outlook of your form using the multiple form customization options. 

• Copy your form link and share it with respondents to gather responses. 

Teachers Evaluation Form Template 

• Teacher Evaluation Survey

This is an easy-to-use template that can help students evaluate teachers‘ classroom performances and provide useful feedback to help teaching and learning methods. You can also tweak it for teacher evaluation by teachers and management exercises. You can access this template here

• Teacher Nomination Form

During a teacher evaluation exercise, you may want to identify and recognize outstanding teachers in your school. You can do this easily with the Formplus teacher nomination form template which allows stakeholders to suggest prospective recipients of different teaching awards and rewards. 

• Training Evaluation Form

Use this training evaluation form to gather feedback from teachers who participated in the training sessions organized by the educational board. With this form, participants can easily rate different aspects of the course and identify areas needing improvement. 

• Course Evaluation Form

Teachers can use this course evaluation form template to measure the level of understanding of their students after a class. With this form, students can highlight any grey communication areas and this can help the teacher improve the course learning process. 

• Peer Evaluation Form

This peer evaluation form template will help you conduct teacher evaluation by teachers seamlessly and gather feedback from evaluators with ease. You can edit this template in the form builder to suit the needs of your school or teacher evaluation board.  

Teachers Evaluation Question Examples

Teacher Evaluation Questions (Students)

• Tell us how the instructor helped you understand the course.
• Was the teacher easily accessible during and after the class?

1. Yes
2. No

• Did the teacher provide constructive feedback after every learning exercise?

1. Yes
2. No

• The instructor encouraged student participation in the classroom.

1. Strongly agree
2. Somewhat agree
3. Neither agree nor disagree
4. Somewhat disagree
5. Strongly disagree

• How would you rate the teacher’s performance?

1. Excellent
2. Average
3. Below Average
4. Poor 

Teacher Evaluation (Management)

• To what degree did the teacher adhere to the course curriculum and outline? 
• How successful was the teacher in creating an environment that was conducive to learning?

1. Very successful
2. Somewhat successful
3. Neither successful nor unsuccessful
4. Very unsuccessful

• The teaching methods deployed by the teacher helped students achieve the learning outcomes.

1. Strongly agree
2. Somewhat agree
3. Neither agree nor disagree
4. Somewhat disagree
5. Strongly disagree

• How effective was the teaching method adopted by the teacher? 

1. Very effective
2. Somewhat effective
3. Neutral
4. Non-effective
5. Extremely non-effective

• Was the teacher present at all times? 

1. Yes
2. No

Teacher Evaluation (Teachers)

• How well does the teacher communicate with other teachers?

1. Very well
2. Somewhat well
3. Not at all

• Is the teacher a team player?

1. Yes
2. No

• How helpful is the teacher?

1. Very helpful
2. Somewhat helpful
3. Not helpful
4. Prefer not to say

• Does this teacher find creative solutions, and own the solution to problems? 

1. Yes
2. No

• Are they proactive or reactive?

1. Proactive
2. Reactive

• If you could give this teacher one piece of constructive advice to make them more effective in their role, what would it be?

Conclusion 

Teacher evaluation is an important exercise that should be conducted regularly in line with the educational laws in your state. During teacher evaluation, you can effectively identify and address any challenges that teachers and students face within and outside the classroom.

When done correctly, the data gathered via teacher evaluation can help you create and implement new strategies for educational development. While there are different methods of conducting teacher evaluation, using Formplus forms would allow you to gather and process information seamlessly.