Teacher appraisal research networks 1980-2000

The study and practice of teacher appraisal has been the focus of complex research networks in England from the 1980s onwards. This work has taken place within a national policy context that has increasingly sought to implement performance management, with a link between pay and targets. This has privileged instrumental appraisal and has sought to marginalise the humanistic and critical traditions. This article is a contribution to both recognising and charting the work undertaken by networks of school teachers, HEI researchers, independent consultants and LEA advisors and how they have created varied ways of working in classrooms that have impacted on professional lives. While particular networks may have been marginalised as a result of educational reform, the issues live on, and the capacity of educationists and the affordance of policy interpretation at local level means that the endurance of the practice of net-working remains.